A2
THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, DECEMBER 24, 2019
Entrepreneurs profi t from parasitic mistletoe
IN BRIEF
Harmful to
individual trees
Astoria woman injured
after being hit by car
A 34-year-old Astoria woman was injured Saturday
night after being hit by a car.
The driver of the vehicle turned onto 11th Street from
Commercial Street when he struck the woman, knock-
ing her down.
The woman was taken to Columbia Memorial Hospi-
tal in Astoria and later taken to a Portland-area hospital.
The driver was cited for failing to yield to a pedestrian.
Warrenton family injured in crash
A Warrenton family was injured in a fatal crash near
Quincy, Washington, on Dec. 16.
Sarah Scheid, 37, of Warrenton, was driving on State
Route 28 when she slid off the road into a ditch.
After the vehicle slid off the road, it was hit by a
vehicle that also slid off the road.
Scheid and her fi ve children were injured and taken
to a nearby hospital. The passenger in their vehicle,
Lynn Coffman, 64, of Tacoma, Washington, died at the
scene.
The driver of the other vehicle was uninjured.
Steelhead closure extended
on Columbia River
Oregon and Washington state fi shery managers
announced Monday they are extending a steelhead fi sh-
ing closure on the Columbia River.
Fishing for steelhead will be closed upstream of the
McNary Dam to the Oregon and Washington state line
through March 31. This closure expands on conserva-
tion measures that have been in place since July to pro-
tect certain steelhead stocks in the Columbia and Snake
river basins.
The return of 2019 summer steelhead to the McNary
Dam was the fi fth-lowest return on record since 1954.
Fishery managers say the closure is necessary to maxi-
mize the survival of the fi sh and ensure there are enough
to meet hatchery brood stock production needs.
— The Astorian
Appeals court orders more action
to protect salmon, steelhead
A federal appeals court ruled Friday that the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency must do more to pro-
tect Columbia basin salmon and steelhead from danger-
ously warm river temperatures.
The ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
came in response to a lawsuit fi led by environmental
and fi shing groups. It upheld a 2018 ruling by a federal
judge in Washington that the EPA had failed to meet its
responsibilities under the Clean Water Act. Specifi cally,
the states of Oregon and Washington failed to protect
salmon from waters that got too warm.
In her opinion for the appeals court, Judge M. Mar-
garet McKeown wrote that the two states have not taken
up the responsibility to craft what are called total max-
imum daily load standards, which would restrict activ-
ities that lead to dangerously high water temperatures.
“Because Washington and Oregon have conclusively
refused to develop and issue a temperature TMDL for
the Columbia and Snake rivers, the EPA is obligated to
act,” she wrote. “The time has come – The EPA must
do so now.”
Conservation groups that brought the legal challenge
say high river temperatures are the result of climate
change and the large, shallow reservoirs behind dams
built on the Columbia and Snake rivers.
— Oregon Public Broadcasting
DEATHS
Dec. 21, 2019
BEEMER, Genevie
Yvonne, 97, of Clats-
kanie, died in Clatskanie.
Ocean View Funeral &
Cremation Service of
Astoria is in charge of the
arrangements.
DAVIS, Jack, 50, of
Seaside, died in Seaside.
Hughes-Ransom Mor-
tuary is in charge of the
arrangements.
MANIRE, Ruth Ann,
78, of Warrenton, died
in Warrenton. Ocean
View Funeral & Cre-
mation Service of Asto-
ria is in charge of the
arrangements.
Dec. 20, 2019
HAWKINS, Benja-
min, 35, of Astoria, died
in Astoria. Hughes-Ran-
som Mortuary is in charge
of the arrangements.
MEMORIAL
Saturday, Dec. 28
GRIFFEY, Gail — Visitation from 10 to 11 a.m.,
memorial at 11 a.m., Hughes-Ransom Mortuary
Chapel, 576 12th St.
ON THE RECORD
DUII
• Carrie Ann Godwin, 44, of Astoria, was arrested
Saturday on Brownsmead Hill Road in Astoria for
driving under the infl uence of intoxicants, unlawful
use of a motor vehicle, criminal trespass in the second
degree and hit-and-run.
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By MATEUSZ
PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
After more than a decade
in business, Garrett Huggins
doesn’t aspire to become a
mistletoe magnate.
Huggins is content to earn
most of his income as a union
carpenter while selling the
wild-harvested holiday crop
through his family’s com-
pany, Genuine Oregon Mis-
tletoe, as a sideline.
“We don’t expect it to
become a million-dollar
company, but it does make
Christmas happen for us, you
know?” he said.
Though they get plenty of
help from friends and fam-
ily, Genuine Oregon Mistle-
toe is basically a two-person
operation: Garrett collects
the mistletoe from oak trees
in s outhern Oregon while
his wife, Ashley, handles the
marketing.
Both help tie strands of
the leafy perennial into bun-
dles with ribbon and package
them for shipping.
“When people call, they
talk to me,” Ashley said.
“He didn’t want to deal with
the customer service side of
things.”
Wholesale parasite
The Huggins are similar to
other mistletoe entrepreneurs
in Oregon, where the para-
sitic plant commonly infects
oak trees. They see it as a fun
yet frantic way to earn extra
money in the weeks leading
up to the holidays.
“The season is really
short,” Ashley said.
Genuine Oregon Mistle-
toe is run as a wholesale oper-
ation, selling about 10,000
bundles of mistletoe a year to
nurseries, Christmas tree lots,
Boy Scout troops and other
holiday retailers around the
U.S.
The company has grown
more sophisticated over time.
Ashley’s uncle built a
website that’s made Genu-
ine Oregon Mistletoe more
prominent than in the early
days, when it was dependent
mostly on word-of-mouth.
Meanwhile,
Garrett’s
uncle lends him a truck
equipped with a boom crane
so he no longer has to endan-
ger life and limb climbing
ladders to the upper reaches
of oak trees on a family
member’s farm in s outhern
Oregon.
“I don’t want to risk it,
because if I were to get hurt,
that would affect my full-
time job,” he said.
Shotgun harvest
For smaller-scale mistle-
toe sellers, blasting the plant
out of a tree with a shotgun
is often the preferred method
Photos by Mateusz Perkowski/Capital Press
Garrett Huggins and his wife, Ashley, prepare bundles of mistletoe for sale to retailers around the U.S.
MISTLETOE MYTHS
Though mistletoe is now commonly associated with the
Christmas holidays, the plant’s role in seasonal rituals pre-
dates Christianity.
The ancient druids, for example, would harvest mistletoe
with a golden sickle and catch the strands in white cloth
before they hit the ground, thereby protecting their sup-
posedly “magical” properties.
In ancient Rome, two white bulls were sacrifi ced during mis-
tletoe harvest, and the plant was believed to restore fertility
when mixed with drink, according to the Roman natural
philosopher Pliny the Elder. These rites are one explanation
for the plant’s association with kissing.
According to Norse mythology, the god Baldr was shielded
from harm from any plant that grew in the ground. How-
ever, because mistletoe doesn’t grow from the soil, the mali-
cious god Loki arranged to have Baldr killed with an arrow
or spear made of mistletoe.
When Badr was eventually resurrected in some versions of
this tale, his mother, the goddess Frigg, was so overjoyed
that she declared that mistletoe symbolized love and peace.
— Mateusz Perkowski
of harvest.
In their early years of
collecting mistletoe, Janey
Lee-Sutton and her grandson
borrowed a 12-gauge shotgun
from the farmer who owned
the infected oak trees, but she
eventually bought herself a
smaller caliber .410-gauge.
“I found the .410 doesn’t
damage the mistletoe as
much as the 12-gauge,”
Lee-Sutton said.
The idea of selling mistle-
toe was sparked by a request
from her grandson, Malachi,
who was then 4 years old, to
buy Christmas presents for
their family.
Since he didn’t have any
money or a job, Lee-Sutton
decided that selling mistle-
toe at a nearby grocery story
would be a good learning
opportunity.
Malachi borrowed some
money for baggies and rib-
bons, which he later repaid
his grandmother while pock-
eting the profi ts.
“I wanted to teach him a
bit of economics,” she said.
Once the boy grew older
and took a gun safety course,
Malachi helped with the
shooting but discovered that
growing older also has its
disadvantages.
“He started noticing that
as he was bigger, people
wouldn’t buy as much, so he
started to bring his little sis-
ter,” Lee-Sutton said.
With his younger sibling,
Miko, serving as the public
face of the operation, sales
rebounded, and they ended
up earning as much as $400
per year.
Malachi outgrew the
mistletoe business once he
became a teenager — he’s
now a high school football
player — and the farmer who
provided access to the mistle-
toe died, with his family sell-
ing off the property.
“It was a great bonding
experience for me and my
grandchildren,” Lee-Sutton
said.
Larger operation
While the mistletoe opera-
tion run by Trillium Gardens
is considerably larger, annu-
ally selling about 700,000
bundles through a distributor,
it’s also not the main business
for the native plant nursery
based in Eugene.
Owner Sheila Klest began
Ashley Huggins holds a bundle
of female mistletoe that
contains berries of the parasitic
plant. Mistletoe is harmful to
individual trees but serves a
valuable ecological purpose.
selling mistletoe about two
decades ago and now col-
lects “thousands of pounds”
a year from oak trees up to
100 miles from the nursery,
with the permission of the
landowners.
“It’s at least a semi-truck
load but probably a lot more
than that,” she said.
When harvesting such
massive amounts of the plant,
Klest has found it’s most effi -
cient to hire people to climb
the trees. Though they’re
strapped into harnesses, it’s
still a precarious proposition
that requires skill.
“Oak trees can be kind of
dangerous to climb because
you can’t tell if a limb is rot-
ted through or not,” Klest
said.
Fragile crop
The plant can be diffi -
cult to handle, as it’s fragile
and gets moldy easily, and
not everything collected is
of salable quality, since its
leaves can get sun-burned or
drought-stressed, she said.
Finding the best locations for
optimal harvest also requires
a certain expertise.
“Not every oak tree is
going to have mistletoe, or
not very much,” Klest said.
“You get a sense of what to
do and how to handle it.”
Ocean
Park
boy dies
in crash
Chinook Observer
LONG BEACH, Wash.
— An 11-year-old boy from
Ocean Park died in a crash
on Sandridge Road on Fri-
day and other members of
his family were injured after
another vehicle crossed into
their lane, the Pacifi c County
Sheriff’s Offi ce said .
Gavin LeHotta, an enthu-
siastic motorcycle racer, was
in a south bound Jeep Cher-
okee driven by his father,
Steve LeHotta, at about
4:28 p.m. when a north-
bound Dodge Ram pickup
crossed into the Jeep Chero-
kee’s lane . Responding offi -
cers found the Jeep Chero-
kee on its driver’s side down
a slight embankment. The
pickup had extensive and
severe driver’s side front-
end damage, the sheriff’s
offi ce said.
A witness told offi cers
that they saw the pickup
swerve into the southbound
GoFundMe
Gavin LeHotta proudly displays his many motorcycle racing awards.
lane several times before
the collision, according to
the sheriff’s offi ce. Depu-
ties interviewed the pick-
up’s driver, who had minor
injuries .
The investigation remains
ongoing.
The names of LeH ot-
ta’s family and some
other details are from a
GoFundMe page started to
help cope with crash -related
expenses.
Gavin LeHotta was pro-
nounced dead at Ocean
Beach Hospital in Ilwaco at
about 5:59 p.m. due to inju-
ries sustained in the colli-
sion. Steve LeHotta was
taken to Oregon Health &
Science University Hospital
in Portland, along with his
partner, Marina Koontz, and
Koontz’s daughter, Audrey.
Gavin LeHotta attended
Ocean Park Elementary
School.
The tragedy has gener-
ated an outpouring of com-
munity concern, with more
than $16,000 raised by noon
Monday toward a goal of
$40,000.
“To Gavin, racing was
life. He loved being out on
the track more than anything
always with his Dad and
Grandpa in tow,” an online
tribute states. “They never
missed a race because Gavin
would never allow that. If
there was a race, regardless
how near or far, Gavin and
his family would be there
with smiling faces, ready
to race, lend a hand to or
encourage fellow riders. …
He will be more than missed
and our community is one
less strong without. Ride
On, Gavin LeHotta. This
world will never forget your
smiling face, little one.”