Turnips-versus-Tires: Les Schwab May Kick Out Organic Farm Store

Naomi's Organic Farm Supply is a sustainable food mecca. The Portland, OR store sells all the usual goods you'd expect to see at an organic farm supply: seeds for regional vegetables, flowers, and herbs; mulch; organic plants; and instructional gardening books. But the shop is so much more than that, too.

Naomi's provides the means for organic gardeners everywhere — from the backyard novice to the experienced large-scale grower — to get up-and-running. The shop offers educational workshops on activities like beekeeping, chicken-raising, and animal-rearing. Naomi's also sells a wide range of live critters like organic chicks, ducklings, pullets, bees, and worms for composting. If there's a farm animal you want that the store doesn't have, husband-and-wife owners, Naomi and Neil Montacre, will do their best to help you get it.

But this local food haven may soon be forced to pick up and move to make way for another business — a Les Schwab Tire Center, which Portland already has nine of (without even factoring in surrounding areas).

You see, Les Schwab owns the two-acre plot of land that Naomi's calls home. Naomi's has been leasing one acre of this land from Les Schwab since 2009, during which time the organic farm supply store has become a treasured local business in Portland's Sellwood neighborhood. Naomi's current lease expires on May 31, 2011, and Les Schwab has indicated that it has plans to build a new tire center on the two-acre plot and will not renew the Montacres' lease.

The Montacres offered to buy their acre from Les Schwab and even said that there's more than enough room for the organic farm supply store and the tire center, with each business operating on one acre of the two-acre plot. Les Schwab, however, feels that it needs to take over the entire space, forcing Naomi's to find a new home.

Devoted patrons of Naomi's are understandably upset, and that's why they're asking Les Schwab executives to reconsider and sell the Montacres the one acre that they currently lease. Activists joined together to form Friends of Naomi's Organic Farm Supply, and they launched a petition right here on Change.org.

Friends of Naomi's figures that there's no reason that Les Schwab and Naomi's can't both operate on two acres of land, especially considering the bounty of Les Schwab Tire Centers already present in the Portland area. After all, there's only one Naomi's, and urban gardeners need that organic farm supply store to maintain the area's thriving local food scene.

Naomi's lease expires on May 31, 2011, so it's important that we turn the pressure on Les Schwab now. If you think Naomi's needs to stay right where it is, sign this petition asking Les Schwab to sell Neil and Naomi Montacre the one-acre property that the couple currently leases.

Photo credit: Naomi's Organic Farm Supply