The annual VFW Ladies Auxiliary Craft Bazaar and Bake Sale will be held from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Friday, Sept. 11 and Saturday, Sept. 12, at the VFW Hall on Bates Road off Highway 42S.

The following streets will be closed during the 2015 Cranberry Festival:

The Bandon Parks and Recreation Commission will hold a Cranberry Festival Disc Golf Tournament beginning at 2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 12, at Bandon City Park.

BANDON — The Cranberry Room at Pacific View Assisted Living and Memory Care recently served as the ideal back drop for a photo shoot featuring three past Cranberry Court members who are all cu…

Weston Jennings

Friday, Sept. 11

Native Americans on Oregon's northern coast gathered wild cranberries. But it wasn't until 1885 that Massachusetts native Charles McFarlin realized that cranberries would thrive on Oregon's sa…

The Blessing of the Harvest will be held at 11 a.m. Friday, Sept. 11.

BANDON — Generations of Oregon coast cranberry farmers have applied muscle and ingenuity to growing and harvesting their crops. In fact, the mechanical picker, forerunner of the present day we…

BANDON — Visit a working cranberry farm Cranberry Festival weekend in Bandon. Bowman Bogs will be open to the public from noon to 4 p.m. Sept. 11, 12 and 13. Tour the bogs and sample products …

Parade attendees and entrants are sure to have a be-boppin' time with this year's Cranberry Festival Theme, “Cranberry Hop.”

BANDON — Port of Bandon General Manager Gina Dearth is this year's Cranberry Festival Parade Grand Marshal, an honor she humbly accepted.

The Bandon Tigers will again host the Pemberton Grizzlies, a community team from British Columbia, Canada, for the 2015 Cranberry Bowl. The game begins at 4 p.m. at Tiger Field on 11th Street SW.

The 15th annual “Quilts by the Sea” quilt show will be presented during the Bandon Cranberry Festival Sept. 11, 12 and 13. The show will be held at the Odd Fellows Hall on Highway 42S and Ohio…

The second annual Cranberry Cruise-In will be held in Old Town on Saturday, Sept. 12.

SALEM — Expansion plans at several Oregon dairies have caused a backlash among vegans and animal rights activists, but farm regulators lack the authority to consider many of their objections.

Likewise, the Oregon Department of Agriculture can’t do much about dairy industry concerns that publicly disclosed regulatory filings will expose farms to trespassing and vandalism.

As mandated by the federal Clean Water Act, the agency issued a public notice in June that five dairies are seeking to change their animal waste management plans.

Wym Matthews, manager of ODA’s Confined Animal Feeding Operation program, said such notices are fairly routine, but this one was somewhat unusual because four of the five dairies want to expand their herds.

After an article in Salem’s Statesman Journal described these plans, the agency received enough requests for a public hearing that one was scheduled for Sept. 2.

Previously, such hearing requests were rare, Matthews said. “I think the interest is new.”

Several of the people requesting a hearing identified themselves as vegan, he said.

The ODA can only consider comments that relate directly to whether the waste management changes conform with the Clean Water Act, not overall opposition to animal agriculture or CAFOs as being abusive, he said.

“The permit doesn’t regulate animal cruelty,” Matthews said.

The ODA also can’t consider comments that endorse particular management systems, such as organic or pasture-raised, he said.

Many of the comments made during the Sept. 2 hearing appeared to fall outside of the ODA’s purview, as they opposed CAFO expansion generally without identifying specific problems with the proposed waste management plans.

Some commenters mentioned antibiotics, which the agency does not regulate as a pollutant.

“They end up in the meat, in the manure and in the waterways,” said Niko Morozov, a college student.

Others objected to the amount of water used to produce milk, which also isn’t regulated under the Clean Water Act.

Nick Shipley, another college student, claimed dairy water use is excessive.

“Is milk really worth it?” he said.

The issue of animal welfare was also brought up.

“In an ideal world, we wouldn’t treat animals the way we do and have massive mega-farms,” said Laurel Hines. “My opposition is to the large farms, the farms that aren’t organic.”

Gavin Curtis expressed dismay with the practice of culling young calves for “bob veal.”

“These two- to three-day-old babies are torn from their mothers and then slaughtered,” he said.

During a July meeting of an advisory group for the CAFO program, some livestock industry representatives expressed worries that information contained in the waste management plans, such as the farm’s location and layout, will expose dairies to retaliation from activists.

Dairy and agriculture representatives later said a Statesman Journal article mischaracterized their comments as trying to hide information from the public.

Tami Kerr, executive director of the Oregon Dairy Farmers Association, said they were simply worried about private information being misused and not about the contents of the waste management plans becoming public.

“We were asking questions and expressing concern for our producers,” Kerr said. “We’re not trying to hide anything. I’m a big fan of transparency.”

While ODA can redact confidential business information — such as financial data or experimental water treatment systems with patents pending — the bulk of these plans must be publicly disclosed under the Clean Water Act, Matthews said.

“We’re required to by law,” he said.

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PORTLAND — The Cully neighborhood isn’t one of Portland’s celebrated areas, yet. Crime, poverty and neglected properties leave it a bit rough around the edges.

But an influx of self-described “homesteaders,” not hipsters, is transforming the Northeast Portland neighborhood into a hotbed of urban farming. The Side Yard Farm & Kitchen, founded by chef-turned-farmer Stacey Givens, is an example of that.

On an acre that once held an abandoned house, garbage and blackberry vines, Givens grows culinary herbs and organic vegetables for 14 high-end Portland restaurants, runs a catering business and hosts “nomadic” suppers for like-minded chefs, foodies and other friends.

Givens, who farms two other reclaimed city lots within a couple miles, said the business is making a profit.

“We’re doing pretty good, I have to say,” she said.

She has an unexpected partner in the venture: the USDA’s Natural Resources and Conservation Service. Using a $2,200 grant from NRCS, Givens purchased and installed a “high tunnel” hoop house on her newest site, at Northeast 48th Avenue and Simpson Street. The tunnel extends her growing season.

“I started tomatoes at least a month before I usually do,” Givens said. This winter, she expects to continue herb and vegetable production under cover.

Providing such direct, on-the-ground help is an intentional policy shift by NRCS. Since 2008, the agency has helped farmers install 139 high tunnels in Oregon, at a program cost of $830,000. Funding comes from the Farm Bill.

Extending the growing season in Oregon can conserve energy by perhaps reducing the amount of produce trucked into the state from California, said Dean Moberg, an NRCS basin resource conservationist for the Northern Willamette Valley and Northern Oregon Coast.

The grant program is open to all sizes of commercial food producers but specifically benefits smaller, diverse forms of agriculture that haven’t benefited from USDA programs in the past, Moberg said.

“That’s exactly it,” he said. “We’ve all seen the growing trend to local food production” such as farmers markets, CSA subscription farming and grocery stores aligning with local growers.

“The general public is more and more interested in where their food comes from, and they want to buy fresh, local food,” Moberg said.

Farmers can find a niche in local food systems, he said.

“Many of them are smaller operations, family oriented, and lot of them are new farmers, people who didn’t grow up on farms,” he said.

“And some of them are urban — it’s kind of a cool thing.”

The program isn’t for someone who wants to put a high tunnel in their backyard, Moberg said. Grant recipients must be involved in commercial food production; it’s not for people growing nursery plants, housing livestock or sheltering machinery. “It’s oriented to growing food in the ground,” he said.

Farmers who are interested in the grant program should contact their local USDA service center.

For Givens, the Side Yard Farm & Kitchen owner, the high tunnel solidifies her business and its connection with some of Portland’s top chefs.

The high tunnel is filled with tomatoes this summer, but she grows unusual herbs such as Rau Ram, a Vietnamese coriander, and purple Shiso, a relative of the mint family used in Japanese cooking. She grows cilantro, allows it to bolt, and sells the green seeds to chefs at $20 per small container.

In Portland’s edgy, experimental restaurant scene, it’s a ready market.

“It’s crazy,” Givens said with a laugh. “A lot of chefs I used to work with say, ‘Plant me this.’

“To me, herbs are everything.”

Flush with a splash of money from the Legislature after multiple lean years, Oregon State University’s College of Agricultural Sciences plans to hire up to 40 people by the fall of 2016.

First on the list are an Extension dairy specialist to work in the mid-Willamette Valley and a livestock and rangeland specialist to work in Morrow and Umatilla counties.

The two are among 19 faculty positions that will be filled by 2016; some positions are new and some involve replacement hires. Up to 21 full- or part-time support staff positions will be filled as well.

The hiring is due to the Oregon Legislature approving a $14 million budget increase for the College of Agricultural Sciences for the 2015-17 biennium. The funding increased the college’s budget to $118 million, according to OSU.

Dean Dan Arp said being able to hire faculty is a welcome change from the past few years. The college will undoubtedly be competing against other schools for the best talent, he said.

Both positions are assistant professorships within the college’s Department of Animal and Rangeland Sciences.

The Willamette Valley dairy position hasn’t been filled for several years, Arp said. The fact that it’s one of the first to be filled with the additional funding coincides with the rebuild of the dairy program on campus.

In 2012, the dairy was shut down after cow manure leaked into a nearby creek. The program was fined nearly $7,000 and was forced to sell its herd of 120 animals while making repairs.

The dairy is back up and running, however, and among other things sells milk to the fermentation center on campus, which makes cheese.

The dairy search committee is headed by Troy Downing, an Extension dairy specialist based in Tillamook County on the Oregon Coast. Downing said he’s “thrilled” to see OSU add someone to work with dairies in Marion, Polk and other Willamette Valley counties.

Other OSU staff work with dairies as part of their duties, but due to attrition, Downing said he is the only full-time dairy specialist.

“The dairy industry has been served with very few people,” he said. “Really what’s been missing is someone to focus energy on the substantial dairy industry in the Willamette Valley.”

Downing said the dairy industry has been “extremely supportive” of OSU’s program.

Industry issues that deserve attention include animal welfare, wast management, soil fertility and workforce training, he said.

Washington and Oregon have joined five other states and the District of Columbia in coming to the defense of the new federal Clean Water Rule.

Twenty-eight states have challenged the rule, which redefines waters regulated by the federal Clean Water Act.

The opposing states, including Idaho, argue the rule would go beyond what Congress intended.

The pro-rule coalition, led by New York, argues the rule is based on sound science and will ensure uniform enforcement in all 50 states.

“Nationwide pollution controls protect downstream states from pollution originating outside their borders,” according to their brief filed Aug. 28 in the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, Ohio. “They serve to prevent the ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ that might result if jurisdictions could compete for industry and development by allowing more water pollution than their neighboring states.”

The other states joining in the brief are Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts and Vermont. The filing asks the court to grant the states intervenor status in 14 separate petitions against the rule.

The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation randomly picked the 6th Circuit Court to hear challenges to the rule, which have been field in several jurisdictions. The court rules on cases originating in Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee.

Nevertheless, a U.S. District Court judge in North Dakota, part of the 8th Circuit Court, granted an injunction Aug. 27 delaying the rule’s implementation in at least 13 states, including Idaho. Judge Ralph Ericksen is expected to make a further ruling on whether he intends the injunction to apply to all 50 states.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency asserts the rule into effect as scheduled Aug. 28 in the other 37 states, including Washington and Oregon.

Ericksen agreed with opponents of the rule that it greatly extended the Clean Water Act, expanding its reach to intermittent streams removed from navigable waterways. In granting the injunction, Ericksen said it was likely the rule’s opponents would prevail in a trial.