Lakeport >> Carpenter Orchards has been operating out of Lake County for six-generations, but before the pear trees and the organic agriculture, the family farm wasn’t even growing fruit — it was a hog farm.
The official start date of Carpenter Orchards is 1881, but the pears didn’t come around until 1926. Up until then, the Carpenter family raised hogs, holding a hog drive every season up Highland Springs Road and over to Hopland, where they sold the animals and collected their checks.
And if you want to dive even deeper into the history of the farm, you can go all the way back to the Homestead Act of 1862. The first Carpenter was a Civil War veteran who the family believed was suffering from blood poisoning after getting shot and failing to remove the bullet. He was never able to assimilate back into society in his home state of Minnesota, so he traveled west.
He wasn’t heading directly for Lake County, but stumbled upon the location. He immediately fell in love with the weather. Then he happened across a large stretch of open land and claimed 160 acres. And so began Carpenter Orchards.
Historically, the family farm has always been open to change. It was how they started pear farming in the first place. In 1926 there was a big push to grow pears and the Carpenters were eager to get in on it. They purchased their first stock from Japan and began their adventures in farming pears.
Change came again in 2004. Organic farming practices were gaining in popularity, the fresh pear market was declining, and Andrew Carpenter, field director and foreman for Carpenter Orchards, wanted to find alternatives to those harsh chemicals that weren’t best for the land.
Though the pear industry has turned around in recent years, back in 2004 farmers were struggling to snag cannery contracts. “That was the number one issue. It’s hard to survive in the pear industry when you don’t have cannery contracts,” said Carpenter. “The organic pear industry wasn’t declining, it was just really starting at that time.”
Going organic — which is all about sustainability — was a natural direction for Carpenter Orchards. Carpenter plans to keep the land in the family for a long time to come, passing the orchard to his kids and their kids after them, with the hope that it will one day became an eighth-generation farm, at the very least. He simply didn’t see single crop farming taking them into the future.
“I just wanted to do something that I felt I would be able to hand down to my grandchildren,” Carpenter said. “The whole organic thing fit that perfectly.”
Before making the official decision to transition to organic farming, Carpenter had been exposed to the idea down in the Bay Area where he attended college. That was when he noticed the demand for organic foods, and realized that Carpenter Orchard could find a solid market. When his uncle connected him with Smuckers, who further encouraged the farm to make the switch, Carpenter was already considering organic farming. It was the last push he needed.
The certification process took three years, but once all was said and done, Carpenter Orchards could officially slap an organic label on their pears, walnuts and grapes. They’ve been able to call themselves an organic farm since 2007.
“It’s been a godsend for us,” Carpenter said.
In the past ten years he’s seen a noticeable change in the land itself. Going organic has also given many customers peace of mind, the label assuring that there are no harmful chemicals or preservatives in the food they buy from Carpenter Orchards. And every year organic farming options grow. Carpenter sees it becoming the big wave of the future.
“It adds a whole new level of comfort in this modern world when there are so many things that aren’t in our control,” Carpenter said.
Carpenter Orchards is a partner of R.W. Kundsen Family, which recently released a video series highlighting their partners’ growing practices. Through this campaign, Carpenter Orchards has been able to connect with new and old customers alike and spread their message of operating an organic, multi-generation pear farm.
And people want to support local farmers. They want to see a product and know exactly where it comes from and where their money is going. It’s part of the reason Carpenter Orchards is still in business after more than a hundred years.
While there are a number of farms across California that are older than a century — the California Department of Food and Agriculture has a heritage farm program and puts on a dinner for farms more than 100-years-old every year — very few can claim they’ve belonged to the same family all that time.
Carpenter family has always been fairly small. Funnily enough, there have been only two brothers in each generation, and the oldest never had kids. Then Andrew Carpenter’s generation came along. He’s the youngest of three brothers. His two older siblings ended up going off to do pursue other endeavors, but by the time Carpenter hit 13, he was working the foreman for the farm. Carpenter Orchards was always going to become his. He was groomed for it.
Although he wasn’t nervous to inherit the farm itself, he was a little wary about making the switch from conventional farming to organic. But now, more than ten years later, he knows he made the right choice.
“If you think about it, when the farm started in 1881 everything was organic,” he said. “And that’s the full circle.”
Jennifer Gruenke can be reached at 900-2019.
