At Draper Farms, we feel a great responsibility to our customers, after all, we are growing what goes into your bodies! This is why we are passionate about starting all of our crops ourselves from the highest-quality seed and have chosen to specialize in rare heirlooms and crop variety.

 

It is our opinion that relying on mass-produced agriculture, especially in the U.S, has done a lot of unfortunate things to our food in the last century. In that time, not only have large corporations and the government been involved in the mass hybridization of fruits and vegetables, and GMO’s, but there also seems to be an interest in limiting variety by selecting the most uniform and proportional in order to develop an “all superior” variety. Mass-produced agriculture often selects from hybrid varieties for higher yields, and consequently will produce crops in only one color; the most common examples of this are red tomatoes and orange carrots. It is hard to think that people actually believe these crops only exist in those colors and that multiple varieties are not available-when nearly every crop in the world naturally comes in more than one variety and many colors!

 

So, we purposefully choose to produce almost entirely heirloom fruits and vegetables many of which are among the rarest varieties in existence today; some aren’t offered anywhere in the USA at all. We believe that continuing to propagate these ancient heirloom varieties that have nearly been lost due to corporate agriculture, is a worthy and significant endeavor.

 

We want to share with our small part of the world here in McMinnville, Oregon, the natural varieties of wonderful fruits and vegetables that are still out there, and we want to show our community just how spectacularly beautiful and absolutely delicious all of them are! What I have found in growing heirlooms is that most heirloom varieties are actually better tasting than hybrids, but just aren’t as perfectly attractive or conveniently sized as large grocery stores products.

 

We are also committed to growing and harvesting our crops responsibly, and use primarily organic practices with minimal synthetic fertilizer and pesticide applications. We are dedicated to sustainable agricultural practices and would like to become certified organic in the future. If at any time a person wishes to see how our crops are grown here at Draper Farms, they may come out and see for themselves. There is little to obstruct the view of our fields from the road, and we do not keep secrets. So if you want to see anything at all, call or come in person to the farm, and simply ask for a tour.

 

Many of our longtime customers live very close to our farm and are neighbors, and some come from far-away. Our most loyal customers continue to shop here season after season, some visiting almost every day in the summer. We think one of the reasons they keep coming back is because they know our product is always the freshest it can possibly be, and that it is also responsibly grown. We are proud to be your neighborhood farmers market, and you can find us open every day from 9 a.m. to dusk.       

 

See you at the farm!