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About Applegater. (Jacksonville, OR) 2008-current | View Entire Issue (May 1, 2016)
8 Spring 2016 Applegater Cowboy up! BY SANSA COLLINS There’s no denying Jerry Henning is a cowboy. From his hat to his truck to the border collie circling his ankles, he’s country through and through. Everybody knows Jerry. He has lived in the Applegate Valley since 1974 and is a vital part of the community. Jerry serves on the mounted Josephine County Sheriff ’s Posse, volunteering his time and expertise to track down lost hikers. Boy, can he tell you stories. Yeah, he’s a little rough around the edges, but give his heart a spit-shine and you’ll see it’s made of gold. In 2009, Jerry was hired as a farmhand for Sanctuary One, the care farm that has since grown into a vibrant part of the Applegate Valley. Working with the frugal budget of a responsible nonprofit, he found new ways to reclaim the term “Jerry-rig.” Did an 800-pound rescue pig bust the gate latch? No problem, Jerry can fix it. Are the Angora goats rubbing their fuzzy butts on the fence again? Don’t worry, Jerry knows a guy who can hook us up with an old street sweeper brush for them to rub on instead. Need to unload thousands of pounds of donated dog food stacked Jerry Henning, farmhand at Sanctuary One since 2009, is a role model for at-risk youth who work at the farm and also a Big Brother volunteer. on pallets? Get Jerry on the tractor. If you have a barn full of hay you’d like to donate, just call us up and we’ll send him on over. Just be sure to have a slice of pie ready because this old cowboy’s sure got a sweet tooth. In addition to all the farm work, Jerry serves as a mentor for the at-risk youth who come to work at Sanctuary One. Many of these kids have no positive male role models in their lives, no one to show them by example what good work ethic is. Thanks to his time volunteering with the Big Brother program, Jerry has developed an easy, joking way with the kids. The boys especially respond to his example, soon vying to make him proud with how many irrigation pipes they can lay out or how many wheelbarrow loads of compost they can shovel into the garden. Even if they’re at the farm for only a couple of hours, the kids will leave with a positive memory of the time they came out to Sanctuary One and Jerry showed them how to “cowboy up.” When you adopt a farm animal from us, Jerry can often be hired to transport your new animal to you. Take a look at our website at www. sanctuaryone.org to see all the fun, fuzzy faces of our rescued alpacas, llamas, horses, goats, sheep, ducks, chickens, geese, cows, rabbits, and, of course, cats and dogs. Like any reputable rescue, we have a no-breeding policy to ensure that we’re not adding to the overpopulation problem. And it goes without saying that our babies should never end up on a plate. But if you just want some happy hens to scratch around the farm or a pair of goats to help keep the blackberries at bay, we encourage you to consider adopting a rescue animal. Every animal adopted into a loving home opens up space to rescue another, so when you adopt one animal from us, you’re really saving two animals. Sanctuar y One boasts a support base that is as varied as it is passionate. We are thrilled to see so many different types of people among our staff, interns, volunteers, donors, and visitors. We all have different diet and lifestyle choices, but we can all agree that the magic created at Sanctuary One transcends differences and equalizes us as human beings sharing the earth with other creatures. You might be a rancher or a vegan artist, a hippie mama, an old cowboy like Jerry, or something in between. Whoever you are, we invite you to visit the sanctuary. There is a place for you here. You might be inspired to volunteer, walk rescue dogs, or weed in our gardens. You might fall in love with one of our adoptable animals and bring home a new horse or goat to your farm. You might be moved to donate to support our amazing work. Now is the time to “cowboy up” and become a part of Sanctuary One. Sansa Collins Animal Care Manager Sanctuary One 541-899-8627 sansa@sanctuaryone.org two years, more than 250 varieties from more than 20 breeders have been pledged to open source. These include seeds from Williams breeder and seedsman Don Tipping, at Seven Seeds Farm, and from myself. More than 20 seed companies, several based in Oregon, now offer Open Source seeds. The Open Source pledge says: “You have the freedom to use these OSSI- pledged seeds in any way you choose. In return, you pledge not to restrict others’ use of these seeds or their derivatives by patents or other means, and to include this pledge with any transfer of these seeds or their derivatives.” Open Source seed is a new choice for farmers and gardeners, a choice where the grower once again is in control. A list of Open Source pledged seed and links to seed companies that sell them can be found on the Open Source Seed Initiative website at www. osseeds.org. OSSI invites anyone who has created a new variety to pledge it to open source. It also invites seed companies to partner in promoting these unrestricted seeds, and food producers, retailers, processors, and restaurants to become food partners. This is the OSSI alternative: seed that is owned by the grower and cannot be restricted. To learn more, visit the Open Source Seed Initiative at www. osseeds.org. When buying garden seeds, look for the OSSI logo. Jonathan Spero Lupine Knoll Farm spero.jonathan@gmail.com Open Source Seed: The past meets the future BY JONATHAN SPERO Not long ago, all seed was in the public domain. If you bought seeds, you owned them outright. No longer. In recent decades, the balance between the power of seed companies and the rights of those who grow plants from the seeds has shifted sharply against the grower. In the 1980s it became legal to patent seeds. Now, saving the seeds or improving them with further breeding becomes a crime. Taken together with seed industry consolidation, this means fewer choices for growers. A company can buy, and remove from production, a line that might compete with its profitable line. The farmer, once the heart of an independent society, is now at risk of becoming only a cog in someone else’s food system. There is a new choice: the Open Source Seed Initiative (OSSI). Instead of accepting restricted so-called “intellectual property” (what makes life intellectual property, anyway?), new cultivars can now be pledged to open source. Instead of accepting restricted seeds, buyers can choose open source seed varieties, which they own outright, can save, resell or improve, and, at the same time, support breeders and seed companies committed to public access. The concept of open source software says that if you create coding, you can “free” its use and commit it to be open source. If you use a sequence of open source coding in creating something new, you owe no one, but you commit that new software to likewise be available. The “free” carries forward. Applied to seed, if you use an open source-pledged seed variety to create something new, the new variety must also be open to being freely used, shared or improved by others. In less than
