Tri-County Farm Fresh

At Mason Hill Orchard, on Northwest Mason Hill Road, a self-service stand is open every day. In the first week of October 2026 it held already-picked Melrose and Jonagold apples and Asian pears in 5- and 10-pound handle bags and 20- and 40-pound boxes, with pumpkins and gourds set out alongside. The orchard sells ready-picked fruit only. Down the road at Sherwood Orchards, which calls itself “Sherwood’s oldest working u-pick orchard,” the picking was over. October 2 was the last day of the 2026 season, and pickers had to arrive by 4 p.m. Through September the orchard had run u-pick only. It added quince and Winesap and Spitzenberg apples in mid-month, sold out of plums and pears, and asked customers to send questions by email because its phone line was not working.

Both farms post these notices on the Farm News page of Tri-County Farms, the association that has linked farm stands and u-pick operations across Oregon’s Washington, Multnomah, and Clackamas counties since 1975. On Instagram it goes by Tri-County Farm Fresh. All of its member farms are open to the public, with farm stores and, in the association’s words, “farm adventures at various times throughout the year.” Members grow over 80 different crops by one count on the association’s site, and more than 100 different farm products by another. The range runs from berries and tree fruit to vegetables, dairy, meat, and flowers, and many farms add hay rides, corn mazes, food, and animals.

Eighteen farms on the map

The association’s directory lists 18 member farms, searchable by product, county, or city. Snowline Tree Farm sits in the foothills of the Cascades south of Molalla. On SW River Road, Roshak Berry Shak offers u-pick berries and Vial Family Farm offers u-pick table grapes. Bays Family Farm sells peaches, plums, nectarines, apples, pears, and Christmas trees in season. Surface Apple Orchard sells unsprayed Gravenstein apples. TK Orchards on Boones Ferry Road sells peaches and nectarines both u-pick and picked, and Woodburn Peach Outlet sells peaches. Dreamwood Acres grows blueberries. Willamette Valley Melon Company is a third-generation family farm. Plumper Pumpkin Patch & Tree Farm dates its business to 1998. Mike & Debbie’s Produce runs a farm stand with ready-picked strawberries, blueberries, and bicolor sweet corn. All Natural Meats, also known as Soggy Feet Enterprises, is a first-generation farm that advises customers to “Start the New Year off with a full freezer!”

Bell’s Orchard, on SW Farmington Road, offers picking for peaches, apples, and pears. Lloyd Bell and his wife, Annette, co-manage it in Beaverton, and Lloyd has served on the Farm Fresh board of directors. A summer 2021 Oregon State University Extension newsletter described the couple as having direct-marketed their apples, peaches, and pears for the past 13 years.

The association’s seasonal guide charts each crop month by month. The list runs from apricots and asparagus through marionberries, loganberries, hazelnuts, walnuts, and Christmas trees. The guide explains the order of the year: strawberries begin to ripen in late May with the increased sunshine, peaches wait until July because they need more heat, and pumpkins go into the ground in July for an October harvest.

A former dairy on Cornelius Pass Road

West Union Gardens opens its farm stand and u-pick for berries and seasonal vegetables starting in late June or early July. Jeff and Cheryl Boden started farming there in 1987, on a 50-acre former dairy. They chose NW Cornelius Pass Road because it was a major rural route close to suburban populations. The farm lies three-quarters of a mile from the urban growth boundary. Oregon’s Senate Bill 100, passed in 1973, required such a boundary around every town and city in the state. When the Bodens began, the line was in place, but development had barely pressed against it.

Geographers Martha Works and Thomas Harvey, writing for Terrain.org, found the boundary highly visible by the time of their study, marked by housing subdivisions built since 1990. They held up West Union Gardens as an example of farming aimed at city customers that had found a place in the protected rural land around Portland. They noted that its garlic was sold throughout the region and that it kept a stall at the Portland Farmers Market. The farm’s motto, as they recorded it: “We Grow Everything We Sell.”

Five thousand flyers in 1977

According to the 2021 OSU Extension newsletter, the Extension Service took a lead role in organizing the group “over 40 years ago.” It also helped the farmers build the structure to establish their own nonprofit. The association’s own pages say that since 1975 its farmers have joined to promote their farms together and to give customers a local farm directory for the Portland area. One of those pages also claims that “for more than 70 years” the association has been the go-to resource for tri-county residents, a span the 1975 date does not allow.

Works and Harvey traced how the farm stand trade grew. In 1977, 5,000 copies of a flyer titled Sunset Trails to Country Fresh Foods were distributed, listing 25 farm stands near Portland. By the time of their article, 100,000 copies of what they called “the more prosaic” Tri-county Farm Fresh Produce Guide went out through the local paper and other outlets, listing 80 farm stands. “While some might consider this merely agri-entertainment for urban dwellers,” they wrote, “it also provides a form of direct income for urban area farmers.”

For many years, the association says, people relied on its printed guide to plan seasonal farm outings and their summer and fall canning calendars. The 2021 Extension newsletter reported that the guide had recently gone electronic. The guide is now online, and the member farmers update their own hours and offerings in it. The association is run by member farmers as volunteers. It sends questions about any single farm back to the farm itself.