Month: June 2015

Another guest commentary from Maya Giddings;

June 25

It’s been a more relaxing day here today. We stayed at the camp and after a long day of preparing our presentations, we have finally completed our time in Wallowa. This morning we all focused on our presentations, while also having some fun in between!

We had a blast meeting all the ranchers, and guest speakers. A big shout out to Nils, and Jim for showing us around and making us feel welcome. Also to all the homestays that hosted us! Our time here will not be forgotten and neither will all the memories that were made.

Tomorrow we’ll start the long journey home, and hopefully not catch too much traffic on the way back. Well, until Tuesday when we leave for Japan!!

-Maya

From Tiffany:

I hope you all are enjoying reading about our adventures. Our time in Wallowa County ended with great presentations from both teams and some great discussion.

We would also like to thank the Wallowa Lake Methodist Camp for hosting us for a week and feeding us delicious food!

We learned so much in our short stay in Wallowa County and can’t wait for our adventure to continue on to Japan early tomorrow morning!

I’m excited for what is to come and to share our experiences through pictures and stories as we go across the ocean!

-Tiffany

Guest commentary from Maya Giddings:

June 24

Starting off bright and early this morning. We went to the biomass center and took a tour around their facilities. It was a small mill, but it was impressive how many products were made here. Using low value timber, they create three different products including posts and poles, wood chips for fuel, and pre-packaged, dry firewood. They were creating a new product called Whole Fire where there is only a log with two holes cut into it. It comes with pitch sticks, so you can start a fire almost immediately and also use it as a stovetop.

Following this stop, we went to the Nez Perce Department of Fisheries Resource Management, where they track and help manage salmon and other types of fish that swim up the Lostine River to spawn every year. Next to the rail of the weir, we saw some salmon just chilling out. It was really neat seeing all the fish there! We also got to hear a lot about the history of the fish from the Nez Perce perspective.

Shortly after that, we headed out to Vern’s house where he has a small hydroelectric plant (called a microhydro) on his ranch. For this, he creates power and then the energy is put onto  the grid. Vern get credits for the electricity that he produces and the excess energy credits he doesn’t use at the ranch is put aside for low-income families. In addition to this, his wife has a greenhouse, so their home is almost self sustainable.

For lunch we all gathered at the Lostine Tavern in Lostine. All of us had a delicious meal that was made from local food produced in the county. There was also a big beet cake that Yasu ordered and some of us had to help us finish before we left.

 

In Lostine we also checked out a local market, that used to be a general store, but is now more of a cover for an online, high end business. 

We also went back to the Wallowa Resources building in Enterprise and learned about their pellet stove heating system and plans for incorporating a similar heating system to a network of buildings downtown.

 

 

 

 

On Tuesday, June 23rd, we had a full day of learning about community programs within Wallowa County. We started out visiting the Stewardship Center, the old hospital building that Wallowa Resources purchased and now rents out spaces for various community resources and programs. We visited the Building Healthy Families program and the Alternative School. It was interesting because we got to hear all about their programs to help children as well as the 4 day school week that the schools within the county operate on. On Fridays, the children have the day off from school, but they have opportunities for extra curricular programs including a robotics club, a natural resources program put on by Wallowa Resources, and sporting events because they have to drive quite a ways to get to the other schools that they are competing against.

Next, we got to go visit the new hospital that was built in Enterprise. The CEO and administrator, Larry Davy met with us to tell us about what the hospital meant to the community. He was actually a very nice and funny guy and seemed to be passionate about the work he was doing. An interesting technological development within the hospital was the ability to utilize telemedicine, or robots within the hospital and clinic that allow a physician in another location to control it, giving the opportunity for specialized examinations without high transportation costs. He also talked about how he believed that the health care system within the United States was only disease care and didn’t really make people healthy. He is working on incorporating preventative care into their work and putting a lot of effort into educating the community saying “the better we do our job, the less patient volume we’re going to have” and “the most ethical thing we can do is to reduce the need for disease care” (Davy).

Following our time at the hospital, we visited the Community Connections program. This facility operates a number of community systems catering to the elderly, veterans, and low income individuals. They operate a food bank 5 days a week, offer energy credits and firewood for low income families, offer transportation opportunities including a public transportation bus, medical transportation, a shopping bus and veteran transportation, provide meals to senior citizens 3 days per week, and run a meals on wheels program. Overall, this facility offers many different programs to help people that are struggling within this community get by.

Next, we went back to the Stewardship Center, where we met in our groups and planned out which other individuals within the community that we wanted to talk to. My group (the food and agriculture group) decided that we had heard a lot from well off individuals, but hadn’t had the chance to hear from any of the lower income community members. We decided we would walk around Enterprise for a while. We stopped in at a local thrift shop and talked with some of the local volunteers, visited a local bookstore, and met with an individual that was sitting on a bench along the road. We got to hear a little different perspective on the county from these individuals and get a better understanding of the lives of the not so well off people that live in the area.

Upon returning to camp, we decided to go for a short hike before dinner. Ryoko and I decided to bail when we got to the wilderness area, returned to camp and watched Mulan (because Ryoko had never seen it). Included below are the groups pictures from the rest of their hike:

Following the adventures, we had dinner back at the lodge and then met around a campfire as a class to check in on everyone’s progress and be sure that everyone was on the same page. It was nice to get to hear everyone’s progress towards their papers and see how we were all interpreting the information that we had been receiving into individual syntheses.

We had the opportunity to go visit with a couple of local farmers/ranchers and hear about their practices and what makes their products unique. We went to the Hawkins Sisters’ Poultry Operation, where we met with Mary Hawkins, and then to 6 Ranch, where we got to talk to Liza Jane and Adele.

At the Hawkins Sisters Farm, we got to see Mary’s operation, which takes place on less than 10 acres of her family’s 300 acre farm. She told us about how she has been enjoying trying to learn to raise chickens for the last 3 years. She creates her own feed for the chickens from local wheat, barley, and field peas. Through this process, she is able to add additional value to the local products that are grown here in Wallowa county.

It was really interesting to get to listen to Mary talk about her entrepreneurial aspirations to expand her business and make a profitable, part time production. She is enjoying the puzzle that is figuring out how to produce locally. She also sells her products to locals, local restaurants, and to some places in Portland, Oregon. She is currently planning on expanding her business to include a processing facility, where she will be able to process her own chickens as well as being able to create opportunities for more small scale chicken farmers in the area.

Following our tour of the Hawkins Sisters’ Farm, we got to go visit 6 Ranch and learn about their operations. This ranch is a century ranch meaning that it has been in operation for more than 100 years. It has been in Liza Jane’s family for 130 years. Liza Jane is a fourth generation rancher, and her daughter Adele is following in her footsteps as a fifth generation rancher. The family raises grass fed Corriente Cattle, which is a slower growing, smaller breed used for rodeos. They then participate in the “eat it to save it” program to keep this breed, which is one of the oldest breeds around.

In addition to their cattle production, the family also has many side projects including a farm stand, a greenhouse, u-pick herb garden, dog and horse training, conservation & restoration projects, and a guided fishing and hunting business called “Cast and Blast”. It was really interesting to see the diversity and passion that they brought towards their business.

Following the tour of the ranch, greenhouse, and farm stand, we got to go across the street to see the river restoration project that they were implementing. They had previously incorporated meanders to another stretch of the river on their property too, so we got to walk along the river and see how the improvements that they had made. I really enjoyed this part of the day because it ties very closely to my Forest Engineering and Civil Engineering major. When we walked along the river, we ended up having to trek through some swampier sections, so we all ended up with wet feet, but it was really fun.

We then ate lunch in the shade by the river, and traveled to Joseph to visit the Josephy Center where we got to here a history of Wallowa County from Rich Wanschneider. He taught us a lot about the Nez Perce tribal history in the area.

These last few days have been extremely informative, but we are all starting to feel the effects of stuffing so much into our brains in such a short time span. We have had full mornings and afternoons of meetings with locals to learn about the history, the natural resources and the food and agriculture of the area. On Sunday, we had the opportunity to ride a gondola up to the top of Mount Howard. It was a beautiful view and Nils Christoffersen accompanied us and gave us a ton of information.

Once we got to the top of Mount Howard we went for a hike around the trail loops, stopping at various locations to discuss what we were seeing and some of the history of land use within Wallowa County.

 

At the top of the mountain, we also got to experience the entertaining chipmunks that were clearly very used to humans feeding them food.

Following our adventures, we came back to camp, relaxed a little bit ate dinner and had a productive group discussion to go over all of the information that we heard from Nils.

A lot can happen in just a couple days! We have had two days full of fun, engaging events here in Wallowa County. First of all, before I really get started I would like to wish a Happy Father’s Day to all the Dads out there! John Bliss, one of our instructors and Nils Christoffersen spent the day with us instead of their own children, so they deserve a Happy Father’s Day.

Yesterday started off at the beautiful bunkhouse owned by the Krebs. We were very well taken care of and had a great night. The view of the stars was amazing at night. Out here in the middle of a large open plain with not another building in sight, you could see so many more stars! (I tried to take pictures, but it didn’t do it justice!)

 

In the morning we set off up the hill from the bunkhouse along a little gravel road. We were told by Clint Krebs to count how many different species of flower we found on our way up the hill. We wanted to make sure we kept track of them, so we picked one of each new species we encountered to try to make sure we weren’t double counting. How many do you think we got (I’ll give you a few pictures to give you some time to think!):

Got a guess? We picked and counted 30 unique wildflower species! We thought that was pretty good for only a little hike up the hillside, but when we got to the top Clint informed us that there are 172 different species out there (at that we didn’t feel quite as accomplished).  We gave our Wallowa County bouquet to Ayumi Sensei.

Along the trek up the hill, Clint pulled up in his gator and gave a few of us a ride the rest of the way to the top, which was pretty fun too!

When we got to the top of the hill, we got to learn about how Clint grazes his cattle on the native grasses. Many of the grasses on his land can have up to 3000 ft of roots. He explained to us about how the biodiversity within the prairie allows the plants to share nutrients and grow better. Clint considered his property to be overgrazed if any one of his plants gets bitten more than once. If they are bitten once, they are challenged and feel the need to grow more, but if they are eaten down too far, they lose their ability to photosynthesize and die. in order to keep this from happening, he moves his cattle once every 5 days.

We then went down the other side of the hill to the Krebs’ main house and took his Hummer around his property and some surrounding area. We got to see some beautiful views, and learn about some of the new water systems that Clint is putting in.

Out on this section of his property, Clint had just finished installing a 290,000 gallon reservoir, and was planning on installing many miles worth of underground pipes to transport the water to his cattle.

After leaving this section of his property, we drove through some of the surrounding landscape owned by neighbors and the Nature Conservancy. Clint does rent some grassland from the conservancy to graze his cattle on. Along the way we talked a lot about the local wildlife including elk and wolves within the county. We also saw mule deer and a coyote.

Next we went to an area where Clint was working on another water resource project. He received a grant from the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board (OWEB) to help with his project. He had buried a 1500 gallon tank, and water collecting boxes that gather the natural seep of water in the soil instead of allowing it to continue running underground down to the river. The water that he is gathering is enough to water 150 head of cattle each day, from an area that looks pretty dry. He then uses solar panels to power a pump that moves the water up a hill to his water trough.

  

 

 

 

 

 

Following this eventful morning we then went into Joseph and went to the farmer’s market. We got some lunch and had the opportunity to talk to some locals.

 

One of the people we talked to was selling goat milk soap:

After exploring the Joseph for a little while, we went to Enterprise for the Mountain High Broncs and Bulls Rodeo. We had a lot of fun and it was a cool introduction to some community and social values of rural communities. It was interesting to see the Japanese students seeing this type of event for the first time.

 

We then came to the Wallowa Lake Camp where we will be staying for the next week and had a wonderful dinner.

 

After dinner we had a great group discussion, and went over our notes, and questions that people had throughout the last couple of days. As it got later, we of course got a little bit goofy and also had a little fun! 🙂

 

I’m sitting here at the beautiful Krebs’ Family Ranch overlooking the gorgeous grasslands and mountains to write about the latest leg of our awesome journey. That means that we successfully made it to Wallowa County!

We have had a really long day of travel, from Corvallis, to Wallowa County. We left Corvallis at 8 am this morning and arrived in Enterprise at 4 pm. Along the way we got to see the amazing change in landscape that occurs crossing Oregon. If you don’t know the area well, we traveled across the state completely, viewing all kinds of different landscapes!

 

Our trip was filled with wonderful views, great discussions, and tons of laughter! We got to see rivers, log yards, poplar plantations, agricultural fields, grasslands, cows, horses, wind turbines, mountains, waterfalls, and all kinds of beautiful scenery.

When we got to Wallowa county we came out to the Krebs’ Family Ranch and met up with a group of ranchers and farmers within the area. They were all gathered to meet with us, tell us about their lives, their community, and their unique resilience. We circled up and they went around and told us about their individual experiences, and situations. They also let us ask questions and get a better understanding of the way they live, and take a TON of notes. As one of them, Cameron Krebs (he spelled his name out so that we could cite him correctly) said, he walked up and started asking questions and all of a sudden a bunch of tiny notebooks popped out! I was really interested in a sheep production process that he is working on by incorporating sheep grazing into a poplar plantation as a form of agroforestry. We definitely got a good start to our data collection here in Wallowa County!

After the formal discussion, we had a more informal BBQ with the community and got to talk with them on a more personal level. They were so nice, friendly, and inviting! We ate hamburgers, salad, various side dishes, and an assortment of desserts. It was delicious!

The Krebs’ family was also generous enough to allow all 5 of us girls to stay in their bunkhouse for the night. By bunkhouse, that is what they called it, but it is a gorgeous little house, completely off the grid (heated and electricity run through solar panels) with heated floors, unlimited hot water, super comfortable beds and an AMAZING view! The boys are staying at a couple of different houses in Enterprise and Joseph.

 

 

As you can see in the picture above, we spent some time in the city of Philomath today. To practice our observational and interviewing skills, we spent a couple of hours walking around the city, making note of landmarks, important features and general characteristics of the area.

This was interesting because I have driven through Philomath quite a few times, but had never taken the time to closely observe the area. On our walk through town, we saw a cute little shop called Myrtlewood Mystique Gallery. We decided to have a look inside and started talking to the owner. She was really friendly and told us about the store, their specialization in Myrtlewood products, as well as other Oregon hardwoods. She also gave us a tour around the woodshop in the back of her gallery, where they make all of the products! She gave us an interesting insight into the lives of some of the artisans, and niche markets within Philomath and was very open and honest. If you’re ever in the area I would definitely recommend stopping in and checking it out!

Following our walking tour of the town, we visited Philomath Community Services. This is an organization serving the Philomath community made up of a few different programs including a food bank, community garden, Gleaners, and June’s Kids Kloset. These programs are designed to help struggling individuals and families within the Philomath community to have access to food staples and  other necessities. The property on which the Philomath Community Services is located was donated by the E.D. Hughes family, which brought together the different programs and put them all in one centralized location. The building was built all by funding from local donations.

June’s Kids Kloset is a program where once a month parents can bring their children in to pick out an outfit, socks and underwear. This can make a real difference to families without the funds to buy new clothes as their kids keep growing.

The food bank is open to struggling members of the Philomath community. In order to receive food here, they must provide proof of residence within Philomath. Approximately 50-60 families come in once per month and go through the food pantry, which is organized in a shopping setup. This setup is unique in that instead of serving everyone a box of food, of which they have no choice, individuals are able to choose foods that they want and need, reducing waste of unused food. The pantry is all stocked on a donation basis, but they carry toiletries, foods such as shelf stable milk, eggs, canned foods (soups, spaghetti sauce, tuna fish, etc),  baking supplies, pasta, bread, cereal, meat, frozen vegetables, and each family may take one emergency blanket per year.

The customer base for the food bank is fairly constant throughout the year, consisting of families that don’t quite make enough money to get by, handicapped individuals, homeless individuals, and people who are in between jobs. The shoppers must be at least 18 years old to shop for themselves, but food is provided to entire families with ages ranging from newborns to 90 year olds.

 

The Gleaners program is unique in that members are able to contribute something, by contributing 8 hours per month of their time, in return for food. The program has approximately 250 members who are able to come in and pick up food once per week. Differently from the food bank, members are able to go to local businesses and farms where there is excess unwanted food and bring it back to the center. Working with the Linn Benton Food Share, the Gleaners are able to create agreements with local businesses for weekly pickups.

The community garden is setup so that the volunteers work as a team to grow the entire garden, and then get a share of the harvest. Usually, about half of the total yield is donated to the food bank, and the other half is split between volunteers.

It was very interesting to learn about these programs and see a little bit into the community spirit within the “City of Volunteers.”

Another day down in Corvallis! Today was a day spent mainly in the classroom learning terminology in regards to resilience as well as how to create interview questions and conduct interviews.

We learned about models (not the kind that show off the latest fashion, but the ones that are a useful representation of a system). The Sustainability Model has been commonly used.

(http://www.downstate.edu/green/sustainability.html)

This model has been helpful, but it has its drawbacks. It is a very linear system, in that it draws a lot on the past to make predictions for the future. It is also static in nature, meaning that it is trying to achieve a steady state. The issue with this is that it does not account for disturbance. Although the system tries to achieve stability, a stable system is usually the exception, not the rule. In most systems change is occurring much more often than stability.

To account for this, a complex adaptive system can be considered instead that shows the more cyclic nature of a system.

(http://galleryhip.com/complex-adaptive-system.html)

This type of system allows for the resilience of a system to be accounted for as well as the path that a system should take in times of disturbance to adapt and still maintain its basic structure and function.

Following our discussions on models, we had the opportunity to hear from Sarah Cunningham. She has been working on an anthropological study within a small rural community in South Central Oregon. We got the chance to hear about her experiences entering into this community and trying to gain an understanding of their lifestyles and practices. She was able to provide us with some strategies for interviewing and making observations.

Nancy Rosenberger then followed up on this topic by explaining participant observation. This is a technique that we can use to try to make note of our surroundings and observe things that we may not have placed importance on. She also taught us how to create questions to ask during interviews and discussed how to conduct an interview.

At this point, we broke up into teams of four and practiced what we had learned. We created 3-4 questions that we thought would be good to ask in order to understand each others’ high school experiences, then conducted interviews to practice asking questions and taking notes.

Following this activity, we came back together and learned about the two main teams that we will be working in for the rest of the class. The first team, will be focusing their investigations on mainly food and agriculture, while the second team will be more focused on forestry and natural resources.

At this point, we were dismissed from class for the day, but we decided to go to the McDonald Dunn Forest, owned by Oregon State University’s College of Forestry to go for a hike and show the Japanese students and Oregon students from Oregon Institute of Technology and Eastern Oregon University around. We drove out to Peavy Arboretum and hiked up to Cronemiller Lake along an intensive management trail. At the lake, we stopped to enjoy the logging sports arena and take a few pictures.

 

Welcome to the Resilient Rural Communities PBL blog! In case you didn’t know, this is the story of a group of students from Oregon and Japan that are coming together to discuss and learn about the problems facing rural communities. We will be spending 1 week in Corvallis, Oregon USA, 1 week in Wallowa County, Oregon and 2 weeks in Akita Prefecture Japan.

Today was day one of our adventure! We started the day meeting and getting to know each other. Our group consists of 3 professors (Dr. John Bliss, Dr. Nancy Rosenberger, and Dr. Ayumi SUGIMOTO), 3 students from Japan (Ryoko, Kasumi, and Yasuhiro), and 5 students from Oregon (Tiffany (that’s me!) Maya, Holly, Christian, and Andy).

Following the introductions, we started getting out and about right away. We hopped in a couple of vans and journeyed to Fitton Green Natural Area. This is a section of land that was purchased by the Green Belt land Trust and given to the City of Corvallis for use as a recreational area. 

We hiked in a ways and came to a beautiful oak savanna where we had a beautiful view of the town of Philomath. Each of us took about 15-20 minutes to make observations of of surroundings to try to gain an understanding of the history of the land and what we thought the town may have been like, by just seeing it from a distance.

We observed that the town was likely made up of people that were farmers, mill workers, and commuters to the neighboring town of Corvallis. In the surrounding landscape we also noticed a variety in the ages of the timber stands, from what looked to be old growth timber on Mary’s Peak to a freshly cut stand and a wide range in between.

Based on these observations, we came to the conclusion that there were many different landowners, with different management objectives within the area.

Following our observations and a group discussion of our findings, we looked at a map of Oregon, and discussed the layout of the state in terms of geographical regions, specifically pointing out the coast range, valley, Cascades and eastern portion of the state.

In analyzing this map, we noted that there was a distinct moisture gradient between the two sides of the Cascade Mountain Range, leaving the valley with much more precipitation than the Eastern part of the state.

Following our excursion, we returned to Oregon State University, ate lunch, and learned an anthropological conceptual framework for the class. We discussed values and how history, power, upbringing, class, capital, innovation, age, gender, race, ethnicity and other factors contributed to the values that are associated with individuals and communities.

An interesting activity that we participated in was to come up with continuums of stereotypical opposite values.

For example:

Task-oriented ——————————————-Relationship oriented

Economic———————————————————————-Moral

Traditional——————————————————————-Modern

We then had to place our own values somewhere along each continuum. It was interesting to see where we placed ourselves and why. Where would you place yourself on the continuums above? Give it a shot!

Until tomorrow!

Tiffany