If you want a quick gauge on demographics, just ask one question: What’s wasabi?

Answer number one: Wasabi, wasabi shooters, that’s what Steve-O snorted in the movie, “Jackass.” (And then he got incredibly, immediately, violently ill. Movie fans will recognize series regulars and Oregonians Dave England and Ehren McGhehey as niche Oregon products themselves.)

Right answer, and most who give this response will be the under-thirty crowd.

Answer number two: Wasabi is that little lump of very hot, very green stuff on the side of your sushi serving.

Right again, and most who give this answer will be 30-50-year-old upscale, yuppies who crowd into trendy sushi bars in trendy downtown neighborhoods.

Answer number three: What’s what?

Well, that answer would put you in the not-so-current on their pop culture 50+ crowd.

Wasabi is one of those new, niche items that separate the men from the boys, the cool from the not so cool. Wasabi is the poster child for where Oregon may be headed, as agriculture flexes and adapts to fickle markets, high labor costs, and global competition. Like Gwyneth Paltrow is the “it girl” for Hollywood, wasabi is the “now niche” for agriculture. Who knows what it will be tomorrow?

One person working to figure that out is Laura Barton, International Trade Manager for the Oregon Department of Agriculture’s Food Innovation Center (FIC). Barton’s mission is to “work with farmers to help them find new markets or develop new products and get those into places and stay competitive.”

“We’re just trying like heck right now to keep our growers who are there in business,” says Barton, “and to try and identify companies who are willing to take the risk if they can, and build their skill set. But it’s very challenging. This is probably the most challenging time we’ve ever had to face in agriculture.”

According to Barton, there are 17.4 million acres of farmland in Oregon but the average size of a farm is a little under 500 acres. “It gets skewed,” says Barton, “because on the east side you have a lot of big ranches, but here in the valley your average farm is a couple hundred acres.” Those farms, she says, must produce very high value products.

Though Barton works in a very urban, very glass and chrome, downtown Portland office complete with high tech labs and tasting rooms, she’s on a first name basis with farmers all over the state. But even she admits that the wasabi grower over in Florence, Oregon is a bit elusive, even secretive. It’s all part of protecting that next niche, that developing market. It’s serious business. Still, she’s able to produce a name: Pacific Farms, owned by Roy Carver III.

Pacific Farms Operations Manager Ted Wakeman is too proud of his product to be too secretive. Just don’t ask to visit the greenhouses. The hydroponic process for growing the wasabi rhizomes, which involves simulating the steady running streams of Japan’s mountainsides, is their trade secret.

Wakeman says, “Oregon’s coastal climate in the central part of the state is well suited to the growing of wasabi, which does not tolerate hot temperatures. If it gets above 80 and it’s in the sun, it’ll sunburn. And it has a high sugar content and will last to 28-32 degrees, but below that it really damages the plant. It’s a pretty limited growing area.

“Carver began the operation in about 1991, and the first commercial sales were in late ’96” says Wakeman. “Wasabi is a large green plant with leaves almost as big as a rhubarb plant, and it’s a member of the mustard family. We use the stems, the roots and the rhizome. The rhizome is the center part of the plant, much like the heart of celery or the heart of a cabbage.”

But here’s the really important secret, and this one they’re willing to tell the world. According to Wakeman, most of what Americans think is wasabi is really an imposter. That very green, very hot stuff on the side of your sushi—it’s not wasabi.

“Ninety percent of the paste you’ll get throughout the United States in sushi restaurants is actually green horseradish,” says Wakeman. “If you read the label--of course you can’t in a restaurant–but it is a powder. It is powdered horseradish with green food coloring and it contains no wasabi.

Turns out that “not-so-current on their pop culture 50+ crowd” are smarter than we thought.

Wakeman says, “We’ve done the research on that. We buy competitors’ products and of course we read the label. Go to your grocery store and read the label and you read on there, ‘Japanese horseradish.’ Japanese horseradish is not wasabi; horseradish and wasabi are not even members of the same plant family.”

So what about those wasabi shooters in “Jackass?” Real wasabi?

Probably not,” says Wakeman, “but that’s theatrics, so who would know.

“To the best of my knowledge if you’re going to get real wasabi in the United States in a paste form frozen you have to get it from us, nobody else is doing it.

“The wasabi paste we have is not a powder; it is ground and frozen. You use it directly from the bag; you just squeeze it out of the tube. Fresh wasabi has a much cleaner taste; it’s not quite as hot as powdered horseradish. The flavor is vastly superior and has no aftertaste. The heat does not linger--it’s very clean, and very vegetable.”

Several Portland restaurants offer Pacific Farms real wasabi, according to Wakeman. So does Uwajimaya, an Asian food store in Beaverton. “They carry our paste in the tube and they carry our salad dressings as well,” says Wakeman. “Zupan’s grocery also carries our paste. We sell to restaurants all over the United States. Wolfgang Puck, who has a TV show--they use it in their restaurants. Emeril from Emiril Agassi--they have ordered it and used it. It’s pretty well distributed throughout the U.S. and Hawaii. Roy’s Restaurants, which is a big restaurant chain, also uses it. It’s all sold over the Internet as well. We do ship all over the United States and Hawaii and Alaska. We also do well in our home state.

Sure enough, here in Oregon the niche is growing, flexing, adapting—just like growers hope niche markets will do. And the first processor to team up with Roy Carver III will be a third generation Oregon food grower/manufacturer, Domonic Biggi of Beaverton Foods.

Wouldn’t you know it, he’s going to mix wasabi with horseradish, the foundation of his family’s business. Beaverton Foods has been making horseradish and mustard products since Grandmother Rose planted the first horseradish on acreage that’s now part of downtown Beaverton. Beaverton Foods makes over 100 varieties of mustard and numerous other products under the Beaver brand.

“We’re just now experimenting with labels for two new products, wasabi mustard and wasabi horseradish,” says Biggi. “We’re getting ground paste wasabi from Pacific Farms in Florence. We will launch the first of the year.”

Biggi says that he and Carver got together on the project because Carver successfully grows the “now niche” product, and Biggi has the Beaver brand that people trust and the marketing and manufacturing expertise. Biggi says the new products will have the heat, the color, the “flavor profile” of wasabi. But he says, “When it comes to an unusual product like wasabi, you’re more apt to buy a brand you trust like Beaver.”

Laura Barton at the FIC agrees that it’s no easy trick getting products from farm to shelf, nor is it easy going from farmer to manufacturer. She talks about the variety of foods she sees brought to the farmers’ markets and the virtual testing laboratory those open markets provide.

“The farmers market is a great place for people to test out new products,” says Barton, “because you’ve got this ready audience and it’s not as costly as trying to get your product into the grocery store, which can be very tough. You really have to have your act together. Basically, you have to already have your products in distribution before they’ll look at you, unless you have something so special and unique. But it’s getting hard to find those because the market’s pretty saturated. To come up with something for the supermarkets where the customers are saying, ‘I want this,’ is hard.”

Different jobs require different kinds of personalities, says Barton. “People who are growers have a grower’s mentality,” she says. “They’re happy to stay on the farm, they’re independently growing, they’re not interested in taking risk. The entrepreneur…to take something to a different stage, to turn something into something else, whether it be to package something a different way, cut-slice-dice it, that’s different. To do something to the product and go out and market that requires a certain kind of personality and skill set that by and large you don’t see in your average farmer. There are a few.

“Karla Chambers (Stahlbush Island Farms in Corvallis), she’s one of the ones—she’s kind of like the poster child for that. But then again, you look at her background. She’s not what you think of as a typical farmer.”

Barton describes Chambers, a former OSU professor and a Federal Reserve Board member, as someone who’s highly educated, has a different slant on things, and comes at it from different directions--an example of vertical integration from growing to processing on up. Chambers’ farm on the banks of the Willamette produces corn, carrots, squash, broccoli, and more, using sustainable practices. On-site the vegetables are processed into packaged frozen vegetables and for further processing into baby foods and other premium products for both international and domestic sale. The operation takes Chambers from farm rows to front rows in the grocery aisles at Fred Meyer and Lamb’s Thriftways.

Out in McMinnville, in the fields surrounding the Evergreen Air Museum, the vertical integration specialists at Evergreen Orchards are finishing the harvest and putting the finishing touches on gift baskets for the coming holiday season. Evergreen Orchards’ marketing spokeswoman Lorrie Williamson says the company, begun in 1976, “holds over 6,000 acres planted in nursery stock, hazelnuts, walnuts, grass seeds, grain, Christmas trees, grapes, and row crops.” This array of Oregon specialty crops is also processed and marketed on-site.

Evergreen’s finished products include multiple varieties of flavored hazelnuts, dried berry mixes, authentic Italian hazelnut biscotti, and their latest introduction—Spruce Goose Pinot Noir juice, from their own homegrown Pinot Noir grapes planted outside the museum home of the real Spruce Goose. Williamson says that all possible channels are used for sales from retail to gourmet shops to the Internet. This very large, very vertically integrated business covers a lot of ground and requires the time, energy and talents of specialists in marketing, automation, sales, and production schedules, not to mention in-depth knowledge of successful farming practices.

But Barton is right—those who take their crops from farm to store shelf are “the exceptions rather than the rule.”

Domonic Biggi readily admits his company made the switch from farming to processing long ago. “In 1974 we stopped growing our own horseradish—grandma said we couldn’t make money growing,” says Biggi. “Urban growth was accelerating in Beaverton. We made the move to manufacturing.”

“The particular strain of mustard seed we use grows better in Canada due to the longer summer days. The horseradish we used to grow ourselves—now, it all comes out of the Klamath Basin,” says Biggi.

For now international competition is not a big factor. “Some roots come from Europe,” says Biggi, “but currently none from Asia or South America, which is good for the time being. It’s just not a big enough market for them to get into.” Adds Biggi, “All manufacturing in the U.S. is now done by about five family businesses.”

And that small niche, that unique character of Beaverton Foods’ products may explain, at least in part, their market success, says Barton. “In Oregon our volumes tend to be smaller than other places. Inputs and costs are higher. The land costs, the labor costs, the taxes—all those things make it more expensive to produce. In those areas we can’t compete, so what we have to do is differentiate ourselves through quality, labor, and service. We’re able to adjust quickly to the needs of our customers to produce something in a smaller size, or change the flavor a bit or something like that. We’re always going to be battling a California who can produce high, high volumes that we cannot.”

Biggi remembers when it was different. “Recently,” he says, “my son was doing a homework assignment and we ended up reading from a 1964 World Book Encyclopedia, the same year I was born. It talked about Oregon being the largest grower of this product and that product, the biggest timber producer, the biggest filbert producer, the second largest strawberry producer next to California. What happened? That’s not the same Oregon I live in, and it’s only been 39 years.

Beaverton Foods moved into new facilities in 2001 from 30,000 sq. ft. into 80,000 sq. ft. Other than Bandon cheese, Biggi says, it’s the only food processing plant built in the state in the last eight years that he knows of. Yet, he says, the state is adamant about not giving property tax relief to food processors. Other industries yes, but food processors no. But, Biggi says, Oregon growers and processors need all the help they can get keeping head above water in the global marketplace.

“The Klamath farmers who grow our horseradish—they’ve had to stay on the cutting edge, dig their own wells, diversify. A smart farmer can make money, but if you’re marginal, you’re toast. There’s no room for error. No more saying, ‘It’s a bad year.’ One bad year, and you’re gone. You have to be flexible and adaptable when you live in Oregon, because it’s inconveniently located with the rest of the planet. You can’t do commodity products on a global basis,” he says.

“Our business climate is suited to the quick, flexible niche product environment,” says Biggi. “You have to be unique, you have to be different. You have to create a margin–we lose to people into commodities in a big way.

“We were the first company to invent honey-mustard. My dad started playing with it in the ‘50s because brown sugar would always crystallize. Now it’s mainstream. Now the big labels have the category.” When that happens it’s time for Oregon food producers to move on. “If you’re in Oregon,” Biggi says, “you’d better be lean and mean. When the big boys get into it, you’d better be able to retire or do something else.”

Hidden in the hills and valleys around the state there are other big international players. You just have to be able to spot them through the trees. For the last eight years, Silverton has been the home of Quest International, manufacturers of flavors, seasoning blends, emulsifiers, and other ingredients.

The family-owned, private company, in business since 1903, moved into the new Silverton facility in 1995. The old Medford facility, where the original plant was established in the early 70s, is now a large estate, historic mansion, a winery, a wine shop and a convention center called Eden Valley Estates and Eden Valley Orchard Vineyard.

“In the Silverton plant we use a technique called double drum drying—that’s a dehydration process,” says Mark Sheppard, Operations Manager for Quest. “We manufacture for several customers, but the primary business is the Pacific Rim, Japan. We sell sweet corn powder. It’s the main ingredient for a product called sweet corn potage in Japan. It’s a very sweet soup, a dessert item, and it’s sold in fast food restaurants, primarily McDonald’s. It would be…well, I’m not going to say a dessert item. Because for our palate it’s very sweet, but in Japan it’s a side dish like French fries. This is a very creamy, smooth product with a lot of milk, sugar and salt. It’s very popular. American culinary preferences are much different than they are in Japan. This has been a popular product there for more than 20 years. Now,” says Sheppard, “we ship into Europe and Australia. And shipping costs are low because we’re not shipping water; we’re shipping dry product.

“Sweet corn powder to us is almost a commodity,” says Sheppard, “because we manufacture such a tremendous quantity. We’re more involved in manufacturing culinary flavors based on actual chef-type recipes. Products like mirapoix. If you’ve ever sautéed carrots, onions, celery together to form a base for sauce or gravy, that’s what we manufacture in dry form. A chef or restaurant or retail processor can add these ingredients to the finished product so that it’s quicker and easier to prepare.

“We do tend to purchase our raw materials from Pacific Northwest companies,” says Sheppard. “We have a select number of growers here in the Willamette Valley and they grow sweet corn to our specifications. Then during the fall when the corn is mature, they deliver it on our schedule and we manufacture the sweet corn powder. And it’s 100 percent sweet corn.

Enter Gail Gosche and the Gosche Farm, where the sweet corn for Quest International is grown.

But back to the corn. Gosche explains: “In a cannery situation you would have premium broccoli parts and then there would be these little broken pieces. At Quest, they’ve been able to take advantage of that commodity—the broken pieces—and dehydrate it and use it in soup mix. With corn you don’t get broken pieces and that’s why we’ve had this relationship growing their corn for them.”

The super sweet corn variety is one of many crops on the Gosche farm, including grass seeds, and some sugar beet seeds. The valley is really exceptional in producing all different types of seeds,” says Gosche. “There are businesses producing specialty flower seeds. You drive by and see 20 acres of poppies growing.” In addition to these crops, the Gosche farm specializes in what Gosche calls the “multigenerational crop” of the farm—hops.

Flexible? Adaptable? That could be the farm motto.

“With canneries closing in the area we’ve had to change our strategy,” says Gosche. “We usually would have a rotation of maybe some fresh peas, green beans. There were quite a few acres—we didn’t grow them--of cauliflower and broccoli in this area and now that’s all changed. Fortunately for us we weren’t that dependent on it, but it came as quite a surprise to the growers. When you’re set up and you have machinery that is specifically for harvesting beans or planting beans and all of a sudden it goes away, that’s an enormous change to your operation.

“So what do you do? A lot of those growers have planted more acres of grass seed,” Gosche explains. “So then you jump out of one commodity that is fairly consistent as far as the market, but then you potentially overload the other one you’re jumping into. What happens to those acres that used to be in row crops? At what point does that market become saturated?

“It keeps life interesting,” Gosche says with a smile.

“Hops are about a third of the acreage we produce on,” says Gosche. “There is a finite market for hops. We don’t do it here on our farm, but there are growers in Oregon that have wonderful relationships with the smaller microbrewers and are able to deliver their hops fresh from the farm right to Bridgeport or Widmer or whoever it might be.” But she says, “We deal directly with Anheuser Busch and Coors, and we sell directly to them. And, in order to have a secure supply for their hops every year, they don’t choose just from one location, one farmer, one country; they spread things out.

“This year is a perfect example of spreading out a worldwide supply of a commodity because Europe really suffered this year with the summer heat. The amount of hops that a company like Anheuser Busch or Coors was expecting to get this year from Germany and the Czech Republic, that’s changed completely because of weather.

“In the hops situation, it’s unique from other commodities because a lot of it is contracted in advance. We need to have that security. There’s an investment in the whole mechanics of growing hops. You can’t take the same piece of land that has poles and wires and trellis and say, ‘Nah, I think I’ll grow sweet corn this year.’ You can’t do that.

“Hops is extremely labor intensive. There’s just a certain amount of it that always has to be done by hand. It’s a perennial crop, so the crop stays in the ground. But every year we have to restring; we put string up at the wire height—20 feet. Then they’re sunk into the ground next to the plant and the hop vines are individually trained up to those strings. At harvest there’s also a good deal of hand labor that happens.

“My two brothers, Glenn and Gordon, and I have taken over the daily operation of a farm that was started by my father Herman in the 40s. He had taken over the operation from his father Carl who came from an agricultural area in Germany—it was in his heritage as well. He started growing hops in 1905.

“Both my parents live on the farm and are still involved. It’s divided up by enterprise. I’ve taken over the management of the hop crop, but it’s only a third of the acreage we deal with. My brothers divide up responsibilities. It’s also a case of individual talents. I have an ability to be able to coordinate hand labor crews that might be used in other crops. When it comes to mechanics, I step aside and let my brothers take care of that.”

It’s a damp, rainy day as Gosche strolls slowly across the field and over to the barn where the hops are stored and baled for shipment. Tables are decorated and set for the workers to celebrate the end of harvest. The day will end soon and the farm will shift toward another crop, another harvest. But right now the pungent smell of hops in the air is almost overwhelming.

“This is day 20 of the harvest and I can’t smell it as well as I’d like because I’m so used to it,” laughs Gosche. She explains that brewers use certain descriptors such as herbal, piney, or sweet, or spicey. “Those are the good ones,” she says. She’d rather not share the bad ones. That’s okay—the aroma is decidedly sweet, piney.

“It has been a good year,” she says. “We’ve been really fortunate. We do have to look at different farming techniques to stay ahead of potential problems. One that we look at quite intensely is water. What sort of water supply are we going to have? Hops are irrigated. Half our acreage is under drip irrigation instead of sprinklers. That way we use water more efficiently. It’s things like that that we have to always be looking at to stay ahead. The world’s getting smaller and Oregon is getting smaller and so it’s not just agriculture that’s using water but its residences as well. We always thought Oregon had plenty of water, but everything’s changing.

“The big player is China. They’re now growing with hand labor completely. I can’t even imagine it, but the price is still lower. It’s a different type of hops they are growing than Anheuser Busch and Coors want to see from Oregon,” Gosche says with some relief. “But when any country is able to come in and produce a product for a lot less money, you look at what you’re producing and say, do I have an option?”

That’s a question that Fred and Barbara Randall of Estacada have had to answer time and time again in their lives. Sitting at his kitchen table overlooking acres of trees and nursery stock, Randall reminisces with his wife Barbara about their years in agriculture, shifting crops, working, struggling, adapting, and finally succeeding…with Christmas trees.

“In the late thirties and forties, this was prune country up in here,” remembers Randall. “There were a lot of old prune driers. Then the price apparently went gunny-sack on the prunes. And then it was grass seed. Pretty near all the land around here was in grass seed--fescues. Then the price of that went down.”

“At that time there was a lot of strawberries around too,” adds Barbara Randall. “But the strawberries always ended up with a disease in them, and you couldn’t raise berries on them again. And with the cattle, they were in the mud all the time, and if you had enough ground to raise hay, that didn’t pay. And if you had to buy hay, that was too much. That didn’t work.”

“Christmas trees is the one thing that did well,” says Randall. They’re the best crop we’ve ever tried to raise, because there’s nothing that has to be done any certain day, except have ‘em ready to ship. When the truck is there, you better have them ready.”

Randall explains how they finally arrived at Christmas trees: “Strawberry prices were about 8 cents a pound, 5 cents to have them picked. One year we had 53 tons of strawberries. I don’t think we realized a dime of profit. So we switched to cattle, and that was about the same proposition. I worked for PGE at the time and my wife took care of the strawberries. I worked on the weekend, and I saw the people who lived above us and I knew darn well they were on public assistance, and they were going to the beach every weekend. I told my wife, ‘We’re doing something wrong.’ So I sold the farm and we built a trailer park and then we sold that and I quit PGE. We had land I didn’t want to plant, so we decided to try Christmas trees.

“That worked out real well and from there it was all uphill. The market kept improving. We planted seven or eight acres, and it did well so we bought a bigger chunk of ground. We’d send trees to the east coast, to Florida and Hawaii--the market just kept growing and it’s still growing,” Randall says. “They’re sending trees to Guam and Japan and you name it, all over the world it seems like. It really is a pretty big business. I think it ranks number two in agriculture; nursery is number one. During the harvest, Estacada is really plugged up with big semis.”

According to the FIC’s Laura Barton, Randall has hit it right on two points. Nursery is number one in Oregon, with Christmas trees falling under that umbrella. The niche is still huge for Oregon growers, she says, with Clackamas County the biggest Christmas tree producer. And she says he’s also right to look at international markets. “It tends to cost less money to ship to Japan or to Asia than it does to ship it to New York. You’ve got consumers in those overseas countries who, if they really want something, will pay top dollar for it,” explains Barton. For Oregon growers, it can be a strength to export, and to develop international markets for niche goods.

Though told they might face a surplus, from their first year the Randalls did well, starting with Doug firs. Quality, they say, brought the buyers back year after buy. Barbara Randall says, “Once you get established and they know you send quality trees, they just buy them because they trust you. Ours were always sold. After the first of the year we knew who was going to buy them.”

But don’t get the wrong idea—it’s hard work, constant work. “June is a good month,” says Randall. “And January is a good month. It’s too early to start planting. Least the way we did it, it seems like there’s always something to do because we did a whole lot of the work ourselves.”

Trees are graded No.1 and down. The No.1 trees are shipped internationally and nationally. So does that mean that tree lots in Oregon offer second-rate trees?

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“I know people would come around and buy trees that the quality wasn’t good enough to ship out, and they were going to Portland,” says Randall.

“For a couple years we had a retail lot in Portland. Most of the lots were taking trees that didn’t sell for export, more or less the No. 2 trees. We decided if we were going to do it, we would do it right. So we set up a real nice lot with a tent, individual stands, took in really good trees--right by Washington Square, in the back. But it was a hassle keeping up with what we had to do at home. We stuck with growing.”

Noticing a preference developing for noble firs, Randall has mostly shifted his operation. He explains the basics: “People think you just put them in the ground and wait five or six years and cut them and sell them. That isn’t quite the way it works. About the second year you have to basal prune, and you’re talking from 10-20 cents a tree, then you have to spray every year to keep the weeds under control--for weevils, aphids, spider mites. About the third year you have to shear them—15-20 cents for that. Every year it goes up a nickel a tree, ending at 35 cents a tree. Ninety percent of the time the tops grow off at an angle, and everybody wants a tree with a straight top, so you have to go in and tie the top by hand. It costs almost as much to do that as to shear.

“A tree buyer told us one year that a tree with a good top is worth $20 more than a tree with a crooked top, so it pays. We were one of the first to start doing our trees that way. I’ve always been grateful to Mr. Rumsfield, an old grower here. We stopped to see his trees one day with all straight tops. We asked him, and he came to our place and showed us how to do it. It caught on. Now you have to do it, or get left out.”

Randall laughs about the extra work he may have helped create for tree growers, including his own daughter and sons, Jim and Joe. For the Randalls it’s been a family affair since way back. “My uncle moved out here from Nebraska in about 1942. We were already established, and he was looking to buy a farm around Estacada. The county agent says, ‘You don’t want to go up around Estacada. That land won’t grow nuthin. You can’t even raise enough to feed goats.’

“That’s been the thinking right along--that this land isn’t very good. And it isn’t all that good. You can raise a good crop of most anything you plant, but it’s a lot more work to do it. You can’t make near the money. It’s not like that good Willamette Valley soil for row crops.”

Randall explains that the key was finding the right crop. “This isn’t the best soil in the world,” he says, “but a benefit is being up in the hills and collecting the rain. The trees grow well in this clay and the rock. They don’t mind the rock field at all; they just grow much better if it’s rocky. So for small farmers, if you’ve got 20-25 acres, it’s something you can make some money on.

The Randalls make it look simple—staying viable in a global agricultural market. For Oregon farmers, it’s anything but simple. And while the Randalls have found their niche, their sons still keep their eyes on the horizon. That’s why much of the acreage behind their meticulously landscaped home is planted in multiple varieties of nursery stock, waiting for that swing in the market.

For now, Fred and Barbara will stick with trees. Says Randall, “As long as there’s a Christmas, people are going to want a Christmas tree.”

Semi-retired, the Randalls enjoy travel to Europe and Asia. But says Randall, “Seems like no matter where you travel, there’s no place like this Willamette Valley—I’ll tell you, it’s God’s country. That’s all there is to it.

Peter McDonald shares that love for trees, that love for the land.

“It was smart to plant that Black Walnut tree far enough away from the firs so that it had space to grow,” says Peter McDonald. “It was planted around 1860.” Sure enough—the enormous, graceful old tree dominates the side acre near the white frame house at Inchinnan Farm in Wilsonville, and it’s untouched, but perfectly framed, by the larger, 300-some year old Doug firs.

McDonald exudes a comfortable attachment, an affinity, for his land. He took over the farm, in the family since 1956, honoring the request of his elderly father. In 1972 McDonald gave up his six-year forestry career in Africa, where he met wife Jill on a blind date in Nairobi, and the two came to Oregon.

“We go back quite a bit. The first time, we did a horseback safari in Kenya,” says McDonald. “I remember we went on one monstrous ten-hour ride; we never saw a single car. We saw one plane that flew over—it was a real intrusion. The sun was getting kind of low and we came into this lovely riparian valley with a meandering stream, and there were nine different species… we just rode amongst them, zebra, giraffes. It was the way the world must have been at some point—it was just beautiful.”

And so are the filbert orchards of Inchinnan Farm. Spectators of the well-attended Country Classic Horse Show may remember back to past Julys when that event was held on the McDonald property. But no longer. The even green pastures have transformed, a relatively short time later, into productive filbert orchards.

Why filberts, or hazelnuts? Or for that matter, is there a difference?

“We grow filberts and we sell hazelnuts,” laughs McDonald. “That’s the joke in the industry. Filberts have all the problems--filbert blight, filbert worm--so by changing the name we got rid of all those problems.

“An old Scot who used to farm in Wilsonville told my father, filberts are the way to go. You can do all the work yourself and you only have to work three times a year, once for pruning, once for fertilizing, and once for harvest. So we fell for that line. I planted the first filberts six months after we arrived back. It’s been a marvelous crop, a unique crop. Oregon is about the only place in the United States that grows commercial hazelnuts anymore.

“In the Willamette Valley we have a mild climate, doesn’t get too hot in the summers and doesn’t get too cold in the winters. Filberts don’t like extremes; they require fertile well-drained soil. That’s why they grow in the valley, and the high rainfall--35 to 45 inches is perfect for them. On that belt around the world--45 degrees north latitude--is where the bulk of the filberts are grown, whether it’s Turkey, or Italy, or France or Spain.”

One way that Oregon filbert growers stay competitive is by cooperating with competitors in Turkey, where 75-80 percent of the world’s filberts are grown. Oregon grows three to four percent. “This is a worldwide commodity,” notes McDonald. “We grow over 99 percent of U.S. hazelnuts.

“But American don’t eat very many hazelnuts,” he adds. “They have so many other nuts they’re used to—peanuts (not really a tree nut, but a competitive nut), almonds, pecans, walnuts.
Europeans eat 100 times per capita of hazelnuts what we eat in the U.S. We eat two nuts per capita in this country, and they eat 200. So, we feel that there’s a tremendous future if we can convince Americans to eat more.”

Harvesting is all by machinery, usually in October. It’s fairly simple and fast. A sweeper-blower goes down the tree rows, once up and once down. “The tree rows’ normal planting distance is around twenty feet,” explains McDonald. “So a windrow is formed in the middle, with dirt, leaves, husks, nuts, old tennis shoes. It’s amazing what comes out of the sky,” he laughs. Next the harvester straddles the windrow, picks everything up onto a screen, and blows anything lighter than the nuts back out--leaves, husks, twigs. Under ideal harvesting conditions, clean nuts are left behind. The nuts are then dried down quickly, usually to nine percent moisture.

“We actually do that on this farm—we do ours and other neighbors. We harvest on what we call the third leaf, three seasons after planting,” says McDonald.

“There are trees in this state that were planted 100 years ago that are still producing,” claims McDonald. “Filberts are susceptible to hard rot, …but generally an orchard is good for 60, 70, 80 years.” But for a variety of reasons, orchards are disappearing. One is development-- roads, country homes. Despite our land use planning laws, there is some development. The Urban Growth Boundary is being expanded, and a lot of trees were near the towns. When filberts were first planted, Portland and Wilsonville were tiny places. And people’s circumstances change as well. The nursery business has been very lucrative recently, and that’s caused a lot of switching from filberts to nursery. Filberts have probably been less susceptible to that than other crops because it is a major investment to put in an orchard or take one out.”

Orchards are also being taken out, according to McDonald, because of Eastern filbert blight--in the Northwest since the ‘70s. “We’re hoping OSU will be releasing an immune variety in 2004,” says McDonald. “We’ve had a breeding program now for 25-30 years at OSU. It’s been a slow process. The research is usually done through the Oregon Hazelnut Commission. We tax ourselves at $9 a ton. Money goes to the commission and the board decides--the breeding program is the longest standing expense of the industry.”

“We have great optimism in Oregon--we can grow wonderful hazelnuts. It’s the most flavorful nut that there is. We’re a tiny little industry; we can’t afford a great deal of promotion money. But we’re doing our best.

“My nuts go into a big pool. We sell them, fully dried in the shell, to a company in Dundee called Westnut. The bigger nuts are usually sold in shell. Quite a bit is exported. Almost 5,000 tons are sold at Christmas time. The holiday time is our big season. And increasingly nuts are used in salads, and breads. Per capita that market in U.S. is still minute, but we’re doing all we can afford to expand it. We think we can gravitate slowly but surely toward Europe usage, because our nut is so flavorful. Once it’s roasted it’s a great nut.

McDonald offers a ceramic bowl of fresh, toasted hazelnuts to confirm his point. “Roasting brings out the flavor,” he says, “but their shelf life outside the frig is not very long. The formula is 325 degrees for ten to fifteen minutes in the oven, as low a temperature as possible, so you don’t break the oils down. Crack them raw, and then roast them.” Before McDonald finishes talking about hazelnuts, the bowl will be empty.

Contracting with a processor like Westnut has brought a lot of stability to the industry, says McDonald because they know they have a bargained price that is industrywide, they know the conditions of delivery, and they have a market.

One glitch in the marketing strategy caused by the trees themselves is their biennial-bearing nature. “We will have a big year and a small year, and we have become extremely biennial, beginning in the 90s,” says McDonald. “In 2000 we had something like 15,000 tons—statewide. In 2001 we had 49,000 tons, and last year we had 17,000 tons. This year we’re going to have 35,000 tons, if statistics are right. When you have those wild swings, it’s very difficult to market, and to keep your customers.

“The trees all seem to talk to each other. Why do they do that? I think they have a union that says this year we’re going to grow ourselves and not produce any nuts--next year we’ll give these guys some nuts. It’s amazing. Again, OSU is researching the phenomenon.

“They all follow the same pattern whether it’s Forest Grove or the Mackenzie Valley, regardless of age, regardless of variety. It’s a known biological phenomenon. A lot of fruit trees follow the pattern. So it makes it difficult for marketing, cash flow. Our industry imports from other countries to make up for short years so we can keep our markets. It’s not an easy situation.”

But nobody ever said farming would be easy, did they? Certainly not the McDonalds. Like other Oregon growers, this international couple have learned to flex and adapt. They too keep their options open.

“We have planted really all our best land to the filberts. But we also planted some grapes, 49 acres of wine grapes. We have a lot of timber, about 225 acres of managed woodland. We just started a couple months ago growing salad greens— arugula, beets and spinach, 35 different varieties. We have a big quarter acre--very experimental. We got into it late this year and we’ll probably expand next year. It’s interesting starting a new product line.

But McDonald is happy to cooperate and turn to the expertise of others. “I formed a partnership to handle the nut processing; I didn’t have the cash to build that myself,” he says. “And the vegetables--I didn’t have the marketing expertise, so we found a partner and she’s doing the marketing and we’re doing the growing.

As for the crops themselves, McDonald appreciates all the options. But he says, “We will stay in filberts; it’s a wonderful crop. It’s great for the land; it’s a tree crop; we can do the work ourselves; it’s all mechanized. It’s a fine nut.”

The health claim recently given to tree nuts by the Food and Drug Administration has also given growers optimism for the future, he says. Research suggests that tree nuts are good for you--the bottom line is that if you eat a reasonable amount of tree nuts every day you will have less heart disease than if you don’t, less chance of diabetes. Of course, McDonald says, lots of foods are trying to position themselves this way. But it’s probably better to eat a healthy balanced diet, with tree nuts.

He’s not the only one looking to science to build new markets.

Hops grower Gail Gosche concurs: Every commodity out there is looking individually at how their crop might work as what’s called a nutraceutical, a natural remedy for some sort of medical need. There’s been a lot of work put toward hops as an anti-carcinogen. It’s becoming quite promising that they could be used in that way.”

Oregon growers say that whether as anti-carcinogens or just old-fashioned herb remedies, more plants are being looked at seriously—at OSU and worldwide.

“As far as testing new products,” says Gail Gosche, “a lot of that comes back to the university level. How strong is OSU going to be as a leader in the future as a land grant university? Will they have the money to do the testing and all? It’s extremely important, especially for the smaller farmer, to have that university backing. Otherwise research is being transferred to larger operations.” Gosche provides an example: a new variety of blueberry developed out of OSU would be a public variety, available to the smallest farmer, she says, but private company research work becomes private property and is seldom affordable for any but the largest corporate farms. It’s a small shift now, she says, but it could have a big future impact on small growers of different commodities.

So many pitfalls. Will Oregon always be fast enough, will the farmers be nimble enough to find the “next niche”?

“We do things so well here I can’t imagine that we couldn’t emerge as a major player,” says Gosche. “Especially when you look at the consumer’s interest in food safety. There is a growing market for the consumer to have more knowledge of where their food came from—it can be really exciting for the farmer and the consumer--to actually know where your berries came from. They can drive 30 minutes from Portland and pick ‘em, or pick up the flat of berries and meet the person who grew them.”

“A lot of people are looking at ways to save their family farms. It’s difficult in agriculture these days; it’s not just the same old thing,” agrees Peter McDonald. “You don’t produce a commodity and sell it and go to Las Vegas for the winter. That doesn’t happen anymore. You’re constantly looking for more efficient ways to do a job. You’re constantly looking at increasing your cash flow.”

And McDonald agrees that Gosche has identified an important niche. “Restaurants, people, everybody increasingly wants to know where their food comes from. People want to buy local stuff--they trust it. They prefer to know the farmer, they prefer to know the ground. They prefer to know how it’s been grown, where the seed comes from. Is it sustainable, organic? That’s the fastest growing segment of food—it’s tiny--but it’s the fastest growing segment of the food marketing outlook in the United States.

“It’s a little niche market, certainly not an inexhaustible market, but it’s one where there is a lot of interest. People don’t want to just go and buy tasteless tomatoes, picked green in some far off place, and ripened in the box in the supermarket. So we have optimism that we can expand.

The farmer is in a painful transition period, says McDonald, and American farmers, Oregon farmers have to change, and adapt, and find ways to add value before the farm gate. This isn’t Iowa, he says, and in most commodities we cannot compete in a global market. But he quickly adds, Oregon has over 270 different crops. There are a lot of farmers and we are such an entrepreneurial country. We live in this Eden, … and you always have whatever land you have.

But there may be one last problem lurking for Oregon agriculture, possibly even tougher than chasing future markets, fads and niches. As rural populations dwindle and the race to find niche markets gets tougher, it’s not just labor, or land, or taxes that could cause Oregon agriculture to stumble. Finding the “next generation” of farmers might be even harder than finding the “next niche.”

Gail Gosche describes her experience: You have to really love the lifestyle, she says, because it can be frustrating and it’s difficult.

“Look at the next generation coming along,” she says. “You see the options that my grandparents had: What am I going to do to make a living? Then you look at the options that my parents had: What do I want to do? Then you look at my generation and my brothers: Those options have just multiplied. There are so many more other things that we could be doing besides farming on the family farm. When you take it one more generation, it just keeps expanding and multiplying as far as options. And so the competitiveness of keeping the next generation on the farm is a pretty big issue.

“Someone that’s coming out of college deciding do I want to be in high tech marketing, or do I want to go to engineering school and come back and be even more innovative on my family farm? What are my income options going to be? What’s going to be attractive to keep them on the farm? It’s been really difficult lately. You’ve had to really enjoy the lifestyle of farming and not worry that your classmates who graduated with you have exceeded you in incomes,” Gosche says.

“But have they exceeded you in quality of life? Who knows?”

In the Gosche family, already a four-generation farm family, there’s another generation coming, too young yet to decide. “For myself,” says Gosche, “I went away and worked in Portland in advertising for awhile. And I just decided that I missed the outdoors. I missed the challenges of growing a plant, and I’ve come back, and I’ve been really happy.”

SIDEBAR: Niche Flavors of Oregon

Seared Tuna with Fresh Wasabi Sauce

4 6 oz. Pieces of fresh Tuna
3 tbs. Peanut oil
1-1/2 tsp. Oriental (dark) Sesame oil
1 tbs. Dry Sherry
1-1/2 tsp. Minced fresh ginger
1/2 cup Radish sprouts
2 Green onions, thinly sliced
1/3 cup Soy Sauce low sodium
6 tbs. Fresh ground Wasabi
1 large cucumber, seeded, peeled and julienned

Whisk soy sauce, 2 tbs. Peanut oil, sherry, sesame oil and ginger. Stir in green onion. Set aside. Sprinkle tuna with salt and pepper. Heat remaining 1 tbs. Peanut oil in heavy large skillet over high heat. Add tuna and sear until opaque in center, about 3 minutes per side. Spoon cucumber onto center of plates. Top with tuna. Add the ground fresh wasabi to the sauce and spoon sauce around. Garnish with radish sprouts. Serves four.

Hazelnut Pumpkin Spice Cake
Yield: 1 8-inch layer cake
· 1/2 cup shortening
· 1 cup sugar
· 1 cup brown sugar
· 2 eggs, beaten
· 1 cup cooked, mashed pumpkin
· 3 cups sifted flour
· 4 teaspoons baking powder
· 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
· 1 teaspoon salt
· 1 teaspoon cinnamon
· 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
· 1/4 teaspoon cloves
· 1/2 cup milk
· 1 cup roasted & chopped Oregon hazelnuts

Cream shortening; gradually add sugars. Beat in eggs and pumpkin. Sift together dry ingredients and add alternately with milk to creamed mixture. Fold in hazelnuts. Batter will be heavy. Pour into 3 greased and floured 8-inch layer cake pans. Bake in 350 oven for 30 minutes. Cool 5 minutes in pans, then remove to cooling racks to cool completely. Add roasted, chopped hazelnuts to butter icing for frosting and garnish with sliced hazelnuts. Couscous with Dried Cranberries, Hazelnuts and Fresh Mint
Serve as a delicious side dish with lamb, poultry or fish.

Ingredients:
· One 12 oz. package couscous
· One 14 oz. can chicken or vegetable broth
· Pinch of salt
· 3 tablespoons nut or olive oil
· 1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
· 3/4 cup dried cranberries
· 1/3 cup hazelnuts
· 1/3 cup fresh mint leaves

Preparation:
Cook couscous according to the package directions, using broth instead of water. Add a pinch of salt to broth. While it is cooking, roast hazelnuts in a very low (250°) oven 10 minutes or until lightly brown. Wash and finely chop the mint leaves. When couscous has finished cooking, drain any excess liquid. If more liquid is needed to cook couscous, add water. Pour couscous into serving bowl. Add oil and lemon juice. Stir well to coat all grains. Add cranberries, hazelnuts and mint leaves. Stir. Serve immediately. Serves 6.

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