Norton Creek Farm, Grass-Fed Chickena nd Eggs in the Corvallis Area

Free-Range Chicken, Eggs and More

See Us at the Corvallis Farmers' Markets!

We have grass-fed chicken and eggs every Wednesday and Saturday.

CORVALLIS, Wednesdays 3 PM - 7 PM at 2nd & "B " Streets, near the skateboard park.
MCMINNVILLE, Thursdays, 1:30 PM - 6 PM at Cowls Street between 2nd and 3rd.
CORVALLIS, Saturdays, 9 AM - 1 PM at First and Jackson, in Riverfront Park.

$$$ Print out this page and save fifty cents when you buy from us! $$$
One coupon per visit per customer, Expires 8/1/09.

The Corvallis Farmers' Markets run from April through November.
The McMinnville Farmers' Market runs May through October.

Pretty girl feeding free-range chickens at Norton Creek Farm

Norton Creek Farm is in Oregon's Coast Range, near Blodgett, and 16 miles from Corvallis. We raise grass-fed chickens, pigs, and turkeys for local customers. Our free-range products taste better because they're raised on pasture and handled with care. Our products are bought by gourmets, the health-conscious, people who used to raise their own chickens, and anyone who likes eating better-tasting meals.

Norton Creek Farm is run by Robert Plamondon and Karen Black, who are leaders in the pastured poultry movement and the pioneers in the rediscovery of lost techniques from chicken farming's Golden Age of 1900-1960. (See Robert's farm blog and poultry Web site for more.)

You can buy our eggs and broilers (fryers) at the Corvallis Farmers' Markets. You can buy our eggs at Richey's Market, Albertson's, and the Blodgett Country Store.

About our Farm

We are in the Norton Creek valley, with 37 acres of land of indifferent fertility. Because much of our land is hilly and we get 60-90 inches of rain a year, we avoid erosion by keeping all of our land in permanent pasture.

We are building up the fertility of our land by raising animals who give back more to the land in manure than they take from it in feed. This trick is accomplished by using animals that eat pasture plants only as a feed supplement, but rely on purchased feed for most of their nutrition. Such species include chickens, turkeys, and pigs.

See what the local paper had to say about our farm!

Eggs From Free-Range Hens

Our free-range hens are scattered in small groups across wide areas of pasture. This keeps the pasture in good shape and makes the hens happy. The hens like to eat pasture plants, and chickens that eat lots of green plants lay eggs with deep orange yolks and greatly superior flavor. The hens are loosly confined with a low, two-wire electric fence, so low that we can step over it without difficulty. This is the same kind of fence gardeners use to keep raccoons from their vegetables, and it also serves to keep predators away from the hens.

Our eggs are not only great-tasting (try them side-by-side with whatever you're eating now, and you'll see), they're highly nutritious. We tested very well in a roundup of pastured eggs done by Mother Earth News in 2007.

We collect eggs twice a day and refrigerate them immediately. We use our 1960's vintage Aquamagic egg machine to candle, wash, sanitize, dry, and grade the eggs in a single operation. Our eggs are sold year-round in Corvallis at Richey's Market and Albertson's, and in Blodgett at the Blodgett Country Store. We also sell them at our booth in the Corvallis Wednesday and Saturday Farmers' Markets between April and November.

Pastured Broilers and Turkeys

Our broilers and turkeys are raised in a kind of home-made hoop house that Karen invented. The pens are floorless and are moved to a new patch of grass every day. This leaves their manure behind, fertilizing the pasture, and gives the birds a chance to forage for bugs and fresh pasture plants without letting them loose. Fresh pasture plants give our broilers and turkeys their superior flavor.

Broilers can't be let loose because they're too young to know the ropes (they are slaughtered at eight weeks). They literally can't be trusted to come in out of the rain! Our free-range hens are older and wiser, and are allowed to run loose. Turkeys can't be let loose because they wander away and are never seen again!

We butcher our poultry in our on-farm, licensed processing facility and deliver them to customers at the Corvallis Wednesday and Saturday Farmers' Markets.

Our broilers are available from April through November. Our turkeys are available for Thanksgiving.

Pastured Pork

Pastured pork is better than factory-farmed pork, and the pigs are certainly happier outdoors. The photo above shows a group of young pigs, their portable house, and their corral. Our pigs are given a large plot of scrubby pasture surrounded by an electric fence. They like grubbing up all the plants and generally making a mess of things, and we indulge them in this. In addition to what they can find on the pasture, they eat a diet supplemented with any eggs we can't sell due to cracks or stains.

We use the region's best custom butcher, The Farmer's Helper, to slaughter and butcher our pigs. We're extremely fond of the bacon and ham from our pigs, and in fact our pork is our all-around favorite meat.

We sell pork by the half-pig, and you must sign up for your half-pig in advance. The butcher will cut and cure the meat to your specifications.