Keith is a third generation farmer on a farm established in 1911. He attended schools in close-by Santa Clara and the University of Oregon in Eugene. His summers as a teen were spent working in the farm’s cherry orchards and vegetable fields.

Keith began his career as an organic farmer in 1972 on the home farm with his parents’ support. He helped manage the orchards and transition production practices to organic methods. Working with his brother and several others in a cooperative management structure, they produced cherries, vegetables and other field crops including reforestation tree seedlings. He helped envision and establish Organically Grown (then Cooperative) in the late 1970s. In the 1980s he farmed with a newer set of cooperators serving the local farmers market, retail stores, and the wholesale market through OGC’s burgeoning distribution network.In the 1990s he worked at Winter Green Farm in Noti and kept that connection until 2020. Concurrently, he and his partner and wife, Rachael DeBuse, have produced vegetables for a winter CSA and the local farmers markets. They also raise poultry and goats, grains, garlic, hay, and produce compost from farm raised materials. They continue to tend the family’s farm amid the flux of caregiving for elders and mentoring the generations seeking careers on farms.