Business
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Thursday, May 6, 2021
The Observer & Baker City Herald
Mother-daughter bakery business takes off
By ANN BLOOM
For the Wallowa County Chieftain
WALLOWA COUNTY —
Do you have an anniversary
coming up? There’s a cookie for
that. Have a birthday around the
corner? There’s a cookie for that.
Wedding? Yep, there’s a cookie
for that, too.
No matter the occasion,
Rancho Road Bakery, a new
mother-daughter bakery in Wal-
lowa County, can probably pro-
vide you the cookies to commem-
orate the occasion.
Debi Warnock — the mother
— and daughter Deidre Schreiber,
started the business, named after
the road they live on, about three
months ago. It all started when
Schreiber, who attends Eastern
Oregon University, was home for
Thanksgiving break and, with a
lot of time on her hands, baked
about 300 gingerbread men that
were scattered on the counter
throughout her mother’s kitchen,
Warnock said.
“After she went back to col-
lege, I thought, ‘Hey, do you think
… ?’” said Warnock.
And the cookie-baking busi-
ness was born.
“Who would have thought
this community needed so many
cookies, but they do,” she said.
Warnock works full time as the
OSU 4-H and Family, Commu-
nity Health agent, and Schreiber
is a full-time student. The bakery
is not a full-time endeavor for the
women.
“We do it because we like to
make people happy with cookies,”
Schreiber said.
Schreiber has worked at a
bakery and Warnock has taught,
by her estimation, “hundreds of
kids in this county how to bake.”
They recently moved to a
house with a larger kitchen.
“Truly, our kitchen begs to be
baked in,” she said.
Schreiber said she “likes to
experiment and learn different
techniques and getting to enjoy
the end product. It’s a stress
reliever.”
Schreiber was in 4-H for 12
years and participated in the 4-H
cooking club.
“Who’s not happy eating a
cookie?” asked Warnock. For her,
she says, it is a relaxing, creative
outlet.
Among the cookies are sugar
cookies decorated with royal
icing, a type of icing that is used
in decorating baked goods and is
harder than regular buttercream
or powdered sugar frostings. The
duo said they spent quite a while
perfecting the recipe.
They say they have made
cookies for weddings, bridal
showers and baby showers, birth-
days, barbecues, Easter, Bible
study groups, graduations and
See, Bakery/Page 2B
Lights, lasers, action
Debi Warnock/Contributed Photo
A plate of tulip cookies made at the new
Rancho Road Bakery.
Court hears
arguments
over ranch’s
‘grazing
preference’
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
Myers, the farmer, partic-
ipated in early trials and has
ordered two robots for 2022. He
estimates a single unit will save
him 23 man-hours per acre per
growing season — a big deal
since his labor costs are up 40%
during the past five years.
Each robot is equipped with
artificial intelligence technology,
12 cameras, eight lasers, a GPS
and a safety scanner.
When a farmer buys a robot,
Carbon Robotics’ engineers
pre-program it to recognize field
boundaries and furrows and to
differentiate between wanted
crops and unwanted weeds.
The robots are then sent out to
zap weeds. The fine-tuned lasers
can kill 100,000 weeds per hour
with blasts of thermal energy —
about 15 to 20 acres per day.
Paul Mikesell, Carbon
Robotics’ CEO, said he came up
JORDAN VALLEY — An
Oregon family wants to con-
vince a federal appeals court that
its ranch’s “grazing preference”
was canceled contrary to the U.S.
Bureau of Land Management’s
own regulations.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals heard oral arguments on
Monday, May 3, in the lawsuit,
which raises questions about the
interaction between private lands
and public grazing allotments.
After losing a permit to graze
on 30,000 acres of BLM allot-
ments in nearby Idaho, ranchers
Mike and Linda Hanley leased
their private “base property” in
Jordan Valley to their daughter
and son-in-law, Martha and John
Corrigan.
When the Corrigans applied
for a new grazing permit
— citing the private ranch’s
“grazing preference” to the allot-
ments — the BLM rejected the
request in 2017.
The BLM claimed the prop-
erty’s grazing preference, which
gave it priority for access to public
allotments, was lost along with
Hanley’s grazing permit.
The agency’s interpretation of
the preference rules was upheld
by a federal judge last year, but an
attorney for Hanleys and Corri-
gans has now asked the 9th Circuit
to overturn that decision.
Alan Schroeder, the family’s
attorney, argued that BLM must
undertake a separate legal pro-
cess to eliminate the grazing pref-
erence, which provides the ranch
property with first-priority access
to permits for nearby grazing
allotments.
The Hanleys and Corri-
gans believe the BLM’s decision
could set a troubling precedent
for ranchers’ due process rights,
since they weren’t allowed to chal-
lenge the BLM’s elimination of
their property’s valuable grazing
preference.
The controversy has also con-
cerned ranch groups, such as the
See, Robots/Page 2B
See, Grazing/Page 2B
Carbon Robotics/Contributed Photo
The robot from Carbon Robotics of Seattle is as big as a medium-sized tractor, can work through the night and uses lasers to zap weeds.
Like ‘Star Wars’: Startup offers robots that kill weeds with lasers
By SIERRA DAWN McCLAIN
Capital Press
NYSSA — Each year, vege-
table farmer Shay Myers hires
hundreds of workers to plant,
weed and harvest approximately
4,000 acres of produce in Nyssa.
But that may change. Myers
hopes to transfer his weeding
work to robots.
Myers, CEO of Owyhee Pro-
duce, is an early adopter of
a Seattle robotics company’s
“autonomous weeder,” a self-
driving, diesel-powered robot
about as big as a medium-sized
tractor that zaps weeds with
powerful laser beams.
Carbon Robotics introduced
the latest iteration of the tech-
nology in April.
“The idea of weeding robots
to me, when I first heard of it,
was like science fiction. I mean,
it just seemed so far-fetched,”
Myers said.
Other farmers described the
Carbon Robotics/Contributed Photo
This undated photo shows a Carbon Robotics autonomous weeder in a field. Nyssa
vegetable farmer Shay Myers is an early adopter of the Seattle robotics company’s
self-driving, diesel-powered robot.
robots as “extremely futuristic”
and “like ‘Star Wars.’”
The company says its robots
will save farmers money by
reducing their reliance on
labor crews. Because the units
use a certified organic, no-till
method of weed killing, Carbon
Robotics says its robots also cut
herbicide costs.
Grande Ronde Hospital Foundation wraps year with online event
Fundraising organization is working to
improve ICU, patient communication, more
By PHIL WRIGHT
The Observer
Grande Ronde Hospital Foundation/Screenshot
Matt and Kylee Goodwin in this image from a Grande Ronde Hospital Foundation vid-
eo tell how the loss of their baby Andrew in March 2020 led to their efforts to fundraise
for a cuddle cot for Grande Ronde Hospital, La Grande. The cot allows grieving family
members to stay longer with babies who die.
LA GRANDE — The Grande
Ronde Hospital Foundation
wrapped up its fundraising year
in April with a livestream event
that showcased the organiza-
tion’s efforts and brought in about
$6,000.
Foundation Manager Patrick
Flynn said the online happening
on the evening April 16 went
better than he had hoped, and the
80-minute video has drawn at
least 1,100 views, so the Founda-
tion’s message continues to get
out. Going to a livestream event,
he said, was due to COVID-19.
“As with everyone this last
year, COVID kind of blew every-
thing up. We normally have our
gala in mid to late March and
that event is our largest fund-
raiser,” Flynn said.
But two days before the
gala in 2020, Gov. Kate Brown
ordered the first shutdown of
Oregon.
“We were about to head out
to decorate the venue,” he said,
“and we got the notice.”
The outbreak at that time was
small in Oregon with most cases
in the Portland area.
“We just didn’t anticipate it
being a statewide shutdown,” he
said.
Neither did other organizations
or events throughout Oregon. And
after a year, he said, the founda-
tion realized it was not going to
be able to have a live gala in 2021,
either. Some brainstorming led to
a couple of ideas.
One was to livestream a gala.
He said organizations taking
that road have met with different
degrees of success, but he ulti-
mately did not see it as viable
for capturing what the gala was
about. The foundation during the
See, GRHF/Page 3B