9/10/2009
Many limbs of family tree help berry business grow
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| Many limbs of family tree help berry business grow |
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Clarice Keating
Theirs is a sweet life.
Harvests begin to slow down this time of year for the Unger family, farmers of Oregon strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries and grapes.
As the trees turn to autumn colors, farmers’ markets – 17 in all where Unger berries are represented – carry the fruits of the family’s labor through early October.
Farming is in the blood for this family. And like the tangled vines of the grapes they grow, the harvest season touches many different lines in their ancestral tree as well as within their community.
Matt Unger is a third-generation farmer. His family has been working the soil since they homesteaded in Washington County during the early 1900s.
“I never thought I’d do anything else,” Matt said.
Matt’s father began raising strawberries on their Cornelius property in the 1940s, and he remembers his first responsibility on the farm as a 5-year-old – a lot of taste testing and a little bit of picking. He went on to study agriculture at Oregon State University.
Since 1984, Matt and his wife, Kathy, have run the berry farm just outside Hillsboro.
Sons, daughters, nieces, nephews, in-laws and family friends spend summers planting, picking, folding and stamping boxes, loading and delivering produce, and selling at the farmers’ markets. The markets alone take a crew of 15 relatives and friends to run.
On the 100-acre property are five acres of blueberries and raspberries, three acres of blackberries, one acre of table grapes and 50 acres of strawberries.
As of late August, they’d sold 50,000 half flats of strawberries.
On a recent day, family friends Kaitlin Wikoff and Lisa Farrell loaded up a van and bounced down the gravel road to a farmers’ market. On that same day, family friends Nick Barto, Chase Hayden and Will Rodriguez, and great nephew Konnor Boyer, put tiny strawberry plants into the ground for the 2010 harvest.
The Ungers’ son Greg, 19, worked this summer for his parents before returning to Lane Community College to resume studies in mechanical engineering. He jokes about enjoying the job security.
“It’s never boring,” he said of working with family. “There’s always somebody around, always something to do.”
Originally Matt and his brother, Steve Unger, farmed the family’s property together, but when their father died in 1977, they split the land.
Steve took a larger, un-irrigated area where he grows grain. Matt took a smaller part of the land, where he started out growing strawberries and cucumbers.
Why did he choose berries? “They are higher intensity, harder to grow,” Matt said. “But they have a bigger reward.”
Matt and Steve are still neighbors by the rural standards of their community – they live two miles apart.
Kathy’s family moved to the area in 1974, when she was in high school. During the summers, she worked picking berries for Matt’s family, a job that – ironically –she didn’t like.
Matt comes from a family of eight, and Kathy, from a crew of 10, so even back then there were relatives everywhere.
Clearly not much has changed.
Matt and Kathy’s daughter-in-law, Kegan Unger, runs the Hillsboro farmer’s market stand. Even their 3-year-old granddaughter, Zoie, tries to pitch in.
Back at the farm, their second oldest son Brian, 24, also an engineer, designed a specialty bed shaper for his father – a machine that shapes the beds and lays the plastic and irrigation system in one process.
Katie Bolton, a niece, works at the farm year-round. Her father is Steve, the grain farmer.
Bolton’s husband, Chris, comes from a very small family. He is still getting used to Unger family functions, she said. There have been three weddings so far this summer, one even at the farm.
Jessie Dummer starts her freshman year at Portland State University Sept. 28. She’s been working for the Ungers since she was 15.
She is Matt and Kathy’s great-niece.
This summer she and her twin sister Becca were in charge of a stand at the Hollywood Farmers Market. Along with another niece, Sam Sagar, and friend Courtney Anderson, they arrived at the farm at 5:15 a.m. on a recent summer Saturday, loaded up and headed out.
As a second cousin, Dummer said she has enjoyed the opportunity to get to know Matt and Kathy’s children even though they don’t attend many family events together.
The job is professional, she said, but also fun.
“We can joke around a lot more,” she said about working with family. “We can be silly on the farm, poke fun at each other. We know each other better than if we were strangers. It’s nice being able to relax.”
As the college students graduate and move on to full-time jobs, there is no end to the younger kin growing up, ready to take over the open jobs, Kathy said.
Beyond the markets, the family sells to local grocery stores like New Seasons, Whole Foods and Uwajimaya. The Ungers supply roadside stands from Tillamook to Portland.
Portland Public Schools buys and serves their local fruit in cafeterias through the Farm to School program.
Each year they donate pounds and pounds of berries to their church, St. Matthew Parish, which the “Pie Ladies” turn into desserts to be sold as a fundraiser.
Once school starts, the selling season slows down. Good thing, too, because many of the Ungers’ employees go back to high school and college. It’s that time, the fall and winter, when all the tasks that were let go during the summer months are taken care of, like equipment maintenance, shop work, building, remodeling and pitching product to stores.
But, even in the off-season, the family still enjoys its berries. Kathy freezes flats to make it through winter months.
And every time their kids come out for Sunday dinner, it’s always strawberry shortcake for dessert.
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