Cultivating Survival — Hentze Family Farm in Junction City, Oregon
Over the course of 121 years and five generations, Hentze Family Farm in Oregon’s Willamette Valley has been many things. Founded by immigrants from the Faroe Islands in 1902, the Junction City plot started as a dairy farm before transitioning to produce. Over time, the farm morphed as the family leased and sold portions of the property. Acreage and ownership have fluctuated, but the one constant has been the land.
Every year, the 42 acres of rural Oregonian soil yield string beans, black walnuts, hazelnuts, pumpkins, root vegetables, cherries, apples, and berries. One parcel of the land is divided as a plot for hunting duck and deer. A stream runs through the back, connecting to the nearby Willamette River, which teems with trout, steelhead, and salmon in the spring.
But this bounty has barely been enough to sustain Hentze Family Farm through its century in the Cascadian timberlands. Today, the farm is more than it has ever been. In 2008, the owners opened the Cook Shack at the Hentze Family Farm, a mobile food cart that sells sandwiches and hot dogs made from local ingredients. They’ve also begun hosting weddings and other gatherings, and seasonal attractions like pumpkin patches, hay rides, and apple picking have helped round out a calendar that, each year, needs more and more events to turn a profit.
It’s another revenue stream that can help pay the bills, pay the taxes, and keep this place afloat. It’s really hard to fucking make money growing fruits and vegetables.
[Editor’s note: This story is part of Good Beer Hunting’s Compound Interest series, underwritten by SMBX, which highlights different ways small businesses can get the funding they need; all of the businesses profiled in this series have worked with SMBX to achieve part or even all of their funding.]
In 2022, the farm embarked on what Seth McEldowney, a fifth-generation Hentze Family Farm member and part-owner, sees as its most sustainable endeavor yet: a brewery. McEldowney is a project manager for G&D Chillers, a company that sells glycol chilling equipment, and is deeply involved in the American craft beer scene. G&D has helped breweries from New York’s Brewery Ommegang to Florida’s Funky Buddha Brewery to Hawaii’s Maui Brewing Co. build out their facilities. Hentze is in one of the densest beer markets in the country, and visitors expect to be able to buy local. McEldowney saw dollar signs beyond anything they could grow, pick, and process themselves.
“It’s another revenue stream that can help pay the bills, pay the taxes, and keep this place afloat,” he says. “It’s really hard to fucking make money growing fruits and vegetables.”
SOWING THE SEEDS OF AGRITOURISM
Patrick Fay and Kasey McEldowney-Fay moved to Junction City in 2018 after McEldowney-Fay’s mother fell into a coma following a scary bout of pneumonia. Prior to the illness, they’d been living in Seattle, working in the city’s bustling restaurant business. When they found themselves back in Oregon with a farm that needed tending, they threw themselves into the work.
“We were up in Seattle living a good life,” Fay remembers. “But there was the opportunity to be a great help to the family, to provide direction and discuss this opportunity for them to do something unique and, at the same time, be able to benefit the family.”
In the past five years, Fay has become a firebrand for the farm. He was married at Hentze in 2014, the pilot for the farm’s now-crucial wedding business. Not only does Fay direct the food program for the Cook Shack, he’s been running a series of high-end farm dinners. His business card may say “farmhand and dishwasher,” but he’s become the face of Hentze as it enters its next phase, running its social media and speaking before the state legislature to ensure its success.
Fay’s long-term vision for Hentze is agri-tourism. He wants to open lodging on the farm for short-term rentals and a permanent event center. He wants bigger, more lavish weddings, and well-appointed farm dinners with beer and wine pairings. Fay claims that the ability to serve wine and beer—something he can only do with a temporary license, which can only be granted four times a year—doubles his revenue.
“It’s like the one thing that’s missing out here, and the one thing that’s gonna tie everything together,” McEldowney says. “I wish I would have looked at this a lot harder five or 10 years ago, and now it’s like, it seems like a rush. It’s crunch time, now.”
Of course the farm brewery fits into Fay’s vision, but it was only one of his many ideas, something that he and his brother-in-law talked about in hypotheticals. He was more focused on launching a canned hard seltzer line that emulated the fruited lemonades sold at the Cook Shack. He was attending a food and beverage expo hosted by the Oregon Entrepreneurs Network looking for a co-packer when he was approached by SMBX.
What he’s trying to do is beyond the normal run-of-the-mill brewery. You get an immersive experience on a century farm where you’re amongst the products that they’re working with.
They liked his presentation, but they wanted to know why he didn’t explore opening a production facility on the back acreage. After all, there are hop bines growing there already. SMBX ran the numbers and determined that, with $100,000, the farm could open something that would solidify its future. Fay liked their approach and agreed to pivot back in the direction of a nanobrewery.
“Farmers are classically allergic to risk,” Fay says. “But for growth on this farm, we need to take these steps. And this effectively let me avoid Wall Street, because they don’t give a fuck about micro businesses like this.”
In February 2022, Hentze Family Farm launched its bond offering, illuminating just how badly new investment was required. 2021 showed only $4,000 in total income for the Hentze Farm Hospitality Co., the arm of the farm that Fay and McEldowney-Fay run. But its value proposition was undeniable. Fay envisioned blackberry, cherry, and boysenberry radlers, and Goses, Saisons, and IPAs bittered with Hentze’s own wild hops, all brewed on a 1-barrel brewhouse situated on family land. He called it “farm to bottle.”
“What he’s trying to do is beyond the normal run-of-the-mill brewery,” says Chris Shown, owner and vineyard manager at nearby Brigadoon Wine Co.. Shown has partnered with Hentze on farm dinners, and he knows how “farm to table” or “grain to glass” resonates with consumers in the Willamette Valley. “You get an immersive experience on a century farm where you’re amongst the products that they’re working with.”
It seemed like a surefire proposition. The SMBX campaign raised all $100,000 within two months, with $96,500 of that being invested in equipment to build out the brewery.
STUCK IN THE SETBACKS
Because of Hentze’s shifting ownership and uses over the generations, the land has been leased and divided. Despite its steadfast, giving presence, it has now become an obstacle.
Fay is swift to point out that, ever since founder Johan Hentze gifted a subsection of the land to another family member, Einar, around World War II, the farm has technically been two parcels acting in union. Lane County officials don’t see it that way, and when Fay applied for permits to begin building his brewery, they said the barn he wants to convert into the nanobrewery needs to be moved 100 feet back, into the pasture, to meet current zoning setbacks. That would mean relocating the water and electricity already in the barn—something not budgeted in the SMBX raise.
Fay filed a variance with the county in 2022, but things have progressed at a glacial pace. Fay says the wait has been “tragically stifling” for a farm that was ready, cash in hand, to set up operations a year ago.
“My brewhouse is here, ready to go,” Fay says. “I was hoping to be already making beer and hiring people to run the brewery. It just seems kind of silly, now.”
Farmers are classically allergic to risk. But for growth on this farm, we need to take these steps. And this effectively let me avoid Wall Street, because they don’t give a fuck about micro businesses like this.
There are reasons to be hopeful. Ryan Ceniga, a neighbor in Junction City, was just elected as Lane County Commissioner, and McEldowney has just filed paperwork to advance the variance this February. They’ve set up a clean room inside the bar, progressing closer to a brewery-ready space with a man door and commercial ventilation. At this point, the Hentze family just needs to believe the variance will go through and lawmakers will see the necessity of building the brewery and preserving the future of the farm.
“My neighbors are invested, so are the people who come to the Cook Shack every weekend with their families,” Fay says. “The farm itself is just getting by, but we want it to thrive.”
Words by Jerard Fagerberg
Illustrations by David Alvarado