Cheryl Stewart
columbiagorgeorganic.com
Lives and farms in Hood River
What’s the background?
We bought our initial farm in 1975 and we didn’t know one thing about farming whatsoever. Our first orchard was 95 acres, and we started farming and learning on the job. A lot of chitter-chatter about organic and safer produce started popping up in the late 80s. My husband Ron started using softer materials and he said, ‘I might as well be organic.’ In 1989 we filled out all the papers with Oregon Tilth and were on the road to be organic. In those days it took 2 years, the first yr you were transitional. The following year we were organic so we started with our own label Columbia Gorge Organic. There’s lots of competition, Coke owns Odwalla and Pepsi Co. owns Naked Juice.
Those first years we had a couple small pears because our trees kind of went into shock from the new ways of farming so we went into the canning business and canned our small Bart pears and small cherries. In the years to come the fruit got better then we added apricots and peaches. We have locally canneries can for us. As the years progressed more growers came our way and we got more acreage, by 96’ we were farming another 60 acres and decided to go into the juice business. We actually built our own huge juice plant. We do everything, you name it we’re doing it.
When we went into the organic fruit business we also became a compost company because we realized we needed to build good soil. We put a lot of really good additives in our own soil but we also sell it.
Who is involved?
It’s myself and I’m the mom, my two sons are here Jimmy and Ronny Stewart, Ronny’s wife Marcie Stewart works with us also. My husband passed away 4 years ago and an older son 12 yrs ago, and we were all in the business together. We’re still going 800 miles an hour.
How have your products been received?
Our fresh fruit has been sold all over the US since 1989 and the same with our canned fruit, since 1990. We’ve found lots and lots of interest in our juice. Our canned line is all over the US, it’s real small but all over, our juice is all WA, OR, CA, a little of ID, MO, MN, but we’re talking to a big distributor, so we’re hoping eventually to have our juice almost throughout the US. Our juice business has been around since 1996, so that’s the new baby. It’s really grown a lot in the last 4 or 5 years. We don’t have any investors it’s just ourselves so a lot of it has to be word of mouth or the shows. This year we noticed the most interest. We flash pasteurize because we want to make it like you wrapped it up in your home, so it has a short shelf life, about 25 days. Odwalla and Naked I think they cook their juice a real long time and have a long shelf life.
Have there been any problems? I’ve heard peaches are difficult to grow organic?
We’re not having any trouble. The first few years there was a lot of trial and error, by now it’s almost 20 years that we’ve been farming organic, well we stated using soft materials 20 years ago, then we went organic.
It sounds like you’ve influenced others?
We do a little bit, a lot of colleges have come out, we’ve helped a lot of college seniors with their Masters projects. We do a couple of tours but we’re awful busy, we don’t do any u-picks or anything like that. Before my son passed away he ran a B&B so he was doing touring, but since he passed away we haven’t done that in 10 years.
What major changes have you witnessed in recent years?
When Wal-Mart said, we’re going to have 800 organic products, then Safeway almost immediately started with the TV commercials, then Wild Oats was sold to Whole Foods, I think it was a ricochet between them. I’ve heard, reading all the material I read, that a lot of people are really interested in organic meat, after what happened with the cat and dog food and e coli outbreak, I think people are finally getting a little more aware of the food they’re buying, where it comes from, what’s used on it.
What do you expect to see in the next 5 years? In 10?
In the next 10 years I think there will be a lot more organic faming and the price of organic will go way down. In foreign countries we allow a lot of trade and I really think that is going to lower the price on a lot. Right now the price of fruit is not real high but it’s a comfortable spot because organic farming is way more expensive, so right now it’s working out so that when prices start going down it’s hard to say what will happen with the farm. I don’t know if some farmers will go back to conventional farming or go for diversity like we have done. We opened our packing house, we do the canning, and the juice. It’s hard telling what other farmers might do.
In 5 years call me again, the ripple effect will take awhile. It will take a few years for the lower prices to come into play, and then the consumer will reap it, but if it hurts many farmers they may go back. But the devoted and diversified people like ourselves, we hope we can keep our head above water.
Where do you get the produce you don’t grow yourself?
We use great product and buy as much local as we can, all the berries are grown in the state of Oregon, there’s lots of apples and pears in Washington, so we source all the apples we need from Washington. For products that we need from other countries like bananas and mangoes we get it frozen and pureed at factories in the country they come from. We’re getting bananas from a Fair Trade place in Costa Rica. We get mangoes from a couple different countries. Mostly everything like strawberries are from California, and grapefruit and lemons, are brought up fresh, we do all the squeezing here. Organic lemons, limes, apples and pears we do fresh. A lot peaches are from here. Our carrots are fresh also, and a lot of cranberries are fresh and grown in Oregon.
Where do you get your information on the environment?
For organic technique we’ve been doing it so long we’ve just learned it. If there’s new products we either read about it or we have a spray technician, and we also have an entomologist that works for us so he can help us too.
What do you think is the #1 thing people can do?
Well, I really couldn’t answer that, because I’m a farmer I would say-- even though this would hurt us-- that all farmers should farming Organic because we’re not putting anything in soil or air that is harmful for humans to breathe. I would venture to say that because I live in a valley where a handful of us are organic and a lot are conventional so I feel a lot of the materials they use could be harmful. A conventional farmer can spray once every 6-7weeks and kill the bugs, but we spray weekly and our materials are made from the roots of plants, so they’re soft. Conventional farming uses real powerful chemicals, so people are eating all that. So, I would say everybody should farm organic to make the soil and the air here really clean.
EcoMetro merchant New Seasons has a video of the Columbia Gorge Organic Farm and Stewart family.