For the Love of Farming
For the Love of Farming
Four Wands Farm with Katy Stokes
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In today's episode we sit down with Katy Stokes of Four Wands Farm. Katy is 75 years old and has been stewarding and homesteading on this piece of land for the past 47 years. They provide most of their diet from the land through a large garden, dairy and meat goats, meat rabbits, chickens for eggs and meat, bees for honey, fruit trees and a large variety of perennials. Katy knows her herbs and is a willow weaver. She speaks to observations of the land over time and she is looking to the future and transitioning the land to another generation.
Welcome to For the Love of Farming. I'm your host, Tegan More. In today's episode, I sit down with Katie Stokes of Four Wands Farm near Corvallis, Oregon. Katie has been homesteading and living off of this 27-acre property for the last 47 years. With her landmates, they are able to provide a majority of their diet by tending to a large, diverse, year-round garden. They manage fruit tree orchards, raise dairy goats for milk and cheese. They raise meat rabbits, have bees for honey, and chickens for both their eggs and their meat. Kitty is also a willow weaver and crafts with the rabbit pelts. She knows her herbs. Her property includes woodlands, a creek, a pond, and an impressive diversity of perennials and trees that she has planted over the years that surround her pastures. She's looking towards retirement and handing the land off to a new generation. This episode was recorded July 13th, 2021. I'd love for you to just start by sharing who you are and where we are.
SPEAKER_00I'm Katie Stokes. I'm 75 years old, and I've lived here for the last 47 years. And uh my farm is 41's farm. It comes from the Tarot. The card is uh the Harmonious Harvest Home. It's one of the few cards that reads the same right side up and upside down. When I first drew it in the Tarot, it was everything I ever wanted, and I thought, well, I'll just name my farm that. And uh so here we are at 41's farm. I love that.
SPEAKER_01How many acres?
SPEAKER_00Twenty-seven. Twenty-seven seven of uh meadow and twenty of woods.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00Uh a stream runs about a quarter mile through the whole property.
SPEAKER_01Wow. And so you said you've been here for 47 years. Is that how long you've been farming stewarding land, or were you elsewhere previously?
SPEAKER_00I I was elsewhere previously. I lived down the road. Um we had uh 30 acres down there of bare land, built a barn, um, had a our first child, finished our little cabin ten weeks after the daughter was born. And uh one day my partner was working and saw a mutual friend of ours and the fellow who lived here drive by. How's Charlie doing? Oh, not so good, he's thinking of selling. Jim came and got me. We walked down the road and said we hate flu, she was a neighbor, but if you're really gonna sell this place, we'd like to buy it. Which is how we came to be here, which I think is how many places change hands.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00The special places don't ever go on the market.
SPEAKER_01No, no. The frustration of many trying to access land. But yeah, that word of mouth and neighbors and community. And so had you always been interested in, you know, living on the land? Was that the way you were raised, or what got you started living in this way?
SPEAKER_00When I was in high school in my junior year, we had to do a report on what we wanted to do with our lives as adults. And uh I wanted to live on a subtaxable income. And except for the few years that my kids were in college, I've managed to do that. And uh obviously if you don't have any money, you need to have a lot of your own stuff together. And uh I had horses when I was a child and just loved the relating with animals and being outside and taking care of something else, and uh that's what I've always wanted to do. And uh I had a few years when I was first married before we lived in cities, and I was just miserable, so I came back to the country as soon as I could.
SPEAKER_01Wow, had that clear vision. Yeah. And are you from Oregon originally?
SPEAKER_00I'm from Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00But long enough now in Oregon. Lived in Oregon 50 years.
SPEAKER_01Fifty years.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I won't get to live more than half my life anywhere else.
SPEAKER_01So tell us a little bit about what you grow here, what you raise.
SPEAKER_00We are um horizontal rather than vertical. We don't do a whole lot of anything, but we do almost everything. We have uh the place came with beautiful hundred-year-old fruit trees, we have berries, um, medicinal and culinary herbs, uh year-round garden, and uh then also chickens for eggs, chickens for meat, rabbits for meat, goats occasionally for meat, always for dairy, um koi and cats for recreation. And um bring in a lot of our own firewood. Um there's a spring on the land, so we get our own water. Um and most of it is for consumption of the people who live here. Uh one of my children were young, I lived here mostly by myself, which is amazing to think, and uh didn't have quite as much going on. But now that I'm older I certainly couldn't do it alone, so other people live here too. Um and uh right now there are seven of us, so we can eat quite a bit, but we also um sell small amounts and uh marketing is not something most farmers are interested in. I haven't ever wanted to do it at all. But um through word of mouth and just getting around. This year we have two small CSAs, which is great because we have our garden is much bigger than we can, even with seven of us, there's more food than we can eat, so we're giving boxes every week to a couple of people. And um I occasionally sell the rabbits both uh for breeding or for meat. Um I have uh a trade with some neighbors. I get a quart of firewood, they get a season's worth of dairy products. We do uh because of being here a long time and being in the community for a long time, there are a lot of connections. So mostly mostly what we try to raise is to be as self-sufficient as possible with and uh to do it in a way that doesn't hurt the land.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. Wow. And you make goat cheese.
SPEAKER_00We make a lot of goat cheese, yeah. Yeah. And rabbit furs. There's a thing that I'll show you in a little bit.
SPEAKER_01I was just admiring that and thinking how the listeners won't be able to uh see or feel, but it is gorgeous.
SPEAKER_00It's a gift for um a newborn baby it instead of a sheepskin. She can lie on that and put it over her little stroller and so forth. Oh yeah, but I'm I think I'll deliver it after Sunday so that we can show it off.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's a wonderful idea. Oh. So what are some of your current challenges on on the land right now?
SPEAKER_00You know, interestingly enough, the challenges are about me rather than about the land. After 47 years, the farm is running pretty smoothly. Um we um we tested the water of the spring on the heaviest rain day of last year. It's a nice background noise. Um and it was contaminated. Okay. Clearly, because when it rains that hard, the surface water gets into the spring. Nonetheless, we thought that we would um dig it out and put in gravel and sand and rework it. So that's a little bit of a challenge. That's something we planned to do last year, but uh the um driving force behind that project um had a six-month-old baby, so it didn't happen last year. We're hoping it'll happen this year. Yeah. Um the climate is certainly changing so far. Our water has not diminished, which is great. And uh the earlier spring is of course a benefit for people who are growing things. Um I used to have to cover my kiwis, the hardy kiwis with plastic so that they wouldn't frost, but I haven't had to do that for two or three years because they don't leave out until after the I mean the frost comes so much the last frost is so much earlier that they're leaved out before that happens. So the challenge for me is to micromanage less and actually do less and let the other people take over so that uh I'm moving into retirement, but it's it's not a it's not a graceful transition for me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, especially difficult after you know doing for so long in the same place to Exactly.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. I I'm making a lot of progress this year of letting go and letting other people do things.
SPEAKER_01Are you finding anything helpful with that?
SPEAKER_00Having the best uh landmates in the world really helps. They're doing a fantastic job. Different from how I would have done it, but uh very, very good. Yeah. I never have used mec mechanical tools at all. And uh Edwin, who is now doing the big garden, has a rototiller and a weed whacker, and uh he likes to use them, and uh I think that they probably are efficient tools because uh the garden is just beautiful and uh it uh it looks more productive and better than when I was doing it with uh hand sickle and a shop. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well, yeah. Yeah. Well, and I can imagine, you know, being here for 47 years, your observations of the climate shift are are quite real. I mean you can't really have a sense of what's changed.
SPEAKER_00The rule of thumb used to be that you plant your summer garden when the snow's off Mary's Peak. There's snow off Mary's Peak all year round right now. Occasionally there's snow on it, but uh you can see it in December, January, February, anytime, any there's always a a day in every month where there's no snow on Mary's Peak. Yeah.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00And there was a a friend of mine works at the museum and there was a paper from the twenties which said Mary's Peak had snow on it for ten months of the year. Now it has intermittent snow.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00That's a huge change.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And I forgot to ask, are you still growing willow to work with?
SPEAKER_00Oh, tons of willow.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And you make baskets and will be. Yeah, tons of whisket willow, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Oh, okay, that's so wonderful.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we'll do some show and tell too, even though we can't do it on the radio.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. So thinking of challenges and thinking of 47 years here. Are there any kind of aha's or lessons learned that have really changed your farm for the better?
SPEAKER_00That was the hardest question for me, and I I couldn't come up with a really easy answer, but a practical one is there should always be two fences between your animals and the things you don't want them to eat. That's a good one. And and that one, that one is a pretty strong one. And then a more general one is do it the hard way the first time. Um, trying to do something halfway pretty much is just a waste of time. It never really pans out. But uh do it right the first time, and uh you'll be a lot happier with it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I like that. If you could go back to Katie, maybe back to Katie when you first uh ended up on this land, or in and around the period of of that time. What would you say to yourself? Or what would you offer knowing what you know now? If anything.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's a little difficult too, because I wouldn't uh have kept my advice and I don't know if I still would, but the advice that I would keep is dream really big, but take small steps. However, I've had taken a bunch of big steps, which have been extremely stressful, but now I have the results of them. So maybe it's not possible to go about changing a landscape in a big way without overcommitting and doing it a difficult way. I would recommend to people don't bring the animal home and then figure out where you're going to house it, but that's how I got my animals because there was always so much going on that I never had time to plan ahead and make adequate housing. So the animal would come available and I'd bring it home, and then that would become the priority, and I'd find a place to keep it. So it's not what I would recommend, but it works. And that's that's the way I've I've always done it. But mostly taking small steps is a really good idea when you can. People think, oh, I want to be a farmer, I want to I'll start small two acres. It's like, how about two beds in your backyard? Practice that for a while.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00And uh working working small really is very satisfying.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I like to say one bite at a time.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, I appreciate that.
SPEAKER_00But it's difficult because time doesn't stand still, time is moving, so much is timely. And uh every time I've done uh the last several big projects I've done, I thought, well that's it, no more big projects. But then another option for a big project comes up and I jump in again, and they're pretty much always stressful.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. So this question is about you know what guides you. And you, you know, mentioned earlier that balance of you know what's good for the land and and providing for yourself as well. But you know what what are your your practices, your priorities, maybe your values that really guide how you steward this land?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, that's that's one's easy respect for the land. Respect for the whole earth and uh specifically for this land, but uh do no harm. Uh treat the land in a way that makes it better. Um f for the land, for the climate, for everything. And uh I pract I when I was just starting out, I thought we had a lot of thistles here and I thought I'd use some roundup and it didn't work well for me and uh I thought, you know, I could either learn more about this or I could just really work on organic practices and uh so I've been organic for the last forty some years and uh I think that's a way that shows a lot of respect for the land and uh I mean I I can't remember who said it, but uh someone said in the future they'll look back and think, growing your food with poison. What? What was that about? So I organic practices definitely are a big one, and just um working in harmony. Um if you were to see my garden, a lot of people are kind of frightened by it because there's so much wildness in it, but uh that's what makes it fun for me is working with nature instead of against nature.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. What's your favorite farm tool?
SPEAKER_00Ooh, I've had a good time with this. And uh for sure a kama, which is a small Japanese handsickle, is the that would be the signature tool of the farm because of the way we farm and how much weeds and wild growth there is, and that cuts it back, and then you go from that. A hoe is the next one back in the early days of um the local tilt gathering. Um, we did a lot of farm tours, and uh pretty much it became unspoken that the person giving the farm tour would carry their favorite hoe while doing it. I have a favorite hoe and I'm very fond of it, and I also have a scythe, and I like to scythe a lot, but much of what I scythe needs to be picked up afterward, so actually the comma works better because you're holding it and you just put it in the cart instead of scything it and then having to go back and pick it up.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Then um another tool that I want to talk about because the beginning gardeners should have one, is uh soil sieve, which is just a half-inch mesh in a wooden box so that the half inch matches the bottom. And then you can just sieve your compost and have um mix it with a few amendments and uh some vermiculite and uh coir and have the best spotting mix ever. So that's that's another tool that is essential and important. And I use it every day. In fact, I was using it this morning before you came.
SPEAKER_01Those are good ones. Yeah, actually I was this I mentioned I was just moving, and that was one piece. I was just okay, I need to find a good place to put this at our shop where I know exactly where it is. Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's great. So that's a shifting to, you know, thinking about how you take care of yourself so that you can keep stewarding the land, keep doing what you want to here, and that's thinking about your mind and your body.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, um unfortunately, not nearly enough is my answer to that. Although um as I get older I get a little better. Having um really good landmates is a great, that's a super help. Learning how to step back is more difficult. In the winter I do all kinds of restorative things, yoga, tai chi, we play the piano, um, work with the furs, um, sew, knit, stuff like that. In the summer, um sometimes three days go by before I comb my hair. So I I don't have many suggestions on how to do it. And we had an apprentice one year that um everyone felt did not carry her weight at all, and she said, I'm modeling how to take care of oneself in the midst of um the chaotic farm life, and it didn't go over well. Yeah, sad to say.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So there's a seasonality to your self-care.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, in in the winter I do much more. In the summer, I don't know. I of course I eat really well. Yeah. Um I don't sleep enough. I don't do purposeful exercise, but I'm on my feet, you know, eight to ten hours a day exercising. Mm-hmm. I can still do a handstand.
SPEAKER_01Wow. I can't remember last time I tried to do a handstand.
SPEAKER_00Did I did one two days ago.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I love it.
SPEAKER_00I took took a half hour to do a little Tai Chi and yoga right in the middle of July.
SPEAKER_01Well, there you go.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but that's probably at half an hour a month is my summer practice and an hour a day is my winter practice.
SPEAKER_01Well, you're still here and you're still doing it. That's right. Something's working. Yeah. Yeah. So kind of in that same spirit, where do you go for support or how do you find support or information when you need to answer questions related to the farm or the land?
SPEAKER_00Books are sometimes helpful. I don't go online, A, because I'm not very comfortable with that um venue. And also anyone can put anything online, and there's just unbelievable misinformation out there that people are speaking as though it's the word of God when actually it's their own idiotic um mumbo jumbo. So I I don't even look at that. Um I have a pretty good network of people that I know and trust. So if I have a question about, you know, is does this garlic have rust? I talk to my friends because I know them, or look at books, but uh I don't look for help so much after 47 years. Um and I haven't found a real good source of help.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Do you find people come to you for help?
SPEAKER_00People ask me questions a lot, yeah, for sure. And like the people online I offer my opinions as if they were the word of God.
SPEAKER_01And you go, Well, take this, and what am I gonna do? Thank you for that. So this whole series is called For the Love of Farming. So the final question really is just what do you love about all of this? What keeps you going? What drives you?
SPEAKER_00The connection with the natural world. Being able to not only observe it, but be a part of it, influence it slightly, observe its influences on me. It's magical. It engages my curiosity. Occasionally I can come through and have a big success in manipulating it a certain way, like you know, a bumper crop of raspberries, something like that. Basically, farming is my religion. I practice it all all the time.
SPEAKER_01I love that. Wow, I am so humbled and full of joy to be here with you, sitting on this amazing covered porch with just the whole natural world of your farm, you know, surrounding us and radiant. Just really appreciate you taking the time to share with all of us today. So much gratitude. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for listening to me.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely.
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