4 Summer 2009 Applegater
Advertiser Highlight:
Take a walk with me
Photo: Lee Webb
BY ALIANOR TRUE
Takubeh Organic
Farm & Garden Warehouse opens
in Williams
Takubeh Organic Farm & Garden Warehouse believes in “Keepin’ it
Local.” The owners, Todd and Duane Rumery, started offering garden supplies
in 2005 as a “community service and hobby, on pallets in the driveway shed” of
their property. Since then Takubeh has expanded and, after opening earlier this
year, is now thriving at 20690 Williams Highway in the heart of Williams next
to Kenny’s Auto and across from the Williams Country Store.
The Rumerys have a strong family background in farming and gardening.
Duane tells us Todd is a “fourth generation resident of the Applegate watershed
and proud of it!” Some folks may remember his great grandparents, Clarence
and Irene Trumbly, who settled here from Oklahoma at the location of the old
Dutch Barn on Highway 238 on your way to Grants Pass. The Rumerys are
uniquely qualified for their farm and garden business. Todd’s experience includes
organic farming and greenhouse management at Pacific Northwest farms and at
his parent’s greenhouse in New Castle, Colorado. Duane’s “passion is healing
through nutrition and herbs” and “has taken this love and directed it toward the
study and application of soil and plant health.” At Takubeh, they can give advice
on your garden needs.
With the same awareness as many Applegate businesses, they strongly
believe in “Keepin’ it Local,” saving on fuel, and using local area suppliers as much
as possible. Duane says, “We’ve got what you need or we’ll get it!”
Stop in to see the variety of farm and garden supplies and talk with Todd
and Duane.
They are open:
Monday - Friday 9 am to 1 pm, and 3pm to 6pm.
Saturday - 9am to 1pm
Closed Sunday
Phone: 541-846-0420.
Curious about the business name? Takubeh means “the beautiful place” in
the native language of the Takilma people who once inhabited this fertile valley
in Williams.
Ruth Austin • 541-899-7476
To highlight your business in the Applegater,
call Ruth Austin at 541-899-7476
Take a walk with me up Forest
Creek, up Thompson Creek, or the hills
around Sterling Creek. Take a walk with
me and I’ll show you what I see: a black-
tailed deer grazing on fresh shoots, a grouse
roaming the clearings in search of a mate, a
clump of fawn lily and Indian paintbrush
emerging from the soil. I see black scales
of char on the trunks of pine and fir,
and round pockets of ash where piles of
debris have burned. I may smell smoke if
I’m walking soon after a prescribed burn,
or see low flames creeping through the
ground litter of needles, leaves and smaller
sticks and twigs. Perhaps in a few weeks
I’ll see some red needles on a pine, or the
curled branches of a Douglas fir scorched
in a hot spot. Putting all these things
together, I see a landscape moving towards
balance, a landscape made healthier by the
reintroduction of fire.
It seems a little odd to me to write
of the “reintroduction” of fire, a natural
force that has always been a part of the
West, and always will be. But of natural
disturbances that have contributed to
the local area’s uniqueness: fire, floods,
wind events, regular climate events, and
volcanic activity, wildfire is the force
most under the human thumb. The event
most contained in the last hundred years,
the most corralled, the most threatened.
Perhaps wildfire is also the most important,
the most vital to restore. It may be the only
one we have the chance to reestablish, this
time in a controlled manner, renewing our
forests and rangelands to a prior health,
one known before human settlement and
fire suppression.
The recent history of the area
is defined by human use: ranching,
homebuilding, recreation and harvest.
Our forested areas have come to be seen
as ‘natural’ and pristine, even without the
regular beneficial role of fire. The human
uses of the land have displaced wildfire
as a regular player in Southern Oregon’s
ecosystems. Wildfire has grown to be a
misunderstood creature, seeking its way
back into its native homeland, unable to
regard the changes that have taken place
in its 100-year absence. Summer wildfires
that race unpredictably through developed
areas are understandably too dangerous
to let run their course through homes
and ranchlands. In the spring, fall and
winter, however, prescribed fire is taking
its place, slowly and surely creeping its
way back to the hillsides and meadows
of Southern Oregon. Prescribed fire is
shaping the environment in a way similar
to the way wildfire did for thousands of
years, before the Applegate was a river, a
valley, a reservoir, or a way of life.
The argument most often given to
support prescribed fire is the “pay me now
or pay me later” approach. The idea that
fire is inevitable in the western landscape
we now populate, and that the controlled
burn effects we cope with in the spring
and fall are insignificant compared to
the billowing white towers of smoke that
appear like omens over western forests
every July and August. But the truth is,
fires in the forests of the west are a fact, and
prescribed fire is a gift. Those who promote
‘natural forests’ or preservation of nature in
America’s wildlands should love the smell
of smoke, the charred catface in a huge
ponderosa pine, the temporary blackened
ground and the future wildflowers. They
should love the signs and effects of fire as
they do the floods that carve the dramatic
gorges of the Grand Canyon, the powerful
winds that shape sand dunes and the
churning waters crashing into Oregon’s
coastlines.
Introducing fire into the woods in
the wetter spring, fall, and winter months,
best preserves the state of the forests as we
know them. Thus lowering the potential
for stand-replacing fire events, that turn the
pine-fir forests we know to a moonscape of
lifeless poles and ash craters. Introducing
controlled fire allows the summer wildfires
that do occur to burn with less dramatic
effects. It allows summer wildfires to claim
their previous place in the forest. The past
history of southern Oregon wildfires may
not indicate pile burns in January, but
doing so allows spring underburning to
occur without torching the overstory. And
spring underburning prevents wildfires
from completely changing the landscape in
August, when a lightning strike may forever
change the hillsides of the Applegate Valley
as we know them. Prescribed fire is an
incremental approach, a gentle loosening
of the dam, restoring the flow of flames in a
way the forests, the native flora and fauna,
and humans, can gradually cope with, one
season at a time.
So, let me ask you again. Take a walk
with me through the hills surrounding the
Applegate Valley. Let me show you what I
see, and let’s imagine what we could see, if
this was a different valley. One that hasn’t
been treated with prescribed fire, one
that perhaps has seen instead the effects
of catastrophic wildfire (the kind that
nature never intended) that was fueled
by thick tangled woods and underbrush
and the heat and drought of August. Back
in the hills overlooking Forest Creek and
Thompson Creek, maybe you’ll see the
beauty in the blackened trunks of the
mature trees, the wildflowers pushing
through the ash, and open gaps in the
mosaic that is a vibrant forest. Maybe you’ll
rush to get through the lingering smoke,
but perhaps you’ll appreciate and support
the role of prescribed fire in preserving this
Applegate valley, these hills, this river, and
this way of life.
Alianor True • 541-472-5203
• Editor, Wildfire: A Reader, Island Press,
2001.
• Contributor to American Nature
Writing 2002 (Fulcrom Press), American
Nature Writing 2000 (Oregon State
University Press), American Nature Writing
1998 (Sierra Club Books), all edited by
John Murray.
Editor’s Note: Alianor True is a
writer, local resident, former wildland
firefighter/fuels technician.