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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 1, 2015)
Page 8A OFF PAGE ONE East Oregonian Thursday, October 1, 2015 Pendleton man is leader of the pack SALES: Will be tax-free until Jan. By KATHY ANEY East Oregonian Steve Hart swears he is not a dog whisperer. Evidence, however, is to the contrary. Each morning, the Pendleton man WDNHV¿YH/DEUDGRUUHWULHYHUVIRUDZDON in Community Park. The dogs travel in a pack led by Hart. When they come across another park user, Hart waves his brood off the path where the dogs wait until the way is clear. Sometimes people approach and scratch the dogs behind the ears or pat them on their glossy heads. Sometime during each walk, Hart usually directs the affable Labs onto a park bench. They obligingly hop up, always in the same order, with a yellow at each end, the black in the middle and the chocolates in between. “They are always color coordinated,” he said during a recent outing. Hart can leave the quintet of canines, walk out of sight and know they will stay there until he returns or gives them the signal to come. Often, he strolls to his home at the edge of the park where he whistles. They come running. This canine harmony persists even at home. “My yard isn’t fenced,” he said. “They never leave.” Meet Blondie and Sunshine, both 11, and Brown, Cocoa and Belle, 4 — all females. Two of the dogs, Sunshine and Belle, belong to his grown daughter, Tara Hart, and one, Blondie, goes back and forth between houses. Steve cares IRUDOO¿YHGXULQJWKHGD\ Hart rarely speaks to the dogs. If he feels the need to correct one of them, “I growl,” he said. He gave a soft growl to illustrate and looked a tad embarrassed. It works, he said. With all this kumbaya between Hart and the dogs, one might think he spends hours training and conditioning them from puppyhood. They would be wrong. Hart said his family’s pooches grow up pack-style, learning all they need to know from the adult dogs. “These are dogs trained by dogs that have been trained by dogs,” he said. Oregon also has a robust supply of marijuana that’s just after midnight to get a grown to support medical head start on sales. marijuana users and for the One store is offering a black market. Companies goody bag with T-shirts, but have invested in massive no free marijuana. Another warehouses in Portland to will have a live band and grow the drug indoors, and 10 percent discounts. The southern Oregon has some marijuana review site of the nation’s best condi- /HDÀ\ZLOOVHWXSZLWKIRRG tions for outdoor cultivation trucks at a handful of stores, of marijuana. giving away free meals to Growers don’t face anyone who promotes the strict regulations yet, so service on social media. the supply can more easily Several stores have ÀRZ LQWR UHWDLO VWRUHV WKDQ erected billboards in Port- it did in Washington and land. A shop in Merlin is Colorado. advertising on the radio. Still, there’s concern. Shoppers have one Summer has historically more incentive to buy early been a time of marijuana and often: Under Oregon shortages in Oregon, and law, pot purchases will be most of the outdoor crop tax-free until January — a isn’t ready to harvest. Indoor savings of up to 20 percent. growers have had minimal Under the state law time to ramp up production, approved last year by since lawmakers only voters, possession of mari- approved the Oct. 1 start juana in limited quantities date three months ago. has been permitted since “I think there’s going July 1. But there’s been no to be a lack of supply legal way to buy it. IRU LQGRRU ÀRZHU´ VDLG In Washington and Shane McKee, co-founder Colorado, which preceded of Shango Premium Oregon in allowing legal Cannabis, which has three PDULMXDQDVDOHVWKH¿UVWGD\ stores in metro Portland of sales brought massive that will open at midnight. crowds, severe shortages He expects recreational and high prices. customers to demand More than 250 medical indoor-grown marijuana, marijuana dispensaries in which can be tightly Oregon have told the state controlled to maximize the they’ll sell to recreational KLJKDQGWKHÀDYRU customers. By contrast, “There’s a lot of highly Colorado had 24 stores on educated buyers here who Day 1. Washington had just have been spoiled with four, and a year later, still high-grade cannabis for has fewer than Oregon. years,” McKee said. Continued from 1A Staff photo by Kathy Aney Sunshine, Brown, Belle, Cocoa and Blondie sit patiently at Community Park on Tuesday morning waiting for Steve Hart to signal them to hop down. Hart doesn’t need leashes or a raised voice to control the Labrador retrievers. “We don’t house train them. We don’t have to break them not to get into the garbage.” The “we” refers to Steve and his wife, Sonja, director of the Eastern Oregon Alcoholism Foundation. When one of the dogs gives birth, the Harts wait eight months before giving them away to another family. “By six to eight months, a puppy is pretty well trained,” he said. One of the Labs, Cocoa, has a little 0DF*\YHULQKHUVRXO6KHKDV¿JXUHG out how to open the sunroom door and let all the dogs into the back yard where McKay Creek bubbles by. The coffee-colored canine jumps up, braces herself with one paw and clamps down on the round metal doorknob with her teeth, turns it and pulls the door open, Hart said, as the other dogs watch. “She takes them all out to swim in the creek,” he said. Obviously, Hart’s breed of choice is the Labrador. During the Harts’ 42-year marriage, “we’ve always had a Lab around.” Hart also hunts ducks and upland game. His dogs respond to both hand signals and whistles. From puppyhood, the dogs’ person- alities gradually emerge. Cocoa is the hunter. Brown, the runt of her litter, is timid. Sunshine is the lover. She and Blondie often endearingly pose like Koala bears reaching for eucalyptus. The Harts feed the pack canned food mixed with kibble once a day, after the couple has eaten. They observe pack SHFNLQJ RUGHU DW IHHGLQJ WLPH ² ¿UVW Blondie, then Brown, then Cocoa. At his daughter’s house, Blondie goes to the bottom of the order after Sunshine and Belle. The two packs merge each day into one. As you might expect, Hart’s gang of pooches attract attention. He grants plenty of requests for photos, though the camera-shy, retired construction worker refuses to pose in any of them. On this day, he smiled happily at his ¿YH FDQLQH EXGGLHV FDYRUWLQJ RQ WKH grass. The temperature hovered around 70 degrees, under a bright sun. Life was good. Hart motioned for the dogs to stay and sauntered the about 60 yards to his house. The Labs watched Hart’s every movement. The man turned, paused a beat and whistled. They ran to Hart as if shot from a cannon. Not a dog whisperer? Hmmmm. ONION: Umatilla is only AgSource lab that tests pungency Continued from 1A The color is then measured as a wavelength of light using a small electronic device known as a spectrophotometer. 3D\WRQ WDNHV WKRVH YDOXHV DQG UXQV RQH ¿QDO calculation to come up with a number somewhere between 0-8. The lower the number, the less pungent the onion. The less pungent the onion, the more money a grower can potentially make off the crop. “They get pretty ecstatic when it’s between a 1 and 4,” Payton said. A different test, known as a Brix test, measures the sugar content of onions and can be done in seconds, as opposed to hours. Payton places a small amount of onion juice on a Brix reader, which resembles a long kaleidescope, to come up with the reading. Occasionally farmers disagree with the results of the test. That doesn’t come as a surprise to Craig Simson, business agronomy manager at AgSource, who has seen how competitive onion growers can be. “We had one fairly large client stay here all day and watch us from beginning to end,” Simson said. “This pungency is a very personal thing to an onion grower.” AgSource is a large farmer-owned cooperative with seven labs nationwide, primarily in the Midwest. Umatilla is the co-op’s western-most location, and the only lab that does onion pungency testing. Most samples come from around the Columbia and Walla Walla basins, Simson said, but sometimes are sent in from out of the region. The test is used mostly for marketing, but can also be used in a variety of ways, Simson said. “By testing at the end of the year, they can compare their secrets and growing techniques to the ¿QDOUHVXOW´KHVDLG³:KDWSHRSOHDUHORRNLQJIRU is high sugar and low pyruvic acid ... People don’t want something that makes you cry and burn.” ——— Contact George Plaven at gplaven@eastorego- nian.com or 541-966-0825. Staff photo by E.J. Harris Lab technician Debbie Payton pours a ground onion into a fil- ter to remove the pulp for sampling Thursday at AgSource Laboratories in Umatilla. Staff photo by E.J. Harris Lab technician Debbie Payton loads a sample into a refractom- eter to perform a Brix reading, or sugar content, of an onion sample Thursday at AgSource Laboratories in Umatilla. STAIRS: Replacement would utilize steel stairs Kerns said that eval- staircase, which would uations of the city’s stair use steel stairs instead of &RUEHWW LV RXW RI WKH RI¿FH system cleared further concrete ones, but it’s too said signs have been placed liability concerns because late in construction season by the top of the 13th Street it proved that the city isn’t to build it this year. stairs that redirect children negligent. Patterson said city staff to access the bus stop at the Public Works Director could seek out grants in Pendleton Early Learning Bob Patterson said the city the meantime to fund the Center via the stairs at would look into adding project and would discuss it Southwest 10th Street. more treads to the stairs that further with the city council But the other public are repairable, but replacing at its next work session Oct. stairs in Pendleton, like the the 13th Street set will be a 13. ones on 10th Street, South- much tougher task. ——— west Seventh Street and City engineers are Contact Antonio Sierra Southwest Isaac Avenue, currently working on a at asierra@eastoregonian. aren’t in good condition design for a replacement com or 541-966-0836. either. Walking up or down those stairs, it’s not uncommon to come across THURSDAY, OCT. 1 large chunks missing from steps, creating an uneven surface for pedestrians. City RI¿FLDOV WKDW HYDOXDWHG WKH at city’s other staircases after the 13th Street incident 8:30-11:00p concluded that those stairs were in need of improve- 8 S.E. COURT, PENDLETON ment, but not in need of 541.278.1100 closure. Continued from 1A Live Music Tylor & The Train Robbers MARIJUANA: Not able to sell edibles and extracts yet Continued from 1A creating recreational pot regulations, estimates sales of marijuana will generate $10.7 million in revenue for the 2015-2017 biennium. Measure 91 dictates 40 percent of that will go to the state’s Common School Fund, 20 percent to mental health, alcoholism and drug services, and 15 percent to Oregon State Police. The Oregon Health Authority will get 5 percent for alcohol and drug abuse prevention. Cities and counties will get 10 percent each for enforcement, unless they ban marijuana. Then they get nothing. Mark Pettinger with the OLCC’s Recreational Marijuana Program said the opt out deadline is Dec. 27, but local governments after that date can rescind their bans and opt in. Purchases of marijuana are tax free from Thursday until Dec. 31, 2016, then the tax jumps to 25 percent. Pettinger explained the Oregon Health Authority is in charge of the medical dispensaries, and the liquor commission will license retail pot stores starting about a year from now. Marijuana at medical stores will have a 17 percent base tax rate, but local govern- ments can tack on an addi- tional tax up to 3 percent. For a while, then, buyers will be able to get recreational pot from OHA dispensaries and OLCC stores, though under different tax rates. Measure 91 has allowed adults since July 1 to possess up to an ounce of marijuana on their person, 8 ounces of usable pot in a residence and a maximum of four plants on a property. But a medical dispensary will sell only a quarter ounce of PDULMXDQDÀRZHUVWRDQ\RQH over the age of 21, as long as the person can prove their DJHZLWKOHJDOLGHQWL¿FDWLRQ Marijuana leaves, seeds and plants also are for sale, but Pettinger said marijuana edibles and extracts are off the table while the agency writes the rules. The liquor commission aims to allow the sales of edibles and extracts in the second half of 2016, the same time it plans to license retail stores. Pettinger said there will not be a limit on how much marijuana a person can buy from those stores. At the same time, he said, the law limits how much pot a person can carry or have in their home. So while someone would be able to buy a couple pounds of pot, they may need some friends to help carry it home, then enough homes to keep it all in. The OLCC’s focus is on the seed-to-sale end of things, Pettinger said, while hangups with possession will fall to the purview of local law enforcement. Attention Parents: Don’t Miss the Bus! Join us Thursday, October 15 from 6-8 pm at Pendleton Early Learning Center learning An early t supports tha program their role as in parents d’s first and il h their c luential most inf er. teach Sign-up Now! tion nt educa help e r a p r u Space is Limited! O to esigned class is d teach their Register at parents ages 0-5 www.readyforkindergarten.org children adiness school re . skills FREE Parent Class FREE Child Care FREE Books & Toys FREE Meal Questions? E-mail tcrfofpendleton@gmail.com Brought to you by The Children’s Reading Foundation of Pendleton
