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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 27, 2019)
A6 THE ASTORIAN • TuESdAy, AuguST 27, 2019 Dry farming: Climate more forgiving for plants Continued from Page A1 It’s a historic agricultural practice, but until recently it has remained widely unheard of on the Oregon Coast. In 2015, Amy Garrett, an assistant professor at Ore- gon State University, kick- started a dry farm trial that now stretches across the state. As of 2019, three farms on the coast partici- pate in the trial, two of them just a short drive from down- town Astoria. “It seems like the coast is a really good place for dry farming, mostly because of the climate,” said Matthew Davis, the project coordina- tor at Oregon State for dry farm site suitability. “It’s a lot cooler on the coast … It’s just a more forgiving place.” Davis began working with the project in May under professor Alex Stone and alongside Garrett. Their research is ongoing. Davis visited both North Coast farms in May, where he installed plants and soil moisture monitors. The mon- itors are inserted and left in the ground, where the small white rods and green cords help scientists and farmers know how much moisture is being held in the soil below. “Dry farming doesn’t mean that no water is used by the plant,” Davis said. “Water is stored in the soil, it’s held there.” The farm’s soil type con- trols how much water is held. On the coast, moist soil and a high water table, cou- pled with the cool, damp cli- mate is the reason both farms have seen success. “The plants are less stressed, I think, in the coastal environment,” Gar- rett said. “Teresa was kind of our pioneer there.” Quality, not quantity Retzlaff got involved with the project in 2016, and has dry farmed a por- tion of her plants ever since. This year, she is dry farming eight rows of produce for the trial’s research and 10 addi- tional rows on her own. Dry farming is not a yield-maximization strat- egy. In order for dry farming to work, plants are plotted more sparsely to decrease competition and help ensure each plant’s roots has access to enough water. “You can’t plant as densely as you would if you are irrigating,” Retzlaff said. “Because all the moisture they have is just what’s in Sarah Zimmerman/AP Photo Republicans show their support of a GOP walkout outside the state Capitol in Salem in June. Hailey Hoffman/The Astorian Winter squash grows in a dry bed on LaNa’s Conscious Farm and relies on rain and moisture within the earth to survive. Continued from Page A1 the soil.” But for Retzlaff, her main goal isn’t the quantity of produce, it’s the quality. Dry-farmed produce typ- ically has a stronger flavor and a firmer texture. Retzlaff strongly prefers the taste of her dry-farmed crops. Oregon State’s small farms collaborative con- ducted blind taste tests, where consumers and farm- ers preferred the dry-farmed produce over the same vari- ety that was irrigated. “They have a very intense flavor because they’re not watery,” Retzlaff said. “Because you’re not water- ing them.” Last year, 46 North Farm sold their dry-farmed pro- duce to local restaurants. The Astoria Golf and Coun- try Club’s kitchen bought more than 80 pounds of dry- farmed zucchini and squash. “They had a really nice, concentrated flavor,” said chef Gehrett Billinger, who used the produce on spe- cialty dishes, to create kim- chi and to flavor beverages and meat marinades. “It’s a really really delightful flavor.” “And,” he said, “I like that it uses less resources.” Resource conservation is one of the aspects that ini- tially sparked the dry-farmed trial, and it’s a theme that keeps farmers and research- ers coming back year after year. As the climate changes, summer water availability has become a pressing issue. “It’s of more interest now because of drought and decreased summer water availability,” Garrett said. “A lot of people are looking at alternatives to irrigated Softball team: Area sponsors were crucial to creation of Future Fish Continued from Page A1 The first tournament the Future Fish played this sea- son was against the Silver Bullets, which draws from a larger pool of players. “We got beat kind of bad,” Svensen said. “We were all looking at each other like, ‘What did we get ourselves into?’ But from that first game till our last tournament in nationals that we played in Newberg … we played eight games in four days and it was double elimination and we were still one of the teams play- ing on Sunday for the con- solation championship.” The team had the oppor- tunity to play at NAFA Western Nationals and they got fifth place. “For a new team that has never played, seeing them at the end versus seeing them at that first game with the Silver Bullets was a night-and-day difference,” he said. “It’s not the same kids. They went from kids that played softball to like little softball players and they were actually playing the game the right way. “And so parents seeing that, I think they get excited about it …to see a kid grow and improve. They enjoyed it.” Svensen said baseball was the favorite part of his Fines: GOP able to claim political wins after both walkouts childhood in Astoria. “And so when I think back when I was a kid, that’s what I remember. I remember that was fun … so the more kids that get to do that, I think it’s a good thing.” Warrenton Fiber and Big River Construction are the two major sponsors for the team and pay for all the tournaments, as well as a portion of the parents’ hotel expenses. “We went into this thinking — when Alina and I were trying to set this up — how can we do this so a parent’s never going to say, ‘I can’t do it, I can’t afford it?’ So we structured it in a way to where we think we accomplished that.” They could not have cre- ated Future Fish without the sponsors, Svensen said, and they are committed to con- tinuing to fund the team for years to come. The coaches and spon- sors feel gratified when they see the girls have fun and feel good about their performance, he said. “And just the competi- tiveness and the pride that they put into how hard they worked and seeing suc- cess,” Svensen said. “I’m sure it feels good (for them) and I’m trying to raise tough little girls and that’s part of it.” crop production in our dry season.” The farmers that partici- pate in the trial meet annu- ally to discuss how specific crops weathered the dry season and exchange ideas to improve the next year’s yield. “I think that this collab- orative approach of adapt- ing to a changing climate is super important given the predictions for summer water availability into the future,” she said. “We’re going to see a lot less of it.” Coastal farmers, whose summer season is cooler and wetter than farmers in the Willamette Valley, are still paying attention to summer water access. “Water is one of those resources, I feel like espe- cially out here on the coast, we really take for granted because it feels like it’s so abundant,” Retzlaff said. “Just because you have a lot of it doesn’t mean you have to use all of it. “If you’re a farmer and you’re irrigating with that water or you’re pulling that water out of a creek or a stream in August, that’s water that’s not being left in a waterway to help fish habitat and wildlife habi- tat. I think the more we can share with wildlife habitat, the better.” Inherent risk Retzlaff recognizes that not all farmers can practice dry farming. There is inher- ent risk with the technique. It requires fertile, moist soil and more land to produce the same yield. For some crops, dry farming is not a profit- able practice. “Part of the learning curve is finding out which crops you can break even on,” she said. “The zucchini has more than paid for itself already,” as have some of the squash varieties. Other products, such as the dry beans, won’t make it to the public market, but will feed the 46 North Farm team throughout the upcoming season. Retzlaff will likely harvest just one or two mel- ons per plant this year. But even without the high yield, she saved time and money by not paying for water or labor to irrigate the plants for months. “I feel like that’s profit- able,” Retzlaff said. “There’s also the knowledge. To me, that’s a huge return on investment.” There is also an economic incentive. On the Nelson’s farm, their winter water bill is typically around $35 a month. In the summer, that bill can be up to $250. “I am fascinated in grow- ing things without water because water is a big expense,” Nelson said. “The dry farming for me is just another aspect of the farm- ing itself. It’s another tool in the tool shed that we can uti- lize to grow some things less expensive.” Both farms still irrigate the majority of their crops, but they are hopeful to con- tinue transitioning and evolving their dry farming for many seasons to come. “The more that I can do dry-farmed, the more that I will do,” Retzlaff said. “It’s less of a resource that we’re pulling on, and I honestly feel like the plants are bet- ter for it.” Twice during the 2019 Legislature, Republicans brought the Senate to a halt by walking out in protest. They were able to claim political victories both times. During the first walk- out, Gov. Kate Brown killed bills regulating guns and vaccinations to bring them back. Democrats announced during the second walkout that they would no longer pursue a controversial car- bon pricing bill, though they said that legislation died because they didn’t have the votes within their own party. To date, Senate Dem- ocrats haven’t imposed any punishment on their peers for walking from the Capitol. “Stopping the work of the people by denying a quorum is unconsciona- ble and undemocratic. Sen- ate Democrats will work to protect Oregon’s democ- racy by giving Oregonians and their representatives more tools to stop any future quorum denials,” state Sen- ate Majority Leader Ginny Burdick, D-Portland, said in a statement. “I hope our Republican colleagues now see that this is not a tac- tic that should ever be used again, and that they will work with us to prevent either party from walking off the job.” Burdick’s statement comes after Senate leaders were peppered by reporters asking if they were going to issue fines. Through- out the past two months, the Oregon Capital Bureau asked several times about the fines, and each time was told that they were going to be issued. The issue was brought back to the foreground last week when a coalition of unions and liberal groups escalated the kerfuffle after noticing a political action committee set up to help pay for the absent lawmak- ers’ expenses while gone out of state has donated to each Republican senator. The coalition has updated its state elections complaint against the 11 Republican senators, con- tending it’s unlawful to use campaign donations to pay for their political exodus. Patty Wentz, a spokes- woman for the coalition, said the complaint still stands. The only senator who’s paid his $3,500 fine is Sen. Brian Boquist, R-Dal- las. He did so to establish grounds to sue Senate Pres- ident Peter Courtney in fed- eral court, claiming he has no authority to issue such fines. Boquist’s check has not been cashed. Rick Osborn, the spokes- man for Senate Demo- crats, said the retreat from the fines was not because the caucus believed it could be on shaky legal ground. Rather, it was to save tax- payers from funding a legal fight. Senate Democrats said that “imposing the fines would have been bogged down by lengthy litiga- tion and hundreds of thou- sands of dollars in taxpay- er-funded legal fees.” The Oregon Capital Bureau is a collaboration between EO Media group, Pamplin Media group and Salem Reporter. Solar power: Room on the roof for more panels Continued from Page A1 The students identified the least shady spot on top of the high school to place the array and designed a digital mock-up. Green Ridge Solar was hired to install the array. “Some students might go into those types of fields,” Shumaker said. “Others probably won’t. They’ll do something else. But I think it’s still helpful just to know that, even if you don’t want to focus on the technical side of it, just to know that a solar panel works, even in a cloudy place like this.” Each 300-watt panel comes with a micro inverter to turn the DC electricity into AC. The array will connect to a meter inside the school showing how much power the panels produce, and how much that saves the school district. Josh Jannusch, an assis- tant principal and technology teacher at the high school, sees the solar array adding to curriculum, with students creating projects out of mon- itoring the school’s energy usage and production. “We definitely have room on the roof for more solar panels,” he said. “Hopefully with the success of this pro- gram, we can parlay it into future projects.” This isn’t the school dis- trict’s first attempt at solar panels. Warrenton Grade School hosted a small solar array in the early 1980s, but the technology did not Photos by Edward Stratton/The Astorian Installers with Green Ridge Solar assemble a 3 kW solar array on the roof of Warrenton High School. Stephen Shumaker, left, an instructor with Clatsop Community College’s Upward Bound Summer Academy, had his students design a new solar array installed on top of Warrenton High School. prove successful, said Mike Moha, the district’s business manager. State law requires 1.5% of public contracts for new buildings to be spent on green energy such as solar or woody biomass. The school district recently held a community forum with the Energy Trust of Oregon on engineering energy effi- ciency into the middle school at its new Dolphin Avenue master campus. “I was just excited with the … thoughtful design of trying to build it to take advantage of natural sun- light, natural wind, the tem- perate environment, mak- ing sure those sort of crucial aspects are in play,” said Tom Rogozinski, the school superintendent. “We’re always open to money and treating the envi- ronment right,” he said.
