Denise Ness and 35 years of Farmhouse Funk
The Old Youngs Bay Bridge in Astoria. Photo: Tedder, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
If you’ve driven Highway 101 Business south of the Old Youngs Bay Bridge in December, you’ve probably noticed the shop that looks like Christmas exploded inside it. That’s Farmhouse Funk, and the woman behind it, Denise Ness, has been at this for 35 years.
Ness, 68, sells vintage furniture, antiques, consigned handmade work, western wear and a lot of holiday decor out of a building that used to be Utzinger’s True Value Hardware. She has been at that spot for about 12 years, The Astorian reported in a profile this month. Before that the shop was in downtown Astoria, and before that it ran out of an old farmhouse by Landwehrs County Grocer.
The business started with a group of friends who held sales out of their homes and sometimes sold in Portland. Over the years the others went their own ways, and Ness kept going on her own. “We’re all still friends with one another, but we all kind of spread off and did our own things,” she told the paper.
“I can carry whatever I want”
The name came from those same friends, after Ness talked about running the store out of a dairy farm and its milking parlor. She likes how loose it is. “The name is nice to have because that way you can get away with anything,” she said. “I can carry whatever I want under ‘funk.'”
That freedom is the point. The North Coast has no shortage of thrift and antique stores, and plenty of them carry the same mix of driftwood signs and nautical odds and ends. Farmhouse Funk stands apart mostly because it reflects one person’s taste: old pieces sit next to new ones, ranch-style clothing next to holiday ornaments, and the arrangement changes with the season.
The shop keeps short hours. It’s open Mondays and then Thursday through Saturday, 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Christmas is the big season
Ness says she is “really known as a Christmas store.” She starts converting the shop the week of Halloween, working from the back to the front until the whole place is done over. Regulars take the finished storefront as the signal that the season has started. “For Christmas, this place’ll be packed,” she said.
Her customers are the part she talks about most. “I have great customers,” Ness said. “They’re very loyal to me and they’ve been with me for all these years.”
The community has been there for her in harder times, too. In 2010 her husband, Kenny, needed a combined kidney and liver transplant, and with local support he became the first person in Oregon to receive one, according to The Astorian. He died in 2018, and Ness has run the store alone since.
The plan for 70
Ness isn’t hiding her timeline. She plans to retire at 70, which puts the end of Farmhouse Funk’s run a couple of years out. She has horses and cattle at her farm that she wants more time for, and she runs a logging business, Ness Logging, with her son.
“I’m almost 70,” she said. “I always say, ‘I’ll work ’til I’m 70.'”
Small independent shops like hers are part of what makes Astoria feel like Astoria rather than a stop on a chain-store map. The historic district, the Finnish and Scandinavian heritage and the working waterfront draw visitors who like places with some age on them. A store that has moved from a farmhouse to downtown to an old hardware building over three and a half decades fits that pretty well.
For anyone who has never stopped in, this holiday season and the next are the window. Look for the old hardware building just south of the Old Youngs Bay Bridge, the one dressed for the holidays.
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