WOMEN IN AG
Friday, July 2, 2021
CapitalPress.com 1
Chloe Hess: Livestock auction becomes a lifestyle
By CRAIG REED
For the Capital Press
JUNCTION CITY, Ore.
— Chloe Hess came to the
auction yard with her parents
back when she was a kid.
Then she worked at the yard
while a student at Oregon
State University. And now
she and her husband, Leon
Birky, own the Eugene Live-
stock Auction, having pur-
chased it in 2018.
“Auctions can almost
be an addiction,” said Hess
who is now 32. “We just like
auctions.”
Birky also came to the
auction with his parents. He
and Hess were drawn to the
cattle, sheep, horses, goats,
pigs, chickens and rab-
bits that went through the
auction.
When working at the
yard during her college
years, Hess met Birky, who
was working as a ringman.
They spent many hours at
the auction while dating and
can now be found at the yard
full-time. Hess works in the
offi ce while Birky hauls live-
stock to the yard, organizes
animals in the back pens and
directs animals through the
ring.
“We want to share this
Craig Reed/For the Capital Press
Chloe Hess works the front desk at the Eugene Livestock Auction. She and her
husband, Leon Birky, were previously employees of the business, but are now the
owners, having purchased it in 2018.
lifestyle with our kids,” said
Hess. “It’s fun to see our kids
start to hang around here like
we did.”
She and Birky have four
children — Hannah, 8,
Whitney, 6, Kristin, 5, and
Wade, 2.
The Eugene Livestock
Auction is in its 62nd year
of operation. Despite its
Eugene name, the yard has
a Junction City address and
is just off Highway 99.
The business had mul-
tiple owners before Bruce
Anderson and Kate Garvey
owned it from 1995 to 2018,
when they sold it to Birky
and Hess.
“They’re young and exu-
berant like I was when I
bought it,” Anderson said.
“They grew up here, they
have a sense of the work
ethic that is needed to make
the business run. As long as
there is a livestock industry,
the auction yard needs to be
there.”
The Eugene Livestock
Auction is the only live-
stock auction remaining in
Western Oregon between
Junction City and the state’s
southwestern border.
A sale is held every
Saturday beginning at
10:30 a.m. A horse sale is
held at 5 p.m. on the sec-
ond Friday of each month.
Online bidding is available
for both the Saturday and
Friday auctions.
“There’s been a defi -
nite increase in the number
of sheep and goats at the
auction,” said Hess, add-
ing there have been Satur-
day sales with 500 sheep
and 150 goats. “Also more
chickens and rabbits. Cat-
tle numbers have increased
some.
“We have more buy-
ers and buyers from far-
ther away,” she added. “The
online bidding is a conve-
nience for buyers.”
When Hess and Birky
aren’t busy at the auction
yard, they’re home looking
after their own commercial
herd of black Angus cows, a
couple heifers that their kids
have bottle fed and a small
fl ock of sheep.
“I’ve always liked live-
stock, especially cattle,”
Hess said. “We want to
share the lifestyle with our
kids and pass it on.”
Bev Mallams: Teamwork builds family ranch
By CRAIG REED
For the Capital Press
BEATTY, Ore. — “I grew up with my feet
and fi ngers in the dirt.”
With that type of childhood, it was no sur-
prise that as a young woman, Bev Mallams was
eager to have her own ranch. She and her hus-
band, Tom Mallams, made that desire a reality
in 1978, transitioning from city life, where he
was a grocery store manager and she worked in
newspaper advertising, to a ranching lifestyle.
They purchased a 480-acre hay and cattle oper-
ation 3 miles outside the small, remote town of
Beatty.
They named their ranch, the Broken Box
Ranch, “because we fi gured we’d be broke the
whole time here,” said Bev Mallams.
It didn’t turn out that way for the couple
despite 40% of their fi rst calf crop from 50 heif-
ers being aborted due to a disease.
A major benefi t for the Mallamses in those
early years of ranching was their operation was
adjacent to the ranch owned by Bev’s parents,
Bert and Margery Goff .
“Dad taught Tom the ranch business and I lis-
Craig Reed/For the Capital Press
Bev Mallams has operated tractors pulling
rakes and balers over numerous hay fi elds in
Klamath County since she and her husband,
Tom Mallams, purchased a ranch near Beat-
ty, Ore., in 1978.
tened and learned even more,” said Bev, who
had grown up feeding livestock, changing irri-
gation pipe and hauling hay on her parents’
property.
The Mallamses and Goff s shared their time
and labor on the two ranches.
The Mallamses slowly built their own cat-
tle herd and grew their own hay. They increased
their herd to 210 commercial mother cows by
the mid-1980s. They expanded their workload
to custom haying in the Beatty, Bly, Bonanza
and Dairy areas.
Bev’s specialties in the hay process were irri-
gating, raking, baling and helping load trucks.
“It’s been a very good life and we love it, but
it’s also a hard life,” said Bev, now 69.
Tom said the hard work didn’t faze his wife
of 47 years.
“She’s the hardest working person I’ve ever
been around,” Tom said. “She looks out for oth-
ers before herself. She’s the most compassion-
ate person I’ve ever known. I wouldn’t be here
without her.”
Bev said she made some good friends with
other women in the ag industry. She added that
women in ag don’t get enough credit for the
roles they play in their family operations.
“There are so many things that women do.
… Most ranches and farms can’t run without
a very good hard-working woman involved,”
she said. “That might mean working off the
ranch or farm that is then tough on the hus-
bands, but fi nancially they don’t have options
because they have to supplement the family’s
fi nances.”
Melissa Fries: Keeps track of poultry operation
By JULIA HOLLISTER
For the Capital Press
Melissa Fries doesn’t count
chickens before they hatch — she
does the counting afterward.
She leads production perfor-
mance, compliance and accounting
for Pitman Family Farms, which
produces poultry under the Mary’s
Chickens label for such markets
as Whole Foods and for upscale
restaurants.
In her job, she keeps track of
millions of free-range chickens.
The farms also produce ducks and
turkeys.
The farm fol-
lows the Global
Animal Partnership
standard for ani-
mal welfare. GAP
uses independent,
third-party certifi -
Melissa
ers to audit farms
Fries
and verify compli-
ance with standards and to ensure
all GAP-certifi ed meat products are
labeled properly.
Breeder farms produce eggs that
the company hatches as meat birds.
The farms are all across the Central
Valley with a few in Southern Cal-
ifornia. The vast operation is based
in Fresno County, Calif.
Fries tracks all costs of grow-
ing each fl ock. She can tell manag-
ers the actual cost of raising each
fl ock. This is broken down to per-
bird and per-pound numbers.
Fries also puts together other
performance measures such as feed
conversion for each fl ock.
About every eight or nine weeks
a farm will place birds.
Fries started her career as an
intern and worked her way up to
hatchery manager at Foster Farms
before moving to her present posi-
tion at Pitman Family Farms.
Ryan Jacobsen, CEO of the
Fresno County Farm Bureau, says
he has known Fries for most of his
life. In fact, they grew up together
in the same rural town: Easton,
south of Fresno.
He says seeing her fl ourish in
the poultry industry and serving in
several important roles for Pitman
Family Farms has been terrifi c.
“She is a remarkable young
leader who we were able to get
involved in Farm Bureau early
on in her career,” he said. “She is
innovative, forward-thinking and
thoughtful to the well-being of our
organization and the agricultural
community as a whole.”
Katie Murray:
Brings diverse
background to
OFS leadership
By GEOFF PARKS
For the Capital Press
Katie Murray has ridden a
vast range of experiences from
Alabama to Mongolia on the
road to becoming the execu-
tive director of the nonprofi t
food and fi ber trade organiza-
tion, Oregonians for Food and
Shelter.
Murray, 43, has been at the
helm of OFS
in Salem since
last
Decem-
ber. She has
an
unortho-
dox
resume
for
someone
now settled in
Katie
the world of
agriculture.
Murray
She earned a psycholo-
gy-philosophy degree from the
University of Alabama-Hunts-
ville and shortly thereafter
took a job teaching English
as a Peace Corps volunteer in
Mongolia.
She said that in Mongolia
“lots of Western culture was
coming into this very, very
traditional culture, and I got
particularly interested in that
around agriculture and food.”
Coming to Oregon, she
was accepted into the applied
anthropology master’s program
at Oregon State University that
featured a “natural resources
and communities” focus area.
After graduation, she worked
in the university’s Integrated
Pest Management center for 14
years before moving to OFS.
Murray said if it needed to be
summarized, the arc of her life
thus far would read, “mother of
three, breast cancer survivor,
executive director … glass ceil-
ing breaker.”
Moving into the nonprofi t
sector brought new “opened-
eyes” moments. She said she
was “a bit surprised at the num-
ber of women in some of these
lobby and executive director
roles. I’m really impressed by
the women I’ve met in this new
area who I’ve started to get to
know, and I’m glad for that.”
She said OFS has a lot of
strong partner organizations it
works with, including the Ore-
gon Farm Bureau, the Ore-
gon Cattlemen’s Association
and the Oregon Dairy Farm-
ers Association, all in the same
Salem building with OFS. All
have women directors except
the Farm Bureau, and its state
president is a woman.
So it should be a continued
smooth transition for Murray
into the director’s seat of the
OFS, with eyes focused on the
path to success.
“Agriculture and forestry
are now and will be essential to
our growing population,” Mur-
ray said. “We’ve got the need to
feed a rapidly growing popula-
tion and also balance that with
the need to make sure we’re
taking care of the needs of the
land.”
Tammy Dennee: Hard work paves path to success
By GEOFF PARKS
For the Capital Press
SALEM — Tammy Dennee
is all about cattle right now, but
her working life in agriculture
has seen her laser-focused on
ag sectors as varied as dairy,
wheat and barley.
“Last June, I got a call from
the then-Oregon Cattlemen’s
Association executive direc-
tor, Jerome Rosa, who told me,
‘I’ve accepted a position in
Arizona and I would like you
to be my successor,’” she said.
She started the job last
October. More than anything
else, hard work has been her
trademark.
“I grew up in The Dalles
and became familiar with agri-
culture in high school by pull-
ing rye (from wheat fi elds),
which makes you realize you
probably don’t want to have to
do that every summer forever,”
she said. “But agriculture is in
my blood.”
She said as her family was
poor, and she had a challeng-
ing childhood that helped her
“grow into a person who is
willing to work hard. So my
work ethic is embedded in
who I am, and I am not afraid
to work hard.”
“My love for agriculture is
really my love for association
work, which is about people,
which makes it so satisfying,”
she said.
She moved to the Willa-
mette Valley and, through con-
nections with ag producers
began working for the Ore-
gon Wheat Commission at a
staff level, even though she
claimed she “did not know
what a bushel of wheat was,
I was willing to say ‘yes’ to
hard work and showing up and
doing good work.”
That work included staff -
ing the then-new Oregon Bar-
ley Commission as well as the
wheat commission. Her net-
working abilities led her to
move to Pendleton to become
the director of member ser-
vices and then CEO of the Ore-
gon Wheat Growers League
until 2010.
After that, she worked as
an independent contractor
for wind energy companies
through the end of 2014.
Her journey then led her to
working with Tami Kerr for
the Ag in the Classroom Foun-
dation. When Kerr moved
to become executive direc-
tor of the Oregon Dairy Farm-
ers Association, Dennee went
along as its legislative director
for 5 1/2 years.
The Oregon Cattlemen’s
Association she now heads
— which represents 13,000
producers in the state — is a
two-person operation at the
moment, consisting of just
herself and communications
director Robyn Smith.
Geoff Parks/For the Capital Press
Tammy Dennee, executive director of the Ore-
gon Cattlemen’s Association.