Bandon Cranberry Festival 2016

Stephanie Balin, an exercise specialist at Westinghouse’s Cranberry headquarters, takes a small break from fitness to get back on a healthy track.

Into the woods

Into the woods

SATURDAY, SEPT. 10

We can say a lot about John Decas…and This article says most of it.  What is doesn’t say is that John Decas is one heck of a story teller and jokester.  Come out to WI John! We missed you at the CMC. 

An Oregon nursery and its landlord have prevailed in a lawsuit that accused them of creating a hostile work environment.

Carlton Plants and Carlton Nursery of Dayton, Ore., were sued last year by former employee Criselda Romero-Manzano, who claimed the companies ineffectively responded to her sexual harassment complaint.

Romero-Manzano had complained to a supervisor in 2013 of unwanted advances by a crew leader, after which she was reassigned to another crew leader, according to court documents. She lost her job a year later after she exhausted her medical leave that was related to a work injury.

In her 2015 complaint, Romero-Manzano claimed she’d suffered economic loss due to lost wages and emotional distress because the companies “did not effectively respond to plaintiff’s report of sexual harassment” and subjected her to a hostile work environment.

Romero-Manzano accused the crew leader of “sexual comments, invitations of a sexual nature, and unwanted sexual touching.”

U.S. District Judge Anna Brown has agreed with Carlton Plants and Carlton Nursery that the lawsuit was time-barred and must be dismissed.

Romero-Manzano originally received permission from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Oregon’s Bureau of Labor and Industries to file the lawsuit against only Carlton Nursery, not Carlton Plants.

However, Carlton Nursery did not employ Romero-Manzano as it’s a separate entity that leases acreage to Carlton Plants, Romero-Manzano’s actual employer, Brown said.

While she did eventually amend her lawsuit to include Carlton Plants as a defendant, the permission to sue from EEOC and BOLI had by then expired, the judge said.

Romero-Manzano also failed to establish that the two companies were so inter-related that they should legally be treated as one entity, Brown said.

Attorneys for the plaintiff weren’t allowed to comment or did not respond to Capital Press.

Jon Bartch, registered agent for Carlton Nursery and Carlton Plants, did not return a phone call seeking comment.

Powers swept visiting Umpqua Valley Christian on Thursday to improve to 3-0 in Skyline League volleyball play.

A Growing Legacy

Friday’s Games

Bandon and Powers will both have the spotlight with Saturday football games this week, the Tigers in their traditional Cranberry Bowl and the Cruisers in the emerging 8-Man Classic at North Bend.

Today

MEDFORD, Ore. (AP) — Western monarch butterflies migrating between the Southern Oregon coast and the south Cascades will soon get fresh patches of strategically placed milkweed and other nectar-bearing plants to create needed habitat on this leg of their storied journey through here.

A group of public and private entities, led by the Ashland-based Lomakatsi Restoration Project, have landed a $193,000 foundation grant to restore and enhance 300 acres of western monarch habitat stretched across six sites along key migration paths through Southern Oregon.

Monarchs that winter along the California coast migrate along this route and the projects are strategically placed like stepping stones along that pathway.

“This is the epicenter of the migratory route,” says botanist Clint Emerson from the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, which is one of the participants in this habitat collaborative. “That makes this compelling.”

The plants will be grown at the federal government’s J. Herbert Stone Nursery in Central Point that will be planted along with milkweed seeds on public and private lands, including several plots already cleared and prepped for other restoration projects, Lomaktsi Executive Director Marko Bey says.

The plants include three locally native species of milkweed and 26 other plants such as coyote mint, winecup clarkia and harvest brodiaea, Emerson says.

While all the plants help butterflies, bees and other pollinators, the milkweed is tied closely to western monarchs’ life cycles.

Adult females lay their eggs in milkweed, and the ensuing caterpillars dine solely on milkweed before forming a chrysalis, from which they emerge as the royal-looking orange- and black-winged butterfly.

Monarchs produce four generations annually, each one making a portion of the migration between Washington and Idaho through Oregon and down to California and Mexico.

In recent years, private groups like the Southern Oregon Monarch Advocates have cultivated small milkweed patches for butterflies called way stations, “but this is a large-scale restoration effort,” says Robert Coffan of SOMA, which joins Lomakatsi, the forest and four other public and private entities in this project.

Restoration sites include 60 acres of Rogue River-Siskiyou forest land along the coast, 60 more acres of Forest Service land on the western slopes of the Cascades near Mount McLoughlin, another 60 acres at Table Rocks and 120 acres of public and private lands in the Ashland-Colestin area.

Some of those lands already have been cleared and prepped as part of other Lomakatsi projects, including the Ashland Forest All-Lands Restoration Project in the Ashland watershed known as AFAR.

That was important because the foundation grant did not cover site-preparation work, Bey says.

“It was a real plus that we’re laying this over other habitat projects,” Bey says.

Most of the work will be done in early 2017, Bey says.

Emerson says the multi-species plantings are different than milkweed way stations because they will create ecosystem-based landscapes instead of gardened plots of a single species.

The grant was one of several totaling $3 million doled out by the foundation’s Monarch Conservation Fund and the only one targeting western monarch habitat. The lion’s share went to the eastern monarchs and their famously arduous migration journeys.

Coffan says western monarchs generally get stiffed in the funding world.

“But we raised the flag a little bit and somebody saw the flag,” Coffan says. “I’m happy with it.”

For the second year in a row, grower Charlie Ruddell of Bandon is claiming the earliest delivery of cranberries in North America.

BANDON -- On Monday, Sept. 12, following the Cranberry Festival, expect to welcome 2,000 or more Cycle Oregon riders for a one-night stay in Bandon.

For the past several years Wild Rivers Coast Alliance has been title sponsor for the Bandon Cranberry Festival.

For the second year in a row, grower Charlie Ruddell of Bandon is claiming the earliest delivery of cranberries in North America.

BANDON -- On Monday, Sept. 12, following the Cranberry Festival, expect to welcome 2,000 or more Cycle Oregon riders for a one-night stay in Bandon.

Since this coming weekend is the 70th annual Cranberry Festival, I thought this might be a good time to share a cute picture of the Cranberry Cadets, taken in August of 1958 with Mark O. Hatfield in front of the…

Organic Valley, the nation’s largest organic dairy cooperative, announced it will buy and renovate the Farmers Creamery Cooperative in McMinnville, Ore.

The pending sale is the latest turn for FCC. Earlier this year, members accepted an agreement that allowed dairy farmers to apply for membership in the much larger Northwest Dairy Association of Seattle, which includes Darigold. The McMinnville plant was not included in the agreement.

The McMinnville creamery will close and be renovated “to align with Organic Valley’s operations,” the company said in a news release. The work will include a “significant investment in new equipment and state-of-the art technology.” The facility will reopen in late winter or early spring of 2017, according to the news release. Additional details of the sale were not immediately available.

Organic Valley, based in Wisconsin, represents more than 1,800 farmers in 36 states and describes saving family farms as its “founding mission.” Organic Valley produces organic milk, cheese, butter, eggs, soy and other products.

In a news release, the company said its “regional model” means milk is produced, bottled and distributed locally “to ensure fewer miles from farm to table and to support our local economies.” Organic Valley has 72 co-op members in Oregon and Washington.