Some of Oregon's oldest farms and ranches showcased

By GEOFF PARKS

For the Capital Press

More than 1,000 years of family farming will be honored at the Oregon State Fair this year.

The Oregon Century Farm and Ranch Program on Sept. 3 will honor 10 farms and ranches from eight counties as Century Farms -- agricultural enterprises that represent continuous family operation for at least 100 years.

It will also honor the Mader Farm of Marion County as a Sesquicentennial Farm, one that has been continuously operated by the family for 150 years or more.

The Sesquicentennial Farm designation was added in 2008 in honor of Oregon's 150th birthday celebration. To date, 23 families have received the award.

Cousins Bob and Doug Mader are the sixth generation of Maders to run their family's farm, located near the community of Macleay, about six miles east of Salem. Bob Mader, 58, wife Gwen Hendricks, 53, and Doug Mader, 55, run the day-to-day operations of the 800-acre farm.

The farm currently is planted to grass seed, wheat and Christmas trees, though in the intervening 150 years have seen crops including oats, rye, barley, hay, cherries, strawberries, nuts and some livestock. The Maders currently rent out some property for others to raise bison, Christmas trees and row crops.

Bob and Gwen live in the home that was built on the farm in 1880, though farming operations go back to 1858, a decade after the arrival of the Mader's ancestor, Rev. Reuben Dickens of Virginia, via the Oregon-Barlow Trail and The Dalles.

Dickens' wife Nancy Phillips; daughter Julia Ann Patton; and son-in-law William Thomas Patton are all buried in a small plot of land beneath two headstones in the middle of a filbert orchard.

The Pattons' grandchild, Genevieve Lucille Patton (who was born in the 1880 home), married Albert Mader, the son of an 1873 immigrant from Switzerland named Julius Mader, in nearby Central Howell in 1922, accounting for name under which the farm will be honored.

Farms and ranches to be honored as Century Farms this year include:

* Cantrell Ranch in Union County (founded 1881).

* Delbert Langdon Farm in Douglas County (1902).

* Flowers Farm in Klamath County (1911).

* Muilenburg Farm in Union County (1911).

* P.J. Rohde Ranch, Inc., in Umatilla County (1905).

* Carpenter Family Farm in Jackson County (1909).

* The Thompson Place in Douglas County (1882).

* The Woods Farm in Tillamook County (1911).

* Chegwyn Family Farm (1909). Charles Chegwyn gifted the family farm to the Yamhill Soil and Water Conservation District in 2009. He maintains a life estate on the farm, living in the home built in 1929 and continues to manage the more than 170 acres at the age of 78.

* The Bierly Farm in Linn County (1911). Kenneth Bierly passed away in 2003 at the age of 79, but his wife, Evelyn, 82, continues to live on the Bierly Farm property in a home built in 1932 near the original 1911 structures.

"It was one of his dreams," Evelyn Bierly said, "to see a Century Farm designation for the Bierly Farm."

The 139.25-acre farm produces grass seed primarily, but has seen crops of clover, meadowfoam and other commodities over the years, Evelyn's son Martin Bierly, 62, said.

Evelyn and Kenneth Bierly moved onto the land in 1957, which originally had been purchased by their ancestor, Mary Bierly, in 1911. Evelyn and Kenneth's grandson, Charley Wolff, farms the land today.

Ag Day honors

Ten Oregon farm and ranch families will be honored as century farms and one will be honored as a sesquicentennial farm on Ag Day, Sept. 3 at the Oregon State Fair in Salem.

The celebration will take place beginning at 1 p.m. in the corporate tent on the west side of the fairgrounds.