ROSEBURG, Ore. — With a wide smile and laughter, Ellie Norris-Assmus calls Norris Blueberry Farm “a hobby gone wrong.”

The hobby that Paul and Sandy Norris started by planting 5 acres of blueberries in the mid-1980s to keep their three daughters and friends busy is now 650 acres of blueberry bushes and a packing house with six sorting lines and six packing lines.

During their junior high, high school and college years, Norris daughters Amy, Carrie and Ellie worked in the slowly expanding blueberry field that their parents had started and sold the fruit at a roadside stand and at a local farmers market. Now at 40 years old, Norris-Assmus is a full-time employee of the business and 43-year-old Carrie Norris is a half-time employee.

While Paul and Sandy are still frequently on site, the two sisters have gradually taken over the operation of the farm with the help of 10 full-time employees and seasonal local workers and contract crews.

“They’re running the farm,” Paul Norris said of his daughters. “It makes me very proud to watch them develop the operation. It’s fun to watch them move the farm forward.”

The daughters said their parents and the farm taught them to work hard and to realize there are usually no quick answers to problems that unexpectedly arise.

“They taught us the process of starting something and making sure you do a good job and finish it,” Carrie Norris said. “Seeing a problem, figuring it out and working through it. Dad would say, ‘Attack the problem.’”

As each of the daughters graduated from Roseburg High School, they went off to college, but returned to help with the summer harvest, packing and shipping process.

Carrie Norris returned every summer even while attending medical school and then becoming a primary care physician and naturopathic doctor at a clinic in Arizona. She and her husband, Ryan Sweeney, also a physician, returned to Roseburg in 2010 to open a clinic, allowing Norris to split her time between the farm and practicing medicine.

“I just love it,” Norris said of the farm. “I was always in the packing house. It’s been fun to be there for each step as we grew bigger and bigger.”

She added that she is fascinated by the overlap of medicine and agriculture.

“The health of the body and of the soil, what you put into them, matters,” she explained in regards to the body and soil being productive.

Ellie Norris-Assmus worked in Portland and Seattle in the outdoor retail industry for several years after college, before deciding to return to the farm in 2014. She now oversees all the audits, food safety and organic practices, hiring and human resources.

During the four months of harvesting blueberries and kiwi berries, the sisters share the responsibility of running the packing house, coordinating personnel and work flow.

“It’s controlled chaos,” Norris-Assmus said.

The farm consists of 400 acres of organic blueberries, 250 acres of conventional blueberries and 18 acres of kiwi berries. On a peak day, 180,000 pounds of berries can be sorted and processed.

The farm provides fruit to major retailers across the U.S. and has exported berries to Asia, Canada, Europe, the Middle East and to South America in past years. In 2021, Norris berries were the first to be exported into China.

To help advocate for and promote the blueberry industry, Norris-Assmus is vice chair of the Oregon Blueberry Commission, the secretary for the North American Blueberry Council and does committee work for the United States High Bush Council. Paul Norris had been a member of those associations and now his daughter is representing the family and industry.

“It’s nice to have somebody involved in the blueberry industry so we’re better able to understand changes in the market as they happen,” Carrie Norris said of her sister’s willingness to be that representative.

“We’re a family farm compared to co-op or corporate operations so it’s good to bring that perspective to those groups,” Norris-Assmus said.

The sisters said they are happy to help guide the farm forward and are pleased that a third generation of the family is becoming old enough to help with the summer harvest.