On an Oregon farm, a collective vision creates a different agricultural model

By Eric Mortenson

Capital Press

SHERWOOD, Ore. — Is this the changing face of Oregon agriculture?

Our Table Cooperative, a 58-acre farm 20 miles southwest of Portland, functions as a collective, with workers, regional producers and consumers buying memberships and sharing risks and rewards.

The farm grows blueberries, apples and an ocean of greens, plus chickens for eggs and meat. It has a small grocery store where it sells its own products and those of producer members. Adjacent to the store is a commercial kitchen, used when hosting farm dinners at $90 a pop. Solar panels provide most of the electricity needed for irrigation and refrigeration. The farm’s delivery vehicle is a commercial-sized Mercedes van.

Its co-founder is Narendra Varma, 47, an Indian-born, American-educated and citizen “visionary,” as a friend calls him, who left Microsoft in 1998 with what he describes as a “stock-option fueled financial windfall” and set out to do some good with it.

After an “obligatory globe-trotting walkabout” and some years involved in property development, he settled on agriculture and its ecological and economic connection to nearly everything, from climate change and social justice to nutrition.

Drawn by Oregon’s land-use laws that protect farmland, he and his wife, Machelle, also a Microsoft refugee, moved from Seattle in 2010 intending to create a farm based on a model of “permaculture.” That is, an agricultural and even social system that mimics natural ecosystems.

Varma believes Our Table Cooperative is an alternative to a food system that she says is broken, unhealthy and mired in “hidden cultural stuff.”

“The problem’s not one of how to grow a better carrot,” Varma said. “It’s much more pervasive and deeper than that.

“People talk about the subsidies in the Farm Bill,” he said. “The real subsidy is not in the Farm Bill, it’s that a soda machine (was) considered normal in a high school. That’s the subsidy to corn.”

He isn’t alone in his thinking.

“We have a generation of people in their 20s and 30s who are interested in going into farming as a business and as a statement of how they see the world,” said Garry Stephenson, director of Oregon State University’s Center for Small Farms and Community Food Systems.

While the number of small farms counted in the 2012 Census of Agriculture actually declined compared to the 2007 census, their impact in urban areas is considerable.

In Portland, self-described homesteaders converted abandoned city lots into specialty herb gardens and sell to high-end restaurants. Others invent tools scaled for small farms, such as battery-powered tillers and adjustable handcarts equipped with bicycle tires. Some carve out a living by hosting farm dinners, selling at farmers’ markets and delivering to community supported agriculture customers.

Increasingly, small farms are gaining institutional recognition and help. OSU’s small farms center and extension programs help beginning and small farmers, while the USDA provides grants and expertise through agencies such as the Natural Resources Conservation Service and National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

In many cases, the agencies are interacting with people who were drawn to farming by a sense that the food system doesn’t work and that regionally, at least, they can fix it.

Josh Volk of Portland, a mechanical engineer who turned his skills to designing and building farm tools, said farming is attracting people who have worked in other industries or businesses.

“They’re not necessarily looking for an easier way to make a living, but they’re looking for a better way to make a living,” he said.

Volk, a consultant who helped design Our Table and who has written a manuscript profiling four farms of less than five acres, said environmental concern is a common entry point for new young farmers, and agriculture is an outlet.

“If you’re going to be growing things, you have to be nurturing in some sense,” he said. “It’s not a coincidence.”

It’s a movement that shows no sign of fading. In September, more than 200 people attended a one-day small-farm school put on by OSU. Also this fall, Clackamas Community College southeast of Portland became the first school in Oregon to offer a certificate in urban agriculture.

The program attracted students such as Andrew Watson, a former statistical engineer for Netflix who, with his wife, is looking to buy a small farm in Oregon. He grew up on a conventional dairy farm in the United Kingdom and now hopes to grow vegetables and have dairy goats and chickens.

“I devoted myself to high-tech, now I’m devoting myself to producing food,” Watson said with a smile. “It’s quite a content switch, but you’re still producing something people enjoy.”

Fellow Clackamas student Chad Bennett was a recruiter for high-tech companies in the Portland area such as Intel before getting laid off. He decided to pursue his real interest, growing food, and established a farm on the one-fifth acre he owns in East Portland. His wife continues to work in high-tech while Bennett grows leafy greens, root crops and salad mixes.

He said Portland is a food-conscious city that supports such ventures.

“It will be more sustainable if people are growing food right around them,” he said. “Otherwise you’re using a truck and driving it across the country.”

Community college instructor Chris Konieczka said some in the urban agriculture program are simply looking to have the “sweetest” home garden, indulge a hobby or make a little money on the side. He said others pursue it as an issue of “food justice” — the concern that the poorest people can’t afford or don’t have access to nutritious food.

Urban agriculture can change the food system, support local economies and spread economic benefit to more people, Konieczka said.

“We’re kicking in a little bit of difference to the world,” he said, “and that feels good.”

Our Table Cooperative, the Sherwood farm, incorporated in 2013 and was founded on that notion of change.

Varma and his wife chose the site carefully, buying land that was close to Portland’s supportive foodies and access to the urban amenities that would be attractive to workers.

They looked for land with good soil and existing water rights, the lack of which hampers many beginning farmers. They purposefully sought property whose previous owners had been through Oregon’s Measure 37 and Measure 49 land-use process, and won the transferable right to eventually add two more residences. Most development is not allowed on Oregon farmland.

When built, those houses will be rented to workers. Varma hopes workers will be attracted by a trade-off of reduced income in exchange for subsidized rent and subsidized food from the farm.

Rather than focus on one crop — by expanding the blueberry acreage that was already in place, for example — the farm grows multiple types of vegetables, berries, flowers and fruit.

“What we lose in efficiency, we gain in resiliency” through diversification, Varma said.

Varma said the farm produces a lot of food but is not yet making a profit and so hasn’t yet paid dividends to co-op members. The farm hopes to make a profit by 2017.

Farm membership shares cost $5,000 for workers; $1,500 for producers and $150 for consumers. Workers can pay the fee up front or with a down payment and payroll deductions. The farm pays a minimum wage of $10.40 an hour for farmer members and no more than two times that for managers. The wage rates are based on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s living wage calculator for the Portland metro area. Varma said MIT recently increased its Portland calculation to $11.25 an hour but the farm can’t catch up to that until 2016. The farm’s three owner groups are represented by a board of directors.

Gianna Banducci, Our Table’s marketing director and a cooperative member, said the farm has had a mixed reception from conventional farmers. Some are apprehensive or merely curious, others identify with the challenges of starting a small, diversified farm.

“For myself, personally, I’ve never worked harder, I’ve never put myself into a job like this,” she said. “At the end of the day, it’s mine. If it doesn’t get done, it’s because I didn’t do it.”

Varma’s overriding concern is maintaining the land for farm use over generations. The average age of American farmers is 57, near retirement, and developers may be the only ones with enough money to buy farmland outright.

The shared ownership model, or holding land in a public trust and leasing to new farmers, may be alternatives, he said.

“We knew we wanted to manage the land with an eye to long-term health,” Varma said.

BEND, Ore. (AP) — The Wickiup Reservoir south of Bend and the Prineville Reservoir are both at their lowest points in more than 20 years.

The Bulletin reports that Wickiup, which serves as a major water source for farmland in Jefferson County, was only 9 percent full as of Wednesday. Typically, the Wickiup is about 32 percent full.

The last time the Wickiup was this low was in 1994.

Elsewhere in Central Oregon, the Prineville Reservoir is only 30 percent full, its lowest point since 1992.

Officials say low snowpack and the ongoing drought has seriously depleted reservoirs. The Prineville Reservoir is expected to recover before next growing season, but the Wickiup may not.

EUGENE, Ore. — A father and son who raise cattle in Eastern Oregon are headed back to federal prison for committing arson on public land.

Dwight Lincoln Hammond, 73, and his son, Steven Dwight Hammond, 46, were sentenced on Oct. 7 to five years in prison for illegally setting fires on U.S. Bureau of Land Management property near Diamond, Ore.

The ranchers had already served shorter sentences because the federal judge originally overseeing their case said the five-year minimum requirement “would shock the conscience.”

The Hammonds were subject to re-sentencing because the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out those original prison terms as too lenient.

Previously, U.S. District Judge Michael Hogan, who is now retired, found that a five-year term would violate the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment because it’s “grossly disproportionate to the severity of the offenses here.”

Dwight Lincoln Hammond, who was only convicted of the 2001 fire, received three months in prison, while his son was sentenced to one year, followed by three years of supervised release for each man.

Federal prosecutors challenged those sentences, and the 9th Circuit agreed that judges don’t have the “discretion to disregard” such requirements.

The appeals court rejected claims by the ranchers’ defense attorney that the federal arson statute was intended to punish terrorism, rather than burning to remove invasive species or improve rangeland.

At the Oct. 7 re-sentencing hearing, U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken said the ranchers cannot disregard the law in regard to setting fires on BLM property.

“You don’t have the right to make decisions on public lands when they’re not yours,” she said.

Aiken compared the situation to “eco-terrorism” cases in which activists damaged property in reaction to environmental decisions with which they disagreed.

“They didn’t necessarily like how the government was handling things, either,” she said.

Similarly, people who violate hunting and fishing regulations are also subject to sanctions, Aiken said.

“The rules are there for a reason,” she said.

Aiken said she would use discretion in sentencing the Hammonds if she could, but that wasn’t a possibility given the mandatory minimums and the jury’s decision to convict them of arson.

“It wasn’t a jury of people from Eugene, it wasn’t a jury of people from Portland. It was a jury of people from Pendleton — your peers,” she said.

Frank Papagni, the U.S. attorney who prosecuted the Hammonds, said the ranchers should be subject to the five-year sentence but disagreed with recommendations from the U.S. Probation Office that they receive even longer sentences.

The U.S. Probation Office said that Dwight Hammond should serve five years and three months, while Steven Hammond should serve six year and six months years.

Papagni said those enhanced sentences were inappropriate because the fires didn’t directly endanger the lives of nearby firefighters and hunters.

Nonetheless, the five-year terms are appropriate for the Hammonds’ actions, he said.

“These grazing leases don’t give them the exclusive right to use these lands,” Papagni said. “It doesn’t give them the right to burn the property. It’s not theirs.”

Attorneys for the Hammonds did not object to the five-year sentences in light of the 9th Circuit ruling, but asked that they receive credit for time served.

Aiken agreed to that request and said she would recommend both men serve their time together at the federal prison in Sheridan, Ore.

Before the sentencing, the Oregon Farm Bureau tried to convince the BLM to drop the arson charges against the Hammonds and replace them with charges that would not require a mandatory minimum sentence, said Dave Dillon, the organization’s executive vice president.

When that route did not yield the desired results, the organization decided to circulate a “Save the Hammonds” petition that has been signed by about 2,400 people.

“We did not make the progress we thought we should, so we’re taking a more public approach,” Dillon said.

Dillon said he recognized that the Hammonds faced slim chances of receiving less than five years, given the 9th Circuit’s ruling, but said he hoped the petition may convince the Obama administration to grant them clemency.

Not only have both men served time in federal prison, but the BLM has refused to renew their grazing rights for two years, he said.

The BLM likely does not subject its own employees to arson charges when they’ve made mistakes during prescribed burns, so the punishment for the Hammonds was excessive, Dillon said.

“To treat them as terrorists, we think, is horribly unjust and secondly, hypocritical,” he said. “Why does the federal government need to get more?”

A sheep producer said two more sheep were found dead in the area where Oregon wildlife officials confirmed five attacks by the Mount Emily wolf pack in Northeast Oregon.

Jeremy Bingham of Utopia Land & Livestock sent photos to the Capital Press of sheep he said were found dead Sept. 30, five days after Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife turned down his request for lethal control against the Mount Emily pack.

The department confirmed five attacks on Bingham’s sheep and guard dogs, one in June and four in August, but said Sept. 25 it wouldn’t authorize killing wolves because nearly a month had passed since the last attack, the pack had moved to another part of its known range and non-lethal measures appeared to be working.

ODFW reports confirm wolves killed at least seven sheep and a guard dog in attacks investigated June 22, Aug. 4, Aug. 15, Aug. 24 and Aug. 27. Under Phase 2 of Oregon’s wolf recovery plan, lethal control can be authorized after two confirmed “depredations,” or one confirmed attack and three attempts.

It’s unclear whether the latest report of dead sheep will factor in ODFW’s actions.

An ODFW spokeswoman said Bingham did not request an investigation and officials have not seen the carcasses. The department will investigate if Bingham requests it, the carcasses are located and the initial evidence indicates wolves may have been responsible, spokeswoman Michelle Dennehy said in an email.

“Any decision regarding lethal control of wolves will be made based on the circumstances of each situation and within the guidelines of the current rules and plan. Therefore, we could not speculate at this time what ‘would’ happen if more depredation occurs — it is solely dependent on the actual circumstances of the situation,” Dennehy said.

Bingham said reporting it wouldn’t make a difference.

“What you have to understand (is) they are not going to take lethal action no matter what this year,” he said in a text.

For Oregon hemp grower Jerry Norton, the recent harvest season has been successful in more than one way.

Apart from producing a healthy stand of the crop in a Marion County field, Norton is pleased with an experiment on cross-pollination between hemp and its psychoactive relative: marijuana.

The potential for cross-pollination between hemp and marijuana was a major point of contention between growers of the two crops in 2015, which marked the first time in decades that hemp was legally grown in the state.

“There’s a phobia with the cross-pollination,” Norton said.

Marijuana growers fear hemp pollen because they want to avoid the formation of seeds in their crop, which decreases the quality and volume of psychoactive flowers.

As part of his experiment, Norton grew numerous hemp plants in a greenhouse that also contained several marijuana plants. In Oregon, recreational use of the psychoactive crop became legal this year and its medical cultivation has been legal since the late 1990s.

Despite their close proximity to male hemp plants, Norton’s female marijuana plants developed a minimal number of seeds.

“We’ve been successful with them not cross-pollinating,” said Norton.

The dearth of seeds found in the marijuana makes him optimistic that hemp and marijuana growers will find a way to coexist in Oregon, similarly to specialty seed producers who use a mapping system to avoid cross-pollination.

“We want it to be like tomatoes or any other commodity,” he said.

Pollen from marijuana and hemp has been known to travel more than 7 miles, and the plants can be pollinated by honeybees that fly about 2.5 miles from their hives, according to legislative testimony submitted by Russ Karow, an Oregon State University crop and soil science professor.

However, some crops that can technically cross-pollinate — such as goatgrass and wheat — will actually produce few seeds, said Carol Mallory-Smith, an OSU weed scientist who has studied gene flow.

While Mallory-Smith has not studied hemp and marijuana specifically, she said it’s possible that genetic variations and differences in flowering times may be responsible for the low seed numbers seen by Norton.

“There are a lot of biological and physical reasons that plants may not hybridize and produce seed,” she said.

Figuring out which varieties of marijuana and hemp are unlikely to cross-pollinate will require more research to be useful for growers, said Norton.

“We don’t know which can coexist with other ones,” he said.

The issue generated controversy during Oregon’s 2015 legislative session, with a bill that would restrict hemp production passing the House but failing in the Senate.

Hemp production in Oregon has turned out much differently this year than what legislators envisioned when they legalized the crop in 2009, said Lindsay Eng, director of market access and certification programs for the Oregon Department of Agriculture. The crop was legalized several years ago but ODA only began issuing permits this year after finalizing production rules.

While lawmakers expected the crop to be grown on an industrial scale for fiber and seed, Oregon growers are more inclined to produce it on a small scale for cannabidiol, or CBD, a compound that’s thought to have medical uses.

The law requires hemp growers to produce fields of the crop that are 2.5 acres, but it does not set a mandated seeding rate, Eng said. “It doesn’t speak specifically to density, so you could conceivably spread five plants over 2.5 acres.”

The ODA is revising its hemp rules and the legislature may revisit the hemp statute in 2016, she said.

Growers have focused on CBD because it’s more economically viable than competing with large hemp farmers in Canada, Eastern Europe and China, Eng said. “On those industrial-type commodities, you tend to see pretty big acreage.”

Norton said he’s growing hemp for CBD but he also expects that the crop stems to be processed and sold as livestock bedding. The stalks can also be chopped up and mixed with lime to make “hempcrete,” a type of lightweight insulation.

“I think it’s going to be the next thing in building materials,” he said.

PARMA, Idaho — The Idaho-Oregon onion industry will use a $35,000 specialty crop grant to educate consumers in Mexico about the yellow bulb onions grown in this region.

Farmers in southwestern Idaho and Malheur County in Eastern Oregon grow about 25 percent of the nation’s storage onions and 90 percent of the onions grown here are yellows.

Mexico is a promising market for Idaho-Oregon onions but Mexican consumers are more familiar and comfortable with white onions, said Candi Fitch, executive director of the Idaho-Eastern Oregon Onion Committee, which received the grant from the Idaho State Department of Agriculture.

“There is a lot of potential in Mexico and we want their consumers to understand how versatile a yellow onion is,” she said. “They’re more familiar with the white onion ... and we’re just trying to introduce them to the yellow onion.”

The grant will help the committee overcome the lack of knowledge about yellow onions that exists in the Mexican marketplace, said Standage Produce CEO Joe Standage, a member of the IEOOC’s export committee.

“They are not accustomed to the presentation of a yellow onion on a plated dish; it’s just not what they’re (used) to looks-wise,” he said. “It’s just a matter of educating them that the yellow onion is still good.”

The IEOOC received a similar grant from the ISDA last year that was used to promote onions at the retail level in Mexico through in-store promotions. This year’s grant will be used to target Mexico’s food-service industry.

“Anything we can do to educate consumers in Mexico about the yellow onion versus the white onion is money well spent,” Standage said. “It will definitely help us promote our product down there.”

The two-year project will include cooking seminars, menu promotions and receipt development in several cities in Mexico.

Some of the money will also be used to help offset the cost of onion industry representatives going on trade missions, which Fitch said provide opportunities to meet potential new buyers and gather in-depth information and insight into the demographics of foreign markets.

“We want to build our identity in other markets and continue to create market share for our onions in other countries,” she said. “It’s a global economy so we want to try to find as many markets as possible for our onions.”

The IEOOC will evaluate trade missions as they become available to determine which ones will benefit the industry the most, Fitch said.

The grant amount is equal to the IEOOC export committee’s annual budget.

“This enables us to do a lot more than we would otherwise be able to do,” Fitch said.

One of the original endangered species — the Columbian white-tailed deer — is slowly making its way toward recovery.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed downgrading its protected status from endangered to threatened.

The new status will mean these deer are no longer on the brink of extinction. But they’re not fully recovered yet, either.

Their numbers along the Columbia River were down to around 450 back in 1967 when they joined the bald eagle and California condor in the first group of animals protected under the Endangered Species Act. Now there are more than 900 deer in the lower Columbia River area.

“We are actually making tremendous progress in recovering this species,” said Paul Henson, state supervisor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Oregon. “We now have more deer in more places. The population has essentially more than doubled since the species was first listed.”

Columbian white-tailed deer populations declined as a result of habitat loss as farming, logging and development took over the river valleys and bottomlands the deer call home.

To rebuild the population, Henson said, his agency has moved deer into wildlife refuges and relocated elk that compete with the deer for food. Wildlife officials have even killed coyotes to protect the deer from their natural predators until their numbers rebound.

In 1971, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service created the Julia Butler Hansen Wildlife Refuge specifically to harbor and protect Columbian white-tailed deer.

Jackie Ferrier, a project leader for the Willapa National Wildlife Refuge Complex, which includes the Julia Butler Hansen refuge, says refuge staff have put a lot of energy into maintaining habitat for the deer.

They’ve also moved deer from the refuge to other areas to help expand the population.

“We do a lot of intensive habitat management,” Ferrier said. “We do pasture work and riparian plantings because they like both grass and woody species. We do that and invasive species control.”

When the elk population in the refuge grows too big, she said, master hunters are invited in to reduce their numbers, though that hasn’t happened in many years. When predation rates get too high or predators grow too numerous, she said, the refuge will call for predator controls.

Their strategy appears to be working. This year, Ferrier said, many deer in the refuge have twin fawns.

“That’s really good,” she said. “We like to see it. It means the habitat is good. The does are comfortable and getting the resources they need.”

The plan for easing protections on the deer includes implementing a new rule that will allow landowners to manage deer on their property. Henson said his agency hopes that will make people less nervous about having the deer on their land.

“From our perspective that will then allow the white-tailed deer to expand into more places and actually have higher population numbers across greater parts of its historic range because people will be more receptive to having them on their property,” he said.

The current population numbers are nearly high enough to consider removing the species from the Endangered List, Henson said. But he said he wants to see more deer populations in more places before delisting.

The current range of the Columbia River population of Columbian white-tailed deer includes areas on the Washington and Oregon sides of the river, including islands in the river.

Another population in Southern Oregon has already been deemed recovered and was removed from the Endangered List in 2002.

The Fish and Wildlife Service is taking public comments on the proposal to ease protections for the Columbia River population before making a final decision.

PORTLAND — Oregon farmers who are owed money for radish seed from an out-of-state company won’t likely be paid for their 2014 crop until next year — if they’re paid at all.

Throughout the year, numerous farms in Oregon’s Willamette Valley have filed liens against Cover Crop Solutions, a company based in Pennsylvania, for more than $6.3 million worth of unpaid radish seed.

An oversupply of radish seed has apparently subjected to the company to financial difficulties.

Liens provide farms with collateral in the event of bankruptcy, but Northwest Bank of Warren, Pa., claims that it actually owns the seed because Cover Crop Solutions has defaulted on a $7.2 million loan.

The bank has filed a lawsuit against 41 Oregon farms, claiming that it has a priority security interest in the seed over the growers and therefore owns the crop.

“We believe they may have some interest in the seed, but it’s definitely behind the bank,” said James Ray Streinz, an attorney for the bank, during an Oct. 5 federal court hearing in Portland.

Northwest Bank recently dropped its request for a preliminary injunction that would have blocked farmers and seed cleaners from selling or moving the crop, but that doesn’t mean growers will be able to sell it anytime soon.

Potential purchasers are afraid of buying the seed because they don’t want to become entangled in the litigation, Paul Conable, an attorney for the farmers, told Capital Press after the hearing.

“They haven’t gotten a dime for it,” Conable said. “Nobody is going to buy the seed until there’s an agreement about who owns it. You’re just buying yourself a lawsuit.”

Much of the dispute between the farmers and Northwest Bank centers on lien filing procedures — the bank claims growers filed them untimely or improperly, while the farms counter that the bank misunderstands Oregon lien law.

During the hearing, Streinz told U.S. District Judge Michael Mosman that the case will mostly focus on matters of law and won’t require testimony from many experts.

The growers and bank agreed that they want to have the legal dispute resolved in time for the prevailing party to sell the radish seed by late summer or early fall of 2016.

To that end, Mosman ordered the parties to submit court briefs arguing their positions by next spring and set a jury trial date of June 7.

CORVALLIS, Ore. (AP) — A California lumber company has donated $6 million to Oregon State University to help fund the school’s forest science complex.

The Corvallis Gazette-Times reports that Sierra Pacific Industries’ gift will go toward the construction of the Oregon Forest Science Complex, which will be part of the new Corvallis campus of the OSU College of Forestry.

The $6 million is earmarked for a 20,000-square-foot laboratory for the development of advanced wood products such as cross-laminated timber, a type of engineered wood panel that is replacing steel and concrete in some high-rise buildings.

The new lab will be named the A.A. “Red” Emmerson Advanced Wood Products Laboratory in honor of Sierra Pacific’s co-founder. Two of Emmerson’s children are OSU graduates.

Christmas tree farmers in the vicinity of Salem, Ore., hope a change in federal airspace designation won’t complicate upcoming helicopter harvests of their crop.

Over the summer, the Federal Aviation Administration increased the radius of “Class D” airspace around the Salem Municipal Airport from about four miles up to eight miles in some areas.

This expansion would impede harvests of Christmas trees in the area because helicopters would come under stringent restrictions that would effectively prevent most flights when visibility is low — a common occurrence during the cloudy autumn months.

“We realized it would shut the growers down,” said Terry Harchenko, president of Industrial Aviation Services, a Salem aviation firm that serves farmers.

Roughly 2,600 acres of Christmas trees on multiple farms are included in the larger “Class D” airspace, said Ben Stone, whose family operates BTN of Oregon, a farm near Salem.

“That’s a big area,” Stone said.

Growers have a narrow window of five to six weeks to harvest trees, so companies such as BTN of Oregon wouldn’t have time to switch their harvest plans this year, he said.

The farm doesn’t have sufficient tractors, roads or workers to cut and haul the trees by ground, nor could such operations be accomplished quickly enough to meet holiday demand, Stone said.

“We’ve farmed with helicopters for 30-plus years,” he said.

Due to protests from pilots and others affected by the airspace change, the FAA agreed to scale back the expansion — under a new proposal, the radius of “Class D” airspace around the Salem airport will increase by up to one mile.

However, due to the public notice and comment process, growers fear the revision will not be finalized in time for this year’s harvest.

“Helicopter harvest is very critical to what we do,” said Bryan Ostlund, executive director of the Pacific Northwest Christmas Tree Association. “I refer to the Christmas tree harvest as controlled chaos and this is going to make it even worse.”

There is a possibility that harvest disruptions can still be avoided.

Agricultural aviators may be able to operate under a “letter of agreement” that allows them to fly in the “Class D” airspace during periods of cloudiness and reduced visibility, as long as they follow certain conditions.

Rob Broyhill, air traffic manager at the Salem airport’s control tower, said he’s drafting a “letter of agreement” that he expects to have done by Oct. 15. The proposal must still be approved by FAA officials, he said.

Harchenko of Industrial Aviation Services said the outcry from pilots and growers, as well as intervention from Oregon’s congressional delegation, will hopefully allow the problem to be resolved in a timely manner.

“It could have been a real disaster if everybody wouldn’t have gotten with it,” he said.

Growers should also submit comments on the scaled-back “Class D” airspace proposal, which was published in the Federal Register on Sept. 21 and can be found online, Harchenko said.

The original expansion occurred after an FAA review determined the change was needed to improve the safety for pilots operating on instruments around the airport, according to the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.

Affected pilots and others didn’t comment on the proposed change because they were unaware of the FAA’s announcement, said Mitch Swecker, director of the Oregon Department of Aviation.

“Nobody noticed it,” Swecker said.

During periods of low visibility, pilots in “Class D” airspace come under the jurisdiction of FAA’s control center in Seattle, which is unlikely to have time for helicopers harvesting Christmas trees, he said. In such a situation, the Seattle control center would probably simply stop them from flying.

“There ability to focus on something as small as ag operations is not very good,” Swecker said. “It probably wouldn’t be a high priority for them.”

ONTARIO, Ore. — As onion farmers in the Treasure Valley area of Idaho and Oregon gather in the remainder of this year’s crop, they are enjoying prices that are significantly better than last year.

But onion size and yields are expected to be down because of a severe heat wave earlier in the growing season that affected plant growth.

“The size is down a tiny bit because of the heat but the quality looks pretty good. With all the heat we had ... the crop fared better than I thought it was going to,” said Nyssa, Ore., grower Paul Skeen. “We’re looking forward to a good market.”

The price for a 50-pound bag of jumbo onions is around $8 right now, up from about $4.50 at this time last year.

“That’s a very good market for harvest time,” said Kay Riley, manager of Snake River Produce in Nyssa, one of about 30 onion shippers in the region.

“It looks like it will be a pretty average crop,” he said. “Quality seems to be good (but) size on some lots is a little smaller than normal.”

The area of southwestern Idaho and Malheur County, Ore., is one of the largest onion growing regions in the country, but acreage has decreased somewhat since 2013 because of a significantly reduced water supply on the Oregon side.

According to estimates by USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service, there will be 8,400 acres of onions harvested on the Idaho side in 2015 and 9,000 acres on the Oregon side.

That 17,400-acre total is down from the 19,900-acre total in 2013, when 9,000 acres were harvested in Idaho and 10,900 were harvested in Malheur County.

According to NASS, 9,300 acres of onions were harvested in Malheur County and 6,900 acres in Idaho in 2014, a total of 16,200.

While Eastern Oregon onion acres are about the same as last year, Idaho has seen a significant increase this year due to the water situation, said Oregon State University Cropping Systems Extension Agent Stuart Reitz.

“They had a little bit better water situation over there,” he said about Idaho. “A lot of it is driven by the drought.”

Reitz said a lot of onion fields in the valley were affected by a nine-day stretch of 100-degree temperatures that ended July 4.

“That took its toll on the plants. We didn’t see the size we normally get around here,” he said. “Some plants seemed to run out of gas by the end of July.”

But Idaho farmer Sid Freeman said his onion crop looked great, which he attributed to the drip irrigation system he installed two years ago.

“This is the best crop we’ve ever grown,” he said, adding that the heat wave ended before it hurt his onion plants. “It stopped just in time. It didn’t do a whole lot of damage.”

Because the drip system allowed him to mange inputs more intensely, “the onions were in good enough condition going into that heat spell that they didn’t degrade,” Freeman said.

ONTARIO, Ore. — Growers along the Oregon-Idaho border who depend on water from the Owyhee Reservoir to irrigate their crops have had to change the way they farm.

They have no choice. The annual water allotment for the 1,800 farms that depend on the reservoir has been slashed by about two-thirds during the past three years as a drought grips the region.

The reservoir provides water for 118,000 irrigated acres in Malheur County in Southeastern Oregon and around Homedale and Marsing in Southwestern Idaho.

This was the fourth straight year of reduced snowpack runoff in the Owyhee Basin, which feeds the Owyhee River and the reservoir. The Owyhee Irrigation District receives water from the reservoir and delivers it to irrigators through 400 miles of canals, laterals and ditches.

“I know growers who are growing onions on 1.7 to 1.8 acre-feet of water. Ten years ago that never happened; we used almost twice that number to grow an onion,” Ontario, Ore., farmer Bill Johnson said. “So clearly this drought has forced us to change our practices.”

To get by, farmers have switched irrigation practices, left ground fallow, grown crops that require less water and mature earlier, changed rotations — anything that will get them through until the snow and rain return to normal.

“It’s kind of been all of the above,” said Stuart Reitz, an Oregon State University cropping systems extension agent in Malheur County. “Growers are doing what they have to do to make a crop.”

OSU cropping systems extension agent Bill Buhrig said farmers are trying many ways to make the water they do have last.

“It’s like a combination (lock),” he said. “Growers are trying to turn it and unlock next year’s success.”

Nyssa, Ore., farmer Paul Skeen said a lot of farmers have switched from a 24-hour watering set to a 12-hour set and sometimes even six-hour sets. A set refers to how often water is moved across a field.

“You’re getting across the field in half the time, so you’re ... using less water on that field, which gives you more for other fields,” he said.

Farmers are leaving a lot more ground fallow, which allows them to use what water they have for the area’s cash crops, such as onions and potatoes. They’re growing more crops that require less water such as like peas, beans, seed crops and grains.

But there’s a catch to switching to low-water crops.

“They try to rotate crops that take a lot less water ... but those crops provide less income, too,” said Owyhee Irrigation District Manager Jay Chamberlin. “That’s completely thrown their rotations out. It’s going to take years to get back into their rotation.”

The drought has resulted in more farmers switching to irrigation pivots, Buhrig said.

“One grower I talked to said, ‘My reduced water allotment goes a lot further through sprinklers than it does through furrow irrigation,’” Buhrig said. “He said, ‘After two years of being reactive, I feel like I need to get on the offense a little bit here.’”

Farmers have also switched a lot of acres to drip irrigation systems.

Skeen switched about 40 percent of his onion crop to a drip system this year and “that’s probably going to be up around 60-65 percent this coming year,” he said. “I’m just trying to save water and have a better crop.”

Some farmers are turning to crops such as triticale or camelina that need little or no irrigation water, Buhrig said.

Those crops won’t provide much income but at least they help a farmer cover some of the fixed costs associated with his land, he said.

“They’re not high-dollar crops but they’re ‘get me over’ crops,” Buhrig said. “Leaving a field fallow is not cheap. Your water bill and taxes stay the same.”

Weeds become a major issue in fields left fallow, Chamberlin said.

Weed patches have developed on some land left idle “and now they’re going to have to fight that weed seed for the next several years,” he said.

Because sugar beets and corn for grain are both high-water crops and need water longer in the season than many other crops, acreage for both is down by about a half compared to normal in the region, Buhrig said. More shorter-season corn varieties were planted, he added.

Onions are a high-water crop, but they are also the main cash crop in the area, so those acres have decreased only slightly during the drought.

Farmers are getting more conservative with their fall fertilizer programs, Buhrig said.

“It’s getting a little harder to spend that $300 on fertilizer in a fall-bedded operation if you don’t know for sure you’re going to (have the water to) be able to grow that crop the next year,” he said.

Water from the irrigation district stopped flowing in August the past two seasons — about two months earlier than normal. But because the allotment was reduced by two-thirds, a lot of farmers ran out of water in July.

The effects of the drought have been felt most severely on the 50,000 acres along the upper parts of the irrigation district, where growers are totally dependent on water from the reservoir.

Growers on the lower parts of the system have access to supplemental water from the Snake River, but that also increases their pumping costs.

The availability of additional water on the lower parts of the system has created its own problem.

Because growers have switched a large portion of their cash crops, mainly onions, to parts of the system with more water, it has resulted in shortened rotations.

For example, instead of planting onions every four or five years in a field, farmers might plant them two out of three years or three out of four years to take advantage of the water that is available there.

Those types of practices aren’t good over the long term because they can lead to a build-up of soil-borne diseases and poor crop quality, Reitz said.

“If you can’t rotate through to other crops, (the problem) just gets compounded year to year,” he said. “For the long term, we don’t want to see those kinds of practices continue.”

Through the drought, much of the work being done at the OSU research station has centered on helping growers maximize the efficiency of their irrigation.

Researchers worked on about 40 experiments this year involving drip irrigation, said Clint Shock, the station’s director.

Some of the work, such as the station’s drip irrigation trials, has been going on for two decades. The station has for years studied irrigation scheduling — turning water on and off at the right time, Shock said.

The drought has caused a lot of growers to adopt those practices, which the station has preached about and studied for years, he said.

Growers and water managers in the area are keeping a close eye on the precipitation forecast for the coming winter. Currently, there’s about a 50-50 chance of the basin receiving a normal amount of snowpack, Chamberlin said.

With only about 5,000 acre-feet of available carryover water stored in the reservoir — far below the 350,000 acre-feet that would be expected during an average year — farmers in this area are heading into 2016 with even more uncertainty regarding their water supply.

“Right now farmers are (preparing) ground for next spring not knowing what kind of water year they are going to have,” Chamberlin said. “That’s tough when you’re looking at a (reservoir) that’s empty.”

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — State regulators have fined a company that conducts aerial pesticide spraying on private timberlands for worker protection violations.

The Oregon Department of Agriculture says Applebee Aviation must pay $1,100 and implement new procedures and training. The company’s Commercial Pesticide Operator license was also suspended.

Regulators say Applebee Aviation employees did not get pesticide safety training, were not provided with decontamination materials, nor with safety gear. They also faced potential for pesticide exposure due to a defective hatch seal on a pesticide mixture tank.

Officials were alerted to the problems in April, when a spraying crew member went to a hospital. The man said he had to regularly take shelter from herbicides sprayed from a helicopter.

Applebee Aviation owner Mike Applebee declined to comment on the violations, but said he would comply with the order.

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — The Oregon State Fair has brought on a new Portland contractor to provide carnival operations beginning next year.

The Statesman Journal reports that officials announced the state fair had severed its nearly four-decades-old partnership with Funtastic Shows and signed a new deal with Rainier Amusements, which launched in 2014.

State fair spokesman Dan Cox says officials had pursued a new deal because of a scheduling conflict with Funtastic, which also provides carnival operations for the Washington State Fair.

Plans for Rainier Amusement’s debut at next year’s state fair haven’t been detailed, but several new rides are expected to be introduced.

The 2016 state fair is scheduled to begin Aug. 26.

CORVALLIS, Ore. (AP) — Environmentalist groups have stalled a timber sale in Benton County that calls for the cutting of about 8 million board feet of timber.

The Corvallis Gazette-Times reports the U.S. Board of Land Management awarded the Rainbow Bridge timber sale Sept. 16 to Freres Lumber for $2.6 million, giving the company the right to log the 135-acre parcel near Alpine.

But the sale won’t become final until a resolution is reached with Oregon Wild, Cascadia Wildlands and the Benton Forest Coalition.

Most of the timber cut would be generated through variable retention harvest, a technique touted for its environmental benefits. The trees that would be left standing would be clustered together with large areas left open.

Environmentalists argue that forest openings should be created naturally by fire, storms and insects.

Oregon wildlife officials won’t authorize killing members of the Mount Emily wolf pack despite five confirmed attacks on a sheep herd since June.

Under the state’s wolf recovery plan, which moved into Phase 2 this year, Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife can authorize lethal control of wolves after two confirmed “depredations,” or one confirmed attack and three attempts.

But ODFW chose not to in this case, despite four documented attacks by the Mount Emily pack in August and a fifth in June.

At least seven sheep and a guard dog were killed in pack attacks investigated June 22, Aug. 4, Aug. 15, Aug. 24 and Aug. 27. The attacks would have qualified for lethal control even under Phase 1 of the recovery plan, which required four confirmed depredations over a six-month period.

The number of attacks alone is not enough to authorize killing wolves. The plan is complicated and requires multiple other findings as well, including that non-lethal measures are not working and that wolves are an immediate threat, ODFW spokeswoman Michelle Dennehy said.

In this case, she said, it had been nearly a month since the last attack and radio collar data showed the Mount Emily pack had moved to other parts of its range, away from the sheep.

Based on that, the department decided not to authorize lethal control, she said.

Producer Jeremy Bingham of Utopia Land and Livestock formally asked ODFW for “lethal relief from the wolves that are massacring our sheep,” but did not do so until Sept. 21.

The department, which hasn’t authorized killing any wolves since two in 2011, turned him down. In a Sept. 25 letter to Bingham, ODFW wildlife biologist Mark Kirsch said non-lethal measures had worked since the last attack in late August.

“We are sorry your experience with Oregon’s forest lands has been problematic this year,” Kirsch concluded in his letter to Bingham. “It is our hope you complete your grazing season with no further loss.”

Department officials also noted Bingham would be removing his sheep from the area in October under the terms of his seasonal grazing permit in the Umatilla National Forest.

Department spokeswoman Dennehy said the Mount Emily pack now is frequenting the central and southern part of their known range area, and the sheep are in the northeastern edge. Three of the pack members wear radio collars that allow biologists to track their movements.

Bingham is furious, and said ODFW officials are dishonest and “two-faced politicians.” He said he was slow to request lethal control because he knew the department would decline it. He said a wildlife official had indicated such in a local media interview.

“It’s unfortunate I trusted them,” he said by text to the Capital Press. “The only interest to them is that the wolves eat the economy of Eastern Oregon.”

Bingham said he’s been patient and followed Oregon’s wolf plan rules in the face of repeated losses to wolves over the past two years. He estimates he’s lost more than 100 ewes. One guard dog was killed this year; in 2014 two were injured and another disappeared and is presumed dead.

“We have not harmed any wolves but we are not in the business of sacrificing assets to feed (ODFW’s) pet dogs,” Bingham said by text.

ODFW investigates reported livestock attacks but follows a strict protocol that includes examining wounds and measuring bite marks and tracks before confirming wolves were responsible. ODFW depredation reports do not correspond to Bingham’s claimed losses. He said he didn’t report many attacks; other producers have repeatedly said livestock often disappear in wolf country. They suspect wolves kill many more cattle and sheep than are confirmed in depredation reports.

Bingham is general manager of Utopia Land and Livestock, a family company based in Burley, Idaho. He grazes sheep in Idaho, and for the past three seasons held a grazing permit in the Umatilla National Forest in Oregon as well. The permit allowed him to graze 2,000 ewes and lambs for a little over four months. He must remove them from public land Oct. 9.

The Mount Emily pack, which at the end of 2014 was thought to consist of seven wolves, has been a problem.

In September 2014 wolves attacked Bingham’s sheep on consecutive nights, killing a total of eight sheep and injuring two of five guard dogs; a third dog was missing, according to the initial ODFW report. The incident was the first time herd dogs were attacked in Oregon, the department said at the time.

Bingham said he’s taken steps to fend off wolves. He hired a herder who is with the sheep 24 hours a day, placed five to seven guard dogs with each sheep band, penned sheep at night on occasion and deployed alarm lights and a siren that is activated by a wolf’s radio collar. He said a federal Wildlife Services agent voluntarily sat with the herd overnight several times.

Bingham said Wildlife Services and the U.S. Forest Service, which administers the grazing allotment, have been “incredible” agencies to work with. He said ODFW led him to believe there was recourse for the wolf attacks but now won’t do what’s allowed under the state plan. He said allowing wolves to kill multiple sheep is “just training pups to be chronic depredators.” He predicted elk and antelope populations will decline due to wolves and said attacks on humans will happen.

“ODFW has an agenda and it is only about politics, not science,” Bingham said.

The State of Oregon is defending the federal government’s new Clean Water Act regulations in court because they’re expected to simplify the statute’s administration, according to a top state official.

It’s possible that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s new rules will allow state officials to issue Clean Water Act permits, which are currently dispensed by the EPA and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said Richard Whitman, natural resources policy adviser for Oregon Gov. Kate Brown.

The regulations have met with controversy because opponents fear the new definition of “waters of the United States” will significantly increase the federal government’s jurisdiction over waterways on private property.

Multiple states have filed lawsuits challenging the rules, while Oregon and several other states have intervened as defendants in support of the regulatory change.

“This is an issue that has frankly been politicized nationally,” Whitman said before the House Committee on Rural Communities, Land Use and Water.

Oregon officials believe the amount of water under the federal government’s purview will only increase by 3 to 5 percent under the new regulations, he said.

“As a technical and policy matter, we do not believe the rule is a major expansion of federal jurisdiction,” Whitman said.

Congress decreed that “waters of the U.S.” fall under Clean Water Act jurisdiction but did not define the term, leaving that problem to agencies and courts, he said.

The matter was the subject of three U.S. Supreme Court rulings, the most recent in 2006.

Because the justices disagreed on how to determine whether a water body is regulated, the case established three conflicting standards, Whitman said.

“You have complete confusion in the lower courts about which of these three tests is the right one,” he said.

The EPA’s new rules are meant to clear up some of that confusion by reducing the number of waterways that must be examined on a case-by-case basis, Whitman said.

Most agricultural activities continue to be exempt from Clean Water Act regulations, he said.

The Oregon Cattlemen’s Association, which is involved in litigation against the rules, is disappointed that the State of Oregon intervened as a defendant without consulting with agricultural groups, said Jerome Rosa, the organization’s executive director.

Rosa said he disagrees with Whitman’s characterization of the regulations, which OCA thinks will be extremely detrimental to ranchers.

“We don’t see it that way,” he said.

CANBY, Ore. — A cougar has been killing livestock and worrying families near this north Willamette Valley town.

Stefani Carlson, whose husband, Paul, owns and operates 4:8 Financial, an investment services firm in Canby, said they lost two alpacas and three lambs last week. Another neighbor lost three sheep around the same time, and another nearby family lost two llamas and a pygmy goat, Carlson said.

“Everyone knows it’s funky out there, a weird feeling out there,” Carlson said. “Even cattle are acting funny out here. (One of our neighbors), Nancy Bennett, said one of her llamas jumped over one of their fences and hurt its leg badly trying to protect (their livestock from) something out there.”

Bennett said her llama has been on “super-high alert” ever since Sept. 9, when the cougar first killed her livestock.

USDA Wildlife Services sent out a trapper who set bait near the dead animal carcasses to try and catch the cougar, but the effort has not been successful.

USDA officials were not immediately available for comment.

SALEM — Farmers near Boardman, Ore., hope state legislators will influence the U.S. Navy on the siting of a proposed transmission line.

Growers in the area fear that the power line — which Idaho Power plans to build from Boardman to Melba, Idaho — will take roughly $30 million of irrigated farmland out of production.

An alternative to this possibility involves repurposing an existing easement that runs across the Navy’s bombing range near Boardman.

The size of the easement’s footprint would not have to be increased, but the decision involves federal action and the Navy doesn’t see the issue as a high priority, said Craig Reeder, vice president of Hale Farms.

Reeder asked members of the House Committee on Rural Communities, Land Use and Water to tell the Navy that the transmission line should not be built over farmland that’s crucial to the region’s economy.

The Navy has a requirement that the easement can only be repurposed if there are no viable alternatives, but a federal environmental study examines siting the transmission line on farmland in the region, said Don Rice, director of North American operations for Greenwood Resources, which owns poplar tree farms in the area.

The state government could help convince the Navy that this option isn’t actually viable, he said.

The entirety of the project spans more than 300 miles and is expected to cost up to $1.2 billion, said Mitch Colburn, engineering leader for Idaho Power.

The transmission line is needed to improve the electrical grid’s reliability and facilitate the expansion of renewable energy in the region, he said.

Aside from the Idaho Power transmission line, the region is facing other power line issues as wind turbine projects must find way to connect to the Bonneville Power Administration’s electrical grid along the Columbia river, said Bob Levy, who farms near Hermiston, Ore.

There’s currently a lack of planning, with wind energy projects winning approval from regulators before their developers figure out transmission routes, he said.

To compare, a builder cannot construct a house without showing how it will connect to existing infrastructure, Levy said.

The state should set a policy to plan for power corridors and to protect high-value irrigated farmland, said Reeder.

Currently, decisions are made based on soil type — while the sandy soils in the Boardman area are not considered the highest quality, they’re nonetheless capable of growing high-value crops when irrigated, he said.

When a horse turned up dead earlier this month in rural Wallowa County after an apparent bloody struggle, wolves were investigated as the primary target.

The evidence, however, soon pointed to a much more unlikely suspect.

Wildlife officials determined the horse, which was found dead Sept. 18 in a pasture along the upper Imnaha River, had actually been gored by a bull elk — a scenario they admit is extremely rare, though not entirely unheard of.

The unusual ruling is tough for some local ranchers to believe in an area where suspicion of wolves runs high. But the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife says its examination clears the predators this time, and places the responsibility on the antlers of a feisty elk.

“It is breeding season for elk. Bulls are very aggressive this time of year,” said Mike Hansen, district wildlife biologist with ODFW in Enterprise.

The horse was initially found by elk hunters in a 20-acre pasture on the Grouse Creek Ranch, about 18 miles upriver from the town of Imnaha. ODFW arrived the same day to investigate, noticing the carcass was mostly still intact except for a piece of intestine on the ground 40 yards away.

After surveying the scene, Hansen said they identified elk and horse tracks indicating the animals had been in a tussle. There was a single half-inch cut on the horse’s nose, deep puncture wound into the groin and scrapes on its side matching the size and space of elk antlers.

The horse struggled and slid down the hillside, Hansen said, before it died of internal bleeding. There were no predator tracks of any kind in the area, and no sign of wolf bite marks.

Roblyn Brown, ODFW assistant wolf program coordinator, said elk attacks on livestock are very rare but have happened before. She cited an incident several years ago in southwest Oregon where a young spike bull charged a heifer and punctured the cow’s lungs and liver.

“All we can do is follow our investigation protocol,” Brown said.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services also agreed with ODFW that it was an elk, not a wolf, that killed the horse on Grouse Creek Ranch.

Despite the conclusion, several ranchers have their doubts. Eric Porter, who owns the ranch where the horse was killed, said the location of injuries were typical with those of a wolf bite.

This wasn’t the first time Porter was disappointed with the outcome of an investigation. In May, one of his calves was killed on the property, with wolf tracks spotted nearby and GPS coordinates placing a collared wolf in the area.

Yet even with that evidence, Porter said ODFW ruled the incident a “probable” wolf attack since bite marks appeared to be from a coyote.

“All the evidence was there, but they wouldn’t confirm it,” Porter said.

Oregon lists wolves as endangered species east of highways 395, 78 and 95, and it remains illegal to kill a wolf except under specific circumstances outlined in the state’s wolf management and conservation plan.

Todd Nash, a rancher in Enterprise and wolf committee chairman for the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association, said producers are frustrated by how difficult it is for them to prove wolves are responsible for attacking livestock. He sees the elk ruling as a huge stretch.

“I can sympathize with not finding wolf tracks, but because you find elk tracks in the area, that’s what you come up with? It’s crazy,” Nash said.

The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission will consider removing wolves from the state endangered species list in Eastern Oregon in the coming months, based on the department’s recommendation. Conservation groups argue the species’ population remains fragile and in need of protection.

Until then, Nash said producers need to make sure they continue to follow the rules. Oregon State Police is investigating two wolves recently killed in Wallowa County, known as the Sled Springs pair, found 50 yards apart from each other. An OSP spokesman told the Oregonian the deaths “do not appear to be natural,” and poaching is being considered as a factor.

Nash said neither he nor the cattlemen’s association would ever condone poaching, but added ranchers are tired of being the only ones asked to play by the rules.

“I certainly do not encourage people to take matters into their own hands,” Nash said. “We still need to do the things required of us. It’s our obligation as OCA members to work through this.”