Del Stoffer

Del Stoffer

Del Stoffer was a pivotal figure for the Multnomah County Farm (now Edgefield), which thrived under his supervision from 1954-69. Hailing from the Midwest, Del came to Oregon with his parents as a teenager. He was an experienced farmhand and was hired as a farm assistant at Edgefield. He met and married a Portland gal named Maxine and in 1951 they bought a house in the vicinity.

In 1954, Del was made Edgefield’s new farm manager and was provided housing on the property as part of his compensation. He and Maxine moved into a small cottage at first, but when the Stoffer family grew by three boys, they moved into the larger duplex west of the main manor and the Administrator’s House. McMenamins transformed the duplex into Ruby’s Spa in 2008.

Del had 300 acres under cultivation, mostly in vegetables and hay. Ironically, he suffered from a bad case of hay fever. “Yeah, that’s great for a farmer to have hay fever,” Maxine recalled sarcastically. “But he did. And there would be times when his eyes would be so swelled!” The farm had a herd of 100 Holstein cattle, 63 of them dairy cows. There were 225 hogs, five or six of which were butchered each week. There was also a smokehouse, a cannery, and a cold storage plant.

The size of the property and distance between structures required Del to be a horseman, too. “He rode everywhere around, clear up on those fields, and all over,” Maxine said. “Of course, it was just up his alley, ‘cause he’d always loved horses.”

And for the Stoffer kids, Edgefield was a playground! “Our kids,” Maxine laughed, “up above in the hay barn, they had basketball nets. And everybody from the neighborhood would come up and shoot baskets! It was a wonderful place to play up there, rain or shine.”