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The green grass of home

Tammara Green/writer@qvpr.com
July 20, 2011

Kent Bacon owns Quincy's Twin Firs Turf.

Kent Bacon moved to the Quincy Valley from Poulsbo when he was 12 years old. His father, finding himself weary of the carpentry trade, bought 200 acres off of Road 8 just southeast of Quincy. Upon graduation, Bacon took a few marketing and financing classes, but mostly he went straight to work.

“I went to the University of Hard Knocks; the College of Experience,” joked Bacon. During the summers, he worked in the orchards. Eventually, he took over his father’s farm, and planted 18 acres of grass seed. In 1979, grass sod was selling for $40 an acre.

“If you do the math, you know that I wasn’t making a lot of money,” said Bacon. Eventually, he had a contract in 1980 to sell the sod to a company in Seattle. The scheduled delivery date was May 18, 1980, and the grass was covered with 3/4 of an inch of ash due to the eruption of Mt. St. Helens. Bacon recalled how every step sent up a large plume of the volcano’s dust into the air. He got the grass ready to deliver because the company in Seattle told him that the client still wanted it, despite the ash. Years later he came across a man from Crescent Bar who bought that first order of sod off of the original owners who had it taken out. He was informed that after the ash settled into the roots, the grass finally grew well.

During this time, sod was seven cents a square foot. The price in today’s market is about 17 cents per square foot. Bacon and his wife, Kim, decided to diversify and spread their wings on the property, as they weren’t making all that much from sod sales alone. After hosting his daughter’s wedding on the property in 2006, it was suggested to them that they open it up for public use. He already had a 24 by 60 foot tent that was purchased for the wedding, so after the event, he purchased a second tent.

These days Bacon finds himself extremely busy with Twin Firs Turf, Twin Firs Feed, and co-running Parties on the Green with his wife, Kim. The Twin Firs Feed business was built off of re-using the grass clippings from the sod on the property. Bacon is always thinking about how to transform discarded waste materials into valuable commodities. He is also excited about adding new activities to the Parties on the Green repertoire, such as murder-mystery dinners and fishing duck races. Events such as the “Night Glow” and the Father’s Day barbecue will continue for Parties on the Green next year, and will boast the biggest fireworks displays yet.

His latest project is buying wine barrels and making them into furniture. In recent years, Bacon was involved as a Scoutmaster for Boy Scout Troop 101 for three years, where he managed to take the group out for up to nine campouts per year. He has been a volunteer firefighter for seven years, and is on the Quincy Tourism Committee.

“I have counted over 160 sports or activities that can be done in the Quincy area, and over half of them can be done on the farm,” said Bacon.

When he has a minute, which isn’t often, he enjoys outdoor activities, inventing things and being with the people of the Quincy Valley.