Author: Nuttygrass

I'm a nut and grass farmer, EMT, Firefighter, and world traveler. I love a good laugh and a great adventure!

Catching up on our family news…

We got some snow on the valley floor in Oregon just last week! We don’t get this “white stuff” very often around here, so even when it’s just a tiny itsy little bit…..it’s a giant colossal big deal to our kids. Late school start and it didn’t take long for the three of them to gear up, knock the dust off their sleds and head out for a hill to sled down.

Also another update, we moved to the home place! Which means, yes, I now live in the same house that I grew up in (no it’s not weird, don’t make it weird!). We switched houses with my parents so they live off the farm for the first time in 40 years and we are back on the farm raising the next generation.

It’s been so great to be here, through harvest and starting school again, the holidays, and getting back into the swing of the upcoming spring season. It has taken a little getting used to, like any big move, but the kids love it and I love being here and more helpful even when the kids are home.

Plus we are on a much less busy road and so we added a new family member this fall….Booker the Border collie. He’s super smart, except when he’s being super dumb, and he’s been a great companion for all of us.

Proactive Bills at the Legislature??

“My name is Brenda Frketich and I am a farmer from St. Paul, Oregon….” This is more or less how I always start off when giving legislative testimony. Sometimes I add in information about my husband, our kids, how long we’ve been on the land that we farm. But inevitably it starts something along the lines of my name and that I’m a farmer. About 90% of the time, I go on to say why I’m against a bill that is being brought before the legislature this session.  It will cost us more money, it will threaten our ability to farm or our way of life, there are no alternatives and on and on and on.

BUT this session, shockingly enough I have had the opportunity to have my voice heard on two bills (so far) that I support!  They were proactive bills, one to make some important changes to the estate tax law here in Oregon for farmers, and the other to help protect our right to fish and hunt.  You can read more about these bills here:
SB 498
HJR 5

But what I wanted to say here today isn’t about those in particular, more about how being on the offense, ahead of the game, felt really good.  A little background for this example; HJR 5 would move to have the voters of Oregon decide if hunting and fishing as a right should be in the Oregon constitution or not.

As I am watching the hearing a woman from the Humane Society of the United States gets on and she’s against (big surprise) HRJ 5. And then she says something very interesting, “First we must be clear; there is no actual threat to the right of Oregon to fish, hunt, or harvest wildlife.” So here I am, excited that we finally have a measure that looks ahead and the first thing this woman says, is that it’s invalid because they haven’t directly threatened it. Hey HSUS lady, as a farmer we fight bills all the time where there has been no harm, no foul, no proof, and still we have to fight it! Welcome to the club.

We have to make sure that our defense is strong but also look ahead to how we can be proactive and out in front of these threats that are coming down the line. I’m not complaining here, I truly do enjoy much of my time testifying and working through issues at the state level. It’s just another piece of the puzzle and another reason why I’m excited for the proactive bills that are coming out so far this legislative session and hopefully more in the future.

So while I know it’s easy to get discouraged when it comes to news we hear from Salem, hang in there, there are people working hard to look ahead and work towards some good bills; even for us farmers.

Crimson Clover Harvest is starting….and is over!

We didn’t have much crimson clover this year, 42 acres. So this two day harvesting job was going to be a breeze. And the way that you can tell you’re a farmer right now is if you read that and started to giggle, because there is little about harvest of any crop that ever turns out to be a “breeze”. This year our crimson crop was no different.

It started out great. Round 1 around the field was was dull at best. But then came round 2 and some surprise “slugs” that were left behind from the swather. When you cut (or swath) it’s usually at night when there is more moisture. Great to keep the seed on the stem of the crop before you harvest it, but if the cutter gets plugged it causes a huge dense wet area that will rarely dry out on its own.

Grabbing those last few piles at the end. Even after performing them out and three days later the combine was growling!

So as we started in round two of the field the growling and terrible noises coming from inside the harvester were hard to ignore. After a few plugs that caused us all want to itch our skin off (unplugging a clover harvester is dusty and dirty and super itchy), we decided to skip those areas and come back to pitchfork them out to help get the drying process started.

But then the wind started to blow the exact direction we were headed on one side. And for 1500 feet we could see nothing, nada, zilch. The best (worst) part was that it was also the side of the field that had all those surprise slugs. I’ve never paid so much attention to combining in my life! It was unnerving.

This should be a picture of a header feeding the crop into the combine. Instead we were completely blind!

So move to day two and all is looking good. Until I jumped out to check the sieves (cleaning area) at the back of the combine and smelled smoke! A bearing had gotten packed with dust and caused so much friction that it actually ignited. Crimson dust is especially flammable. Then when we had made the corner, the smoldering dust on the back of the harvester had shifted onto the ground and started the stumble on fire.

We caught it early. Had a water tank all ready to go, got the fire out and all was fine. Just a few new bearings later and we were back at it. So while it only added a day or so to our harvest, I think we are all a little glad to be saying goodbye to the extremely dusty, itchy and challenging year of harvesting crimson clover! Next up, grass seed harvest!!