Parking was in high demand at Forks Farm near Yachats on a Saturday morning earlier this month. Its owner, Katherine Lucido, and a handful of her neighbors were welcoming in people, produce and other goods on display on folding tables under shade trees.
It was Aug. 9, 2025. The date of the 15th annual Yachats River Valley Farm Tour, an event that invites people to visit with the "river folk" who live in the area.
Lucido is one of those river folk. She's wanted a small operation like Forks Farm since she was a young adult.
“I studied horticulture when I was younger in college. When I was in my 20s, I knew I wanted to grow blueberries because I was at an old people’s farm and they had blueberries. I thought, I’m going to do that and pay my taxes, that was the goal,” she said.
Well, she almost hit that dream.
“I don’t know that I’ve ever paid my taxes. But with the rest of my stuff, I do.”
Lucido’s biggest crop is flowers when they’re in season, but she is selling blueberries today.
One of her main contributions to The Yachats River Valley is the farm tour. She helped organize the event from its start until a few years ago.
“[Visitors] always seem to have a good time, and it supports our local farmers. Nobody probably makes their living off of it here much, but they still have farms that they use,” Lucido said.
Among the farmers who have set up shop at Forks Farm for this year’s tour was Dale Dawson. He and his wife are selling honey from the bees they keep at River Folk Farms.
The farm currently has nine hives, but it has been bigger in the past.
“The most we've had is 14, and the most we'll probably ever have is maybe 18. But I don't want to do any more work than that, because I'm retired,” said Dawson.
This particular Saturday could be a momentous day. The jars that the Dawsons have on hand will push them into the black for the first time, covering the costs they have incurred in their years of apiculture.
“We had about $3,400 invested in it, as long as you don't believe that your time is of any value,” he said.
At the next table over is Adam Kotaich, who is working his first farm tour. He leases a one-acre plot he has dubbed Huckleberry Farms.
“Right now it's just sort of a weekend hobby farm, and kind of seeing how things go with that. But eventually I would love to do farming full time for a living, he said.”
The person who owns a stop further up the road has notably more experience. Ann Jensen owns River Wind Farm.
Along with Jensen’s vegetables, there are also artisan soaps and pottery for sale and a local musician is playing. It’s busy enough that a farm staffer is directing traffic off the road and into the parking lot.
“We got this farm in the 70s. I came down here from Portland. I came down here with a sprig of oregano. We started growing stuff, taking it locally here, and then I discovered that it was costing me too much time,” said Jensen.
Now, at age 90, Jensen also helps run the farm tour and opens up her farm every Saturday to shoppers.
“There's a lot of time element and trying to coordinate the whole thing into having everything from apples to blueberries to zucchini. And by the way, my zucchini looks terrible this year. Don't ask me why, because I can't tell you. That's farming for you,” she said.
The stop on the tour this year that is the farthest back on Yachats River Road has notably different plants. Yaquina Nursery specializes in small succulents and cactus, and has been a mainstay of the tour from the beginning.
Renee Taylor-Valentin and her husband bought the nursery in 2021, and inherited their spot on the tour.
“Roy and Jerry, the original owners, who had this business since 1963 in Newport, moved it here and decided to narrow it down, to specialize in cactus and succulents. They did that in 2005 and they were already in their 70s. From the moment we stepped in here for the first time, we absolutely fell in love with all of these plants,” said Taylor-Valentin.
The boost that the farm tour brings to Yaquina Nursery each summer can be massive.
“We see probably eight or even 20 times the volume of customers during the farm tour than we do on any other single day of the year. It's a wonderful day to have people just kind of come discover both the valley and our business,” she said.
Several other farmers and businesses along the tour expressed similar sentiments, noting that the tour is good for everyone along the road whether they are selling produce that is typical for the area, such as blueberries, or something a little more exotic and spiky.
