Saturday, March 29, 2014

Farm out Fun! every Sunday at 1:00!

Farm Out!

Young People Experience Farm Activities in the Dike lands!

Melanie and Craig Hudson moved to Clatskanie several years ago and their son started school at Clatskanie Middle/High not long afterward. It wasn't long before a troop of active teens were frequent visitors to their small 2 ½ acre farm where they raise chickens, ducks, geese, sheep and Nubian goats for dairy products. The Hudsons were frequent visitors to the MacGregor farm where they got one of their dairy goats. When the MacGregors needed help last summer baling hay, Melanie showed up with a group of local youngsters who helped buck over two hundred bales just before it started to rain! “Had it not been for Melanie and those kids we would have lost most of our years supply of hay! It would have been devastating for us!” said Tracy Prescott-MacGregor. It wasn't long before these kids were out helping tattoo, clip goat hooves, deworm and milk goats. One day Prescott-MacGregor and Hudson realized that this was a great resource and these kids were genuinely interested and wanted to part of the thriving farm life out here in the dike lands near Port Westward so they decided to formalize the group.

The mission was decided. The goal of Farm Out is to connect younger Clatskanites to the farm lifestyle and to help them appreciate the land that produces the food we eat and connect them with nature, all while having fun! They had a meeting with the core group of 10 young people aged 15-21 and talked about things they would like to do around the area. Ideas ranged from picking blueberries at Poysky's Blueberry farm and canning them as jam, to river bank clean up, to water and soil testing.

Craig Hudson is a beekeeper so it naturally followed that the first project was to build 15 bee boxes. It was a major success. All 15 boxes were constructed on a Sunday afternoon and now the next step is to paint them.

The group meets every Sunday.

Other projects scheduled for the group:

Processing Honey

Making things with beeswax (candles

etc...)

Milk goats

Picking berries and making jam

Make Mozzarella cheese

River bank clean up

Build a bird house

Build a bat house

Press apples for juice

Bird watching and identification

Plant a large garden

Harvest veggies and preserve them

Camp out on a farm

Design and make T-shirts

Make scare crows

Learn Pacific Northwest Native American
crafts of weaving and bent box

Stream work-water and soil testing.

The Group is open to all who want to participate. There are no fees. For more information call Melanie Hudson at 503-709-7801

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