Norton Creek Farm

Our farm is in Oregon's Coast Range, near Blodgett, 16 miles from Corvallis. We are in the Norton Creek valley, with 37 acres of land of indifferent fertility. Because much of our land is hilly and we get 60-90 inches of rain a year, we avoid erosion by keeping all of our land in permanent pasture.

We are building up the fertility of our land by raising animals who give back more to the land in manure than they take from it in feed. This trick is accomplished by using animals that eat pasture plants only as a feed supplement, but rely on purchased feed for most of their nutrition. Such species include chickens, turkeys, and pigs. We also have goats to keep the blackberries in control, and a few sheep to harvest the grass.

Read Our Newsletter (PDF Format)

See what the local paper had to say about our farm in an August, 2001 article!

Our Products:

Free-Range Eggs
Pastured Broilers and Turkeys
Pastured Pork

Eggs From Free-Range Hens

Our free-range hens are scattered in small groups across wide areas of pasture. This keeps the pasture in good shape and makes the hens happy. The hens like to eat pasture plants, and chickens that eat lots of green plants lay eggs with deep orange yolks and greatly superior flavor. The hens are loosly confined with a low, two-wire electric fence, so low that we can step over it without difficulty. This is the same kind of fence gardeners use to keep raccoons from their vegetables, and it also serves to keep predators away from the hens.
We collect eggs twice a day and refrigerate them immediately. We use our 1960's vintage Aquamagic egg machine to candle, wash, sanitize, dry, and grade the eggs in a single operation. Our eggs are sold year-round in Corvallis at Richey's Market and the First Alternative Co-Op, and in Blodgett at the Blodgett Country Store. We also sell them at our booth in the Corvallis Wednesday and Saturday Farmers' Markets between April and November.
Pastured Broilers and Turkeys

Our broilers and turkeys are raised in home-made hoop houses. The pens are floorless and are moved to a new patch of grass every day. This leaves their manure behind, fertilizing the pasture, and gives the birds a chance to forage for bugs and fresh pasture plants without letting them loose.
It's the fresh pasture plants that give our broilers and turkeys their superior flavor.
Broilers can't be let loose because they're too young to know the ropes (they are slaughtered at eight weeks). They literally can't be trusted to come in out of the rain! Our free-range hens are older and wiser, and are allowed to run loose. Turkeys can't be let loose because they wander away and are never seen again!
We butcher our poultry in our on-farm, licensed processing facility and deliver them to customers at the Corvallis Wednesday and Saturday Farmers' Markets.
Our broilers are available from April through November. Our turkeys are available for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Pastured Pork

Pastured pork is better than factory-farmed pork, and the pigs are certainly happier outdoors. The photo above shows a group of young pigs, their portable house, and their corral. Our pigs are given a large plot of scrubby pasture surrounded by an electric fence. They like grubbing up all the plants and generally making a mess of things, and we indulge them in this. In addition to what they can find on the pasture, they eat a diet consisting largely of whole corn, outdated supermarket milk, and any eggs we can't sell due to cracks or stains.
We use the region's best custom butcher, The Farmer's Helper, to slaughter and butcher our pigs. We're extremely fond of the bacon and ham from our pigs, and in fact our pork is our all-around favorite meat.
We sell pork by the half-pig, and you must sign up for your half-pig in advance. The butcher will cut and cure the meat to your specifications.

Other Links:

Go to the Norton Creek Press Home Page and see the poultry books we are publishing!
Farmers click here. More information on raising free-range eggs, pastured broilers, brooding baby chicks, and poultrykeeping in general.
Go to the Plamondon.com Home Page
Find a farm like ours that's closer to you.