HOOD RIVER — The fifth installment of Mt. Adams Institute’s Sense of Place Season 16 will arrive at Columbia Center for the Arts on Feb. 18. Titled “Going Out on a Limb: Life on the Family Farms of Lisa Perry & Ricardo Galvez,” the evening will welcome Perry for a conversation rooted in the agricultural landscape and lived experience of a family farm in the Columbia River Gorge.
Sense of Place is a comprehensive series of lectures intended to deepen our understanding of the Gorge and strengthen our connection to the landscape. Featured voices often include scientists, tribal members, authors, farmers and other diverse individuals across the Pacific Northwest.
Perry is a fourth-generation farmer, born and raised in the region. She grew up in the tight-knit community of Pine Grove, spending her childhood checking irrigation boxes and riding tractors alongside her dad. When her father lost the farm, Perry was forced to confront what it truly meant to be a farmer, and whether she wanted to continue that legacy. As she considered her own future in agriculture, new questions emerged — from simply, why plant one crop over another, to the more complex, like why are farmers so often the last to be paid for their work?
Despite the uncertainty, Perry found her way back to agriculture. She spent summers and weekends working on her stepfather’s 100-acre fruit farm, learning hands-on from an experienced grower. In 2017, Perry and her husband, Galvez, launched their own venture. They founded Out On A Limb Farm after purchasing a 14-acre fruit orchard from Galvez’s grandfather.
Today, Perry works full-time on their farm in Dukes Valley, just southwest of Odell, where she and Ricardo grow pears, apples, plums, peaches, and nectarines. Their produce is grown for a local packing house, in addition to being sold online and in person at The Farmer in Odell fruit stand.
During her lecture, Perry will share stories of their challenges, successes, and the deep connection to place that keeps her and her family farming in the Gorge, where family farms have shaped both the landscape and the community for generations.
Orchards stretch across the hillsides, tended by growers whose livelihoods rely quite literally on their sense of place. From microclimates and soil conditions to insect cycles and wind reports, their work blends inherited wisdom with modern science. And the agricultural community reflects a diversity of backgrounds — homesteaders of Finnish, Japanese, and Mexican descent — all of whom have contributed to the Gorge’s agricultural knowledge and legacy.
Together, local farmers anchor an agricultural industry that generates more than $200 million, and the Gorge ranks in the top three for pears and cherry production.
Yet behind those numbers is a way of life that is anything but simple.
What does it take to grow fruit in a place where frost can erase a season overnight? What’s the best way to prune a tree — or hundreds of them? How do families keep farms alive in the face of rising costs, shifting regulations, and the constant pressure of development? And what might the Gorge look like without them?
You can catch Perry’s lecture from 7-8:30 p.m. at 215 Cascade Ave. in downtown Hood River. For more information and tickets, visit www.senseofplace.org.
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