Lili Tova, owner and manager of Flying Coyote Farm in Sandy, Ore., tends the mid-May growth of her greenhouse pea plants.
Lili Tova, owner and manager of Flying Coyote Farm in Sandy, Ore., tends the mid-May growth of her greenhouse pea plants.
SANDY, Ore. — Lili Tova’s history of working on farms in Oregon stretches back only 17 years, but she started “getting her hands in the dirt” as a child and then while gardening as a teenager.
Now, the 37-year-old is owner and manager of Flying Coyote Farm in Sandy, Ore., and farms her 37 acres using certified organic and biodynamic principles.
“Biodynamics means looking at the farm as an organism,” Tova said. “It encourages you to be saving your own seeds and seeds from within your region as well as trying to import as little fertility from off-farm as possible. We use some of those principles and we’re certified organic, but we’re not totally biodynamic.
“We farm soil, not plants,” she said, “so we try to grow the healthiest soil we can through our tillage practices, the type of fertilizers and tillage equipment we use.
“When I first started farming there were far fewer female-owned farms than there are now,” she said. “I feel very lucky that most of my farm mentors were women farmers, and that wasn’t necessarily by design but by happenstance. I started farming just because I loved being outside, growing things and working hard. It’s also something I feel I’m good at.”
Tova hews to the creative side of things in farming and also in her personal avocation — working with ceramics with her housemate in an endeavor called Sandy River Studios. “I love to be around creative people. There’s something about creativity and being out in natural spaces that I think just go hand-in-hand.”
Tova has 10 acres of pastureland and 8 1/2 acres of vegetable crops, four greenhouses, a propagation house and an animal barn, where about 20 meat pigs are raised. She also has 1,600 to 2,000 meat chickens. She has farmed under the Flying Coyote name for nine years, three in the current location.
She describes her farm property — owned in partnership with Dan Sullivan — as being located on the “unceded territory of the Clackamas band of the Upper Chinook Tribe.” Oregon historical documents list it as the 1873 Donation Land Claim (the first Sandy-area settler homestead) of Francis and Lydia Revenue, founders of the nearby city of Sandy.
Tova provides certified organic produce to 40 area restaurants and to nearly 200 CSA customers through the summer and winter. A percentage of farm profits are donated to the lands of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, an area where local tribes were relocated.
In addition to produce from the farm, the pork and chicken products, her thriving CSA adds in fruit, sourdough bread, maple syrup, sauerkraut and “some lambs” sourced from partnerships to the 24-week summer and 10-week winter programs.
Tova also does some farm consulting work in the off season, an effort to “diversify her offerings and income.”
“I really enjoy doing infrastructure and systems design,” she said. “Between Dan and I, we have over 40 years of farming experience and I enjoy helping other people take a dream and hone it into something.”
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