Category: Agriculture

Harvest harvest harvest

We have been rolling along over here in St. Paul. We started harvest early this year, we didn’t get much to any rain since early April so that really sped up the maturing of our crops.

We are on a pretty good stride of the middle of harvest right now. Most days are the same, combine, fill trucks with seed, feed the people, try to stay cool, haul the trucks to the cleaner, rinse and repeat.

The beginning of harvest was a little insane I’ll be honest. We started combining crimson clover at the same time that we started cutting our tall fescue which happened to be at the same time as the good old St. Paul rodeo.

So our days started at 2am with cutting grass, moving on to 11am combining, 7:30pm rodeo volunteering or watching and finishing off that long day around 11pm.

With of course the inevitable crying family member because there weren’t enough games played (Auggie), not enough carnival rides ridden (Millie), too much food eaten (Hoot), ready to be home (Matt) or just plain damn tired (me!). Don’t get me wrong though, we do a good job of having a lot of fun too!

Not sure when we slept that first week but I know I am not the only one to be happy to be in the middle stride of harvest!!

We will finish tall fescue this week and then get the combines all cleaned out for perennial ryegrass. A week or so of that will finish our grass seed harvest for this year. Next up green beans, wheat, radish & filberts!

Isolation in Grass Seed Fields

On our farm we grow a number of proprietary varieties of grass seed for companies in the Willamette Valley. This means that these varieties by and large are bred to have specific traits. Some have disease resistance, some are greener, some are lighter, some are tall and some are short….without sounding too much like a children’s book here and before I start to rhyme my way through this post I’ll cut to the chase.

When we grow different varieties many of them are certified by Oregon State University. When certified it means that they have been signed up as such, inspected to check for issues with the field and also been “isolated” from other varieties.

Instead of having to plant fields that are super far apart, which would not allow you to use your land and soil to the best of your ability; we create isolation areas for fields.

These areas are kept separate when harvesting and cleaning the seed and are then paid out at a lesser price. The seed from these isolated areas are considered “un-certified”.

So if you’re out driving around in the grass seed capital of the world, and see some very tall markers out in the field this time of year, it’s more than likely to show the isolation areas of that field to keep the variety and characteristics of the variety pure.

Or if you see a helicopter that is flying super low above a grass seed field; it’s more than likely to check out the stand of that field and approve the certified sign up.

Here is where I would have posted the picture of the helicopter flying around our fields. However (in true Brenda fashion) as I was writing up this post and watching the helicopter in one of our fields get closer to the farm so I could take said picture, I realized that we forgot to flag one of the fields! So if you’re reading this today realizing that “whoopsie daisy now I have to pay for another inspection” let’s just say you’re not alone. I didn’t stick around to get the picture, but instead headed quickly to the field and got the flags up fairly quickly, however I’m quite certain I missed the boat (or more accurately the helicopter) this time around.

Reaching across the aisle in Farming

I recently was invited to come and speak alongside other farmers with a group of college kids. The college itself is one that initially I probably would have said no way. The reputation of beliefs at the school don’t at face value align with my own.  However, after working with the professor on a few different projects, I got the sense and gained trust that his goal truly is to share different perspectives in a way that is not judgmental, but with the goal of reaching common ground and understanding. So I said yes. 

I have to say it was great. I had to leave early, but as I left, I felt myself feeling like there was more to say more conversations to be had. We talked a lot about how can groups of people get so polarized and what the cost of that is, specifically in agriculture. I told them about some of the bills that we have fought in the legislature (some have passed and some haven’t), that some of those bills would close our doors the day they were signed into law. I wish that was just a dramatic story, but unfortunately it’s true. The positive side of that story is that the legislation didn’t pass, but my overall message was that misunderstanding or not having everyone at the table to discuss their side of the story (because let’s be honest you don’t know what you don’t know) can create unintended and serious repercussions. 

This legislative session I went and testified on house bill 2548. It was a bill that at face value claimed it wanted to simply increase safety for our farm workers. But when you took a closer look, it actually was incredibly redundant, dangerously open ended and was going to cost our industry, not to mention do nothing to actually increase safety on farms. During the public testimony, there was a comment made by a legislator that she heard that while BOLI and OSHA have the regulations in place, they have no way to enforce these regulations. (Insert my look of shock here!) OSHA and BOLI have become some of the most powerful agencies in our state in regards to agriculture. We have found that that not only do they not know the law in many respects because they quickly hired many inspectors without extensive proper training, they also feel that they have the ability to use unchecked power to regulate our businesses with a heavy handedness that is unwarranted and unfair. The amount of time over the past four or five years that I have spent educating myself on rules and regulations in order to be able to essentially educate them when they show up on our farm has been exhausting. OSHA‘s fines alone in the past year have gone from an average of $1.9 million to almost $10 million. The heavy hand of enforcement is alive and well in the state of Oregon, believe me! However, the sad part is at some point a legislator heard that and never failed to go beyond to find the truth until we got to the point of a legislative hearing for this insane bill. 

But as I sat there, I realized that that is why I’m glad that I said yes to going to speaking to those college kids. Because maybe someday one of them will be a legislator, a lawyer, an environmentalist, and one of them will reach out to me or have another farmer that they could discuss agricultural issues with or maybe they’ll just think back on our conversation and realize that there can be true repercussions so maybe they need to look a little further and ask a few more questions to find out what they don’t know or what they could be missing.

I think as farmers our lifestyle and our jobs generally lend us to be more secluded, less likely to interact or reach out to folks who maybe don’t have an experience with farming. We work hard. We take a lot of pride in what our hard work produces. I have to say that I didn’t want to go and speak to those college kids that day. It was on a day when I usually just lay low with my family before the very busy spring work begins. But as I was driving away, and then later as I was sitting at the Capital, I realized or maybe got a renewed realization that reaching across to the other side of the aisle is just ever so more important.

So this is my encouragement to say yes if you can to those opportunities. Have conversations human to human about each of your realities. You never know what it might produce, and at the very least a little understanding goes a long way.