Leaving the city to carry on the farming legacy
“My father was a farmer and my mother was a farmer, but, my childhood was very good. I am very grateful for my childhood, because it was full of gladness and good humanity.”
In the early 1940s, my Swiss grandparents bought an apple and pear orchard in Parkdale, Oregon and raised a family there. My mother spent many of her childhood days driving tractor and eagerly learning how to farm from my grandfather. After going to college and teaching for 7 years, she and my father came back to the upper Hood River Valley to start farming in the early 1970s.
I and my siblings spent our childhood summers gladly learning the art of farming from my mother. I have so many really warm and beautiful memories of growing up on my family’s farm and always knew that I would someday carry on the family tradition if I could save up enough money to buy it from my parents.
This year, after saving for 12 years, I left my nurse practitioner job in city to carry on my family’s farming legacy.
My parents always taught me to be very hospitable and generous when friends and family came to visit our orchard. I love to open up our farm like a large living room and invite everyone to come and "taste and see" all the abundance of our harvests. Wendell Berry believed that "a significant part of the pleasure of eating is one's accurate consciousness of the lives and the world in which the food comes."
My name is Trina McAlexander and I invite you to come share my journey of becoming a 3rd-generation female farmer.
