For the Love of Farming
For the Love of Farming
PK Pastures with Kait Crowley
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In today's episode I sit down with Kait Crowley of PK Pastures outside of Sweet Home, Oregon on the traditional lands of the Kalapuya people. They raise pigs for meat and chickens for both meat and eggs. They have sheep that are a part of their leader follower pasture management strategy. As first generation farmers, Kait and their farm partner Pat, now step into their fourth year in business. Last season they stepped into new landownership of their home farm and continue to lease additional pasture for the pigs. Kat was able to secure land with a lease to own relationship and by working very closely with their financial lender over time. In their time on the land they have been focused on renovating the pasture from neglected hayfield to nutrient-dense forage for livestock. Harnessing pig power, they are reseeding with a diverse perennial mix and annual cover crops. It is their goal to raise tasty, ethical meat that’s good for people, critters, and the land we all share. They are proud to be certified Animal Welfare Approved and Non-GMO, and a member of the Oregon Pasture Network. Their animals rotate seasonally through their Oregon Tilth Certified Organic pasture and heritage oak stand. They also receive non-GMO feed from a local mill and organic cull crops from their neighbors. They sell primarily through a CSA program where they have either a chicken share or a combo share with a mix of meats. They partner with another farm to add lamb to their combo option. In addition they do sell at a farmers markets and offer Whole/Half Pig options and online ordering. Kate had a long career of working for other farms under her belt before she took the leap to start PK Pastures. As climate change continues to have greater impact and prices for feed, straw, and fuel continue to climb at alarming rates, Kate shares their strategies. I am so grateful for their open heartedness and humor as she generously shares her journey....The realities of being in the first 5 years of business and figuring out how to fit the puzzle pieces together so theu can keep farming, AND farming in a way that fits their values. You can learn more about them at https://www.pkpastures.com/ This episode was recorded on March 29th, 2022.
Welcome to For the Love of Faring. I'm your host, Tegan Marion.
SPEAKER_02In today's episode, I sit down with Kate Crowley of PK Pastures outside of Sweet Home, Oregon. Their farm is on the traditional lands of the Kalapuya people. They raise pigs for meat and chicken for both meat and eggs. They have sheep that are a part of their leader follower pasture management strategy. And as first-generation farmers, Kate and her farm partner Pat now step into their fourth year in business. Last season, they stepped into new land ownership of their home farm, and they still continue to lease additional pasture for their pigs. Kate was able to secure land with a lease-to-own relationship and by working very closely with their financial lender over time. In their time on the land, they've been focused on renovating the pasture from a neglected hay field to a nutrient-change dense forage for livestock. Harnessing pig power, they are reseeding with a diverse perennial mix and an annual cover cropping system. It is their goal to raise tasty, ethical meat that's good for people, critters, and the land we all share. They are proud to be certified animal welfare approved and non-GMO. And they are a member of the Oregon Pasture Network. Their animals rotate seasonally through their Oregon Till Certified Organic Pasture and Heritage Oak Stand. They also receive non-GMO feed from a local mill and get organic coal crops from their neighbors. They sell primarily through a CSA program where they have both a chicken share and a combo share option with a mix of meats. They partner with another farm to add lamb to that combo option. In addition, they sell at farmers markets and offer a whole and half-pig options in online ordering. Kate had a long career working for other farms under her belt before she took the leap to start PK pastures. As climate change continues to have greater impact and prices for feed, straw, and fuel continue to climb at an alarming rate, Kate shares her strategies. I am so grateful for her open-heartedness and humor as she generously shares her journey. The realities of being in the first five years of business and figuring out how to fit the puzzle pieces together so that she can keep farming and farming in a way that fits her values. You can learn more about them at pkpastures.com. This episode was recorded on March 29th, 2022. Thank you for sitting down with us this morning on this slightly cloudy spring day. I just want to tell the listeners I pulled up to the front of your house and there was this cherry blossom tree with the hummingbirds just going wild on it, and it set a really nice welcome as I knocked on your door.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. And then that's the quince bush that the the ducks are uh hanging out underneath right now. That's the other hummingbird epicenter. I think I see one or two at the top of it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And for the listeners, it's just this vibrant, you know, pink dark hue to the flowers and spring is in the air. Yeah. Yeah, feel it. Well, Kate, just to get us started, can you please tell the listeners who you are, where we are, and just lay the foundation some information about your phone.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Uh I am Kate Crowley, and you slash we are at PKmasters, which is uh postal address in Sweet Home in Lynn County, not so much in Sweet Home, uh outside of that city for sure. Um we are a certified animal welfare approved and non-GMO pastured pork and poultry farm. Um, our pasture is certified organic through Oregon Tilth as well. Um we are small, our home farm is uh just under six acres, and then we currently lease uh just under six acres and uh are hopefully adding another 12-acre lease this year. Um we do at present 40 feeder pigs a year and uh 1600 broilers. We raise Idaho pasture pigs, which are really cool recently registered triple cross between Berkshire and Durock and Cooney Cooney pigs that surprise, surprise, was created by a breeder in Idaho uh to um to be raised in production systems outdoors on pasture. Um great pig, gentler on the pasture than other heritage breeds, um, are but they're still pigs. So there's um there it's a lot of very hands-on management to design infrastructure and rotational grazing systems for them that are additive rather than subtractive to the health of the forage out there, um, and then chickens. We do red-feathered birds, proprietary name of the chickens we raise is Freedom Rangers, so like the Red Rangers. We are currently expanding our small flock of Icelandic sheep, which right now um are really just part of a leader follower system at our home farm to you know maintain pasture health out here, looking to expand our lamb operation pretty significantly next year as we take on more acreage, hopefully. And where do you sell? We, yeah, we are um primarily a CSA farm. Pork is really the star of the show. That's the main attraction because that's the way it works here with our production levels, too. Yeah. Um, but it also includes one of our birds, um, and then um two pounds of either beef or um lamb. We also do farmers market sales and set aside a number of hogs every year to do as half or whole sales direct to um to customers who buy them from us on the hoof.
SPEAKER_02Great.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02And so just for timeline, how long have you been PK pastures? How long have you been in this region? How did you come to be here?
SPEAKER_00Why pigs? That is a great question. I think it takes a very particular type of personality to be drawn to pork production. I love it. So we've been here for four years. And uh prior to this year, um uh moved to Oregon five years ago and um participated in a Rogue Farm Corps Advanced Apprenticeship and managed pastured pork and poultry production for a flying coyote farm up uh in Sandy near Mount Hood for a season there uh before striking out on my own down here. Flying Coyote Farm also has a very robust market veg operation and market vegetable CSA. And um before I moved to Oregon, um my professional background in sustainable agriculture was largely on diversified market veg farms. So getting on to a decade now, I've been working uh working on small farms. I started out working on the East Coast uh on a huge and uh uh long-running CSA out there that had 300 members a season, really gorgeous. Um, the community supported garden at Genesis Farm in Jersey, and it was a really great introduction to agriculture in general. And one of the reasons I wanted to work there was because they were such a devoted CSA farm and farmed in New Mexico uh in the mountains, uh near Taos for a while, and then ended up managing vegetable production at a urban farm in Nevada of all places.
SPEAKER_03Wow.
SPEAKER_00And at the point that I was sort of ready to stop working for other people and give it a go on my own, uh, it also felt really apparent that climate change isn't coming, that climate change is here, and that it since I was in my uh my early 30s at that point, I was like, let's I'm I let's give myself a break. Let's move back home to the Pacific Northwest. I'm from Washington State, where the default is that things grow, not things die. Uh if left to their own devices for the most part anyway. So I left, um, I left the desert, moved to Oregon specifically with the intention of finding a way to start my my own farm. And before I left, before I left Nevada, I was doing some pretty preliminary business planning, making some sales projections, thinking through with my very limited resources, aka zero savings, because I'd spent my 20s uh working on other on farms. So very poor, you know, never never been above the poverty line in my adult life. How was I gonna make that work? And it seemed like there would be less startup cost to get into pasture livestock production than if I went to straight to diversified market veg. And that also if I focused on pasture-based livestock for a number of years, at first, it would let me build fertility and do observation on marginal farmland. So, you know, a couple of years in, I could start to think about how to add on a vegetable production component on land that otherwise, you know, would would not have been suitable for it. So that that was the that was the general plan, and we are generally on track four years in. Okay, great.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and you're feeling good about the business at this point in time.
SPEAKER_00You know, ups and downs. Sometimes I am, sometimes I'm not. I think big picture, yes, I am feeling positive about the business, but I don't know, you hear different projections about when you can expect to start paying yourself or taking weekends off or making any amount of a profit after starting a farm. And I feel like five or six years is sort of the number for that that you hear most frequently, and this is year four. So, you know, I feel good about the direction that the business is heading. I feel very good about the direction that the land is heading, and that feels more important to me. Yeah, but I'm only gonna be able to stick around and steward the land in this way that is that that feels positive if we can start making, you know, the baseline profit. So I think we will be on track to do that year five. Okay. Um, yeah, I think I think this is our this is our we're solidly breaking even year, knock on wood, I hope. Um and uh and and next year, next year there will be some returns.
SPEAKER_02Okay. And currently you still are doing some off-farm work in addition to full-time farm.
SPEAKER_00So I guess that's the other picture of the way the farm looks, is um I work full-time on the farm. I have a partner who works full-time off the farm to pay our mortgage. We have a pretty extensive homestead garden, and obviously we raise livestock. Uh, so I try to grow as much of our own food on the farm as possible. So that certainly cuts down on expenses, but I over those four years have tried out a number of different part-time positions to see um what I can what I can do to to help make ends meet. Starting off working on other farms, which I love and I miss, but quite candidly, I do not have any time for. And I've tried to find some positions in my off hours on the shoulder um of my my work week, which since I have animals is seven days a week, so that's a little tricky. Those didn't really pan out. So my solution, um, what's worked for me has has always been like if if I can get some remote work that I can do from the farm when I have time, that works great for me. And right now I have a position that feels like a really good fit with a nonprofit that's based in Eugene. So feeling very fortunate that that piece of the puzzle has slid into place. But yeah, no, hoping hoping to pay myself something from the farm in year six. Let's say, let's say profit year five. Let's say pay myself year six. Okay. And is it currently just you? My partner uh gets roped into farm projects on the weekends uh and on the evenings um after work. But um, yeah, for right now it's mostly a one creature show. I was hoping to hire a farmhand for the first time this year, but the the year is 2022 and the labor market is a little bit challenging. So that doesn't look like it's gonna pan out. We do have a team of folks who works with us to process our chickens. So we rent a state licensed facility and process all of our birds ourselves. So my my partner is on that crew, and um, yeah, we hire folks to do that with us. Good quality time doing some processing together. No, it's yeah, I run the kilphones, he runs the Galdar. You know, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Well, and I also just want to put a little plug-in since you mentioned one of your um farms that you trained on, that I actually just did a podcast interview with Lily Tovin of Flying Coyote Farm. So for the listeners, they'll be able to put those little pieces together as well. Well, and not to you know really get into the hard stuff here, but what are the challenges you're working through right now?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, oh man, well, so the years 2022 feed prices went up significantly last year. Um, and since we're a CSA farm mostly, that was really challenging because we sell um we sell our shares in advance. So um the amount that we were getting back that was locked in, that was a done deal. And then feed um, for example, went up about $200 a ton for us. Um, you know, I think last year we went through something like 19 tons of hog feed, so that that was that was not nothing. Um yeah, last year I think we did something around 30, 30 tons over the course of the season, and both hog feed and chicken feed went up 200, 200 bucks a ton. So um that was a surprise. Uh straw bales, also crazy expensive, right? Like wheat and straw prices, they're uh they're tied. Yeah, so um, because we're animal welfare approved, that certification system really encourages pharaoh to finish operations for pigs, which means um you keep breeding animals on the on the farm, you know. Um and I love it. I love our boar, I love our sows. Um, but keeping pigs in the winter in the Pacific Northwest, um, you really have your work cut out for you to make sure that everybody stays dry and healthy during the rainy season. So we go through a I was gonna say a ton of straw, but way more than a ton of straw. Yeah, big big straw expense to make sure that um it doesn't turn into a mud pit for them. We have them in, we have our breeders in the barn over the winter and they're on um the highest point of our of our property. Yeah. We put down like a base layer of pro tip, if you have pigs in the winter, put down walk-on bark to start. And then, you know, uh just straw and straw and straw and straw all winter long. Right. So, anywho, I think straw prices tripled for us last year in 20, yeah, 2021 prices tripled from what we were able to get in 2020. Um, and that was partly drought, that was partly wildfire, that was partly less straw available because of market, like global market demands elsewhere, and also um uh less availability because of increased hemp production. So, yeah, a lot of factors there anyway. Yeah, that's a challenge. Looking down the barrel of 2022, I've tried to build in a margin of safety in our pricing. Okay, but I think it's reasonable to expect that we'll see some feed increases over the cost of the season, likewise gas prices. It's just you know, it's it's when you are operating under a community-supported agriculture model and your contract with your folks happens, you know, six months in advance, seeing those numbers go up is pretty scary. So another thing that we've done um is um try to fiddle with our ratios a little bit and send more product to farmers markets where we do have the flexibility to change our prices mid-season responsibly. That's that's a big challenge right now. I really liked the um the feeder, the water, the um the housing, the transport designs that we started the farm with, but I am happy to have them continue to evolve a little bit each year, both in response to us raising more animals, you know, 40 pigs moving through pasture is a lot different than five pigs moving through pasture.
SPEAKER_02And that's the piece, right? And that's the piece where when you're talking about, you know, in year four to five and into year six, you know, part of becoming profitable is finding your sweet scale spot. Yeah. So that's tied to the profitability. Yeah. And then there's tied to you as a part of this farm system having to scale up. Yeah. Really thinking about how you take care of yourself so that you can keep doing this. How do we support those things?
SPEAKER_00Not enough. Not well. Not doing a great job at that in all candor. I try to make decisions where I am that set boundaries so that I can try to get some free time. I am more or less successful at that as well, really depending on what time of the year it is, right? Like I rest in the wintertime for sure, but I have livestock, so I'm still working seven days a week, but I will allow myself to go out and do chores, come back in, put on pajamas, and then just do computer computer work and planning for the rest of the day. But no, it is it is a real challenge to make sure that we're taking care of ourselves and also you know allowing space for our relationship. The ideal is we will figure out a way to each get a weekend every week. So it looks like my priority this year is going to be making sure that I have the revenue I need to be in a good place next year to hire someone and pay them 17 bucks an hour.
SPEAKER_02Well, and so all that said, hey Kate five years ago, maybe hey Kate just starting to think about coming back to the Northwest and going, okay, I'm ready. I'm ready to do my own thing, I'm ready to make a leap back into the Northwest. Is there anything you would say to yourself? Knowing what you know now?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I would say whatever idea you have about what the climate is gonna be uh in um the Willamette Valley, you need to just you need to scramble it. You need to like hit the hit the random auto generator button on it a little bit and know that it's it's gonna be um it's gonna be trickier than you thought going in. Um and that's that's a a piece of advice that's a mantra that I like continually tell myself now, and and yeah, I would love to go on the record of saying this to any farmers who are listening to. Like whatever your plan for climate resiliency is, and sort of the extremes of temperature that you're you're thinking you need to be responsive to when you when you come up with your farm plan with your infrastructure, just like dial that increase the volume in both directions. You know, it's gonna be somehow colder and wetter and also drier and hotter than you think. Um yeah, so for for livestock for us, you know, I would I would I would tell my past self, you know, to to um to make my priority think thinking about how I can get as much water as possible to my chickens, for example, in the summertime, rather than like how how can I make it the easiest for me to move my water around for them. Like, no, it's it's uh actually the goal is how much water do you think they need? Well, they need more. And they need more than that. Um yeah, the the heat wave last last June was a real eye-opener.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00And that's related to another piece of advice that I would give myself and anyone else, which is yeah, um, dial up the volume on your plan for climate resiliency and responsiveness, but also think about portability, think about flexibility, think about modular systems design, because you never know when some sort of crazy disaster is gonna strike, and you're um maybe maybe you'll have to evacuate. We had to do that, and your family actually helped us move some of our stuff during the wildfire when that happened. But you know, if you are a livestock producer, you should probably have a plan for what you're gonna do with your 40 pigs if they can't be where they are because of fire or flood or I don't know, hail store or you know, whatever the heck it is. Yeah, live livestock farming is a little bit different than you know, if you if you lose a plant crop, that's one thing. If you lose all of your breeding stock, you know, that's a that's a whole other order of magnitude. Yeah, who boy. So I would I would counsel my previous self to just be be emotionally, mentally prepared um for a whole bunch of curveballs. Yeah, related, related specifically to climate chaos.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah. I mean, in your short time here, you've had some significant climate challenges from heat waves to wildfire evacuation to extreme snow events, which I don't think has, I mean, I don't know much about how that impacted your infrastructure here, but yeah, that's the that's the one thing that hasn't walloped us. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Thankfully. You know, you get one past.
unknownYep.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Well, thank you. Oh, there will be more.
SPEAKER_00Oh, oh, one more thing. One more thing. Silva Pasture, aka planting trees in pasture has always been part of our long-term plan. Um, so I would also tell my former self, you're not wrong, stay on track, continue to prioritize that. Um, plant trees sooner than you think, as soon as possible. Plant trees yesterday.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00As soon as you can. That's our our big focus right now for animal and pasture health. It's like, let's let's get some shade out there, let's get some micro, some, some little microclimates, you know, that that um give give the animals cooler places to be. Do it yesterday.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00That's it. That's the last one.
SPEAKER_02Hey, I really needed to hear that. I'm finding myself in a little paralysis of planting trees in terms of is that the right spot? And just what if just and yep. Yeah, I mean, I think ultimately, right, you're gonna work around it and it's gonna create the the and I agree, yeah, that pasture shape.
SPEAKER_00Or you're gonna harvest it for biomass if you're like, oh crap, this should not have been here, you know?
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00That's okay. There are plenty of creatures that will eat it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, thank you.
SPEAKER_00I needed to hear that.
SPEAKER_02Hopefully, some listen to that. Just get them in the house. Just do it, just do it. Yeah. Just do it. Well, this is just a fun one and and a nod to Farmer to Farmer Podcasts. What's your favorite tool?
SPEAKER_00And why? Oh man. Okay, there's like a a number a number of things that I'm thinking of. I this is this is a tool, whatever. Yeah, it's a tool. I I love our current pig and sheep house design. I'm staring at our sheep in one of them right now. I love it. A lot of trial and error to come up with a pig-proof structure that is lightweight enough for one farm creature, aka myself, to drag around the pasture by themselves, especially after there have been pigs in them and there's some additional topography, if you will. Um, so now uh after, yeah, after a couple of different versions, um, we've scrapped any wood in our pig houses at all. And they're kind of just like mini um hoop houses. So the you know, metal top rail, it's easy enough to drag, added in probably more horizontal and diagonal brace supports than you would for a structure of that size if it was just a greenhouse, and more than I need for sheep, really, but it's for pigs. Yeah. So I now have a design that I don't have to replace every season. Um, yeah, it's it's it doesn't need a tractor. I can I can drag it myself, the pigs won't muck it up. I can also then at the end of the season just take the tarp off and store them outside. They're very resilient, so I love those things.
SPEAKER_02And I just want to say, is that a used billboard sign?
SPEAKER_00Oh, tarp?
SPEAKER_02Or yeah, so pro tip, if no one no one listening knows about this, you can source old used billboard signage that is basically like a thick tarp option. Yeah, and you can put grommets in them. You can put grommets in them. How are you able to find that?
SPEAKER_00If you just Google it. Buy them off of some website. Okay. I I've I would love to say, like, well, I have this cool hookup and I get them nah, I just buy them off. So just Google it, but just a picking. And then it's fun too, because you never know what you're gonna get. You know, you spread it out and you're like, oh, I've got some DMV ones. I think that's a real estate ad over there. I have some sort of terrible ones from a hospital though that I might need to amend a little bit. Sad child's face that I'm like, oh, I don't I don't like this so much. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Uh but um yeah, they're they're they're great. They last, I think some of those, some of them that we have are going on year three. Yeah. And it kind of doesn't seem to matter how expensive the just tarp tarp is if I buy a tarp. It's done. It's done, yeah. Really after after a year. So highly recommend. You can get them in any size you want. You can also use them uh in the field.
SPEAKER_03Mm-hmm. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Instead of silent tarps.
SPEAKER_02Well, okay, I'm I'm glad that in your pursuit of balance that you did choose to say yes to this. And you know, this podcast series is for the love of farming. And so just to wrap us up today, if you could please share what do you love about this? What keeps you going? What keeps you motivated to put these puzzle pieces together so that this can continue to be PK bash?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So that's the that's a a through line in terms of masochism.
SPEAKER_02I'm gonna see where this goes.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So coming from a ballet background when I was a kid, uh, I went to school for dance and for the arts, and it was immediately after um college that I had my first farm internship uh coming from um uh a place where I'd gotten really into um an expanded version of performance art that was sort of more interested in uh shaping social space, this kind of nerdy arty way. Um and um specifically also interested in uh creating alternative economies as as part of that like social, social creativity design project, etc. Um at some point existing in that mental space, the thought occurred to me that it was feeling pretty silly to you know make things uh that were just pointing at the moon about it, rather than kind of getting out there and doing it. It's like, oh, seem to be spending a lot of uh a lot of energy talking about doing a thing in theory. What if I just found a way to go do the thing? Um, which is to say um become in involved in in a different type of of economic production or way of um organizing our, you know, what what could be the building blocks of of organizing our our societies and how we build healthy communities. So it seemed pretty fundamental that that's that starts with localized food production. So that's that's how I I got into that's how I got into sustainable farming to begin with and community-supported agriculture in particular. And as soon as I started doing it, as soon as it was like in my body, I loved it. For me, right when I was younger, creative practice was always about doing something with my body, and this was like, oh, well, this is this is the most fundamentally creative thing you can do, right? Like I'm it's really physical, I'm using my body, and I'm making something, but that that thing isn't like an abstract art something. You know, it's it's food, and that's what I'm sharing with people instead, and it just like it felt it just immediately felt like what I wanted to do full stop for for the rest of my life. Um and that's still fundamentally what I love about it, is it the it's a a fundamentally creative form of production and and it's production for for other people, it's for the community. It's a it's a radically creative act that is is producing something for that sustains us, all of us, whatever the the heck that means, you know. And that's what I love. Yes.
SPEAKER_02Farming, the radically creative art. Thank you so much, Kate.
SPEAKER_00Thank you for coming over and bringing me tea.
SPEAKER_02Anytime, anytime. Thank you so much for sharing generosity of your time and just open-heartedness, and look forward to continuing to see what Kate does and your ongoing creation. Thank you. Thank you for joining us today, and you can learn more about PK Pastures and all of the ongoing adventures at PKPastures.
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