Apr 7, 2007
Little Farmer Learns To Survive In Big World

In many ways, Matt Roloff is your average farmer. He’s 44. He owns Roloff Farms, a u-pick peach and pumpkin farm near Portland, Ore. He has a wife, Amy, and four kids: Jeremy, Zach, Molly and Jacob. He hopes the 34-acre farm will one day be able to sustain itself, not only paying for his retirement but for his kids’ college tuitions.

In other ways, Matt Roloff is not your average farmer. He’s an author and a motivational speaker, among other business ventures. His family has its own TV show. He, Amy and Zach are about 4 feet tall. They’re little people in a big world.

“Farming can be very tricky when you’re a little person,” Matt said. “You don’t have the physical strength and leverage (of an average-sized person).”

The constant physical challenges of farming – picking crops, loading bins, driving tractors, digging soil – are multiplied when everything is designed for people of average height. Matt needs pedal extensions to drive a tractor. If he has to skid off the tractor and uncover dirt around a pipe, he has to get on his hands and knees and dig with a garden shovel instead of a regular shovel. There are some things he can’t do at all.

“At a lot of home farms, a guy can go out and do the job himself,” Matt said. “I have to hire someone.”

Hiring workers to do tasks other farmers can do themselves put Matt at an economic disadvantage. He had to find creative ways to offset his labor expenses. He found them, but it led to even more challenges.

Matt and his wife bought the farm in 1990. He thought it would be a great place to raise kids, having spent a couple of years on a farm when he was growing up.

“There’s a little bit of farming in my blood,” he said. “I thought we could be more independent if we grew our own food.”

Matt tried all kinds of crops, but eventually settled on peaches and pumpkins for commercial production. Pumpkins are predictable. The farm opens for u-pickers in October and closes on Halloween. Peaches are hit or miss. They’re usually harvested in late summer, but exact ripening times and yield sizes are hard to control. The farm skipped its u-pick peach season this year because a couple customers bought the entire crop, which was half its normal size, Matt said.

In his efforts to keep his kids entertained, Matt caught on to a recent trend: agritainment. He had several attractions built on the farm including a large treehouse, a pirate ship and a castle. When visitors to the farm started asking about the attractions, Matt thought he had discovered a new source of revenue. He was hampered, however, by Oregon’s strict farming laws and by those who accused him of building a “Disneyland” instead of running a farm.

In Oregon, a farm’s promotional revenue cannot exceed 25 percent of its agricultural production revenue. Matt, however, found a creative way to obey that rule while still earning money from his agritainment ventures. The farm hosts two or three corporate picnics a year. Companies taking part in the picnics pay a middleman, and at the end of the year Matt sends the middleman a statement of his earnings. The middleman pays him an amount equal to 25 percent of his agricultural production revenue for that year, he said.

Matt hands out flyers during the picnics, which work just as well as advertisements to promote the farm. His marketing strategy has had phenomenal success. Business has essentially doubled every year for five years.

“It’s been a wonderful experience, with the exception of the legal bills,” he said. “I’ve managed to convince everybody that I’m not cheating.”

As good as business has been the last few years, 2006 might be the year sales “go nuts.” People from all over the world are planning to pick pumpkins this fall, and local hotels might be booked solid.

The reason for all the excitement? A TV show.

“Little People, Big World” premiered this spring on TLC. The show documents the lives of the Roloffs – some of whom are average-sized, some little people – and the challenges they face on the farm and in the outside world. The show has made Roloff Farms so popular the family had to put up a gate. Matt was amused by the irony.

“We spent the first 10 years trying to attract people, and we’ll spend the next 15 years keeping them out,” he said.

Matt, a former president of Little People of America, has always tried to find ways to normalize the playing field for people of small stature. On his farm, at least, he thinks he has.

For more information about the farm, the TV show or Matt’s book “Against Tall Odds: Being a David in a Goliath World,” visit www.mattroloff.com.




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