Beyond Organic

At Dancing Roots Farm, Troutdale’s Shari Sirkin and her husband are getting people back in touch with their food, one farm member at a time

By Kari Hastings

The Gresham Outlook, May 4, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Shari Sirkin and her husband Bryan Dickerson stroll through a row of radishes at their Dancing Roots Farm on Woodard Road in between Troutdale and Springdale on Thursday, May 3.

Carole Archer / The Gresham Outlook

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It’s a wonder what can happen in four short years.

When Shari Sirkin and her husband, Bryan Dickerson, bought the old Woodard property between Troutdale and Springdale in 2002, blackberries 8 feet high obscured the promise of fertile ground underneath.

Heavy equipment and lots of sweat rid the 10 acres of the pesky, proliferous vine to reveal an agricultural jewel waiting patiently for new owners to dust it off and make it shine again.

Dancing Roots Farm, now provider of vegetables to 100 households, is springing to life at the moment. Its 43 beds are filled with the standards – carrots, broccoli and lettuce – and the very interesting – kohlrabi, rutabagas and rainbow chard.

Come the last week in May, loyal subscribers to the local farm will file in to every Monday to scoop up their weekly bundle of what’s-in-season-this-week. A second Northeast Portland drop point supplies those closer to the big city.

It’s part of a broader nationwide effort, called Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), which invites the public to share in their local farms’ bounty. There are about 20 CSA farms in the Portland-metro area – three of them in East County.

At Dancing Roots, a membership will run you $380 for a small share and $680 for a large share, reaping a box of fresh vegetables for 26 weeks.

“This is about having a direct relationship with your farmer and with the food that you eat,” Dickerson, 46, said. “People have had dentists and doctors and accountants for years. Now they can have a farmer.”

Sirkin, 44, who leased farmland in Hillsboro for seven years before starting Dancing Roots, has happily watched her members grow from a handful the first year to 100, and her East County members grow to 40 this summer.

She drives a hard bargain though, engaging interested parties in discussions about what they are looking for and changes they’ll need to make in their cooking and eating habits.

“This is for the adventurous chef,” she says. “If you need to have clam chowder on Sundays and spaghetti on Mondays, then CSA is not for you.”

One East County resident who’s taken the farm fresh plunge is Lisa Harley of Sandy. She and a friend share a membership and take turns picking up the weekly food box from Dancing Roots.

Her husband, Bob, a Gresham police officer, and her 5-year-old son, Wyatt, have enjoyed the steady supply of organic, flavorful produce, she said.

“We’ve actually started having friends over every Monday night for what we call our ‘farm dinner,’ ” she says. “And it’s always different and exciting to see what we’ll make. It’s a great topic of conversation.”

Thankfully, Harley said, Sirkin includes a sheet with every box of produce, with seasonal recipes such as stuffed Italian fried peppers, turnips with bread crumbs and parsley and pear and turnip soup.

The Harley family is healthier now, Lisa Harley said.

“We don’t feel that we’re as sick,” she said. “We don’t have to take as many vitamins or iron pills. In fact, I don’t take any vitamins anymore.”

Harley isn’t the only one who’s drawn to the farm for health reasons. Sirkin said two members joined because their doctors instructed them to eat more fresh vegetables. One had breast cancer, the other endometriosis.

Dickerson said an increased awareness in the connection between food and health is also prompting new members.

“People are having more and more issues with their food,” he said. “Even if it is organic, it probably comes from 1,500 miles away, so how organic is that with all the fossil fuels it took to get it here?”

Organic certification is not on the high list of priorities for Dancing Roots. It’s a lot of hassle and a lot of money, Sirkin says, and she doesn’t need a piece of paper to tell her that she operates without chemical fertilizers, pesticides or genetic engineering.

“We’re beyond organic,” she said.

Sirkin has a loyal following among the “foodie” restaurants of Portland, selling fresh produce to Paley’s Place, Fife and Nostrana.

And the couple is passing on their passion by inviting apprentices to learn how to farm. Holding nothing back, they involve their crew in everything from the physical labor to the marketing and budgeting processes. Two former apprentices are now small farmers themselves, a fact that brings a proud smile to Sirkin’s face.

Their current apprentice, Soleil Hutchinson, worked with Dickerson to build a yurt on the property, where she lives. Dickerson built the structure – part Internet specs, part ingenuity – and Hutchinson sewed the canvas.

A flock of chickens pecks around a portable “eggmobile,” a traveling roost and shelter that moves around the land, fertilizing as it goes.

A muscular yellow Lab lumbers around the property, buff from his jaunts up and down the 10-acre slope.

The neighbor’s llamas peek over the trees, keeping an eye on the busy bee workers at Dancing Roots Farm.

And it’s another day in paradise for Shari Sirkin.

“Oh yeah, this is my dream job,” she says, laughing. “It doesn’t get much better than this.”

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