OUR GORGE I LOCAVORE
Deep Roots Kiyokawa Family Orchards has evolved to thrive with the times
story by RUTH BERKOWITZ | photos courtesy of KIYOKAWA FAMILY ORCHARDS
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wenty years ago, actress Meryl Streep testified before the U.S. Senate that she feared eating apples because of alar, a chemical used by a few farmers to increase the longevity of their fruit. The popular television news program “60 Minutes” ran her testimony with an image of a skull and crossbones inside an apple. Equating apples with poison stemmed from the erroneous fear that alar caused cancer. Instead of believing that “an apple a day keeps the doctor away,” people stopped eating America’s favorite fruit and many family farms closed down. Parkdale farmer Randy Kiyokawa, who, like most farmers, never used the spray, suffered hard times. The fruit in his orchard rotted on the trees. In a desperate move, Kiyokawa filled a basket with Red Delicious apples and placed it on the side of the road with a sign, “Apples 5 cents a pound.” Kiyokawa considered it a good day if someone grabbed a few of his apples. After a while, locals began asking to pick his fruit and Kiyokawa sighed with relief and joy watching families pick and munch away. Thus began one of the largest u-pick farms in the Hood River Valley. Over the years, Kiyokawa created a Disneyland-type experience on his family farm, where people can pick fruit straight from the tree and be wowed not only by the unique and delicious varieties, but also by the double mountain views of Mount Hood and Mount Adams. In 2018, USA Today voted Kiyokawa Family Orchards the top u-pick apple orchard in the country. Since taking the helm of the orchard from his father, Kiyokawa has planted all kinds of fruit that you wouldn’t see in the grocery store. He grows 120 varieties of apples, 24 different types of Asian pears, 14 varieties of cherries, eight different types of peaches, four varieties of blueberries, and other fruits like kiwi berries and pluerries, a cross between a cherry and a plum. Recently, I met Kiyokawa during his late-summer crunch time. When I arrived, he was in the driver’s seat of a broken down Sprinter van and half a dozen of his employees were pushing the vehicle onto the ramp of a truck bed so it could be hauled to Portland for repairs. After a few tries, they succeeded. “That’s life as an orchardist,” Kiyokawa says, “constantly fixing things and problem solving.” As we walk the orchard, his cell phone beeps with messages concerning a multitude of tasks, from 28
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preparing for the 14 farmers markets he sells at to the construction of new employee housing on his land. Currently, 12 families live on his orchard, many of which have been working for him for the past 20 years. “They are the backbone of my operation and some know the farm better than I do,” he says. “Being a farmer isn’t what it used to be,” adds Kiyokawa, a third-generation orchardist, reflecting on the late 1980s when he returned from college at Oregon State University and spent at least 75 percent of his time on his tractor in the field. Kiyokawa’s grandfather, Riichi Kiyokawa, left Japan in 1905 when he was 17 to come to America. When his boat docked in Hawaii, Riichi disembarked and cut sugar cane to pay the rest of his passage to California. The 1906 earthquake and fire in San Francisco steered him north, first to Sacramento and eventually to Dee, where he worked in the lumberyards and, in 1911, got a small plot of land. Along the way, Riichi married his wife, a picture