BUSINESS & AG LIFE
THURSDAY, JULY 29, 2021
GRILL
THE OBSERVER & BAKER CITY HERALD — B3
SUMMER
on specials for Fridays, including
steaks and ribs. There’s also a
kids’ menu.
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Family and community
with three strips of bacon, three
sausage links or a sausage patty.
It’s backed up with hash browns
and toast.
“We sell a lot of Denver
omelets,” Jason added about the
omelet that features ham, bell
peppers and onions.
Moving onto lunch, they off er
a variety of burgers and sand-
wiches, highlighted by the Wal-
lowa Mountain Burger with its
two quarter-pound “Pattyes.”
“All our burgers are very pop-
ular. We make them all fresh,”
Patty said. “Our bacon cheese-
burgers are really, really popular.”
For dinner, Patty said they plan
On the back of the menu is a
list of “Things to do in Wallowa
and Lostine.”
“We want to promote some of
the smaller outfi ts around here,”
Jason said.
Their commitment to the com-
munity is honest, and it goes both
ways. They saw that for real when
tragedy struck just after opening
last month.
“We opened on (June 7) and
fi ve days later, my son was in
a really bad car accident and
the community has been won-
derful through that,” Patty said.
“They’ve been supporting us
Bill Bradshaw/Wallowa County Chieftain
Jason and Patty Skillings stand behind the bar in their new Wallowa Mountain Bar
& Grill in Wallowa on Tuesday, July 20, 2021. Above the mirror is their establish-
ment’s logo.
Bill Bradshaw/Wallowa County Chieftain
No, this is not the stove Jason and Patty Skillings cook on at their new Wallowa Moun-
tain Bar & Grill in Wallowa, but the 1930s-era Hotpoint range makes for an interesting
conversation piece in the establishment they opened June 7, 2021.
because I had to leave to be there
with him (at hospitals in Port-
land and Salem). … They’ve been
pretty supportive of everything
that’s gone on with me.”
She had family come from
far away to help run the place,
including a brother from South
Carolina.
Patty, who has three chil-
dren and fi ve grandchildren, has
lived in Wallowa 19 years, 21-1/2
years in the county. Jason has
lived there all his life and has two
children.
A niece, a nephew, a sis-
ter-in-law, two brothers, a cousin
and her daughter helped keep the
place going during a busy June
and July.
“The family pulled together
and kept it going,” Patty said.
“The community absolutely loved
that fact, that we were able to
keep it going.”
She said one of their main
goals is to give back.
“We’re trying to help every-
body out with what we’re doing,
because a lot of all this is to
give back to the community,”
Patty said. “We have our coff ee
drinkers who come in. They just
love it. They can sit and socialize
and have their time. Then there’s
the ladies’ day where they come
in and socialize and get some-
thing to eat. We have couples who
like to come in and they have
their games on their phones and
they play together while they sit
and drink their tea and have their
dinner or lunch. It’s just a lot of
fun to let them have a place to
go. That was my big thing, giving
back to them.”
Jason said they’re still formu-
lating plans for the bar side of the
business. It’s housed in a 1910
building that started as a phar-
macy but has been a bar ever
since. A previous owner opened
the wall between the bar and grill
and joined them.
“It’s an old building,” Jason
said. “Sometimes it’s a pain in the
butt to work on, but it’s all right.”
Patty still is glowing from an
experience on their opening day
when a man from Texas stopped
in who regularly goes to bicycling
events and checks out their chick-
en-fried steaks. He was looking
for places for he and fellow bicy-
clers to eat.
“He said that so far, nobody
has beat Texas. I go, ‘Great, that’s
what I need to hear.’ So I go get
my husband and (the Texan) said,
‘That was one heck of a chick-
en-fried steak. You guys just blew
Texas out of the water.’ And the
whole restaurant heard it,” she
said. “And he’s coming back.”
CIDER
CROPS
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Pendleton for helping to
keep his cidery going.
Crowder’s hard cider
is also on tap at North
Seven Brewing, Baker
City’s newest brew pub
that opened earlier this
summer.
“During the winter to
have people isolated in
little individual tents, so
they can have some lim-
ited seating, things like
that,” Crowder said of
the brewpubs’ various
improvisations to meet
COVID-19 safety regula-
tions. “I was able to keep
relationships like that
going forward.”
Since its inception,
Rain Barrel Ciderworks
has been able to branch
out in regards to fl avors.
Starting off with both
apple and cherry, Crowder
has now begun to produce
guava hard cider, and he’s
preparing to produce cran-
berry hard cider.
“I have a guava cider
right now that I am
really happy with,” said
Crowder, who started
brewing beer while he
was in college in 1991
Corey Kirk/Baker City Herald
and made his fi rst batch
Mark Crowder, owner of Rain Barrel Ciderworks in Baker City, is able
of hard cider in 2009. “I
am still doing the cherry. to preserve his cider for longer by storing it in these plastic totes,
I have the apple, which is which helped the business stay afl oat during the pandemic.
a semi dry. I have a cran-
Crowder said. “I’m just
berry that I just started
tinue to build business
really trying to get out and
and that’s going to be
relationships in Eastern
interface with bars and
more of a fall release. It’s
Oregon and to continue
restaurants, trying to get
going to be a fun one.”
bottling his products.
“(Bottling) gives me
the ciders out to more bars
Looking to the future,
and places.”
Crowder is excited to con- a new avenue for sales,”
Manufacturers are
trying to keep the supply
chain running smoothly
despite tight inventories
of steel, labor and trans-
portation, said Blades.
“All three of those things
are facing pressure in the
global marketplace.”
The industry is also
struggling with a shortage
of computer chips that are
needed to “run everything
from toasters to tractors,”
he said.
As a result, “there’s not
a lot of inventory standing
around on lots” and orders
may take longer to fulfi ll,
he said. “The only solution
is a little bit of time.”
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that during the recent
Crazy Days in La Grande,
I glanced, repeatedly, at the
gushing fi re hydrant.
Spend a few hours — or
spend the day — perusing
each booth, enjoying
the fresh air, and simply
taking time to be care-
free. It’s interesting to note,
the more time you spend
exploring, the more you fi nd
to explore. What was going
to be an hour or two turns
into the afternoon or even
the whole day, moving from
vendor to vendor, shop to
shop. Think of the impact
it has on our local economy
— one day, one afternoon,
even one hour of time spent
browsing, fi nding little
knickknacks or necessi-
ties. It plays into what has
been said before: Investing
in your local economy is
an investment in long-term
vibrancy for the community.
The simple act of taking
time to check out the local
summer festivals is literally
making Union County better
— for everyone. Who would
have guessed that having a
beer at the Eastern Oregon
Beer Festival is doing your
small part in making the
community a better place to
live, work, and play? (I’m
not going to be the one to
argue with that logic!)
So, while we might be
too old to run through the
fi re hydrant geyser at Crazy
Days, to compete in the pie
eating contest at the Cove
Cherry Fair, or even to ride
the pig train at Island City’s
Hog Wild Days, we’ll never
get too old to indulge on a
giant elephant ear … or two.
———
Suzannah Moore-
Hemann is the execu-
tive director of the Union
County Chamber of Com-
merce & Visitors Informa-
tion Center.
Despite a recent soft-
ening in commodity crop
prices, the prospects
remain good for farmers
based on the futures
market and a fairly low
ratio of stocks to usage,
said Langemeier.
The drought is the
“wild card” that will
impact some farmers
more severely than others,
depending on the region,
he said.
Generally, though, crop
prices can be expected
to remain healthy until
inventories are replen-
ished, which usually
requires two to three
years, Langemeier said.
“When you get in that sit-
uation, it takes a while to
get out of it.”
Sales of smaller trac-
tors have also shot up in
2021 — 15% for those
under 40 horsepower, 19%
for those 40-100 horse-
power — after an already
impressive performance in
2020, according to AEM.
The market for smaller
machinery, which was
invigorated by people
spending more time at
home, has recently shown
signs of leveling off ,
Blades said. However,
that’s largely a function of
demand becoming “more
rational” after being “on
fi re” for so long.
“That market is going
to fi nd its correct footing
and it’s going to be
stronger than it has in the
past, though it may not
grow at the rate it has been
growing,” he said.
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