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East Oregonian
Wednesday, July 10, 2019
Dairy: Easterday family plans to reopen state’s second-largest dairy
Continued from Page A1
Cody Easterday said the com-
pany plans to invest $15 mil-
lion in the dairy, including
completion of a wastewater
treatment system that was
never finished under the pre-
vious owner and bringing the
farm into full environmental
compliance.
“It’s a state-of-the-art
dairy. It just needs to be fin-
ished, and it needs to have
the correct management,”
Easterday said. “It will be a
solid, environmentally sound
dairy.”
First dairy
While Easterday Farms
has decades of experience
running ranches, farms and
feedlots in Washington, this
will be the family’s first foray
into the dairy industry.
According to its CAFO
application, Easterday Farms
Dairy will have up to 28,300
cattle, though not all of those
will be milking cows. The
dairy lists 8,000 mature dairy
cows and 2,650 dairy heif-
ers housed under roof, along
with 1,700 mature dairy cows
and 5,950 heifers in open
confinement.
Some 10,000 cattle will
also be kept in open confine-
ment for beef production.
“We’ve operated CAFOs
in Washington,” Easter-
day said. “We understand it.
We’re good, clean operators
and we know what we need
to do.”
In Oregon, CAFOs are
jointly regulated by the state
Department of Agriculture
and Department of Envi-
ronmental Quality. Per-
mits must include an Ani-
mal Waste Management Plan
that describes how the farm
will handle large amounts of
manure without contaminat-
ing groundwater or surface
water.
Easterday Farms Dairy
expects to generate roughly
5.4 million cubic feet of liq-
uid manure, 5.9 million cubic
feet of solid manure and 11.7
million cubic feet of pro-
cessed wastewater annually.
That’s enough manure to fill
128 Olympic-size swimming
pools.
The dairy plans to recycle
all that nitrogen-rich manure
by using it as fertilizer on the
surrounding farmland, grow-
ing irrigated crops, such as
potatoes, onions and wheat,
as well as forage for cattle.
Easterday said the manure
will be applied at agro-
nomic rates on 5,390 acres of
cropland.
By operating in a closed-
loop system, Easterday said
the farm will reduce its pur-
chases of commercial fer-
tilizer by about 3 million
pounds per year.
“We think that it’s going to
work really well,” he said.
Permit review
Wym Matthews, CAFO
program manager at the Ore-
gon Department of Agricul-
ture, said there is no time-
line for reviewing Easterday
Farms’ permit application.
Once the agencies have
written a draft permit, Mat-
thews said it will be made
available for public review
and a hearing. He suspects
there will be a lot of interest
in the Easterday Farms pro-
posal, based on the fallout
from Lost Valley.
“The site is exactly the
same,” Matthews said. “The
concerns, at least in our
minds, are no different.”
The site is within the
Lower
Umatilla
Basin
Groundwater Management
Area, designated by DEQ in
1990 for having elevated lev-
els of groundwater nitrates
that exceeded the federal safe
drinking water standard. A
Capital Press Photo/George Plaven
Cody Easterday, president of Easterday Farms, said he hopes
to open Easterday Farms Dairy by fall 2020.
coalition of environmental,
animal rights and small farm
advocacy groups opposed
Lost Valley from the begin-
ning, raising alarms over
potential harmful impacts on
air and water quality.
As the facility racked
up violation after viola-
tion, the groups called for
a moratorium on so-called
“mega-dairies” until regu-
lators could strengthen pro-
tections. So far, that has not
happened.
In a written statement, the
13-member coalition urged
Gov. Kate Brown “not to
repeat the same mistakes and
hope for a different outcome.”
“If Governor Brown’s
Department of Agriculture
has really learned the lesson
of the Lost Valley disaster, it
will not entertain another ‘too
big to fail’ mega-dairy permit
for nearly 30,000 cows on the
same site,” the groups wrote.
“Allowing a new mega-
dairy in an area with existing
groundwater pollution, water
scarcity and air quality issues
will only exacerbate these
public health, economic and
environmental harms.”
Completing
infrastructure
Cleanup is still under-
way at the dairy, and Easter-
day said it’s gone smoothly.
The milking parlor and barns
were scrubbed down, and
wastewater lagoons are grad-
ually being emptied.
It’s a far cry from photos
of Lost Valley that showed
cows standing ankle-deep in
manure, and reports of over-
flowing lagoons and illegal
wastewater discharge.
Lost Valley owner Greg
te Velde declared bankruptcy
and lost control of the dairy
— as well as two other dair-
ies he owned in California
— in September 2018 for rea-
sons that ranged from cash
flow problems to alleged
gambling and drug abuse. A
federal trustee, Randy Sugar-
man, was appointed to man-
age Lost Valley, overseeing
the sale and cleanup.
Easterday Farms was the
lone bidder at auction. Cody
Easterday said it is “the right
place and the right facility”
for a dairy.
“I think all the pieces are
here,” Easterday said as he
toured the dairy last week
with a reporter. “The initial
design of the dairy is very
solid.”
Waste from the cows is
separated into solids and liq-
uids. Liquid manure is held
in open-air lagoons, which
have the capacity to store 10.4
million cubic feet of liquid
for up to 134 days during an
average year. From there, it is
pumped to irrigation pivots
and applied on crops.
But Easterday said the
system was never finished,
meaning it could not reach
enough land to accommodate
the volume of manure the
herd produced.
“Part of the issue with
compliance is the waste sys-
tem was not completed, and
not adequate to some extent,”
Easterday said.
Easterday said the farm
will not bring any cattle onto
the dairy until all the infra-
structure is completed. Sim-
ilarly, solid manure will be
kept on an impervious soil
pad and used as fertilizer
or composted for animal
bedding.
Matthews, the CAFO pro-
gram manager, said condi-
tions of the dairy’s permit
would likely follow the same
general guidelines as Lost
Valley, which at the time was
held up as having the most
extensive monitoring of any
facility in the state.
“Once the facility is built
and functional, our plan for
a dairy this size would be to
be out there (for inspections)
three or four times a year,”
Matthews said. Ordinarily,
CAFOs are subject to an
inspection every 10 months.
Community partners
At full capacity, Easterday
said the farm and dairy com-
bined will have about 100
employees, including new
hires from local communities.
“We’re going to be the
pride of Morrow County
when we’re done here,” East-
erday said.
Don Russell, a Morrow
County commissioner, said
he met with Easterday ear-
lier this year and is confident
the dairy can be run responsi-
bly. He pointed to the success
of Threemile Canyon Farms,
located west of Boardman, as
proof.
With
65,000
cattle,
Threemile Canyon Farms
is Oregon’s largest dairy. It
opened in 2002 and supplies
milk to Tillamook Cheese,
which runs a plant at the
nearby Port of Morrow.
Russell said the businesses
offer good-paying jobs, and
because of their large scale
they can offer benefits that
smaller dairies can’t — such
as more regular work hours,
and investing in technology
such as methane digesters
that reduce air emissions and
create renewable energy.
Problems with Lost Val-
ley, Russell said, boiled down
to management. In the end,
he said the state’s regulators
did what they were meant to
do.
“We know it can be done
right,” Russell said. “I think,
locally, people understand
that we had a guy who had an
addiction problem, and didn’t
do things right.”
Easterday said the dairy
could consider a methane
digester in the future, but that
is not in the immediate plans.
The goal, he said, is to open
Easterday Farms Dairy by
fall of 2020.
As envisioned, the dairy
would produce 550,000
pounds of milk a day. He said
they are still looking for buy-
ers, but are confident in the
dairy market.
Easterday said the farm
is prepared for the scrutiny
that will inevitably come
with operating the dairy,
and is looking forward to the
opportunity.
“We knew the environ-
ment we were going to be in,”
he said. “We’re prepared. We
think we have a great story.”
Rick: Man honors brother by
winning championship buckle
Continued from Page A1
State University football team
and eventually got a full-ride
scholarship. By that time, he
weighed 185 pounds, still
small for college ball, but he
wasted no time worrying
about his lack of bulk. Reth-
erford credits his father for
infusing him with tenacity.
“That man convinced me
I was as big and bad as any-
body else,” Retherford said.
“He instilled in me the ability
to believe in myself.”
Just after transitioning
from walk-on player to schol-
arship athlete, Retherford
suffered a huge setback. A
teammate found Retherford’s
“varmint pistol” under the
front seat of his car and acci-
dentally discharged the gun,
shooting Retherford. The blast
left him without the use of his
right arm and with a bullet
lodged in his neck.
He fought his way back to
health, got back on the team
and finished out his college
football career as if the acci-
dent had never happened. In
one game against Univer-
sity of Oregon, Retherford
intercepted a 54-yard pass to
cement the win.
The book “Rod” chroni-
cles Retherford’s extraordi-
nary life. A stack of the books
sits on the counter in Rether-
ford’s saddle shop next to pho-
tos of him playing football and
riding broncs.
The book, however, doesn’t
describe the latest chapter in
Retherford’s life.
With his eye on making
good on his long-ago prom-
ise to Rick, Rod got back into
rodeo at age 54.
“I hadn’t been on a bucking
horse in 25 years,” he said. “I
didn’t practice. I just entered
and got on.”
He had a rough first ride.
Coming out of the chute, the
bronc banged Retherford’s
shoulder against the fence and
then flung him to the dirt. He
lay on the ground with a bro-
ken hand and two crushed
vertebrae, before rising gin-
gerly to his feet. The cowboy
refused the offer of a re-ride,
then reconsidered after his
brother-in-law (who Reth-
erford said didn’t realize the
seriousness of the injuries)
called him a “daisy.” In pain,
he climbed on the next horse
and rode to second place.
“I wasn’t no daisy,” Rether-
ford said.
He healed and continued
to ride bareback, transitioning
eventually to saddle bronc,
Rick’s event. Last month at
age 60, Retherford entered
the Buckeye Senior Rodeo in
Buckeye, Arizona. The buck-
ing horse he drew ran a short
ways and veered to the left,
jumping and kicking. Rether-
ford held on tight.
“Rick was always on my
mind,” he said. “I just had it
in my head to get this done no
matter what.”
Retherford prevailed. The
championship buckle he won
bears an extra inscription that
reads, “For Rick.” The new
buckle replaced the old calf
riding one he had worn for
years to remember his brother.
On a day following the
rodeo, Retherford was tooling
a belt in his saddle shop when
a thought came out of the blue.
It had taken 45 years to fulfill
his promise. It dawned on him
that Rick’s football number
at Grant-Union High School
was 45. It felt like a sign that
everything had worked out
just right.
Retherford still misses
Rick every day.
“He was a good kid that
everybody liked,” he said. “He
was a friend to everyone. He
was a cowboy.”
———
Contact Kathy Aney at
kaney@eastoregonian.com
or 541-966-0810.
Shutdown: Lexington reopens
Continued from Page A1
the day of the meeting to
remind them.
“To hell with protocol,”
one man retorted. “It’s your
actions that count.”
He and others said it was
part of city councilors’ jobs
to keep track of when they
needed to be at meetings
without having someone
“hold their hand.”
John Renfro, who served
as Lexington’s mayor sev-
eral years ago when Kemp
was on the city council, told
the room that they were
lucky to have her as mayor.
“I’ve had a taste of what
you’re going through, and
why you’d want this job is
beyond me,” he told Kemp.
Residents of the town of
238 seemed to have gotten
their frustrations out Mon-
day, however, and on Tues-
day refrained from com-
menting on the budget when
given the opportunity.
The budget of $737,549
passed unanimously, as did
required resolutions to levy
taxes in the town and accept
state revenue.
After the meeting, Kemp
said she was pleased to have
the whole thing behind her.
She had been distracted at
work and kept up at night
worrying about the city, she
said.
“I did not want this to
happen,” she said, adding
that leading the city was
“not a game” to her.
She was grateful for
Eddie Dickenson, the city’s
maintenance person, for fix-
ing a major water main that
broke during the shutdown
even though he had techni-
cally been laid off and was
well within his legal rights
to refuse to come in and
work for free.
“I was not going to leave
the town without water,” he
said.
He said he had “sat
around about as long as I
could” the past week and a
half and was thrilled to be
able to officially return to
work Wednesday morning.
He celebrated by doing one
of the jobs that had gone
undone while city hall was
shut down: throwing away
a dead mouse that had
been caught in a trap for
several days.
Staff photo by Ben Lonergan
Benny Young, left, and Jamie Maxwell drove the final portion of the race stage to Pend-
leton Tuesday night. The car, a replica of the original 1909 cross-country Model T to com-
pete in the cross-country race, is driven by a team of drivers.
Tour: Model T tour commemorates race
Continued from Page A1
trailers because they broke
down. Several drivers also
spoke in reverence of the
1909 teams. Those fellas
did not have the advantage
of the interstate system nor
plenty of fuel stations, and
traversed tough terrain in a
mere two weeks.
The Model T Ford Club
of America organized the
anniversary
adventure,
thus all the cars are Model
Ts. They span years of that
production line, from early
models to the final version
in 1927, and most teams
and cars are from the East
Coast and Midwest.
Ryan Hauge, of Louisi-
ana, brought his wife and
their two young children
on the trip. He said they
love the 1926 Model T, and
the design makes it plenty
comfortable to drive, even
for hundreds of miles a day
at a mere 38 mph.
His brother and his
uncle also are part of this
tour, he said, but the Model
T is a part of his family.
“My grandparents dated
in the one they have had
since 1921,” he said. “I
learned to drive in that
car. My brother learned to
drive in that car.”
Likewise, John Huitt
Staff photo by Ben Lonergan
Ryan Hauge helps his son Maddoxx, 3, steer a 1926 Ford
Model T in a parking lot. Hauge learned to drive in his
grandparents’ 1921 Model T and has driven them for much
of his life.
said Ford cars have been a
staple of his family since
he was a boy. He and his
wife, Thelma Huitt, came
to the tour from their home
in Victoria, Australia, and
they may have the only
Model T on the tour with
an Oregon license plate.
They own three of the cars
back home, he said, but
bought the 1927 Model T
from a family in Eugene.
They said they plan to visit
them after the tour.
Kim Kramer said she
and Jerry got into Model
Ts after a convention of the
cars came through their
neck of Indiana in 2008.
“They had a 1,000
Model Ts at that event,”
she recalled.
They caught “the bug,”
she said, and had to have
one. She said it was not
surprising the rest of
the drivers felt the same
way.
The group departs
Wednesday morning for
Yakima, and from there
makes the final push.
Hauge said while coming
up to the end is exciting,
he’s also feeling a tinge of
sadness.
You can follow the
Ocean to Ocean Tour on
the Facebook page for
the Model T Ford Club
of America.