Original Post 4/27/2012 ... Updated as needed ... General overview of our farm ... Disclaimer link at the end ...
The Oregon Truffle Tryst Farm started out with an Aquaponics system that was built from plans obtained from Friendly Aquaponics of Hawaii and housed in a self-designed greenhouse building. The first phase was built to gain experience with the setup and daily maintenance of a vegetable aquaponics system. It consists of 256 square feet of growing troughs and several tanks (4'x4'x4' and 4'x4'x8' fish tanks, a 2'x4'x4' biofilter tank and a 2'x4'x4' vet tank) giving a water volume of approximately 3000 gallons. After a few problems with the newly purchased fish in startup mode, it was functioning well. However, a recurrence of fish problems ensued and our nutrients have continued to fluctuate much more than we'd expect. Overall we are still producing nice quality crops but our production is inconsistent rather than a regular amount each week. Our Aquaponics system has been functioning for over nine years now and we had been selling a small amount of produce nearly every week.
Our farm plan has evolved beyond Aquaponics over the last nine years as well.
We have seen a number of Oregon Black truffles appear in a stand of Fir that was inoculated with truffles over ten years ago. We haven't yet determined if there are a significant number of truffles available as we have only once managed to get a truffle dog out here. We do, however, see lots of holes dug and gather leftover pieces of truffles that the forest critters uncover for us.
We have produced mushrooms on sawdust, straw, and logs over the years but have not attempted to produce them as a crop available to sell. That may soon change once more construction has been completed. Update 2025: Currently inoculating Alder logs for shiitake harvests. Currently building an indoor mushroom grow area in the lower room of the barn.
Over the last four to five years, we started to grow a tea crop and that became our main focus. We have a reasonable climate, a great location, and great topography for the attempt. Although funds are limited we expect to bootstrap the endeavor. We had bought some live plants (1-2 years old), started a fair amount of tea plants from seeds, and planted out over 1800 seedlings. When we managed to harvest a small amount of tea it turned out very promising after some basic processing. But then we have had some major problems with voles and, possibly, gophers that have decimated a large number of the tea plants in the ground. There is possibly only a hundred or two left, and those are covered in weeds and vines (weeding around them left only those plants to eat by the voles and they disappeared musch more quickly). We have finally given up on trying to grow tea in the ground, except that we are starting to build protected beds for a new attempt. Much, much more expensive, and time consuming, but still a possibility.
One other idea was to create a "forest garden" in at least a section of our back fields while maintaining it, mostly, as a wildlife 'sanctuary'. So it has been mostly untouched other than mowing. With less signs of vole activity back there, we had recently planted about 600 tea plants in one of the back fields in 2022. Pretty much all of the tea plants have been wiped out! I actually saw two plants, tiny but still alive, when I walked that field this spring. That also won't be attempted again :).
If anyone is wandering around our area, feel free to drop by to see the bits and pieces we have managed to put together so far. And we would be more than happy to hear your thoughts and suggestions!
Thank you for your time. Have a great day!
Please take note of the disclaimer link below before perusing our website.
Original Post 4/27/2012 ... Updated as needed ... General overview of our farm ... Disclaimer link at the end ...
The Oregon Truffle Tryst Farm started out with an Aquaponics system that was built from plans obtained from Friendly Aquaponics of Hawaii and housed in a self-designed greenhouse building. The first phase was built to gain experience with the setup and daily maintenance of a vegetable aquaponics system. It consists of 256 square feet of growing troughs and several tanks (4'x4'x4' and 4'x4'x8' fish tanks, a 2'x4'x4' biofilter tank and a 2'x4'x4' vet tank) giving a water volume of approximately 3000 gallons. After a few problems with the newly purchased fish in startup mode, it was functioning well. However, a recurrence of fish problems ensued and our nutrients have continued to fluctuate much more than we'd expect. Overall we are still producing nice quality crops but our production is inconsistent rather than a regular amount each week. Our Aquaponics system has been functioning for over nine years now and we had been selling a small amount of produce nearly every week.
Our farm plan has evolved beyond Aquaponics over the last nine years as well.
We have seen a number of Oregon Black truffles appear in a stand of Fir that was inoculated with truffles over ten years ago. We haven't yet determined if there are a significant number of truffles available as we have only once managed to get a truffle dog out here. We do, however, see lots of holes dug and gather leftover pieces of truffles that the forest critters uncover for us.
We have produced mushrooms on sawdust, straw, and logs over the years but have not attempted to produce them as a crop available to sell. That may soon change once more construction has been completed. Update 2025: Currently inoculating Alder logs for shiitake harvests. Currently building an indoor mushroom grow area in the lower room of the barn.
Over the last four to five years, we started to grow a tea crop and that became our main focus. We have a reasonable climate, a great location, and great topography for the attempt. Although funds are limited we expect to bootstrap the endeavor. We had bought some live plants (1-2 years old), started a fair amount of tea plants from seeds, and planted out over 1800 seedlings. When we managed to harvest a small amount of tea it turned out very promising after some basic processing. But then we have had some major problems with voles and, possibly, gophers that have decimated a large number of the tea plants in the ground. There is possibly only a hundred or two left, and those are covered in weeds and vines (weeding around them left only those plants to eat by the voles and they disappeared musch more quickly). We have finally given up on trying to grow tea in the ground, except that we are starting to build protected beds for a new attempt. Much, much more expensive, and time consuming, but still a possibility.
One other idea was to create a "forest garden" in at least a section of our back fields while maintaining it, mostly, as a wildlife 'sanctuary'. So it has been mostly untouched other than mowing. With less signs of vole activity back there, we had recently planted about 600 tea plants in one of the back fields in 2022. Pretty much all of the tea plants have been wiped out! I actually saw two plants, tiny but still alive, when I walked that field this spring. That also won't be attempted again :).
If anyone is wandering around our area, feel free to drop by to see the bits and pieces we have managed to put together so far. And we would be more than happy to hear your thoughts and suggestions!
Thank you for your time. Have a great day!
Bob & Stephanie
Please take note of the disclaimer link below before perusing our website.
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