Northwest Transplants

Quality and uniformity of the seedlings for the customer is priority for Northwest Transplants located in Molalla in Clackamas County. The REALOregon had the chance to see the operation on our tour day of agricultural businesses.

Customers of the business contract to have their vegetable, herb, ornamental seeds grown. The farm is in charge of planting the seeds in trays and germinating the seeds in a specialized germination room before moving the seedlings into greenhouses for the duration of their stay at the farm.

Northwest Transplants began when the Lucht family noticed a need for in the area:

Neal and Pamela Lucht started Northwest Transplants in 1988 after experiencing the need and potential for a quality seedling production operation in the Pacific Northwest. The couple combined backgrounds in production agriculture and business management to grow a family operation that now services 5 Northwestern States and Western Canada and produces over 70 million starts annually.

That blurb was from a couple of years ago, currently the farm produces 90 million seedlings a year. With the growing season only about 40 days, the turnover rate for the nearly 100 greenhouses keeps the business on a tight timeline. Reaching the correct stage of growing to meet the customer deadline for shipment is monitored with precision computer modeling 24 hours a day.

The company is connected to their community and support many groups and non-profits throughout the year. Their involvement proved to be the guiding reason for the community to help them when the farm ran into trouble, and they are thankful for the support they got and keep the message on their website:

Community Supported

Their love of agriculture and passion for helping farmers achieve success drives the operation to expand and overcome those hardships common to agriculture. One such hardship occurred during the winter ice storm of 2008. In that storm, Northwest Transplants lost 64 of 80 greenhouses with only 2 months to go until production season began. The Lucht family was overjoyed when employees, community members, and the local FFA chapter stepped up to help rebuild and restore production to capacity in time.

Although this agribusiness is small in acreage, it is big business with the community it resides in and the large area that it services with quality seedlings.

Thank you so much for supporting our stories. We appreciate every reader we have and love it when you spread the word about SchmidlinAngusFarms, fill out the FOLLOW information so you get each story right to your email each day and/or leave comments about the stories. I would also like to take a moment to thank those who click on the icon to do shopping with the affiliate, your clicks give me credit for directing people to their site (clicking on the affiliate icon does not make you purchase, only gets you the their site) and sometimes I get a small commission from your purchases if you do shop, without a cost to you! As always, Prime and special codes work with the icon and you do not have to purchase any item that I promote. Please consider using my link when you do your cyber shopping. Thank you for your support

I am so pleased to announce that MaryJane Nordgren has made her new book available to the public! Click here for your copy of Nandria’s War.