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Century-Old Farm Remains in Family

Posted on: Thursday, 22 September 2005, 18:00 CDT

Sep. 22--MULINO -- Time hasn't changed everything at the little Engle farm just off Oregon 213.

While the family no longer grows hay or milks cows, Ron Engle still has to move irrigation pipe in the summer to keep his big yard, landscaping and garden green.

His grandfather, Joseph Daniels, moved from Utah with his mother and three sisters to try his hand at commercial fishing and farming, and bought 40 acres in Mulino for $2,500 in 1905.

The family still owns 23 acres of the original farm, and that property was designated a Century Farm this month.

Ron Engle, 67, and brother Roger, 62, have photos showing Daniels and his crew with some of the big chinook salmon they netted in the lower Columbia River for canning at Warren Packing Co. near Clatskanie in Columbia County. Unlike modern gill-netters with boats, the crew relied on teams of horses and mules to pull out nets loaded with salmon.

But when fish wheels replaced the horse-pulled nets, Daniels left Wallace Island in the Columbia for his Mulino farm to raise hogs for smoked ham and chickens for eggs. A team of horses helped to clear land for a fruit orchard.

Daniels' mother, Mary, rented a dormitory-like room in the family house to sawmill workers for 75 cents a day.

In the late 1920s, Daniels and his wife, Eliza Jane, opened a Standard Oil service station for additional income on the front of their land along the highway.

One of their children, Blanche, married Lee Engle in 1935, and the Engles eventually took over the farm along with operating Engle's Cafe in Mulino in 1958 through 1962.

"Our parents began farming in 1938, clearing more of the land," Roger Engle said. "Dad also built logging roads for timberland owners, and he went into dairy farming with about 30 cows. He and an uncle did custom hay baling for farmers in the 1940s."

The family farm began shrinking long before Roger Engle and his brother were born. One acre was taken in 1915 for expansion of the nearby Mulino Elementary School.

In 1920, five acres went for home sites for Daniels family members. Another expansion of the school in 1960 took more land from the farm.

Ron Engle and his wife, Annette, 68, live on the remaining 23 acres. The sole agricultural output is on 14 acres they rent as cattle pasture. Three years ago, the Engles opened Mulino House bed-and-breakfast inn along the highway in an 1887 Queen Anne-style house.

The house had been Joseph and Eliza Daniels' home but was out of family ownership for 44 years. "Buying the house back in 2000 tied it all together," Roger Engle said. Before returning to manage the inn, he was a teacher and restaurant manager out of state.

With few motels in rural Clackamas County, Mulino House has become a popular overnight place for people doing business with local nurseries and tree farms, he said. Tourists and small wedding parties also frequent the inn.

The brothers remember picking berries as boys and earning their allowance helping to milk cows. When milk prices soured, the family switched to beef cattle to produce meat for the family cafe.

"We used to ride our bikes a half mile to swim in Milk Creek," Ron Engle said. "But we hated it when a neighbor put his turkeys in the creek on hot days to cool off," his brother said.

"We hunted deer on the hill and pheasants on the flat ground. You don't see pheasants anymore," Ron Engle said. "When I was a teenager, I'd take a tractor to a neighbor's farm to earn extra money helping them put up hay. I was 5 years old when I first drove a tractor to pull a hay wagon for my dad."

Ron Engle went on to earn his living as a truck driver, screen printer and trophy shop owner, but he never lost interest in tractors. He restored his father's 1940 model Case tractor, two others, and has two more waiting.

Whether anyone in the next generation of Engles will operate the farm is unknown. Roger has no children; Ron and Annette have three plus five grandchildren.

"I don't know if any of them would move here," Ron Engle said.

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Source: The Oregonian

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