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White Oak Farm & CSA
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Late Sunday, August 28th, we wound our way through the gently curving roads in the dark, at last finding the sign that led us uphill to White Oak Farm and CSA near Williams in southern Oregon west of Ashland. Only as we left in daylight did we see the expansive pastures rising uphill to the gardens, the barn/community building, and further up to the straw bale-cob residence under construction. We parked our van beneath the oaks and fell blissfully asleep, happy to be in familiar-feeling quiet woods.

The next morning we set up our cameras inside the Common House, a two-story barrel-shaped strawbale structure, while several young people set to work plastering an interior wall. The building's exterior wall curves around a huge central tree-trunk. An upstairs loft looks down into the main room and kitchen areas. As we set up our cameras, a few ducks wandered by.

The White Oak Common House

With plasterers working in background, we taped a conversation with Stacey Denton, who along with Taylor Starr and Eli Sarnat formed the White Oak Farm CSA and Educational Center. Stacey wanted to put into practice what she'd been studying in environmental sciences. After taking a Permaculture course with the Bullock brothers on Orcas Island, she and two others found this land, a perfect south-facing plot much of which was already cleared and in pasture.

They worked with a local Land Trust to hold the land while they raised money to pay it off. They've put conservation easements on much of the land, some of which is forested. They formed a non-profit organization and have sponsored educational programs for school children, as well as providing courses in natural building techniques in association with building the straw bale residence. They envision adding photovoltaics for electricity to supplement their grid power.

White Oak formed a CSA farm (community-supported agriculture), planting hundreds of orchard trees as well as a garden of row crops. They keep ducks, chickens, goats and honeybees. Interns work with them in the busy season, and then the farm and its residents take some rest during winter, in keeping with the earth at that time.

Whew! That's a lot accomplished in a very few years! This is still a work-in-progress, as it will likely be for many years to come. White Oak models a small-scale sustainable, intensively-managed, organic, permaculture-based farm that we need multiplied a million-fold across North America. That it's also an educational center harbors the promise there'll be training for many new farmers yet to come