Thistledown Farm

From Lane Co Oregon

Good Fruit, Really

By Joe Mosley

The Register-Guard

Published: Saturday, August 11, 2007

Most of the large-scale blackberry production in Oregon - about 7,000 acres total, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture - occurs in the northern Willamette Valley, from Corvallis to the Portland suburbs. Smaller commercial patches are grown in the Eugene area and points south.

"I've got about a half-acre," says Randy Henderson, owner of Thistledown Farm, on River Road north of Eugene. "That doesn't sound like much, until you try picking them."

Henderson says blackberries sell well, but are still not as popular as blueberries because they "are a little messier to eat - they're not finger food." And he sympathizes with landowners who see blackberries and their obstinate, meandering brambles as more nuisance than resource.

"They're everywhere - they're like thistles," Henderson says. "If I walked away from this place for about three years, you'd never be able to find it again."

Not quite the same varieties he farms in neat rows, but you get the idea.