Building a vision on the farm

By Cliff Newell

The Lake Oswego Review, Jul 20, 2006, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Cliff Newell / Lake Oswego Review

Brenna Bell, holding her 20-month-old daughter, Ember, is pleased that Tryon Life Community Farm is reaching its main goal of educating and inspiring local people about sustainable living. Below: A group of visitors hears Bell talk about the farm.

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The campaign to keep the land has been won, and now Tryon Life Community Farm is getting down to its true purpose – educating and inspiring the Portland-area public about sustainable living.

Certainly, you could make a pretty good Frank Capra movie about the Tryon Life Community Farm Board’s effort to buy the farm. Just when it seemed it was short of its goal of raising the dollars needed, a big push at the end brought in double the necessary amount, just in time to beat the court-set deadline.

The public poured in donations ranging from $5 to $60,000, which was reminiscent of the joyous scene at the end of “It’s A Wonderful Life,” when Bedford Falls rallied to bail out good old George Bailey.

Now it can be shown how Tryon Farm is a happy place for a bee, a chicken, a child, and even an adult. In fact, when you listen to Brenna Bell, the board chair whose legal savvy and prodigious energy was crucial to the campaign’s success, you get the idea that the farm is the wave of the future.

“For the past two and a half years I’ve been working to save the land, develop a program and raise a kid,” said Bell, the mother of a 20-month-old daughter named Ember. “Now we want to move on to enact the vision that led people to save the land.”

Already experiencing the vision are the hundreds of school children that have streamed through the farm in recent months. A stop by the chicken pen is always popular. But there is so much more that kids are learning about sustainable living at Tryon Farm, such as composting, natural building, native eco systems, self-regulating natural food systems.

And like building the cob ovens in which the community bakes its bread and pizzas. Building a cob oven – which is made from sand, clay and straw – is something that is highly recommended by Bell.

“It’s like building with mud pies,” Bell said. “Everyone can build with mud pies. It’s really fun to have a whole lot of people getting dirty together.”

Tours and classes are held all the time at the farm, providing a “broad-based holistic, sustainability education,” and they seem to be particularly effective at reaching at-risk youth.

“We get amazing feedback from the groups who come here,” Bell said. “But we seem to have the most impact on at-risk kids. We provide an atmosphere they’re not used to, and we’re told this makes an outstanding difference in their lives.”

While kids get VIP treatment at Tryon Farm, the guest list can include just about everybody; especially the people who helped the land campaign succeed. The last six months have been a time of celebration.

Bell said, “They tell me, ‘This is a great idea. I thought you’d never be able to do it.’ We can say, ‘Thanks. You did it. We did it.’ I’m so glad the grassroots philosophy is alive in Portland. Sustainability is something we’re committed to.”

In fact, sustainability is something Brenna Bell has been committed to almost her entire life.

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