Oregon Culture Keepers Roster Menu

Sandra Porter is a traditional baker known all over the Nestucca Valley for her lip-smacking homemade pies that taste like no others. When the pie sign goes up at the Porter’s farm stand outside of Cloverdale on Highway 101, locals know they have but a short time to make haste. Pumpkin pie is Porter’s own favorite—made with home grown Jarrahdale pumpkins. Porter cuts the meat of the pumpkin into large wedges, then roasts them in the oven to give the pie “another elevation of flavor.” Raised on a dairy farm in Tillamook County, Porter’s interest in foodways came at an early age, thanks to her loving Grandma Lee. When Porter tried her grandmother’s pie recipe, however, it didn’t come out right. It took several years for Porter to refine her own recipe, but once she did, her pies flew off the shelf at the Neskowin Farmers Market. "For a four-hour market, they were gone in a half an hour." Porter and her husband worked the Neskowin market for six years before they decided to remodel and reopen her grandparent's old farm stand at their family farm. Early on in America’s founding, as the colonies spread out, the pie’s role to showcase local ingredients took hold. With it came a proliferation of new, sweet confections. History repeats itself with Porter’s lip-smacking offerings, which include that Oregon specialty, marionberry pie, as well as strawberry rhubarb, pumpkin, apple crumble, pecan, nectarine, sour cream lemon, and chocolate cream. Tillamook County 4H, a youth program experiencing a decline in membership, has always encouraged homemaking skills. Could Porter be the inspiration behind a whole new renaissance? For Porter, her raison d’être stems from her first job as waitress when she was fourteen. "I always just loved how it felt to have people come in and take a break from their lives and be taken care of.”