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ABOUT US
Triangle Farms is a 6th generation "Family Farm". We have gone through many changes to survive over the years.
The farm is versatile in many areas due to its location.
We are located on the foothills of the Cascade on the Northeast side of the Willamette Valley with growing areas from Mt. Angel to Silver Falls. This gives us an elevation change from 300' to 1700' with some irrigation. This also allows us a lot of diversity for different crops. The crops we grow include flowers, grass, forbs, vegetables, herbs, and specialty grains for seed.
With our own modern state of the art "seed-processing" facility, we process our own seeds. Triangle Farms also processes for other growers and companies. On our steeper acreage is more difficult to farm row crops so we specialize in raising Noble Fir Christmas trees.
The remainder of our ground is re-planted to timber and is also used to raise meat goats.
With several thousand acres and a large investment in equipment we are able to accommodate a multitude of projects. We also have worked with some bare root production that is in trial stages.
Triangle Farms continues to farm in environmentally friendly ways. That will produce safe products for the consumer without the spread of disease and unwanted pests.
- We use our best efforts to make sure the products we produce are of the highest quality.
- We believe that we can directly offer some of the best services available.
- We form long lasting relationships with our customers founded on communication and trust.
As you can see Triangle Farms is a very diversified farm. We have very good staff that have supported our goals and efforts over the years.
Our people have learned what it takes to perform the tasks needed to maintain and improve the quality of service that we demand for the fine products we produce.
Check out the rest of our site and if there is something we can help you with or you have questions about, please contact us!
OUR HISTORY
1902 The Loe family farm was purchased in 1902 by Ole Loe our great, great grandfather, who originally came from Norway in 1869, and moved to Wabasha county Minnesota until 1901 when he moved to Oregon.
He bought this farm from Coolidge and McClaine and other parcels from Gilbert Evens. This is where the name of the valley- Evens Valley, which is the area we live.
In the early days they raised hops until the 1920's when they then switched to more typical crops, such as chickens, cows, grain, hay, fruits, and berries.
1924 In January of 1924 Ole Loe died and the farm was divided between his three children. Two of his children Emil and Ida went into other occupations and the third child Oscar, our great grandfather stayed on the farm and continued to farm.
December of 1924 Oscar and his wife Marie Westby moved into the old hop-picker's which is the farm house where our seed processing facility is located. It was also used for the schoolhouse before the school was built for Evens Valley. They had three children: Kathryn, Roger and Mary.
1934 Oscar worked at tree grafting, raised nursery stock, turkeys and chickens and did custom harvesting in the 30's but realized to survive he had to do something different from what every other farmer was doing. He had a friend at Oregon State College named Harry Schoth who was an agronomist. In 1934 Harry introduced Oscar to Alta Tall Fescue, this is how we got started in the grass seed industry. From this point on they started growing different grasses and forbs.
1939 Oscar built a warehouse and seed plant to process these products. One of the very few built specifically for seed processing in the Willamette Valley at the time.
1948 Oscar went to Europe in search of new crops and went to France to see if he could get Charolais cattle. Charolais cattle were quarantined from entering the U.S. directly so they were not allowed to buy cattle. So he went to Texas and bought Charbray cattle and eventually upgraded with Charolais bull through Canada. Oscar also raised a lot of horses, he worked with the Arab and Welsh breeds which at one time numbered well over 100 horses. When he was in Europe, he brought back a new variety of clover from Denmark, and Burnet, a herb from England.
1952 A Dryer and Elevator were built. This facility was used for adding field corn in their crop rotations. This was one of the few built in the valley of this design that remains today.
1964 When Oscar died 1964 his son Roger Loe managed operations. Roger's main enterprises were with the Charolais cattle and the Fine Fescue. The large number of horses were replaced with almost 500 Charolais cattle, and most of the tillable ground was planted to Fine Fescue. The several farms he had accuired were left over the years to his wife and children. As of today most are still owned by the family.
1978 Kevin Loe started farming his own ground while working for his father Roger Loe.
1981 1981 caused many changes as low cattle prices and a burning ban were forcing a change on many years of working with cattle and Fine Fescue. Very low cattle prices and a burning ban put large economic pressure on the farm for changes. Kevin Loe started growing flowers and vegetables for seed as an alternative.
1983 Roger and Patricia Loe had five children: Greg, Ruthie, Kevin, Laurie and Wendy over the years. Kevin who had worked on the farm from a very young age started to purchase the farm and taking it another direction. He knew in order to succeed he would need to make major changes. Looking into many different crops; that most farms did not produce. That would have economic value above most crops due to the high risk of production. Learning how to produce and process these crops became a challenge that would be well worthwhile.
1991 Triangle Farms, Inc. was created for a separate business for processing seed for other growers. From 1983 we had grown to where we needed to treat this as a separate business. A facility was leased from Sunseeds in Brooks, OR where we processed specialty seeds and such as flower, vegetable, vine and many other seeds.
1992 Our home seed plant we used for cleaning grass seed that was built in 1939 was destroyed in a fire.
1994 We started to rebuild the facility with 3 complete seed processing lines to process all of the diverse seeds that we might produce or that other growers produced in our area.
1998 Most of the cattle were sold and 150 goats were purchased from Texas. We changed the operating name to Triangle Farms, Inc., for the whole farm because we felt it represented our farm better.
1999 We began Native seed collections and propagation of domestic seeds of our own varieties.
2000-2007
Angela Rose, our daughter started Oregon Wholesale Seed Company in 2000 to market seed that we produce and of other producer's on the wholesale markets. She also markets the production services of this farm and selected farms for seed production.
Angela at the same time started Silver Falls Seed Company and offers seed that is produced on our farm and a few others directly to the consumer and to retailers in an attractive ready to use package, also using this as an educational tool to teach about agriculture. She offers the Silver Falls labeled seed and custom labeled as well for whatever occasion or business in smaller quantities than most companies offer. She is married and has a 2 year old daughter.
Travis Loe is our youngest and is currently working on our farm.
Melissa Loe is our 2nd daughter and graduated in December 2004 from Linfield Nursing School and is currently a registered nurse working at OHSU Hospital in Portland, OR. She is currently engaged to be married.
6 Generations on this farm & over 100 years of success!
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