The Melville name welcomes visitors on Jan. 2, 2024, to Cornerstone Farms Joint Venture, the home of Tim and Audry Melville, just outside of Enterprise.

WALLOWA COUNTY — You spend the bulk of your life building a successful business — in this case a farm — with the hope that one day you’ll retire and pass it to children and grandchildren.

That day draws near, and then what?

One Wallowa County family farm has plans in place to bring in at least a third generation to join with the first two who have been farming a wide variety of crops since the 1970s.

The CornerstoneTim Melville, now 73, grew up on a dairy farm in eastern San Diego County, California. His parents saw the influx of people moving into Southern California and decided it was time to evacuate. He had an uncle who was a logger in Wallowa County, and they would come to visit.

“There was lots of water and few people — the opposite of what was happening down there,” Tim said. “My parents bought their first farm here when I was 12. We’d rent the farm out to some neighbors. We would come up in the summers. We didn’t get moved here permanently until I was 16 and we came up and actually started farming.”

He started school at Enterprise High School, where he met Audry Hammack, a member of one of the early families in the county. They married in 1970 and have two sons, Kevin, now 50, and Kurt, 48. Those two have seven kids between them — five girls and two boys, all but one in high school or college — and Kevin is the grandfather to two. That’s four generations who could be interested in the farm, now called Cornerstone Farms Joint Venture.

The Cornerstone of the venture is Christ, which the entire Melville family affirms as the basis of their faith and work ethic.

“It has biblical connotations to it,” Tim said. “Kurt and (wife) Heather came up with it. Jesus is the cornerstone.”

“We wanted the business to be Christ-centered,” Tim said. “We consider it God’s business; we’re just taking care of His creation.”

And that goes beyond the primary farm.

“We have some other properties we have purchased as a group and we call them Isaiah 55:10,” he said, reading, “The rain and snow come down from the heavens and stay on the ground to water the earth. They cause the grain to grow, producing seed for the farmer and bread for the hungry.”

“The family still owns some timber ground,” Kevin said. “When they got the chance, in the 1920s, (the Hammacks) bought (what became) the Hammack place on Sunrise Road. (The family doesn’t) own it anymore — we rent some of it — a pretty good chunk of what the family bought in the 1920s.”

The combined family put together a sizable chunk of land that they now either own outright or rent to farm.

“When Audry’s grandparents died, and Dick Hammack, her father, and his sister inherited it, it got sold off at that point in time,” Tim said. “Since then, we have rented part of it back — the vast majority. We farm on it, but we don’t own it.”

Cornerstone Farms is now one of the largest in the county at about 5,000 acres.

After Kevin and Kurt got their agriculture-related degrees from the University of Idaho in the 1990s, they went out on their own for a few years.

Kevin started his own farm after college and added to his income by managing an operation for another farmer and subsidized his farm by building cabinets.

“I just wasn’t interested in joining at that time,” he said. “So I didn’t come in until 2016.”

Kurt also started his own farm and did some part-time work for his dad. He rented a couple of hundred acres here and there that enabled him to buy a tractor, the start of his own fleet of equipment. He and Tim formed a partnership in 2010.

“Finally, we were big enough to form partnerships among ourselves and eventually joined our operations,” Kevin said.

“When they came into Cornerstone Farms, they brought enough assets to support themselves,” he said. “As a conglomerate, we had more purchasing power and stability with the bank.”

Farm wivesAudry and her two daughters-in-law always have taken an active role in the joint venture.

“Originally, Audry did all the books,” Tim said. “Then, when Kevin and Kerrie came in, the books got turned over to Kerrie — that took some of the pressure off Audry and Kerrie’s an extremely good bookkeeper. Heather still comes out and drives truck.”

Heather also is involved in local education as a member of the Enterprise School Board. She serves on the county’s Natural Resource Advisory Council and is a 4-H livestock leader.

Tim said Audry raises sheep, in which she’s gotten some of her granddaughters interested. She also helps out around the farm.

“Now, Audry’s more of a go-fer. When it’s time for us to move combines, we tell her, ‘Bring the pickup,’ ” he said, and she’s there to haul the header away once it’s loaded. “She’s really good at shuffling people around and moving headers and things like that. But she hasn’t driven combines — she could and did way back when we first got married, but she doesn’t like to do that.”

Bringing in the grandkidsThe way Kevin and Kurt joined their dad in the joint venture is how they envision any interested subsequent generations joining.

“Inside our operating agreement for our joint venture, I shouldn’t say it’s a requirement, but the kids are expected to go somewhere else for a certain period of time to get off-farm experience,” Kevin said. “They can come back immediately, but they take a pay cut to do that. So we’re encouraging them, for at least a short period of time, to get some other experience, whether that’s on an ag farm or any kind of experience.”

Tim and his sons are unsure if any of the third generation are determined to come back to be part of the farm.

“I don’t know that we have a firm commitment from any,” Kevin said.

“Two of Kurt’s kids are pretty positive,” he said. “Case, the youngest, is pretty intent on coming back. Aubrina, his oldest, wants to start a sheep business (like Grandma Audry) with thousands of head.”

Kevin said any plan to join Cornerstone must be well thought out.

“Whether or not that’s going to be a part of Cornerstone, we don’t know the answer to that yet,” he said. “It could be on land that’s available, but we don’t know how that ties in. We have specific details in the operating agreement that tell how a person could come back and bring a new enterprise into the operation. But we also know that the way that anybody gains the most experience in life is to do it on their own for a while.”

The grandkids can’t just rely on the resources of the family.

“You learn way more when it’s your own money on the table,” he said. “That’s why we have a lot of incentives built in to try to encourage them if they want to come back, they’ve got to show how this is going to generate that $100,000 a year that you think you need to have as a wage, or whatever it is. If you want to raise sheep and it’s only going to raise $50,000 a year, but you want (to be) paid $100,000? That doesn’t work.”

Professional adviceWhile the Melvilles have a plan in place for succession of their own farm, it’s not the only game in town. Oregon State University Extension and estate planners offer advice that can be tailored to individual farms.

“The classic way is the oldest kid, as a historic practice, takes over the farm in its entirety,” said William Price, the rangeland, livestock and forages field faculty for the OSU Extension Service at the Baker City office.

Some operations just divide the farm if there’s no transition plan.

“The assets get split,” Price said. “Say, one kid is working in town and the other wants to keep farming, that kid has to have the assets to buy out the others. That’s one of the challenges that can lead to the loss of a family farm.”

He said it really is dependent on the individual farm or ranch.

“If all the kids want to come back, you have to find a way to make it work,” he said.

Price deferred to Pete Schreder, the OSU Extension agent in Wallowa County, who has done research on transition planning and given seminars on the topic.

“Every operation is so different,” Schreder said. “It’s an individual process.”

They both agreed the Melvilles’ plan seems like a good one and while specific to Cornerstone, many other farms have similar plans.

“It takes a lot of different shapes, depending on the family,” Price said. “That seems like a good way of doing things.”

But the transition depends on what the family wants.

“The value of the transition planning is how the family wants the farm to look as the farm goes into the future,” Price said.

“The value of the transition planning is how the family wants the farm to look as the farm goes into the future.”

— William Price, Oregon State University Extension Service

Farm transition planning

OSU Extension: http://tinyurl.com/farmsplit

Schwabe law firm: http://tinyurl.com/schwabeadvice

Attorney Joe Hobson: jhobson@schwabe.com.