Roloffs Online

Little Trip, Big Fun!

Kevin October 15th, 2009

Last weekend my family and I flew up to Portland to visit Roloff Farms. We lucked out with beautiful weather and some amazing scenery up in Portland this time of year. The mix of evergreens with splashes of red, gold, and orange from seasonal trees was quite the show from mother nature.

We spent almost the entire day Saturday (Oct 10th) at Roloff Farms. One thing that surprised me was just how close to the city of Portland the farm is. From watching the show, the surroundings seemed to indicate they were in a rural farm area … maybe an hour outside the city. However, the farm is actually only about 20 miles from downtown Portland. We were driving along the freeway, when the landscape switched pretty abruptly from urban to open fields and a more rural feeling. The Roloffs actually live in Helvetia, a suburb of Portland.

After reaching the farm, we all picked up a Roloff Farms sweatshirt or t-shirt from their gift shop. They were selling all sorts of stuff such as water bottles, key rings, Roloff Farms dirt in a jar, family pictures, coffee mugs, sweatshirts, t-shirts, Little People Big World DVD’s, Matt’s book “Against Tall Odds”, magnets, fleeces … all sorts of souvenirs!

We then bought a combo ticket to go on both rides for $10/person (it was $6 separate if you only wanted to go on one). One ride was a scenic tour of the entire farm, the other was a ride out to Western Town where we got to get off the trailer and tour the town for about 5 minutes. The one thought that kept coming back to me as we toured the property was just how nice everything looked. It was quite an amazing piece of land, and all of Matt’s projects, along with all the landscaping really made it something special. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t just a tad bit jealous by the time we left

The day we were there, a TLC crew was there filming the show. The topic? Matt organized a contest - a fort building competition between three teams of local kids. They were all building their forts as we toured the farm, and the cameras were rolling. You can see the crew in some of the pics we took.

We saw everyone in the family except Molly, who we were told by Papa and Honey (the grandparents) at Western Town that we had JUST missed her by 5 minutes - she had to cut out to attend a surprise birthday party. We actually met and got to talk with both Amy and Jeremy. Amy was super friendly, so was Jeremy. It actually surprised me a bit just how down to earth they all were. Jeremy had more than a few girls swooning over him.

All in all it was a very fun trip. The farm was everything we had hoped it would be, and more. If you’ve ever considered going, I’d highly recommend it. Our entire family loved it. Thanks Roloffs for letting us visit your farm