Page 222 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong

CORE VALUE: EXCELLENCE
Boyle Family Farms, one of the early adopters of Precision Ag technology in Central Oregon, with their Lexion 570 in 2009
Today, they farm three-thousand acres around Madras, Oregon; co-own a seed company, a compost facility, and a spraying service; and run their own trucking company. “My father-in-law started farming here back in 1948 when the water came in,” says Don Boyle, second-generation owner. “There was no such thing as sprin- klers back then. The fields were all furrowed for flood irrigation. The only way you could farm was to make small fields out of everything. So the Bureau came in and leveled it and chopped it up into small fifteen-acre pieces. When I started farming with my father-in-law in 1969, I moved forward with a lot of ideas,” says Don. “He was very standoffish because ‘that’s the way we’ve always done it.’ We farmed together for twenty-five years and went round and round on several issues. But eventually, he’d come around.”
Don started re-leveling and combining their fields, installing pump-back systems and wastewater recovery systems, and upgrading their equipment. In the 1970s, they were one of the first in the area to plant garlic and carrot seed.In 1979,he formed Central Oregon Seed Inc.(COSI) with six partners,all local farmers.“We had to do a lot of talking to get that sold, especially with my father-in-law,” says Don. “But then he didn’t want to be left out either.”
For the past forty years, COSI has operated a cleaning facility and seed plant out of Madras, distributing to big seed companies all over the world. Today, carrot seed is the Boyles’s biggest crop, although they still farm wheat, alfalfa, timothy hay, flower seed, dill seed, and turfgrass. “Carrot seed is one of the hardest crops to grow, with the biggest inputs—$3,500 to $4,000 per acre,” says Ryan. “It takes the most passes across the field, and it’s a lot of work. But the seeds can be worth twenty-five dollars per pound, so it’s our biggest return. I’ve got a lot of different innovative ways of growing carrots. There’s a lot of things you can think about while sitting on a tractor.”
220 | PETERSON: 85 YEARS AND GOING STRONG