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About The Blue Mountain eagle. (John Day, Or.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 25, 2019)
A18 NEWS Blue Mountain Eagle Mistletoe MISTLETOE MYTHS Though mistletoe is now commonly associated with the Christmas holidays, the plant’s role in seasonal rituals predates Christianity. Continued from Page A1 out of a tree with a shotgun is often the preferred method of harvest. In their early years of col- lecting mistletoe, Janey Lee-Sutton and her grandson borrowed a 12-gauge shotgun from the farmer who owned the infected oak trees, but she eventually bought herself a smaller caliber .410-gauge. “I found the .410 doesn’t damage the mistletoe as much as the 12-gauge,” Lee-Sutton said. The idea of selling mistle- toe was sparked by a request from her grandson, Malachi, who was then 4 years old, to buy Christmas presents for their family. Since he didn’t have any money or a job, Lee-Sutton decided that selling mistletoe at a nearby grocery story would be a good learning opportunity. Malachi borrowed some money for baggies and rib- bons, which he later repaid his grandmother while pocketing the profits. “I wanted to teach him a bit of economics,” she said. Once the boy grew older and took a gun safety course, Malachi helped with the shooting but discovered that growing older also has its disadvantages. “He started noticing that, as he was bigger, people wouldn’t buy as much, so he started to bring his little sister,” Lee-Sut- ton said. With his younger sibling, Miko, serving as the pub- lic face of the operation, sales rebounded, and they ended up earning as much as $400 per year. Malachi outgrew the mis- Plan Continued from Page A1 logging; coordination between agencies; and wildlife and fisheries. Among their criti- cisms, the counties argued that Alternative E-Modi- fied included provisions that would artificially close roads and limit live- stock grazing, while fail- ing to thin enough of the woods to boost timber jobs or lower the risk of large wildfires. Counties also objected to any new wilderness or wild and scenic river designa- tions, and any new research natural areas. Harney County Com- missioner Mark Owens said the plans must take into account the social and eco- nomic impact of the forests to the region. “There is a lot of poten- tial opportunity,” Owens said. “We want to see actual opportunity.” Wednesday, December 25, 2019 The ancient druids, for example, would harvest mistletoe with a golden sickle and catch the strands in white cloth before they hit the ground, thereby protecting their supposedly “magical” properties. EO Media Group/Mateusz Perkowski Garrett Huggins shows off a pile of mistletoe that he collect- ed from a family member’s property in Southern Oregon. tletoe business once he became a teenager — he’s now a high school football player — and the farmer who provided access to the mistletoe died, with his family selling off the property. “It was a great bonding experience for me and my grandchildren,” Lee-Sutton said. Larger operation While the mistletoe oper- ation run by Trillium Gardens is considerably larger, annu- ally selling about 700,000 bun- dles through a distributor, it’s also not the main business for the native plant nursery based in Eugene. Owner Sheila Klest began selling mistletoe about two decades ago and now collects “thousands of pounds” a year from oak trees up to 100 miles from the nursery, with the per- mission of the landowners. “It’s at least a semi-truck load but probably a lot more than that,” she said. When harvesting such mas- sive amounts of the plant, Klest has found it’s most efficient to hire people to climb the trees. Though they’re strapped into harnesses, it’s still a precarious proposition that requires skill. Rebuilding trust After the last forest plan recommendation was scrapped in March, Owens said the Eastern Oregon coun- ties reached out to North- west Regional Forester Glenn Casamassa to see if they could work more closely with the Forest Service on plan- ning efforts moving forward. The answer was the for- mation of the Blues Inter- governmental Council, giv- ing them a seat at the table to relay information and pro- vide input directly to the for- est supervisors and other fed- eral agencies. “I believe this gives us an extra opportunity for public involvement with this inter- governmental panel,” Owens said. “It’s very encouraging for me.” In addition to 13 Oregon and Washington counties, the Forest Service has invited six state government offices, four American Indian tribes and six federal agencies to participate on the council. A final roster of members has “Oak trees can be kind of dangerous to climb because you can’t tell if a limb is rot- ted through or not,” Klest said. Fragile crop The plant can be difficult to handle, as it’s fragile and gets moldy easily, and not every- thing collected is of salable quality, since its leaves can get sun-burned or drought- stressed, she said. Finding the best locations for optimal har- vest also requires a certain expertise. “Not every oak tree is going to have mistletoe, or not very much,” Klest said. “You get a sense of what to do and how to handle it.” In ancient Rome, two white bulls were sacrificed during mistle- toe harvest, and the plant was believed to restore fertility when mixed with drink, according to the Roman natural philosopher Pliny the Elder. These rites are one explanation for the plant’s association with kissing. According to Norse mythology, the god Baldr was shielded from harm from any plant that grew in the ground. However, because mistletoe doesn’t grow from the soil, the malicious god Loki arranged to have Baldr killed with an arrow or spear made of mistletoe. When Baldr was eventually resurrected in some versions of this tale, his mother, the goddess Frigg, was so overjoyed that she declared that mistletoe symbolized love and peace. — Mateusz Perkowski Though the harvest and preparation of mistletoe bun- dles is “intense” work that requires a “hard and fast” pace due to the short duration of the sales season, Klest said it’s also become a jovial holiday tradi- tion for her company. “It’s almost like a social thing sometimes,” she said. The company that distrib- utes Klest’s mistletoe, Fibre- Dust, is primarily in the busi- ness of selling agricultural soil media made from coconut coir, or fiber, but realized it can also use its reach and expertise to sell mistletoe. The bundles are shipped to independent garden centers, major retailers such as Trader Joe’s and Walmart, and sold online through Amazon, said Andy Pidgeon, marketing director at FibreDust. Demand for mistletoe is stable but slowly growing, he said. “It’s been very consistent with an upward tick each year.” Prices for mistletoe vary according to who sells it and the amount being sold. The Hug- ginses, for example, sell bun- dles for about $2 each but offer a 30-cent discount for orders of more than 100 bundles. In Oregon, mistletoe is col- lected from oak trees that it nat- urally infests, but in Europe, a related type is actually grown and harvested from fruit orchards, said Dave Shaw, a professor and forest health spe- cialist for Oregon State Uni- versity’s Extension Service. not yet been completed. The council will meet once a month to discuss the plan revision. The first infor- mal meeting was Nov. 22 in Bend, and the second meet- ing was Dec. 20 in Pendleton. Craig Trulock, supervisor of the Malheur National For- est, said it will likely take 2-3 more years before an updated forest plan is completed. Until then, the forests will continue to operate under the 1990 plans. The council will likely continue to discuss conten- tious forest management issues such as livestock graz- ing in riparian areas, road management, habitat con- nectivity for wildlife and the so-called “Eastside Screens” rule that prohibits cutting trees larger than 21 inches in diameter in Eastern Oregon and Washington. Trulock emphasized the council is meant to enhance — not replace — additional required planning and out- reach under the National Environmental Policy Act. “The way I see it, it would all be working to develop a really transparent and solid proposed action to move for- ward with the forest plan revision,” Trulock said. Tom Montoya, supervisor on the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest, said the For- est Service managers felt the council was an opportunity to rebuild some relationships with the public that had been fractured previously during the planning process. “I think that’s where we are with this whole effort, is mak- ing sure we are all on the same page, so to speak, and working on those (plan) components together,” Montoya said. Owens acknowledged there are no assurances the coun- cil will succeed where other efforts have failed. But, he said, with greater transparency, they can begin to rebuild trust in the system. “Most of our communi- ties understand that. We need to move forward together,” Owens said. “It will all come down to building trust again.” Holiday tradition S159837-1 S154074-1 John 1:14 “The Word became a human being and, full of grace and truth, lived among us. We saw his glory, the glory which he received as the Father’s only Son.” Livestock impact Mistletoe-infected tree branches that fall to the ground can pose a threat to livestock, which can develop gastrointes- tinal problems and abort preg- nancies, said Shelby Filley, livestock and forage specialist with OSU’s Extension Service. “Sometimes animals are weird and they eat stuff, and you don’t know why exactly,” Filley said. Most likely to be affected by mistletoe toxicity are cat- tle, horses and goats, possibly because there’s “something lacking in their diet that they’re craving,” or because they’re simply hungry, she said. When releasing livestock into unfamiliar pastures, it’s a good idea to give them nutri- tious feed so they’re not tempted to experiment, Fil- ley said. “That way, they’re not indiscriminate about eating things. They’re cautious about what they eat.” For the Huggins family, the mistletoe business has involved negotiating other hazards — such as learning to avoid unre- liable buyers who eventually stiff them on payments. “When you’ve never run an online business, you learn as you go,” said Ashley. BIC MEMBERS The U.S. Forest Service has convened the Blues Inter- governmental Council to develop a new methodology for forest planning in the Umatilla, Wallowa-Whitman and Malheur national forests. • Oregon Department of Forestry Representatives from multi- ple state, federal, tribal and county governments were invited to participate in the BIC: • Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation Federal County • Bureau of Land Manage- ment • Baker County • U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service • USDA Rural Development • USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service • National Oceanic and Atmo- spheric Administration • Washington Department of Natural Resources Tribal • Nez Perce Tribe • Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs • Burns Paiute Tribe • Grant County • Harney County • Malheur County • Morrow County • Umatilla County • Union County State • Wallowa County • Oregon State Governor’s Office • Wheeler County • Washington State Gover- nor’s Office • Columbia County (Wash- ington) • Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife • Garfield County (Washing- ton) • Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife • Walla Walla County (Wash- ington) • Asotin County (Washington) Monday - Thursday 7am- 6pm Friday 8am - 5pm Mendy Sharpe FNP 541-523-6377 541-963-6577 541-573-6377 541-576-2160 Apppointments available S154080-1 139101 Merry Christmas from Len’s Drug Apart from its potential for holiday profit, mistletoe plays a “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” role in the natural world, Shaw said. “It’s both good and bad,” he said. For individual oaks, infected limbs will become stressed and eventually die back, particularly during peri- ods of drought when mistle- toe consumes the scarce water absorbed by the tree’s roots, Shaw said. At a certain point, trees get so overcome by the parasitic plant that it can no longer be pruned away without killing them. “We believe there is a point you will have too much mistle- toe in the crown, to the detri- ment of the tree,” he said. On the other hand, mistle- toe berries and insects attracted to the plant serve as food for western bluebirds and other avian species, with the plant basically forming a microhab- itat that improves biodiversity, he said. “The flip side is when you get the wildlife biologists involved, they see it as a wild- life creator,” Shaw said. Though mistletoe has fig- ured in folklore since pagan times, scientists still haven’t deciphered many questions about the plant — for exam- ple, why it flowers in summer but doesn’t produce berries for more than a year, in the autumn of the following year, he said. “It’s a pretty mysterious plant. It’s a really cool plant,” Shaw said. Every other Monday in John Day at Blue Mountain Hospital 170 Ford Rd. • 541-575-1311 S138221-1 SNAFFLE BIT DINNER HOUSE 830 S CANYON BLVD., JOHN DAY • 541-575-2426 S160434-1 Basic Drawing Class: Begins Tuesday, January 14, from 5:30 - 7:30 PM. The popular basic drawing class by Robert Rex is back! Learn to draw basic shapes, apply shading, and much more in this 12-week course. Intermediate Drawing Class: Begins Thursday, January 16, from 5:30 - 7:30 PM. Intermediate students will pursue new subject matter such as composition, design elements, perspective, and figure proportions in this 12-week course. Music Lessons: See paintedskycenter.com/music-lessons for more info or to register. Music lesson punch cards available to purchase. Arts After School & Friday Art Club: Ongoing; see more at Paintedskycenter.com/Kids-Art. If you are interested, please join the waiting list. With enough interest we will start additional classes. Youth Arts Program: Ongoing, Monday 6:00 PM rehearsals through December. S159627-1 For more info or to register visit paintedskycenter.com or email paintedskycenter@gmail.com.
