NEWS
A10 • HERMISTONHERALD.COM
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2020
Hermiston woman donates 142 quilts
By JADE MCDOWELL
NEWS EDITOR
Bonnie Engle has given
the gift of warmth to a lot of
people over her 22 years in
Hermiston.
Engle, a 90-year-old res-
ident of Desert Sage Manor,
makes dozens of quilts each
year for donation to local
nonprofits.
“A conservative guess
for her, personally, would
be she’s made about 2,000
quilts, and given them all
away,” said Darleen Nel-
son, manager of Desert Sage
Manor.
This year Engle, with
help from Nelson and
another resident, donated
142 handmade quilts to the
Hermiston Police Depart-
ment’s Christmas Express
to give to families in need
for Christmas.
They also donated about
60 more earlier in the year
to Made to Thrive and Uma-
tilla Morrow County Head
Start, and residents of Des-
ert Sage made and gave
away more than 9,000 cloth
masks this year.
Engle said she makes
quilts in a variety of pat-
terns, colors and sizes
depending on what cloth
is donated by community
Darleen Nelson/Contributed Photo
Bonnie Engle stands by some of the quilts she made for the Hermiston Police Department’s
Christmas Express.
members or picked up on
clearance sales.
“We make baby ones all
the way up to twin size,” she
said.
Over the years, some
people who have received
a quilt have sent thank you
notes, and one year the
police department presented
Engle with a plaque thank-
ing her for her service to
Christmas Express over the
years.
She said she first started
quilting after she retired
from the restaurant industry.
She moved into Desert Sage
Manor in 1999 and decided
to start donating her work
then.
Desert Sage Manor is
part of the Retirement Hous-
ing Foundation, a faith-
based housing organiza-
tion for low-income seniors
and people with disabili-
Darleen Nelson/Contributed Photo
Bonnie Engle shows off a quilt she made for Hermiston Police
Department’s Christmas Express.
ties. Nelson said Engle isn’t
“great at bragging about her-
self,” but she wanted people
to know how much she has
put out into the community
this year and in the past.
“She’s worked super
hard,” Nelson said.
ODA pulls back state hemp plan as Congress extends deadline
By GEORGE PLAVEN
CAPITAL PRESS
The Oregon Department
of Agriculture has with-
drawn the updated state
hemp plan it submitted to
USDA in August after Con-
gress voted to delay imple-
mentation of new produc-
tion rules through Sept. 30,
2021.
That means ODA will
continue regulating hemp
growers under the current
pilot program established
in the 2014 Farm Bill for at
least another year.
Sunny Summers, Ore-
gon’s cannabis policy coor-
dinator, said the move
allows extra time to ensure
compliance with USDA
requirements.
“All in all, I think it ben-
efits the industry to wait
and see if we can smooth
out some of those bumps
along the road,” Summers
said.
USDA issued its interim
final rule for hemp produc-
tion on Oct. 31, 2019, giv-
ing states one year to sub-
mit plans for approval
before the law went into
effect. But Summers said
they were struggling to
meet the original deadline.
For example, hemp
growers applying for a
license cannot have any
felony convictions on
their records, though ODA
does not have the statutory
authority to conduct back-
ground checks. Bills to fix
the situation in the Oregon
Legislature failed after the
last two sessions ended in
Republican walkouts.
“We decided to pull
back our planned submis-
sion from USDA and wait,”
Summers said. “We just
wanted to take advantage
of that opportunity.”
Hemp industry mem-
bers were also concerned
about the deadline, primar-
ily because it would change
regulations in the middle of
harvest season.
“We don’t want our
farmers interrupted in the
middle of harvest,” said
Courtney Moran, presi-
dent of the Oregon Indus-
trial Hemp Farmers Asso-
ciation, in a previous
interview. “These people
have worked so hard. They
have invested a significant
amount of capital. To have
regulatory overreach in this
commodity ... it breeds a
lot of concern, and a lot of
confusion.”
Ultimately,
Congress
pushed back implemen-
tation of the interim final
hemp rule in October as
part of a continuing resolu-
tion to fund the federal gov-
ernment through Dec. 11.
On Dec. 2, ODA
announced it would with-
draw its updated plan. Sum-
mers said the withdrawal
will not change Oregon’s
requirements for testing total
THC versus Delta-9 THC.
By rule, hemp cannot
have more than 0.3% THC,
or tetrahydrocannabinol,
the compound in marijuana
that gets users high. Oregon
previously tested simply
for levels of Delta-9 THC,
which is the intoxicating
form of the compound.
However,
there
is
another component in
standing
hemp
plants
known as tetrahydrocan-
nabinolic acid, or THC-
A, that converts to Delta-9
THC when heated. In its
interim final rule, USDA
states it will test for total
THC in hemp plants.
In
response,
ODA
announced in 2019 that
it too would test for total
THC in hemp. The change
went into effect this year.
“We are not changing
that going into 2021,” Sum-
mers said. “While it’s been
hard on growers, that is the
level that we’re anticipat-
ing they’re going to have
to meet. ... We have to go
with whatever the federal
requirements are.”
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