8A COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL August 10, 2016
High Wire Farm works to fi nd its niche
BY JON STINNETT
The Cottage Grove Sentinel
H
photo by Jon Stinnett
High Wire Farm founder Drew Renault harvests leeks prior
to a Thursday Farmers Market.
F IGS
Continued from page 7A
mant, clip off a piece about 8-10
inches long. Cut below a node
and at the tip of the stem. Stick
the piece in a pot of potting mix
and leave it through spring. At
that point, the small plant can go
in the ground, but keeping it in a
pot for a year is not a bad idea.
Renquist doesn’t recommend
growing fi gs in pots for the long
term. They are vigorous plants
that need room for sustainable
root growth. If you have a small
space to garden and a container
is the only choice, start with a
pot that will accommodate sev-
eral years of growth and then
transplant to a larger one. A sev-
en-gallon container should be
suffi cient for three to four years;
a 15 gallon for seven to eight.
Once the pot fi lls with roots,
growth will become weaker and
he suggests pulling the plant out
and pruning the roots severely.
The top will have to be pruned
signifi cantly, also.
Make sure the pot has good
drainage holes and use a soilless
potting mix. Don’t overwater.
Check by sticking a fi nger into
the soil. If it’s dry an inch below
the surface, it’s time to water.
Feed with a thick layer of well-
rotted manure on top of the soil,
a foliar fertilizer once a month
or a balanced (5-5-5) fertilizer
in early spring, late spring and
summer.
Though not as complicated to
prune as other fruit trees, it takes
some practice to learn the art of
pruning fi g trees. First, Renquist
strongly suggests growing your
fi g as a multi-trunked plant. The
plant’s natural tendency is to
branch, so why fi ght it?
“The biggest thing people do
is try to grow them with a single
trunk,” he said. “You don’t need
to. With two or three trunks, you
can keep the tree lower and have
the fruit easier to reach. There’s
a lot of fruiting wood if you
have multiple trunks.”
igh Wire Farm’s Drew
Renault says he got into
farming to grow food for the
people around him. Learning
how to make a living on the
farm, though, has been an on-
going lesson.
“It’s mostly about the life-
style,” Renault said while pre-
paring produce for Cottage
Grove’s South Valley Farmers
Market. “I love producing food
for the people I know, for my
community, my family and my
neighbors. Farming used to be
about sustenance, but then it
became a business, and a lot of
farmers these days — especial-
ly new farmers — are trying to
fi nd the in-between.”
For Renault, who raises veg-
etables on the 2 ½ acre farm
he and his family founded in
2014, fi nding a scale at which
High Wire can thrive has been
one diffi culty.
“We’re not trying to be some
big industrial farm, but we’re
defi nitely bigger than any one
person can handle,” he said.
“I’m working to fi nd the niche
where I can operate the farm
and make a living.”
Many of the farmers in the
South Willamette Valley, where
small operations dominate as
opposed to larger-scale indus-
trial farms, have confronted
the same challenge lately,
and Renault was among those
pushing for the establishment
of the South Valley Farmers
Network, which in turn led to
the founding of the downtown
Farmers Market, last spring. In
the process, Renault and others
have learned to farm without
the use of large equipment.
“Veggies are very labor-
intensive,” he said. “It takes
a lot of planning and getting
things established in a way that
makes sense. Planning creates
less work in the long term, but
it can still be tough.”
Such skills were what Re-
nault said he sought when he
left the “big city” of San Fran-
cisco and the graphic design ca-
reer he’d originally envisioned
for himself. These days, he’s as
likely to be found among the
100-foot beds that are the heart
and soul of High Wire, rais-
ing corn, broccoli, cabbage,
caulifl ower and a host of other
crops, often for the two-dozen
or so people that purchase his
vegetables through a Com-
munity Supported Agriculture
model.
Much of the struggle to
grow delicious food, he said,
involves water.
“Water is the biggest chal-
lenge,” Renault said. “Most
wells in this area are bad —
they’ve got arsenic in them, or
salts, or other metals. Finding
reliable groundwater has been
tough.”
And the biggest pest to both-
er the farm so far have been
voles, which Renault called
“unstoppable.” And yet, like
any farmer, Renault toils on,
handling whatever Mother Na-
ture throws his way the best he
can.
“Every year, I realize that so
much success has been about
luck,” he said. “I’ve got good
soil to work with, but it still
gets more diffi cult every year.”
More information about
High Wire Farm can be ob-
tained on its website, high-
wirefarm.com.
'Hamlet' opens this
weekend at
Cottage Theatre
C
ottage Theatre is set to offer one of Shake-
speare’s most iconic and most quoted
plays.
“Hamlet” is a legendary tale of revenge, rich in
vivid imagery, complex characters and powerful
language, bolstered by Shakespeare’s unrivalled
humor and wit.
Cottage Theatre’s production of “Hamlet” will
run for three weekends: Aug. 12-14, 18-21 and 25-
28. Shows Aug. 14, 21 and 28 are Sunday mati-
nees that begin at 2:30 p.m.; all other shows begin
at 8 p.m. This production is directed and designed
by Tony Rust, with lighting design by Amanda
Ferguson and costumes by Rhonda Turnquist.
This production features Tim McIntosh as Ham-
let, Davis N. Smith as Claudius, Tracy Nygard as
Gertrude, Patrick Torelle as Polonius and Martha
Benson as Ophelia. Rounding out the cast of this
classic drama are Mark Anderson, Nathan Blakely,
Dale Flynn, Joel Ibanez, DJ Luna, Lisa Mattiello,
Glenn Rust and Earl Ruttencutter.
courtesy photo
Tim McIntosh (center) stars as Hamlet in the Cottage Theatre's pro-
duction of the Shakespeare classic, which opens this Friday. The play
also features Davis N. Smith as Claudius, Tracy Nygard as Gertrude,
Patrick Torelle as Polonius and Martha Benson as Ophelia.
O FFBEAT
Continued from page 4A
the newspaper — were far
more likely than the employees
would have been to regard the
newspaper as a fi nancial asset
rather than a public trust.
Now, having made and stuck
with a labor-negotiating deal
that had brought the Journal
to the brink of insolvency, the
trustees moved to subvert the
other major bequest in Maria’s
will: the part that specifi cally
prohibited them from selling it
to Newhouse.
With the Journal facing bank-
ruptcy and a union strike that
they could blame for the situ-
ation, the trustees could now
plausibly claim that they were
faced with a choice of either
honoring Maria’s wishes and
allowing the paper to fold, or
selling to Newhouse. Surely no
reasonable person would fault
them for saving Maria’s paper,
even though it were necessary to
fl out her express wishes to do so
… right?
And so, in 1961, the trustees
accepted an $8 million offer
from Newhouse … and Port-
land became, effectively, a one-
newspaper town.
As for the strike, it petered out
over the following several years.
In 1963 the National Labor Re-
lations Board ruled it illegal. Fi-
nally, in the spring of 1965, the
pickets called it quits, and both
papers became open shops.
(Sources: Diehl, Caleb. “The
Newspaper Wars…,” Portland
Monthly, Dec. 2015; Klare,
Gene. “Let Me Say This about
That,”
nwlaborpress.org,
1/01/2002; Diehl, Caleb. “The
Portland Reporter,” oregonen-
cyclopedia.org)
Finn J.D. John teaches at
Oregon State University and
writes about odd tidbits of Or-
egon history. For details, see
http://fi nnjohn.com. To contact
him or suggest a topic: fi nn2@
offbeatoregon.com or 541-357-
2222.
Post a picture of
your garden (vegetable, fruit or
fl ower garden) on our Facebook page
and earn the chance to
WIN A $200 GIFT CERTIFICATE
CONTEST RULES: Visit the Cottage Grove
Sentinel Facebook page at https://www.
facebook.com/pages/Cottage-Grove-Sentinel/
and upload a picture of your vegetable, fruit or
fl ower garden to the photo album section of
the page. In the comment space, describe what
makes you so proud of your garden. The person
who receives the most “likes” by August 17,
2016 will win the $200 gift certifi cate valid at one
of the participating businesses. The name of the
winner will be posted on our Facebook page on
August 19, 2016. Participants must be 18 years
old or more. Employees of the newspaper and
participating businesses and their immediate
family members are not eligible to participate in
this contest.
Lawn & Garden Supplies
Canning Supplies
901 Row River Road
Cottage Grove, OR 97424
(541) 942-4600
www.walmart.com
Contest submission date EXTENDED!