Thank You for All your Support!!!

Well the results are in for the winners of the Faces of Farming & Ranching! And unfortunately being a finalist was as far as I got in the competition. The winners are Will Gilmer, Katie Pratt, Bo Stone & Chris Chinn! You can find out more about the announcement and follow along with the campaign by going to the Faces of Farming & Ranching website. Congratulations to you all!!

I wanted to take a quick moment and truly thank all of you for your support. It was funny going through this process, mainly because everyone I saw during this voting period would come up to me to say hi and instantly proceed with “I voted for you today!”, “Shoot I forgot to vote!”, or “I’ve been trying to vote every day, but sometimes I forget.” The last one is my favorite mainly because I’m just about one of the busiest people you will ever meet, so forgetting to vote for me a few days here and there is no huge confession my friends J

I do want to say though that I’ve been amazed at how much people love this whole idea. I agree that agriculture has needed for years now to come together, and in a way that truly bridges that urban rural gap that we feel so strongly when we are fighting for our rights to farm in this country. But it’s tough battle, and I come from a state where it’s even more difficult because we are so diversified in what we can grow, a blessing and a curse. Not all farmers grow the same crops, (our county alone grows over 200 different crops), we don’t all use the same practices to get our crop growing and to market, and we definitely don’t all use the same market. And while being from a diversified state for our farm is a great advantage, at times it can leave us with more issues as a state, because as the saying goes, “united we stand, divided we fall.”

This group of farmers will do great and I’m excited where this adventure takes them over the next year. I’m also excited to see how this bridge gets formed to link rural and urban life. At the same time I will still keep doing what I’m doing to share my story of ag and continue the conversation about how we grow food for the world. As I said in my application video, “I have already signed up to be a dedicated agent to tell the story of agriculture!” So thank you everyone for all your votes, tried to votes, and sometimes votes, but mostly thank you for thinking of me and supporting me as someone who you would be proud to represent you as the face of farming in Oregon. This is just the beginning, I’m here to farm in Oregon, I can’t move the land and the soil, so I will fight to make sure that I can stay here and farm, and this legacy that was started to many years ago continues on!

Blight Scouting in Hazelnuts…Photo Friday

This time of year we are able to stay pretty busy working out in the orchards.  We scout for blight, which grows in the tree and can actually kill off parts of the tree, or even the whole tree if you don’t spray it many times during the year, and also prune it out of the canopy.

2013-01-17_13-34-19_782The black scab marks are what we look for, then you have to cut about 6 inches below the site to make sure that what has moved through the tree is also getting cut out.

gvf_orbit_lifts_2010This is the tower that we use to get up high in the trees.  Our established orchard has very tall trees and most of the growth is at the top.  That is also where the a lot of the blight starts, in the newer growth areas.

2013-01-19_08-54-29_508This is the usual crew I have going around to check on the what is being pruned, kind of a full house at times 🙂

Happy Friday!

Farming is more than Plows & Cows?

Now as some of you might know, I did not get a degree in Agriculture, or any of the top 5 most useless degrees that YAHOO! so inconsiderately listed (keep reading).  I actually left my family’s farm with big dreams of being a big time lawyer, saving the innocent from the grips of injustice (think major Matlock obsession).  But instead I took my non-ag, Business degree and ended up coming back anyway.  I had friends who thought I had just wasted a lot of money to “just end up farming”, some who were shocked by my return, and some (thanks goodness my parents) who thought that a business degree for the farm was about the smartest thing I could have done!  But what degree is best when farming?  I think that this industry is so diverse, so complicated, and covers so many aspects of our economy, anyone from any degree should feel they can be useful to agriculture.

But obviously there are many advantages to getting an actual degree in Ag, and there are many that do just that.  Whether it be the challenge of feeding millions and millions of people in the years to come, or the advancements in technology that bring them back, there is a lot to say about a growing industry and young people wanting to do their part. Hence the title, farming today truly is more than just plows and cows!!

Awhile ago Yahoo! receive plenty of flack from ag producers all over for claiming that Agriculture is a useless degree.  Which is interesting because I have the inclination that who ever wrote that probably did it on a full stomach, and never once thought, “Hmm…I wonder where this food came from…maybe I should thank a farmer?!”  They actually named Ag as the #1, Animal Science as #4 and Horticulture as #5.  Well Yahoo! here is just another story that proves you are in fact incorrect in you assumptions.

Fox News recently did a short story that completely debunks the worthless degree claim and shows that Ag degrees are actually on the rise, and for very good reason!  When you’re young and staring at a future world of 9 billion people, all with stomachs and mouths, it makes you realize that farming is going to become more and more important.  Ag research will become more important, fertilizer and feed companies, agronomists, the list goes on and on with how far an agriculture degree can take you today and far into the future.  In Oregon 1 in 8 jobs are tied to agriculture!!

You can watch the news report by clicking the link below and make your own assumptions…but as for Yahoo!, well I hope that no one actually believes what you say, because we need farmers, we need researchers, we need horticulturalists, animal science, vets…do I really have to keep going on and on??

Agriculture Degrees the HOT ticket for job growth?