Zoe Bradbury can tick off the frightening statistics in rapid-fire fashion:

n Half the farms in Oregon will change hands in the next decade.

n The average age of farmers in the state is 57.

Which begs the questions: Where are the next generation of farmers coming from? And, can the farms that are in production now, be saved for future generations.

People like Bradbury, her sister Abby and Joe Pestana may be part of the solution.

The trio of Langlois residents have all returned to the area after time away to go into farming.

Zoe, 29, and Abby, 32, went away to go to college, but have returned to their hometown to become farmers.

Pestana, 34, spent 15 years in the Air Force before the call of the farm brought him back to Langlois.

All three are interested in the same topics, despite going about it in different ways. They are interested in producing organic, sustainable and green products for local markets.

Abby is the furthest along, having started Abby’s Greens 10 years ago duri ng her junior year in college.

Zoe graduated from Stanford and then went into agricultural activism.

“I worked for non-profits,” Zoe said. “I was helping farmers get their own land. We worked with farmers who wanted their own organic land.”

But the idea of tilling her own soil was strong.

“After a few years of sitting in front of a computer, I decided I wanted to be a farmer,” she said.

So Zoe spent three years learning the business of organic farming at Sauvie Island Organics in Portland.

“It’s really taking off,” Zoe said of the move to organic foods. “I got my feet wet there. We were growing a lot of things. I learned how to grow and what I wanted to grow.”

When she returned to Langlois in December, things really started moving fast.

“In 24 hours, I was packed up, and back here building a greenhouse,” she said.

She took the old sheep pasture on the family farm and planted it in row crops.

“I’m actively farming 4 1/2 acres that we have worked up along the bottom land near the river,” she said. “Over half of it is in covercrop. The cash crop space is about an acre and a half.”

Since her sister is the “greens” farmer, Zoe is filling in all the gaps and says she is growing carrots, beets, fenel, leeks, potatoes, winter squash, strawberries, artichokes, raspberries, asparagus and flowers.

Oh yeah, and she’s doing at least part of the farming using a team of draft horses.

“When I was a kid I had saddle horses,” Zoe said. “When I was 16, I was torn: I liked getting in the garden and I liked horses. I thought ‘Wouldn’t it be great if ...’ ”

So springs an idea.

Zoe spent two summers learning how to work with draft horses with Doc Hammill in Montana.

“I decided to take that opportunity to see if I could use draft horses,” she said of her work-study program. “I built fences for hie, and he taught me how to harness horses. I went back the next summer and got introduced to a network of horse farmers.”

She expected it would take at least a few years to find her own team, thus giving her plenty of time to get the farm started.

But the phone rang earlier this year, and Doc was on the line.

“Doc was looking for a team,” Zoe said. “He found one this spring in Idaho. I went and test-drove them. I loved what I saw and brought them here.”

Now, given the price of diesel, she’s liking that decision even more.

“The horses are my solar-powered tractors,” she said. “I don’t have to put $5 a gallon diesel in them. They’ve done a lot of the real work for me this year.

“It sort of a back-to-the-future option in farming.”

Not being able to shake her activist past, Zoe is currently working on a the Cape Blanco Challenge —  a project aimed at keeping the working farm landscape intact.

“There’s sort of a coalition brewing, so in 10 years we’re ot there scratching our heads, saying we didn’t see this coming.”

Zoe also writes a farming blog. The address is edibleportland.com.

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Pestana says his grass-fed cattle farm is “in the beginning stages of development.”

He has a small herd of about 30 Charolais-Angus cows and says he’s in the process of refining the herd.

Pestana says he could try for his organic certification as early as this fall. He doesn’t figure to have much of a problem though since, “I haven’t had any fertilizers put on my fields for the past 10 years.”

He’s leasing a quarter of the 800-acre family-owned farm where he used to spend summers as a teenager.

If he does get certified, he says next spring would be his first crop of organic calves.

“Two years would be my first ogranic beef to market,” he said.

Pestana said he hopes to increase the herd size to about 50 cows in the near future and would like to go “no-till” in the next few years.

“I’ll probably be tilling it up for the next couple years,” he said. “Then I’ll go no-till after that and use animal rotation. I want to get to sustainable farming and not have to run diesel every year.

Pestana said there’s a lot of interest lately in knowing the conditions in which cattle are raised and that his grass-fed cows can gain nearly as much weight grazing in the pasture as those who spend their final months on a feed lot.

“Feeding corn puts a lot of meat on animals, but it throws off the Omega-3 fatty acids,” Pestana said.  

He said the real benefit may be in the final product.

“I think it results in a lot healthier steak.”

For friends and family this year, he also did pasture-raised chickens.

He said people who are interested in his operation or might like to become a customer can check out his Web site at: oregongrassfed.com or call him at (541) 260-8969.