Mt. Hood Organics Profile

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Mt. Hood Organic Farm
T.J. Boeschen

Perched on the bountiful flanks of the Hood River Valley and dominated by the staggeringly beautiful vistas of Mt. Hood, sits a veritable agricultural Garden of Eden. John and Brady Jacobson are the proud founders and owners of Mt. Hood Organics, a 200 acre apple and pear farm which has supplied fresh produce to the People’s Food Cooperative of Southeast Portland for the last 20 years. This remarkable stretch of earth has been nourishing many a Portland shopper with organic fruit since 1989. Through his conscientious stewardship of the land, John has earned not only “USDA certified Organic” qualifications, but also the prestigious title of being a true “biodynamic” farm. As one peruses the verdant isles of Peoples’ produce section, the artistic display of the “fruits of the earth” burst forth as a tangible cornucopia of choices which most certainly would have inspired both the admiration and envy of the initial farmers who first turned over the soil of this region centuries ago. This article labors to identify John as a truly unique individual who represents not only the idyllic example of a man who has dedicated his life to a dream, but also distinguishes him as a proud spokesman of the Organic farming revolution which is just now beginning to come to the forefront of mainstream American society. As “going green” and “eating organic” have slowly moved inward from the fringes of the typical American consumer’s mode of thinking, it becomes more and more important to establish the link between the farmer and the consumer amidst the confusion of today’s modern shopping environment. This can be achieved through conscious representation of the “real” farmers who toil day in and day out to bring us the most nutritious, most healthy, and most flavorful of produce, wherein each pear or each apple actually carries a fascinating story along with it. This is the story of John Jacobson, a man who has certainly learned to separate “the wheat from the shaft” and revels in both the struggle and the rewards of living out the fading lifestyle of the classic American agriculturalist’s dream.About 16 miles south of Hood River, Smullin Road branches off of Highway 35 and leads the more intrepid of travelers through a towering stand of evergreens which slowly gives way to numerous picturesque rows of apple and pear trees. While surrounded by fragrant fruit orchards the first time visitor cannot help but gasp at the raw beauty of Mt. Adams and Mt. Hood, which rise up from the rolling hillsides like two white sentinels…guardians of this sacred and pristine expanse of “terra firma”. Hood’s regal crevasses and striking glaciers seem but only a stone’s throw away as her foothills slowly morph into the very contours of the Jacobson farm. As John himself explains, “this land can sweep you away; just like a woman can sweep you away…I live here because it’s beautiful.” When asked why he has pursued the lifestyle of an organic farmer and what is it that really pulls him to the land, Jacobson’s flair for eloquent prose and his sincere earnest tone serve him well as he elaborates, quoting literary masters such as Steinbeck and Pearl S. Buck all the while. His answer reflects both the passion and the romantic nature of a man who loves what he does, is sincerely fascinated with life, and takes pride in leaving the spectacular hills of the Mt. Hood Organics farm much healthier and more beautiful than he found them nearly 27 years ago on Sept. 24th, 1981.“It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, and also the most rewarding! What is the experience to live out in the land?… it’s a whole different lifestyle than living in the city, it’s seductive… the same experience as you might have by completing a marathon or some other great accomplishment or other things that invoke in us some kind of special feeling… it’s there every day when you’re living out in the land like this and you feel like, this is mine. We’ve had 10,000 years of joint farming history as people who stopped being hunters and gatherers, it’s somehow really in us; it’s an acquired trait. Having this land fits with what I like to do as a person also. I’ve come to learn about the value of architecture, and music, and literature, and a person’s life. I have the opportunity now if I need a farm building to pack my fruit in or store my equipment I can ornament it…me who’s not an architect or a wealthy person… I can make my finest effort to create something so that people will come along some day and say, ‘we see why he struggled to do this and he never pretended that he had any special talent at it’. How could you live in this place and not want to build a meadow or create an ornamented building that’s pleasing? There’s something in a human mind that resonates when they see good architecture, read fine literature or hear wonderful music. So it has that element of opportunity to it. It’s a pure thing to say, I love my land I’m a modern day Joseph Wayne (Steinbeck), and I want to have the finest thing… that some day somebody will come down to the end of Smullin Road thinking that they’re not going to do anything more than buy a couple pounds of organic fruit, or to rent a cottage to go skiing, or to get married here or be a guest at a wedding and see something where that just really makes them feel good, it’s like going to a concert and hearing fine music or reading a good novel…they’ll say, ‘I drove into this place and there were geese and ducks on lakes, there was lots of open area for the wild animals, insects everywhere you look, flower gardens and if you look at the flowers there are bees and butterflies all over them… this is a healthy environment. I looked at the buildings and they were WAY beyond what they needed to be to do the task, which was to grow and pack fruit, or to store a tractor. They were like some poor man’s Versailles, or some poor man’s Timberline lodge… ornamented with the unnecessary, and it told a story about animals that were going extinct, perhaps through a relief carving in the wall or through murals on a ceiling. I stayed in a room and I pulled open the shutters and I looked at the view and I said, this place is incredible, how come I didn’t know about it?’ Now that’s how you use the 26, 426 days of your life.”As we sit outside near the packing house, with the mountain reflecting the light of an azure blue sky behind us, a gentle breeze tousles John’s hair and he moves a calloused hand to brush a silver lock away from his gentle eyes. Clad in overalls, a flannel shirt and worn fingerless gloves which have frayed away to nearly nothing, Jacobson certainly fits the bill as the classic rural farmer and seems at home in his environment…blends with it as if he belonged to the land and the land to him. He goes on to mention that by growing organic fruit he feels like in a way he is literally rebuilding the land. There are many more wild animals now than when he bought the farm 27 years ago. As an example he explains with proud enthusiasm that they have elk every fall. Whenever the snow gets deep on the mountains they come down to lower elevations to find something to eat and they always find a home at the Jacobson farm. John gestures towards a small hill at the edge of a clearing in the forest off to our left and says, “there’ll be 40 of them in a herd, they’ll come down that hillside over there and stand there in the moonlight and eat the apples and pears that we’ve thrown out as compost. Every kind of bird that lives in Oregon, and migratory varieties as well, can come here and feel safe. There’s lots of food for them, there’s lots of insects here, we have more insects now than ever before because we don’t use herbicides, pesticides or fungicides; we don’t use any of that stuff.” Following the lead of visionaries such as Rudolph Steiner, in 2008 Mt. Hood Organics achieved full “biodynamic” status which elevates them even one notch higher than USDA “certified organic”. Though he admits that it perhaps won’t change the economics of the farm John says, “It’s more apropos of what we’re trying to do here as a family and the respect that we have for the land….it’s embedded within our morals and our values as organic farmers. There’s some satisfaction in that… you feel like you’re doing the right thing… particularly now that the world is coming to realize more and more that our impact on the earth is not a good one.”Mt. Hood Organics stands out as a perfect example of a more esoteric vision of what a farm ought to be. Jacobson’s tone shifts as he works to find the words and the analogies to compare his style of organic farm versus the growing number of organic corporate farms which have recently been snapped up by agribusiness giants such as Post and General Mills. This new wave of popularity has spawned an “organic frenzy” which has dramatically increased the demand for everything “organic” within a burgeoning $11 billion dollar industry. John’s concern for the future of organics echoes the words of author, Michael Pollen, who writes in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, “surely there comes a point when the process of industrialization will cost organic it’s soul.” John’s words come at a quicker pace and the frustration in his voice adds a note of tension which hangs suspended in the mountain air. “Because organic has become a growing thing among chain stores, there now needs to be more supply. People who own big farms and corporations that own big farms have realized that there is a market out there and so what they do is they buy a bunch of land, they look at the list of what makes a farm organic and they go out and get certified. The list is kind of like a syllabus from a college course…it has all the do’s and the don’t dos. Same for organics… (the list says) you can’t use these things or you can use those. So some big corporation who owns 1000 acres can come along and decide well, I’ll do it also. Do they really care about migrating geese or ducks that live in a pond at certain times of the year behind these trees that I built, well no, they couldn’t care less about that, they’d fill in the wetlands and plant an orchard there if they thought it was profitable. A biodynamic and an organic family farmer would really be more likely to care about the place, really care about the ground water and the air and minimize their use of water and take into consideration the animals that coexist with them on that piece of land.” Perhaps the next time we are pushing our shopping carts down the aisle it would behoove us all to remember that awareness breeds conscious decisions, which ultimately lead to informed purchases at the supermarket (or the farmers market for that matter). Once the connection has been made between the food we eat and the lives of those who grow it, that red D’Anjou pear or Jonagold apple sitting in our basket takes on new meaning. It does indeed have a story behind it. The hopes, the dreams, and the very livelihood of those who’ve invested so much energy to bring it to our table are all encompassed within the seeds, the flesh and the skin of the fruit itself. As the small family farm fades from the landscape of our modern industrialized world we must remember to cherish these stories and support the few “true organic farmers” who have managed to defy the odds and live out their dreams. Perhaps through fairer government legislation, consumer outcry for safe, pesticide-free, local foods, and conscious informed decisions, we can help people like John Jacobson continue to provide us all with some of the most flavorful and nutritious apples and pears which have ever been wrested from the soil of the Hood River Valley. Mt. Hood Organics was the first certified organic commercial farm in all of Oregon…let us all do our part to make sure it is not the last. Please take the time to learn about your local farmer and become acquainted with the details of their lives and the challenges they are facing today. As consumers, every day we have the power to promote and sustain many local farms such as John Jacobson’s little slice of heaven hidden away at the end of Smullin road. If you’d like to visit the farm to buy some fruit, have a picnic beneath the mountain, escape to a charming romantic cottage, or even profess your love and devotion to your new husband or wife, John’s email is: mthoodorganicfarms@gorge.net and his phone numbers are: 541-352-7492 & 541-352-7123. They also have a lovely website www.mthoodorganicfarms.com which gives the viewer a tantalizing glimpse of this magical piece of earth.