Deck Family Farm, Junction City
The Deck Family.
John and Christine Deck of the Deck Family Farm live just outside of Junction City, OR. John and Christine are raising their children, along with a handful of dairy cows, several beef cattle, pigs, chickens (for meat and eggs), turkeys, sheep, lambs, goats and ducks on 320 acres of beautiful, rolling pasture and woodland in the Eugene area.
The Decks have set up a pasture-based system with the goal of giving their animals a happy and healthy life. But their goals extend further than this. Ultimately, they would like to create community around agriculture while taking back the distribution and marketing aspects of the food system so that family farmers can once again make a viable living off the land. Their vision includes creating a cooperative of meat producers in the Willamette Valley that can distribute and market products under one brand name, much like Organically Grown Company does with vegetables.
The Decks have a lot of inspiration for these ideas. After growing up in California’s San Joaquin Valley, Christine saw how hard it became for her family farm to survive. While attending UC Davis, both John and Christine worked on farms throughout college where they became focused on finding an agricultural model that worked. Eventually, they made their way North to give direct marketing a shot.
The Deck Family Farm sells at farmers’ markets throughout the Valley, and they run a 200 family CSA (community supported agriculture) for their pasture-raised meat products. To sell their meat by the cut at the farmers’ markets, they have to travel up to Canby or Dayton to get their meat processed in an USDA facility. The CSA allows them to use a state-certified custom butcher shop, much closer to home, and sell their animals by the side, or ‘on the hoof.’ Meat processing has become extremely difficult in Oregon over time, and it is a big hurdle to jump for farmers trying working on contributing animal protein to their local food system.
Happy pigs in the mud.
So far, this diverse family farm is surviving, and appears to be happy and healthy itself. They have a wide variety of products and a number of ways to sell them. They practice sustainable forest-management and lease some of their extra land to a neighboring farm. Eventually, Christine would like to grow the dairy and continue to find ways to bring their community in to the farm and help them achieve their long-term goals. You can read their blog at The Deck Family Farm Blog website.
