Tillamook Coast Life Blog
Grant’s Getaways: Hydrangea Ranch
Join me for a visit to a ranch for all seasons! You won’t find cattle, horses or sheep but the Hydrangea Ranch offers blooms galore, a cross country-runners dreamy landscape and one of the largest corn mazes and pumpkin patches in the country.
Oregon’s Hydrangea Ranch is a living masterpiece and its owner, Pat Zweifel is the gifted artist who created it.
“I think of (my farm) almost like my canvas,” said Zweifel. “I’m like an artist and for this year’s corn maze, I went in there free form…with a tractor and I was able to produce circles that kind of come at each other. It’s really different and unique.”
He’s a third generation Tillamook County farmer, but he doesn’t raise dairy cows!
Rather, Zweifel cultivates flowers, gorgeous colorful hydrangeas like Hamburg, Lacecap and Pistachio.
“Hamburg is just beginning to turn burgundy and that’s what my customers love. You have all this burgundy and then a dark green on the fringes. It’s like a brilliant jewel.”
Zweifel farms 64 acres along the Kilchis River and he owns the largest operation to grow so many hydrangea beauties in the state.
While he has grown scores of different flowers over the past quarter century on his ranch, he settled on hydrangeas a decade ago. He prizes them for their long blooming season.
“If you have hydrangeas protected from the direct sun, they bloom from June all the way through November. It makes a nice ornamental flower.”
But the early days weren’t easy! Zweifel recalls back in 1996 when he came home from the bank with his first mortgage and he found a herd of elk eating his profits.
“I was a 30-year-old man, sobbing over there on the other side of the fence. I was working hard, trying to keep the elk out of my crops and I didn’t have the money to build a proper fence! But you know, I could have quit because it was all so hard and so scary. I like to give that endurance illustration when I’m coaching kids. I ask them: when thing get hard are you just going to stop or work harder and keep going forward?”
Coaching? That’s right! Zweifel is a former Oregon high school and college cross-country champion and he cultivates athletes each spring thru fall.
“I was born to coach! I believe the flower business prepared me for coaching. So, on my farm we hold running camps throughout the summer. It’s real running too; you’re not out on busy asphalt streets, you’re out here in nature.”
Each September, the capstone running event is called the “Ulti-Mook.”
In 2019, 2500 runners from 109 teams raced across the fields, forested hills and the Kilchis River.
“They run through a mud pit and twice across the river. It’s amazing because they run through and are just covered in mud, but then they come out of the river a second time and they’re all washed clean.”
Covid put Oregon’s largest cross-country race on hold this year, but not so Pat’s seasonal pride and joy: the Hydrangea Ranch Corn Maze and Pumpkin Patch are open, ripe and ready.
“We have the corn maze and pumpkin patch and a hayride too. And what people like is that it’s not a carnival setting. It’s really down to earth and people enjoy it for the quality family entertainment!”
It’s the sort of entertainment your family will enjoy the next few weeks.
Be sure to follow my Oregon adventures via the new Grant’s Getaways Podcast as I relate behind the scenes stories from nearly four decades of television reporting.
You can also learn more about many of our favorite Oregon travels and adventures in the Grant’s Getaways book series, including “Grant’s Getaways: 101 Oregon Adventures,” “Grant’s Getaways: Guide to Wildlife Watching in Oregon,” and “Grant’s Getaways: Oregon Adventures with the Kids.” The collection offers hundreds of outdoor activities across Oregon and promise to engage a kid of any age.
My next book, “Grant’s Getaways: Another 101 Oregon Adventures” will be published in 2022.
