Unger Farms Inc started in 1984 by Matt and Kathy Unger. They grow Oregon strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, and grapes. They sell their premium berries at 18 different farms markets and many different local stores.
My family has been farming out here for a little over a hundred years. Fourth generation farmer with a lot of land around here that my aunts and uncles are all farming and so we're pretty heavy in the community around here. I'm Greg Unger and this is Unger Farms and right now we're at Unger's farm store. My father started farming strawberries while his brother started taking over all the wheat and grains that my grandfather was doing. My brother and I are set to take over the farm. Eventually once my parents decide to retire, which as farmers that's going to be a while, they never want to stop working. Right here we have 160 acres. Really great area for growing strawberries, just the soil that is here is fantastic for this climate and the type of berries that we grow. We sell strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and blackberries and we have different varieties of each to try and extend the seasons for all of those so we can actually sell strawberries from beginning of June till end of September. We sell them at farmers markets, that's how we really started out growing in the community. We do 15 local farmers markets every week all around the Portland metro area and then when new seasons local grocery store around here opened up, they found our berries, loved them, asked if they could buy some and we started selling to them on their first store and we've kind of grown with them. Now they have 18 stores around the Portland area, we sell to them all and it's been a good partnership and then we sell our overwrite berries at the pickers pick to Canary also. When it comes to farming there's always some kind of situation where you have to get something done right away. We've been in a couple situations where we need tea posts and that'something that Coastal supplies and they are close by and they have a good price so we've been able to run in there and pick up what we needed to get started and that has saved quite a few plants of ours which has been really, really helpful. We are sustainable and we use a integrated pest management system so we'll bring in predator, pest if we can, if we might have to spray, we look at what the safest for the environment, safest for the cons We use drip irrigation instead of overhead when we can which saves a lot of water and as you can see our pond here we have a lot of foliage planted around for shade to keep it from evaporating. We just try and keep in mind what we can do with the environment around us to keep it farmable forever.
