Business AgLife
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Thursday, June 11, 2020
The Observer & Baker City Herald
New vet office opens for dogs and cats
By Dick Mason
EO Media Group
LA GRANDE — A man who
has opened his heart to pets and
their owners for more than 42
years has opened a new veteri-
narian clinic in La Grande.
Grande Ronde Animal Hos-
pital began operating Tuesday on
East Adams Avenue. Lee Darch
built and owns the clinic. Darch
recently moved to La Grande
from North Carolina where he
practiced veterinarian medi-
cine for 42 years. Darch will run
Grande Ronde Animal Hospital
with his daughter Emily, also a
veterinarian.
Emily Darch has worked as a
veterinarian in Union County for
three years. She is a graduate of
the University of Georgia’s school
of veterinary medicine.
“She is smart and very tal-
ented,” Lee Darch said.
Darch, who practiced veteri-
nary medicine with his daughter
earlier in North Carolina, said the
chance to work with her again
in La Grande is “a dream come
true” and the reason he moved to
Northeast Oregon. He said he is
inspired to work as a veterinarian
because he wants to care for those
who can’t care for themselves.
“How is a dog going to fix his
own broken leg?” Darch said.
Grande Ronde Animal Hos-
pital has a staff of six, including
two veterinarians, but Darch
expects the number to grow over
time. He said the last clinic he
had, in Kittrell, North Carolina,
had a staff of 25. He said that
throughout his career, he has had
college and high school students
working at his clinics to give them
the taste of what the world of vet-
erinarian medicine is like.
“I want them to be sure that
this (working as veterinarians) is
what they want to do,” Darch said.
He said that to be a good vet-
erinarian one has to be smart, a
problem solver and one who has
compassion for people and pets.
Lee Darch said he devel-
oped an interest in animals while
growing up on a dairy farm
in North Carolina. He said his
daughter Emily has a similar
background, growing up on his
cattle ranch and spending many
hours in the veterinary clinics
where he worked.
Darch built Grande Ronde
Animal Hospital, which cost at
least $600,000 with the help of a
$75,000 grant from the La Grande
Urban Renewal Agency.
“It was definitely a big help,”
he said.
Grande Ronde Animal Hos-
pital, 2400 Adams Ave., which is
for small animals, is open week-
days from 8 a.m. to noon and
1:30-5:30 p.m. For additional
information call 541-605-0833.
Photo by Dick Mason/EO Media Group
Veterinarian Lee Darch and his daughter Emily Darch, also a veterinar-
ian, examine Benson, a border collie pup, Tuesday afternoon at the
newly opened Grande Ronde Animal Hospital, La Grande.
relocation in the works
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Architectural design business moving to space next door on Adams Avenue, La Grande
By Ronald Bond
EO Media Group
LA GRANDE — Associated
Design & Engineering Services
has outgrown its office and is
moving.
The La Grande-based business,
though, won’t be too far from
where customers know it to be.
The architectural design company
is moving next door from its 1015
Adams Ave. home to the former
Growing Wise location at 1019
Adams.
The move is for a simple
reason, according to Ralph
Edwards, a co-owner and busi-
ness partner in the limited-lia-
bility company with Les Tipton
— a need for more space. Since
forming and opening in 2018,
Associated Design has added two
full-time draft persons and a part-
time draft person and also has
a part-time engineering intern.
Both part-timers are working
from home, and Edwards said
there isn’t room to have them in
the building. That’s on top of two
other businesses operating from
the same location.
“(We’d) have no space if they
came to the office,” Edwards
said. “Consequently, we basically
need four really good work sta-
tions, besides the fact that I still
run my own business, Workable
Design, out of this office, and my
wife (Cindy) runs her business,
I.D.E.A., which takes care of web-
sites and graphic design, out of
Photo by Ronald Bond/EO Media Group
Eric Lonsbury, a drafter at Associated Design & Engineering Services,
La Grande, points to photos of a home the company designed a re-
model plan for. The limited liability company, which has been at 1015
Adams Ave. since 2018, is moving in July into a larger space at 1019
Adams Ave.
Associated Design & Engineering is moving down the block to a new
home at 1019 Adams Ave., La Grande, and hopes to be in the larger
space by the beginning of July.
this office too.”
The location next door is much
larger, and having that space will
increase expansion opportunities.
“Way more room than we
really need, but man, there’s a lot
more room to grow over there,”
Edwards said. “And we could get
a nice conference table in there,
that kind of thing. We’re still
plugging along, we just need a
little more elbow room.”
The current building provides
little space to meet with clients.
“We had a meeting in here the
we need to open an office and pop-
ulate it with some people to help
take care of some of this excess
work we got,’” Edwards said. “So
that’s how this all started.”
The company takes the design
concepts of clients and works
with them to get the idea off the
ground and, ultimately, a plan that
can garner a building permit from
city or county officials.
“Just like it says on the wall
— ‘Plans to Permits’ — that’s
what we’re here for, to get you a
building permit, to get the project
other day,” he said. “We have this
little table and we had seven guys
in here from the Liberty Theatre
Foundation. We’re trying to put
this program together for them.
And there was just no room for
anybody.”
Edwards and Tipton both have
their own businesses — Edwards
runs Workable Design based in
Cove and Tipton owns Blue Eagle
Engineering in Summerville.
“We just looked at each other
and said, ‘Over 60, overworked,
what are we going to do? I think
Photo by Ronald Bond/EO Media Group
you want to do going by taking
care of everything it takes with
the people across the street (at city
hall),” Edwards said.
Unlike many in the areas,
the business was not severely
impacted by the coronavirus pan-
demic, Edwards said. It lost a
couple clients who were unable to
continue projects, but aside from
that Associated Design has con-
tinued to move ahead.
Edwards said the hope is to be
in the new location by the begin-
ning of July.
A second chance: More farms seek bankruptcy protection
“Keep hoping, keep
praying, and keep your
faith,” Theresa said. “Lord
willing, we’ll get out. He
has a plan for us.”
“I stick to the cows,”
Art said. “You have to. I
cannot stick my head in the
ground. There’s always a
way, and there’s always a
hope.”
That hope, however,
varies from moment to
moment, Kristyn said.
“When you have a good
day, it erases all the bad
days, and then you have a
bad day, and it just erases
all the good days,” she said.
Report shows farms seeking bankruptcy
protection increase five consecutive years
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By Matthew Weather
Capital Press
MABTON, Wash. —
The Mensonides family
designed its dairy with
“cow flow” in mind.
Cows enter the milking
barn in one direction and
exit a different way.
Free stalls are 3 feet
longer, giving the cows
easier access to feed and
exercise.
“Easier cow flow is
less stress for the cow,
and less stress for the cow
equals more milk for the
dairy farmer,” said Kristyn
Mensonides.
But at this dairy, it’s
the farmers who are under
stress.
The Mensonides family
is among a growing number
of family farmers who
have sought protection
under federal bankruptcy
laws as the agricultural
economy falters. In gen-
eral, the laws allow them to
prevent lenders and others
from foreclosing on land
or equipment while they
develop a plan to repay their
debts. In many cases, farms
emerge on stable financial
footing, experts say.
Art and Theresa Men-
sonides own the Mabton,
Washington, dairy. Their
daughter, Kristyn, man-
ages accounts, and another
daughter, Amy, works in
the office. Three other
daughters are not affiliated
with the dairy.
The Mensonides family
has 11,500 cows and milks
about 5,200 of them. They
raise corn, triticale and hay
for feed on 650 acres. They
employ 70 people.
The dairy filed for
Chapter 11 bankruptcy pro-
tection in June 2018. The
Mensonides family cited
the years-long drop in milk
prices and a loan for 70,000
tons of corn silage that
wound up being unusable
as feed. Their bankruptcy
plan, under which they reor-
ganized their finances, was
approved in August 2019.
Bankruptcy protection
doesn’t mean the end. The
Photo by Matthew Weaver/Capital Press
Kristyn Mensonides, left, with her parents, Thersa and Art Mensonides, at the family’s
dairy in Mabton, Washington. The dairy reorganized its finances under Chapter 11 of the
bankruptcy law.
dairy continues to operate.
“We’re still working
hard, day and night,
24-seven, 365 days a year,”
Theresa said.
Their repayment plan
was originally going to
last 15 years, but it could
be extended because of the
effects of COVID-19 on
the industry. This spring
demand from restau-
rants for milk has evap-
orated, causing prices in
some areas to drop into
single digits per hundred-
weight, far below the cost of
production.
Under the plan, the Men-
sonides family must meet
certain criteria each month.
It’s the first time the
family has filed for bank-
ruptcy protection.
“We’ve had tough times,
but we always could work it
out,” Art said.
It’s not an easy situation
for the family.
They get frustrated by
delays in the process. Con-
versations with the bank are
now done entirely through
attorneys, which adds to the
cost.
But they stick together.
‘Heartbreaking,
alarming’
A survey of court doc-
uments by the Capital
Press found during the
first quarter of 2020, 170
U.S. family farms filed for
Chapter 12 bankruptcy pro-
tection, a part of the law
designed specifically for
family farmers.
That’s up from 130 for
the same period in 2019.
Across the country,
595 family farmers sought
See, Bankruptcy/Page 8B