| Mountain Top Paradise |
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| Saving the past for the future |
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The Parrett family harvests hops circa 1900
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By Madeline MacGregor, ODA Information Office
Traveling to Parrett Mountain requires a winding detour through Wilsonville-past schools, condominiums, convenience stores and upscale horse farms. Within three short miles, the line of demarcation between urban and rural is sudden. Mature filbert trees shade each other in neatly pruned rows. Hay fields, pear orchards, and nursery operations line the highway.
After navigating a steep turn to the right, another to the left, and climbing slowly up a gravel drive, Parrett Mountain road circles lazily to a bucolic, old-world farm. Identified by its' colorful Century Farm sign, the Parrett family house and gardens entice the visitor to stop and explore.
Crystal Dawn Smith Rilee celebrates her 91st birthday this year. Rilee, a proud descendent of early Parrett pioneers, tells me that on a clear day, you can see the gold statue on top of the Capitol Building in Salem. Across the road from a knee-deep grass-field, her property overlooks most of the northern Willamette Valley, and well beyond to snow-capped Mt. Hood.
Crystal and her granddaughter Elizabeth Rhode, oversee the leased operations of Parrett family farmland, an approximately 400 acre portion of the original 650 acres deeded to the family in the 1800s.
The land came to Crystal and her family with a heavy price. The original homestead house burned to the ground in 1923. Crystal's mother, Ella, attempted to smother the fire on her own without calling the men in from the fields. As flames shot through the roof, seven-year old Crystal persuaded her mother to let her telephone a neighboring Parrett.
Careening down the mountain in his classic Maxwell (one of the only cars available in the area), cousin Fred managed to remove several pieces of furniture from the house. Crystal was able to grab a kerosene lantern and carry her toddler brother to safety, one mile uphill from the burning residence.
With the onset of the Great Depression, financial hardship challenged the Parretts as it had most of the nation's farmers. In 1932, Crystal's father John Smith and his brothers were heavily invested in strawberry and blackcap production. When processors lacked the funds to purchase the crop, over 100 acres of berries rotted in the fields. Crystal still remembers the odor, as the fruit turned to sugary compost.
Misfortune struck once again when the Parrett farm claimed Crystal's husband of 54 years. Bob Rilee was killed in a tractor accident at the age of 92. However, nothing stopped strong-willed Crystal, as she moved forward with plans to preserve her land for one purpose: farming.
"I want to keep the land so that people cannot build million dollar homes up here, and so that it can continue to be farmed like it was back in the 1900s," Crystal maintains. Her blue eyes settle on lilacs swaying in the breeze outside her window. "I want to make it available to groups, like schools and woodworker's associations, and keep a working garden, a greenhouse, chickens, turkeys, goats, and hogs."
Crystal first started recording Parrett family history when she was just a young girl in the sixth grade. After an appendicitis attack at the age of 14, she was hospitalized for two weeks. She began to scribble on bits of paper, and keep a diary. Writing came naturally to her; she even reported on Parrett Mountain events for several regional newspapers.
Crystal's inclination towards writing and investigating lent itself to her 75-year occupation as family historian. With the honorable distinction of being the last Parrett born on the mountain, Crystal has meticulously collected family artifacts, photos, clothing, and correspondence. The remodeled Parrett Mountain Schoolhouse that Crystal purchased in the 1950s hosts the collection. Among the neatly assembled vintage objects is a much-prized Underwood-the same typewriter Crystal used when she reported for the Newberg Graphic.
Rilee's memory about the details of family farming may have faded somewhat, but she remembers clearly that her father hired his brothers to help during harvest, at the grand wages of one dollar a day. The brothers plowed and harrowed wheat, oats and barley.
The Parrett men also ran a large hop operation. Hops were the mainstay of their farm in the early years. Like many homesteads of the time, Parrett women had roles that were more traditional. From a nearby creek they hauled water and then heated it in huge iron cauldrons-scrubbing their laundry clean. They planted large kitchen gardens, and gathered eggs. Ella Parrett in particular, was well known for her skills in the kitchen. Crystal says that visitors came from miles around, to sample her mother's culinary delights. For a farming operation that encompassed 600 acres in the early 1900s, a woman's work inside the house was as integral to a farm's success as men's in the fields.
Like many children of the period, Crystal found herself working outside of the home to save the farm. "Out in the world," muses Crystal, is where she began to formulate her plans to reclaim as much of the Parrett land as possible.
When her Navy husband retired from active duty, Bob concentrated on hog farming while Crystal worked in government service. Her much needed, off-farm income empowered the hardworking couple to buy neighboring lots from other Parrett heirs. As the years passed, much of the original Donation Land Grant acreage, farmed by her great-grandparents in the 1850s, was brought back into the fold.
"At best," says granddaughter Elizabeth Rhode, "their lives centered on subsistence living." The mountain provided timber, hay, crops, and meat when finances were lacking, yet the Parrett's never focused on their poverty. "Crystal sacrificed her life for this place," Elizabeth points out. Rilee's Spartan lifestyle helped to create a legacy of well-tended agricultural land that has, in turn, become a precious endowment to future generations.
According to the mission statement of the Crystal Dawn Smith Rilee Foundation (organized to preserve the Parrett family farm for public and educational use) the goal is to "Provide the general public a turn-of-the-century Oregon farm, as well as protect 400 acres from encroaching urban development."
By working with consultants, Crystal and Elizabeth are planning to attain self-sufficiency for the property by offering membership in the Foundation; providing fee-based day-use areas; creating a farm fresh egg and produce stand; restoring existing farm buildings; maintaining educational trails; and, refining working agricultural exhibits.
As the recently formed group states in its hopeful brochure, the family is "helping to ensure that a vast area of Parrett Mountain will forever be preserved as an oasis of peace and tranquility-where the past is remembered and opportunity is built by observing the past." For more information on the Crystal Dawn Smith Rilee Foundation, please contact Elizabeth Rhode, 503-625-9650 or e-mail earhode1@aol.com .
2006 Century Farm and Ranch awards ceremony
The Oregon State Fair hosted this year's Century Farm & Ranch awards presentation. Members from 15 families were in attendance, and celebrated their century-long history, of family farming.
Families honored were presented with certificates signed by Governor Kulongoski and Oregon Department of Agriculture (ODA) Director Katy Coba. Recipients were congratulated on stage with handshakes from representatives of ODA, the Oregon Farm Bureau, and the Oregon Historical Society.
The program and refreshments brought smiles to toddler and grandparent, alike. Roth's Grocery donated two giant cakes that resembled the program's roadside signs. The non-edible, metal program signs are provided to the families through a special grant from ODA.
The following families earned recognition for 2006:
- Agnes and Charlie Doherty, Umatilla County
- Boyd and Sheree Follett, Union County
- Wayne Morin, Donna Jenkins-Morin, and Waynette Morin, Baker County
- Donell J. and Mary F. Smock, Umatilla County
- Larry and Paula Bangs, Lane County
- Vernon and Penny Bruck, Clackamas County
- Lila and Jim Elliott, Clackamas County
- John H. and Patricia McGhehey, Yamhill County
- Robert and Ryan Mahaffy, Coos County
- Wilbur A. Olson, Don and Denise Olson, Clackamas County
- Fay Samuel (Sam) Pambrun, Jr. and Dottie Pambrun, Umatilla County
- Barbara F. Skinner and Carol A. Fery, Linn County
- Stephen Unger, Washington County
- Irv, Joan & Edith Wettlaufer, Clackamas County.
ODA wants to publish your century farm or ranch story. Please contact Madeline MacGregor, in the ODA Information Office: 503-986-4758, or e-mail: mmacgreg@oda.state.or.us
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