Red Mud Ranch
Discover Red Mud Ranch, a century farm where restoration meets community.
We are cultivating a living classroom for food sovereignty and ancestral infrastructure right here at Common Ground—a space rooted in the dirt and driven by real, human-paced connection.
We are currently opening our gates to a select few to join us as Founding Facilitators. We are offering an exclusive, dedicated spot to host your workshops at a locked-in lifetime rate. This isn't just a fee; it is a direct investment in securing your own home base. In exchange, we want your honest feedback, your grit, and your collaboration as we forge this space together. Reconnect with the land and build alongside us.
What Makes Red Mud Ranch Special
Red Mud Ranch is an 88-acre century farm along Clear Creek in Oregon City with two distinct, complementary areas:
The upper area serves as our active demonstration and restoration zone, where we build hugelkultur beds, maintain a greenhouse, and implement regenerative farming practices that rebuild soil health, enhance biodiversity, and sequester carbon. This space functions as a living classroom for agricultural education and hands-on learning.
The lower seven acres remain intentionally private and secluded, preserving a peaceful sanctuary of meadow, forest edge, and creek. This natural setting provides the perfect environment for immersive workshops, community gatherings, and deep nature connection, creating an ideal space for experiential education and restoration
This separation allows us to do hands-on regenerative work up top while offering facilitators and participants a truly private, distraction-free space below. The result is an unusually versatile and honest venue: grounded in real land stewardship, yet deeply supportive of presence, nervous system regulation, and community connection.
Not when it’s done. Now, while it’s becoming.
Farmed For Over A Century
Red Mud Ranch is a multi-generational farm actively undergoing restoration. We’ve chosen to open its gates while it’s still in process, not when it’s perfectly finished. This 88-acre property along Clear Creek in Oregon City has over 100 years of history feeding families and gathering people. In recent years it has hosted joyful music festivals like Stringbender and Mojo Family Fest, with camping, creek floats, live music, and strong community energy. Now we’re in a new chapter: gently restoring it’s purpose, building hugelkultur beds, tending the greenhouse, caring for the water and it’s forest, just to name a few — all at a human pace.
Experiences that connect
Signature nature connection experiences
- Forest bathing & sensory nature immersion: Slow, guided walks along the meadow-forest edge and near Clear Creek. The sound of water, birdsong, and the honest "in-process" landscape make this deeply regulating for the nervous system.
- Foraging & wildcrafting walks: Seasonal identification and gentle harvesting of edible and medicinal plants right on the recovering land. Participants learn sustainable practices while connecting with the farm’s ongoing restoration.
- Creek-side mindfulness & reflection: Quiet time by Clear Creek — listening to the water, journaling, or simple breathwork. Many people describe this as one of the most grounding parts of their visit.
Fostering connection, community, and sovereignty
At its heart, Red Mud Ranch is about Common Ground — creating space for people to reconnect with the land, with themselves, and with each other. Here’s how we do it:
Deepening personal connection to the land
- The farm offers an honest, living landscape along Clear Creek that invites presence rather than performance.
- Activities like forest bathing, creek-side mindfulness, foraging walks, regenerative farming practices, agricultural ed and land observation help people slow down and build a direct, sensory relationship with nature.
- Being on land that is visibly “in process” gives permission to be unfinished themselves — many visitors report their nervous system finally relaxing here.
Building real community
- Small, intimate groups (6–12 people) operating in the lower area create the conditions for genuine connection instead of superficial mingling.
Our History
Long before Red Mud Ranch became a place for ecological education, restoration, and community gathering, this land was shaped by the hardworking families who settled the Clackamas Basin in the early 1900s. Among them were the Deiningers, whose stewardship and agricultural vision helped establish the ranch as a working homestead tied deeply to the rhythms of Clear Creek and the surrounding valley.
Like many farms of the era, survival here depended on resilience, ingenuity, and a close relationship with the land and water. In the 1910s, an early gravity-fed water and irrigation system was implemented to support the property’s agricultural production and long-term sustainability. Those systems helped transform the land into a productive farmstead capable of supporting crops, livestock, and future generations.
Over the decades, the ranch evolved alongside the changing landscape of Oregon agriculture. Floods, shifting weather patterns, economic transitions, and changing land use all left their mark on the property. Yet the core spirit of stewardship remained — a recognition that healthy land requires care, adaptation, and respect for the natural systems that sustain it.
Today, Red Mud Ranch carries that legacy forward in a new way. What was once a historic working farm is becoming a living field site for ecological restoration, mycology, herbalism, regenerative land practices, arts, education, and community connection. We honor the resilience of those who came before us while helping cultivate a future rooted in restoration, reciprocity, and relationship with the land.
At Common Ground at Red Mud Ranch, history is not something left behind — it is something we continue to participate in, steward, and pass forward.
From modest beginnings, we've grown through unwavering dedication and a commitment to continuous improvement. Each step has reinforced our core belief in the power of collaboration and the importance of integrity. We're passionate about what we do, and we're excited to share our story with you.