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2 CapitalPress.com September 25, 2015 People & Places Entrepreneur hops into new field Frankie Arburua III raises free-range rabbits for meat at his sheep ranch Western Innovator For the Capital Press Frankie Arburua III Hometown: Tracy, Calif. Age: 22 producer, sheep rancher Education: Bachelor’s Julia Hollister/For the Capital Press Frankie Arburua III and business partner Nicole Kochanowski of Tracy, Calif., believe Lapin Ahpen is the only free-range rabbit operation on the West Coast. The name means “Fancy Rabbit” in Basque. In April of this year, Arbu- rua was finishing his last year in business school at the Uni- versity of the Pacific in Stock- ton when his professor told him about the San Joaquin Entrepreneur Challenge. It seemed like the perfect venue for his business plan. He was among eight con- testants in the final rounds of the competition. Each had five minutes to present the ba- sic idea and the detailed busi- ness plan that covered startup costs, sales projections and management. Arburua won the challenge and $22,500. Their business called Lapin Ahpen — mean- ing “Fancy Rabbit” in Basque — was born. “It was neat to see Frank- ie win the competition with a new ag-related business idea, as many of the partici- pants and winners have been inventions of some kind for a product or service,” said Nate McBride, director of the Northeastern California Small Business Development Center at San Joaquin Delta College. “It was also fun to see a young entrepreneur win the contest this year,” he said. “He may be the youngest winner we have had in the six years we have been running this contest. We wish Frankie success with his new business endeavor.” By BILL SCHAEFER For the Capital Press Bill Schaefer/For the Capital Press Steve Paulsen, owner of Native Roots nursery, in a plot of Hercules buckwheat, in Kimberly, Idaho. He preaches the doctrine of using indigenous species plants in landscaping and gardens. they’re of the place. A plant of the place, from the place, will react best to what it is given. Native plants have the oppor- tunity to work with the envi- ronment and the water they’re given to still be gorgeous and beautiful and perform really well for you.” Through a licensing agree- ment with the University of Idaho’s Office of Technology Transfer, Paulsen is method- ically developing an outlet to sell native plants such as penstemon, buckwheat, col- umbine and sage, to name just a few of the 36 plant varieties Calendar To submit an event, go to the Community Events calendar on the home page of our website at www. capitalpress.com and click on “submit an event.” Calendar items can also be mailed to Capital Press, 1400 Broadway St. NE, Salem, OR 97.01. Wednesday-Friday Sept. 30-Oct. 2 Harvesting Clean Energy Confer- ence, 8 a.m., Billings Hotel and Con- vention Center, Billings, Mt. http: // www.harvestcleanenergy.org/ Saturday-Sunday Oct. 3-4 Alpaca Harvest Fest, 10 a.m.-4 p.m., Alpacas of Oregon, 21.45 SW Aebischer Road, Sherwood, Ore. 50.-.48-6954 Saturday, Oct. 10 Oregon Ag in the Classroom Fall Harvest Dinner, 5-9 p.m., CH2M Hill Alumni Center, 725 SW 26th St., Corvallis, Ore. oregonaitc.org/ fall-harvest Saturday-Sunday Oct. 17-18 The All About Fruit Show, 10 a.m.-4 p.m., Clackamas County Fairplex, Canby, Ore. http: //www. homeorchardsociety.org/events/ Thursday, Oct. 22 Columbia County, Ore., Farm Bu- reau Annual Meeting, 6: .0-9 p.m., Fultano’s Pizza, 770 E. Columbia River Hwy., Clatskania, Ore. Capital Press Managers Mike O’Brien .............................Publisher Joe Beach ..................................... Editor Elizabeth Yutzie Sell .... Advertising Director Carl Sampson ................Managing Editor Barbara Nipp ......... Production Manager Samantha McLaren .... Circulation Manager Occupation: Rabbit That was just the begin- ning of the learning. “The rabbits can’t have one large pen because they all have different personalities and are territorial. Some will fight oth- ers,” Kochanowski said. “These are not the typical cuddly little bunnies. These are meat rab- bits weighing up to 12 pounds with powerful hind legs. Most of the rabbits are Beverens for their fast growth and excellent temperament. The rest of the breeds are either Californians or American Chinchillas.” Rabbits have a short gesta- tion period — one month — and the average litter is five to eight. There is also a huge mar- ket for the rabbit manure. degree in business admin- istration concentrating on marketing and entrepre- neurship, University of the Pacific, Stockton, Calif. Quote: “A complicated vision is simply a mirage. Doing one thing, and doing that thing whole-heartedly, is how we intend to change the world.” Many gardeners love to use it because it is natural. “Ours is the only free- range operation on the West Coast,” Arbarua said. “We plan to land accounts by a team effort. Nicole is good at husbandry and I tend to be a numbers-cruncher. We are just trying to get our packag- ing and pricing of our prod- ucts finalized. We plan to re- ally ramp up production over the next two years. “By September of 2017 we intend to have roughly 500 producing does if all goes as planned.” Nursery goes native to cope with dry weather KIMBERLY, Idaho — Dry and getting drier — that’s the current drought outlook for California and the Pacific Northwest, according to the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center. The issue facing landscap- ers and gardeners in the Pa- cific Northwest today is how do you maintain verdant and beautiful yards and gardens in the midst of the current water shortages. Steve Paulsen is trying to change not only the palette of gardens but also the amount of water necessary to keep gardens green and sustain- able. Paulsen, the owner of Na- tive Roots nursery in Kim- berly, Idaho, is preaching the doctrine of using indigenous plants in landscaping and gar- dens. “They offer the best solu- tion for water conservation anywhere in the continental United States,” Paulsen said of using plants native to the region. “The reason they offer the better solution is because Established 1928 Board of directors Mike Forrester ..........................President Steve Forrester Kathryn Brown Sid Freeman .................. Outside director Mike Omeg .................... Outside director Corporate officer John Perry Chief operating officer By JULIA HOLLISTER TRACY, Calif. — Frank- ie Arburua III, a farmer and sheep rancher, made a deci- sion one afternoon to change his focus: He would raise grass-fed, free-range rabbits. “We had a man drill a well on the ranch last fall and we got into a conversation about business,” he said. “He men- tioned that he had been study- ing the rabbit industry for years and that it would be a terrific opportunity for young, ambitious people to get into.” Arburua is also a sheep rancher and vice president of operations at Frank’s Basque Family Farm, and raises Ram- bouillet ewes crossed with Suffolk rams, with his father, Frank Arburua Jr. Several months later, fate lent a hand to the entrepre- neur. He met a student — Ni- cole Kochanowski — who was studying animal science at the University of Califor- nia-Davis. “I told Nicole about the possibility of raising rabbits and all of the calculations I had done,” he said. “We both fell in love with the idea and each other on our way to a business partnership.” Capital Press Thursday, Oct. 22 Livestock grazing water quality seminar, 10 a.m.-. p.m., Washington State University Extension rangeland and livestock management regional specialist Tip Hudson, retired Oregon State University rangeland ecology and management extension specialist John Buckhouse and University of California-Davis rangeland watershed specialist Kenneth Tate will address ranchers, Fairfield Community Center, 218 E. Main St., Fairfield, Wash. Tuesday-Thursday Nov. 3-5 Practical Food Safety & HACCP workshop, 8 a.m.-5 p.m. This is a comprehensive, three-day workshop, designed for those individuals respon- sible for implementing and managing a HACCP system in a food manu- facturing facility. Idaho Water Center, .22 E. Front St., CL156, Boise, Idaho, http: //www.techhelp.org/events/197/ practical-food-safety-and-haccp/ Thursday-Friday Nov. 12-13 Oregon Water Law Conference, 8 a.m.-5 p.m., Hilton Executive Tower, 921 Sixth Ave. SW, Portland, Ore., www.theseminargroup.net Friday-Sunday Nov. 13-15 Tilth Producers of Washington An- nual Conference, 9 a.m.-10 p.m., Spokane Convention Center, ..4 W. Spokane Falls Blvd., Spokane, Wash., www.tilthproducers.org he is currently cultivating. The Native Roots program began through the vision and efforts of Steve Love, Idaho’s consumer horticulturist, based at the University of Idaho’s Aberdeen Research and Ex- tension Center. Love began collecting na- tive plants in 2005. He esti- mates that he’s collected more than 1,500 plants in that time. He spends part of every summer, joined by one or two plant enthusiasts, collecting promising specimens in the higher elevations of Idaho and its neighboring states. “We’re looking for plants that people can use in their landscapes and save a signif- icant amount of irrigation wa- ter,” Love said. Love said that he is search- ing for plants that would re- quire 25 percent to 30 percent of the water required to main- tain a bluegrass lawn in south- east Idaho. “You need anywhere be- tween 25 to 36 inches (of wa- ter), depending on the year, to maintain a bluegrass lawn,” Love said. He said that the native plant plots he is developing at the Aberdeen R&E Center av- erage 6 to 8 inches of irrigated water a year. Love said that in past years he has focused collecting pen- stemons and buckwheat plant. This past year he changed his emphasis to the silene genus, commonly known as capion. During the past couple of years, he has seen a growing demand for honeybee forage plants and milkweed plants, a forage plant popular for Mon- arch butterflies. Paulsen said that he has 15 acres under production. “We’re focused on all types of plants,” he said. “We have sedges, rushes, grasses. We have shrubs, trees and forbes. Forbes are flowering plants and popular as grouse habitat. Paulsen said that he’s seen a consistent increase in de- mand for native plants. “We haven’t seen a big pop or explosion,” he said, “but we see more every year.” He sees a developing trend toward water conservation plants but that people are not fond of change and will con- tinue to use more traditional plants until the cost of water becomes too expensive for landscaping practices. “People, generally speak- ing, are not fond of change and the traditional plant world has been well ingrained and well trained and well market- ed for a long time,” Paulsen said. “As a result that kind of change we’re asking people to consider, just frankly won’t come easy and it’s going to take a catalyst in the form of money to change it.” “Still saving the planet one native plant at a time,” Paulsen said, describing the Native Roots business model. Drought is taming wild horses in Southern Nevada By JACKIE VALLEY Las Vegas Sun LAS VEGAS (AP) — The beige mare’s skin stretched tightly over her ribs as she grazed at Oliver Ranch. It’s the temporary holding area for the wild horses the Bureau of Land Management rounded up at the end of August to save them from the drought that’s parching the American West. Given the horse’s emaciat- ed frame — protruding bones and no visible fat on her neck or around her tail — BLM of- ficials assessed her condition as a one of nine, the most dire. Healthy horses are a five or six, said Karla Norris, assis- tant district manager for the BLM’s Southern Nevada Dis- trict Office. “It’s just sad,” Norris said, peering into a pen housing multiple sick horses. “That’s no way to live.” Starting in late August, the BLM rounded up 201 wild horses from the Cold Creek range northwest of Las Vegas to keep them from starving. Twenty-eight were euthanized. The horses were kept near Red Rock National Conserva- tion Area before being taken to a private facility in Utah, where they will be rehabilitat- ed for adoption or life on off- range pastures. A 1971 law requires the BLM to protect wild hors- es as “living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West.” But the symbolism cuts both ways. The situation of today’s wild horses mirrors that of many people in the modern West: clinging to a frontier mentality but depen- dent on the federal govern- ment to provide resources — water, most obviously. “They’ve lost the ability to forage for food,” Norris said. “They are not wild horses anymore.” Well-meaning people feed the horses illegally — apples, peanut butter-and-jelly sand- wiches, gummy bears, Chee- tos — even going so far as to drop off bales of hay. Because of the drought, the horses’ graz- ing lands have been stripped of vegetation, forcing them to eat the bark off Joshua trees. Like city pigeons cooing for bread crumbs, the horses have come to expect sustenance from humans, a dependency the BLM used in its favor. The bu- reau put out food and gathered the horses in days, more quick- ly than originally expected. “These (horses) are so ac- climated to people that when we put out hay and water, it was like putting out a ‘free buffet’ sign,” Norris said. Some wild horse advo- cates, including Darcy Griz- zle, who has documented and photographed the Cold Creek herd for six years, support the roundup. Grizzle said that al- though it was difficult to watch, the move was necessary. “They were going to die,” she said. Others disagree. Arlene Gawne, president of the Spring Mountain Alliance, ar- gues that only half of the hors- es should have been rounded up. The younger, healthier ones could have found new territory, she said. Entire contents copyright © 2015 EO Media Group dba Capital Press An independent newspaper published every Friday. 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