Green Parrot Goat Farm

I was one of the early arrivals at the Green Parrot Goat Farm. I drove Tom's old 1950's one ton Chevy truck with a load of stuff for the farm. This was before anyone had taken up residence there. Early spring of 70? I'm now 75 so my memory isn't what it used to be. Anyways, I wasn't going to be a part of the new community (commune), but later that year I did just that, finding it tough to get a job in the Boeing crash of the Puget Sound economy. I arrived with a 1963 650 Triumph, maybe $20 to my name, and a bag of clothes. I was there most of the summer of 70.

I recall how Sandra was probably 6-8 months along with their first child when I left. I can recall Frank (Rev. Frank) getting sick from making wine in an old lead painted bathtub. I swear, Frank would drink anything if he thought it'd get him high. He liked codeine cough medicine. Made me sick to my stomach! Gary and Pete (both bikers) and their women stayed in the old garage/house(?) down from the main house. Gypsy Jokers I think was their club name.

I recall that Tom, myself, Pete and Gary all got on our bikes one early morning and headed out to a rock concert in Washington up around Tacoma, after an all nighter on LSD! What a great sunrise that was! Got stoned at the concert a lot, but don't remember much of what went on. Probably just as well. I decided that living a stoned life wasn't for me, and I was able to find a couple days' worth the job painting a house for a couple, and went back to Everett Washington. I didn't hear much about the goings-on of the Goat Farm after that other than to hear they had gotten busted for growing pot.

I was young, rather stupid at times, etc. I'm the one that shot dead a mother deer! Haven't shot one since. Another time I was taking the old tractor up the hill on the power line road when it surged out of gear and started rolling backwards, discovering that there were NO BRAKES! I thought I was going to die! It flipped me off the seat and onto the bank that was cut into the side of the hill, and the big tire came down on my left shoulder, leaving just a red mark! I was unhurt, amazing to even think about it to this day. I suppose God saves His fools for the plans that He has for us.

Well, I hope to hear from others that were there at the very beginning that might remember me. Go easy on me if you know who I am, my memories of that time is hazy at best.

Ken

 

I did visit the farm about a year later, toting my wife (now ex) and her daughter. I remember it was early evening, and my wife asking if anyone knew me. When the front door opened Tom was first to greet me, with a big "KEN". Yes, they knew me. There were a few people I didn't know there as well. Seems the resident turn over was active. I also visited there around 197 as I was then living down the road in Dorena Or with my wife, her daughter, and our daughter. I asked the wife if it were OK to visit the farm. She gave me a whole Sunday to do so. Turned out to be a disappointing visit. No Tom, no Sandra, and no Salena. One of the persons that was there said Sandra had taken up with some logger dude, and nobody seemed to know where Tom was. I left disappointed. I've never been back.

I think the idea of communal living is great, but it attracts people that see free room and board! I worked my butt off while I was there. Mostly shoveled cow shit out of a neighbor's loafing shed, filling the old one ton truck up and hauling it back to the farm where we spread it out on the fields as fertilizer. It was work, but something I didn't mind. I've done harder work, hot roofing, nailing down shake or composition roofing. And I was pulling green chain for a living in Culp Creek Or, just up the road from Dorena, right alongside the Row River when I last visited the farm. I ended up getting a computer science degree, worked in IT for a few years as a programmer and operator before taking a job as an inspector at Boeing, where I got laid off in early 70. I retired from Boeing almost 20 years ago at 55yo. Glad I did! Life is still as good as ever!

I also was one of Clyde's 'keepers', the male breeding goat. Dirty stinking mess Clyde was, but indispensable to the 'girls'. At that time he was chained to an old wheel and tire. It slowed him down but never stopped him unless he got the tire jammed between a couple of trees, He would pee on his head, apparently the 'girls' were attracted to males that done that! He ate much of the day but it seemed like he never got much of a clearing going.

And who can forget those stupid turkeys? About a hundred of them IIRC.

 

Very good ,Ken!! Ahhh--a fellow roofer. I love these stories about the "old days". The Church of the Good Earth folks were here for years and had a lot of great stories from the Haight---but they seem to be all gone from posting now. I only visited a commune in a little town in southern Oregon back in 70, but I stopped in the town a few years ago and some of the residents of the town said that the commune had a reunion that year. Don't remember the name of the town or the commune right now, but there were many folks there with quite a few buildings. And and course--many naked hippies. ( by the way--I also had a 1963 T120 triumph) Welcome to the forums--I've been here since about 2000. Keep em 'coming Ken.

I worked roofing from the age of 27 'till I was over 75!! I and my sons have a roofing company here in Eugene. Have a good day, brother.

 

Well, this is an old thread---hope all who posted here are alive and doing well.

 

I'll be 70 in a few weeks, but I was a mid-teen when I briefly visited the farm. I found this thread and had to "Weigh in"! I visited the GPGF back in very early 70's (I think). We, my siblings and our parents, stopped in and got the "quick tour" and had a meal on that big table made of 2X lumber. I was really quite impressed by the table! "Reverend" Frank (though we just called him "Paco") was a pretty close family friend and even stayed at my house off and on, in Snohomish County WA. I remember him talking about the home brew bathtub "plumbism" (lead poisoning) fiasco. That made the newswire. Our visit at the GPGF was brief, but left me with enough memories, all these years later, to track down this thread and drop a note. I reminisce about the "old days" quite a lot. Be sure and check for chipped enamel before making wine in an old bathtub and we'll see you later!

 

Glad you checked in!

 

I was at the Green Parrot Goat Farm, kinda' briefly. I think that was '72. I was a longhaired 19yo had been out on my own in Berkeley a couple of years already. Me and a buddy had gone fruit pickin', starting with the pears in Hood River Valley, OR, which came down on the north slope of Mt.Hood. Then we'd. move on up north as the harvest moved into WA, finishing with the Golden Delicious apples.

I think ihat was where we met Tom, working on the same orchard. He told us about the farm, but said a lot of folks had showed up there, but only a few actually did what all had to be done. Said he owned it, along with his friends, a couple, but there had been a pot bust and their probation required they live in Eugene. So he was mainly tending to the farm. Said everyone else had to leave, but to not come back unless they had a share of the due land payment. He said he'd been noticing that me and my buddy worked hard and diligent, so invited us to join.

On the way. there, my buddy decided to return to San Diego to close out his life there, then come back up. When I got to the farm, there were only a couple of guys there. And everyone 'cept me and one other guy had to go into Eugene to take care of some biz. However, they had a 500lb heifer quartere and hanging out in the barn seasoning but it was time to get it butchered and into a freezer. That meant that me and the one other guy there had to do it, which neither of us had ever done so before.

We had to go to the County Exrtension office and get one of those charts with dotted lines showing all the different cuts of meat. Took us one whole day to get it all cut and wrapped in paper, labeled. Even then we had some packages called "stew meat" or "piece of. meat". Wasn't near enough freezer space at the farm, so the next day we went int town and rented a freezer locker out behind the big grocery store.

We were just finishing up, getting it all packed into there when a guy comes in and asked if we were the fellahs that had some beef. When we confirmed that, he apologized but told us we couldn't keep it in there because other folks had some wild game hanging in there and it was against rules to have both wild and domestic meats together. At that, we complained saying as how there was no more time to get it frozen and we'd just then finally gotten the last of it all fit into the locker we rented and had nowhere else to put it. He explained that he hadn't known we got a locker-- thought we was hanging big chunks on the hooks where the game animals were. So it was okay.

We took a couple of the thickest steaks you've ever seen back with us and fired up the woodstove to treat ourselves for a big job well done. But when I bit into mine, after frying them, it had kind of an 'after-taste' sort of like how that kitchenk smelled after we'd done all that butchering. We looked at one another, scared that we'd just taken a bit too long getting it all into freezer.

Before long, a guy from Ithilium stopped by to trade us some of their veggies for some goat milk (we were milking four at the time) I asked him if he'd eaten, offering him a big steak (the rest of mine). He eagerly accepted, so I warmed it up and served him, watching closely as he dug into it. He was enjoying it and when I asked how it tasted, he said "mighty good, thanks!" I've had to eat beef 'well done" ever since.

Tom told us that a lot of folks that stayed at the farm got jobs at either a biz outside town that built RVs or the local woodmill. Neither of those suited me, as I had ambitions to do. "creative work". I also had some resperitory problems which turned out to be reactions to all the sprays on the fruit we'd picked, and had to get some medical attentions in. Portland. There, and when I'd go into Eugene, I met some folks doing projects more like what I wanted to do. I wondered if I might be able to go into one town or the. other for spells and live at the farm otherwise, maybe putting together a studio/work space. But it didn't take too long before the opposite happened and I'd stay in town mostly and only go out to the farm now and then to "retreat". Then, no more at all. Having paid a full land payment share, that ended up being fairly expensive "rent" for my time there. ;-)

So I just moved on to further chapters in my life like being one of the founders of the Portland Saturday Market. But that's another tale....