A18
NEWS
Blue Mountain Eagle
Wednesday, June 12, 2019
Celebrate
Continued from Page A1
midpoint, but the biggest
challenge was keeping the
tires on the wheelchair rims.
Some repair work will be
needed before next year’s
race.
“We are thankful for all
that joined us this year and
appreciate their time and
effort,” Galbreath said. “We
awarded first, second and
third places, but everyone
was a winner in our book.”
Parade results
Mounted individual
First: Grant County Fair
Queen Courtney Nichols
Second: Jenny Taynton
and rider Tyson
Mounted group
First: Julie Bowling and
Amber Britt
Second: Baker County
Fair and Panhandle Rodeo,
Queen Kelsei Kiser with
Lady-in-waiting Jaeden For-
rey (Nyssa Nite Rodeo),
Princesses Laramie and
Lavina Kiser
Walking group
First: Boy Scouts, led by
Greg Floyd
Second: Kim’s Tae-
kwondo, instructor Laurel
Coombs
The Eagle/Richard Hanners
The Eagle/Richard Hanners
From left, Amber Britt and Julie Bowling ride in the ‘62 Days
parade in Canyon City on June 8.
Antique car
First: Ron Phillips driv-
ing Loyce Phillips
Group entry
First: Sleep in Heav-
enly Peace, led by Susie and
Mark Brown
Second: Grant Union
Class of ‘99
Third: Grant County
Snowballers and trail riders
Business entry
First: Station 62 in “Min-
ion” 1972 Volkswagen Bee-
tle, with Emma and Tori
Second,
tie:
Saul’s
Mobile Pressure Washing
with little prospectors May-
ley, Emmie and Dalley; and
AAA Thunderbolt Fire Ser-
vice of Mt. Vernon
Third: John Day Polaris
Derby car
First: Steve and Georgia
Patterson
Best representation of
1862
First: Whiskey Gulch
Gang
Honorable mention: Can-
yon City Fire Department,
John Day Volunteer Fire
Department, U.S. Forest
Service and Smokey Bear,
Grant County Search and
Rescue, Canyon Mountain
Racers and Coach Shane
Koppel’s Grant County Lit-
tle League minors baseball
tea
The Eagle/Richard Hanners
Ron Phillips took his mother, Loyce, for a ride in his 1927 Model T during the ‘62 Days parade
in Canyon City on June 8.
Ranch
Continued from Page A1
covered, he said.
His approach is to leave
each year’s “fall greenup”
ungrazed so the third leaf
on the tiller can fall to the
ground as litter. It’s a tempta-
tion to let cattle graze on the
fall bunchgrass, but the soil
will lose moisture and grass
will not fill in the seed drill
pattern.
Southworth also relies
on more intensive grazing
— four cows per acre with
a hoof print on every square
foot to pound that litter into
the soil. This is something he
learned in just the past few
years, he said.
Portable electric fenc-
ing is used to control stock
density by dividing his 100-
to 200-acre pastures into
smaller sections. Grazing
periods are limited to a week
or less to minimize rebiting
of regrowth.
The fact that the seed drill
pattern was still visible at this
site after seven years and a
few years of higher-density
grazing didn’t deter South-
worth. The missing litter
might be the fault of elk graz-
ing, he said.
Jenni Moffitt, a soil scien-
tist with NRCS in Bend, eas-
ily dug a 4-foot-deep hole to
see the soil conditions. There
was very little compaction,
and the deep grass roots
showed evidence of moisture
in the top 6 inches, she said.
The soil at one level was
“fluffy,” Moffitt reported, to
Southworth’s delight.
Keeping track
Soil
moisture
probes
Committee Volunteers Needed
Grant County is now recruiting volunteers to serve on
active boards and committees.
Obtain an Application to Volunteer from County Court,
201 S. Humbolt, No. 280, Canyon City, OR 97820;
(541-575-0059) wrightl@grantcounty-or.gov or
online at www.grantcountyoregon.net .
Applications are due by Friday, June 28th, 2019
Committees are formal public bodies required to comply with Oregon
Public Meetings Law ORS 192.610.
Extension & 4-H Service District Advisory Council .
Eleven members serve three year terms and meet semi-annually to provide guidance
and assistance to local OSU Extension staff in planning, developing, and evaluating
balanced educational programs directed to high priority needs of county residents.
Membership is limited to one re-appointment.
Planning Commission
ORS 215.020. Nine members serve four year terms and two alternates serve two year
terms, meeting as needed to review land use and zoning applications and discuss city
and county growth issues and the siting of new facilities. Members must be residents
of various geographic areas within the county and no more than two voting members
shall be engaged in the same kind of business, occupation, trade or profession with
agriculture designations of livestock / forage crop production and horticulture
/ specialty crop production. Commissioners serving in this capacity must file an
Annual Verified Statement of Economic Interest with the Oregon Government Ethics
Commission. Members must re-apply to the County Court before their term ends if they
wish to be re-appointed.
A growing pile of logs from the Malheur National Forest unsuitable for milling lies
waiting to be chipped for processing in the new torrefaction plant in John Day.
Plant
Continued from Page A1
Quality also gave permission for work on
a new boiler system to begin ahead of air
quality permit approval, Krumenauer said.
A hearing will be held on the permit appli-
cation at 6 p.m. Tuesday, June 18, at the
Canyon City Community Hall.
a higher temperature using a mixture of
propane and syn-gas, which is emitted by
wood chips during the torrefying process.
The belt dryer and torrefier are
expected to produce particulate matter,
nitrous oxides, carbon monoxide, volatile
organic compounds, methanol and visible
emissions. A large electrostatic precipita-
tor unit will be installed to control partic-
ulate emissions.
New emissions
Forest health
Ochoco Lumber Co., which owns
Malheur Lumber Co. and is applying for
the permit, proposes increasing the cur-
rent limit for particulate matter from up
to 34 tons per year to 42 and for nitrogen
oxides from up to 50 tons per year to 77.
The mill is not a major source of hazard-
ous air pollutants, according to the DEQ
application.
As part of the torrefaction proj-
ect, plans call for replacing two Wellons
wood-fired boilers currently used for heat-
ing the mill’s seven lumber-drying kilns
with a single Hurst wood-fired boiler that
can meet the mill’s current needs as well
as those of the torrefaction plant.
The Hurst boiler, which was a standby
boiler at a timber plant in Mississippi, is
more modern and efficient than the cur-
rent boilers, so total emissions should be
reduced, said Joe Koerner, the operating
manager for Restoration Fuels. The same
crew that took apart the boiler in Missis-
sippi will reassemble it in John Day.
New emissions for the site will come
from a 15-foot-wide belt dryer, which
will be heated by the boiler through a heat
exchanger, and the rotary torrefier unit,
which take dried wood chips from the belt
dryer and heat them into a charcoal-like
material.
The low-temperature belt dryer will be
capable of drying up to 149,000 tons of
wood per year.
It was designed and will be built by
Industrial Mechanical Inc. of Georgia,
which sent a crew to oversee the overall
construction project.
The torrefier came from a mill that
produced oriented-strand board, where it
was used to dry wood chips. The large tri-
ple-pass rotary torrefier will be heated to
Restoration Fuels’ overall goal is to
support stewardship work on national
forests, marketing the smaller diameter
logs and twisted or partially rotten logs
removed as part of fuel reduction thinning
projects.
A large supply of logs ready for torre-
faction already sit at the mill’s log yard on
Lower Yard Road in John Day. The mill’s
existing chipping facility will be used to
convert the logs into material for the new
plant.
A machine from Denmark will be used
to compress the torrefied wood into bri-
quettes or pellets. Much of the mill’s cur-
rent pellet plant machinery will remain,
but the plant will be reconfigured so the
mill can continue to produce white wood
pellets and bricks as well as torrefied pel-
lets and briquettes.
Japan — which has imposed tariffs
on power produced by nuclear and coal,
making torrefied wood competitive — has
shown interest in torrefied wood mass.
Restoration Fuels expects to ramp
up production at the John Day torrefac-
tion plant — the first commercial plant in
North America — to more than 100,000
tons per year.
“That’s about one log truck or one chip
truck of biomass per hour,” Krumenauer
said.
Proposed plans call for transporting the
torrefied wood to a rail line in Prineville,
at which point it can move on to domestic
or international customers.
Comments on the air quality permit are
due by June 24. For more information on
the air quality permit, visit https://go.usa.
gov/xmdjG. For more information about
the new torrefaction plant, visit resto-
rationfuels.com.
could be used to keep South-
worth informed in real time,
one participant said. South-
worth is not averse to high-
tech solutions — he has
DNA profiles for all his
cows and sorts them by the
expected progeny differ-
ences index.
He also tracks how his
50-some pastures are far-
ing using formulas on a
computer spreadsheet. If he
finds unexpected conditions,
he can change one figure
and see all the other graz-
ing dates adjust in line. He
can also adjust figures back-
wards to account for Forest
Service changes in opening
dates for grazing on leased
land.
Southworth said he likes
to do his monitoring in Sep-
tember, when he evaluates
steps he took to improve
grasslands by looking at
how much stubble was left.
At one site, he lined up
the 18 participants in a tran-
sect and had them march
off three steps. About
55 percent of them were
stepping on a perennial
grass when they stopped,
TREAT
YOUR
FEET
which was good.
This site was planted in
1984 and litter concealed
the seed-drill pattern, but
the individual plants were
not as big as the site planted
in 2012. The question for
Southworth was if he should
spray this site and till it back
up.
“I’d prefer to plow,” he
said. “Is that now considered
a mortal sin even if it’s done
just once every generation?”
Seed mixing
The next site was planted
in 2018 with a “forage cock-
tail” composed of crested
wheatgrass,
intermediate
wheatgrass, Western wheat-
grass, ladak alfalfa, yellow
blossom sweet clover and
groundhog forge turnip.
Forage cocktails can
range up to 30 species at a
time. Southworth said his
mixture cost about $40 per
acre, which is more than
grass seed alone, but the last
time the site saw a plow and
seed drill was 40 years ago.
So that comes to about $1
per acre per year, he said.
He recommended seed-
Our Services Include:
ing in the spring for high
elevation arid places like
this. Turnips are an annual
that help break up clay soil,
Southworth said, some-
thing his father read about
in 1948. Antelope had eaten
the leaves, and only the pale
white stalks remained.
Back at the shop build-
ing, Southworth demon-
strated his spreadsheet and
the flip board his crew uses
to track all their changes.
Resting plants is against
the ranch’s philosophy, he
said. Instead, he is always
tweaking figures, tweaking
infrastructure.
What motivates him,
he asked. Some ranch-
ers don’t want to make so
many changes. Is it a ques-
tion of tradition — just leav-
ing things the way they were
always done?
A lot of the ideas he
showed the touring pro-
fessionals are not based on
proven theories, he said.
He’s still learning. His father
was an intellectual, ranching
in different ways than others
in Bear Valley. He is con-
tinuing that heritage.
541-575-1648
- Skin Inspection
Call for an Appointment
- Nail Trimming
$35 fee
- Callus and Corn Reduction
- Electric filling of thick, hard to cut nails
Services available at
- Basic foot care provided by a trained CNA
Home Health Office,
- Advanced foot care provided by
a Certified Foot Care Specialist
422 W. Main, John Day.
- Monument/outlying foot clinic every 8 weeks
Wolf Depredation Advisory Committee
OAR 603-019-0015. Members include one County Commissioner, two members
who own or manage livestock and two members who support wolf conservation or
coexistence with wolves. These members agree upon two business representatives to
serve as additional members. The committee oversees the procedure established by
Grant County for its Wolf Depredation Compensation Program. The current vacancy is
for one business representative.
125298
Blue Mountain Hospital We provide Basic and Advanced foot care nursing based on current medical
FOOT CLINIC
bluemountainhospital.org
research and professional guidelines. Reduce your risk for foot infection and injury
by scheduling with our professional staff today.