AG DAY
WEDNESDAY
March 25, 2020
KEEPING IT IN THE FAMILY
‘The best horse in the
barn has a name, and
his name is Try.’
By Steven Mitchell
Blue Mountain Eagle
Spring is Chad Holliday’s favor-
ite time of year.
For baseball fans, it’s spring
training. For high school or col-
lege students, it’s spring break. For
Chad Holliday, a third-generation
rancher, it’s calving season.
Chad is the eldest son of Ron
Holliday, the patriarch of Windy
Point Cattle Company, who died in
October.
Chad said his father taught he
and his sisters Mandy and Tonna
how to run the day-to-day opera-
tions of the ranch.
Tonna said the three of them
work well together, and while los-
ing their father was — and still is
See Family, Page B2
The Eagle/Steven Mitchell
Billy Radinovich feeds a calf with a
milk bottle at the Windy Point Cat-
tle Company. Radinovich, a sopho-
more, has been helping out at the
ranch during the school closure.
Contributed photo
Tonna Holliday feeds the herd at sundown at the Windy Point Cattle Company.
F inding value
in the resources available
John Day’s city
greenhouse trying
new agricultural
practices
By Rudy Diaz
Blue Mountain Eagle
B
arren land and vile waste-
water seem irredeemable at
first, but the John Day city
greenhouse gives those resources
a new purpose.
The idea for a greenhouse
came before John Day City Man-
ager Nick Green worked for the
city. When Green was getting
ready for his interview for the city
manager position in March 2016,
he researched past city coun-
cil minutes and realized that the
wastewater treatment project had
been a 10-year adventure with no
treatment plant built.
When Green researched
options for the treatment plant,
he came across a team called Sus-
tainable Water from Virginia,
and they created a hydroponic
reuse facility in Atlanta, Georgia,
at Emory University called the
WaterHub.
The university was generat-
The Eagle/Rudy Diaz
Eagle file photo
Tomatoes are also grown alongside the various
greens.
Butterhead lettuce that is about ready to harvest and package at the John Day green-
house.
ing a lot of grey water running
down sinks in dorms from daily
use. The volume of water gener-
ated from campus per day is about
equivalent to the city of John Day,
according to Green. The univer-
sity generated a 100% reuse sys-
tem that recycled the water and
put it back into irrigation and
non-potable uses.
Green saw this idea and said, if
this is possible on a college cam-
pus, then it can be done for a city.
“It was a brilliant idea from
the university, and it showcases
a very green technology in the
way you treat wastewater,” Green
said. “I took their approach one
step further and said, ‘Rather than
using plants to treat wastewater,
why not use wastewater to grow
plants for human consumption.’”
The city has about 120 million
gallons a year in waste, which
gets treated and then dumped into
the ground, Green said. The treat-
ment plant will give a new use for
wastewater in the greenhouse.
“The idea behind the green-
house was can we use it to restart
See Greenhouse, Page B3
The Eagle/Rudy Diaz
The John Day Greenhouse stands tall as it continues to provide more produce to the community.