Image provided by: North Santiam Historic Society; Gates, OR
About The Mill City enterprise. (Mill City, Or.) 1949-1998 | View Entire Issue (April 23, 1959)
Rich Soil Amazes z Oregon Farms Produce Bountiful Yields of Widest Diversity By Genevieve Morgan Oregon State Department Of Agriculture The most amazing thing about Oregon's agriculture is its breath taking variety To look at the whole picture is almost like seeing a fascinating fairy tai«' come to life. We produce commercially just about everything you can imagine except that which requires a real ly hot climate. Our livestock duplicates this feat But the diversity at which people marvel today was probably not in the minds of the crew from the ship Ruby when thes«» men piant«*d the first gardens in Oregon coastal soils back in February, 1795 One may presume the only con cern of these seafaring men, as they firmed the soil over vegetable seeds, potatex's and peach stones, was relief from salted pork and dried beans. Trapper Plowed First Furrow The honor of plowing the first farm furrow in Oregon goes not to sailors but to fur trappers. And one may presume that they, too. did not forese«’ the tremendous di- vi i sity which would one day set the lands of Oregon apart from thos«- of most other states. Oregon farming was bom in the rich soils of French Prairie, west of th«> present town of Woodbum That much is clear Some sources say the first farmer was Etienne Lucier, a Hudson's Bay trapper, and set the date of that first plowing in 1828 But others go back to 1811 — almost a half cen tury before Oregon became a state — and say that four trapper families started Oregon farming in that year. For more than a hundred years -■ until World War II boom«1«! t'tnber to our No. 1 basic industry —agriculture was Oregon's t o p ranking natural resource, econom ically speaking. Today, timber in cluding some primary processing, accounts for $1 billion of Oregon's income; agriculture, $400 million at th«1 farm gate; our tourist in dustry. $150 million; with mining and commercial fishing down the line at $42 million and $15 million respectively. Wheat I m King Crop Th«1 primary crops of our first farms were grains and potatoes; then, as today, the king of the ciups was wheat In thus«' early days, wheat was the big crop in the Willamette valley; today most of our wheat Ls grown in eastern Oregon in the Columbia river coun ties Now we raise in the neighbor h«xxl of a hundr«*d different crops on roughly five million acres of ctop lands. We grow th«' apple and wt grow th«> zucchini In between this alphabetical range are all the staples bf th«' e.,ily day. plus many and varied seed crops uixireamtx! of then; bulbs and flowers ard a long list of nursery ornamentals and shrubs; flower seeds and vegetable steds; strawberries an«i caneber ries; hops and peppermint; water melons and cantaloupes and other melons; blueberries and sugar beets; walnuts and filberts; apri cots and pears and apples and ch« rries and peaches and prunes . nd grapes; sugar b«>et seed And we raise dry edible tx'.ins and dry field peas, asparagus, green lima beans. Brussels sprouts, cabbage, celery. cucum ber«, garlic, kale, lettuce, green peppers, spinach, tomatoes, car rots, parsnips. mil to mention our rt ally sizable production of snap beans, green peas, onions, sweet own, broccoli, carrots, beets, caul iflower and pumpkins or squash <lreg«>n leads the Nation (List year Oregon ranked first in th«’ Unit«'«! States in th«> produc tion of peppermint for oil. several s»ed crops, snap beans, sweet cherries, tarn«' blackberries, biack raspberries and filberts; sec ond in pears anti strawberries piunes and English walnuts, and high in grc’n peas for processing' We produ«'«' some dill for o i 1 i:nu some drug crops but prob ably the m«>st unusual «Top of all is teasels though like som<< of th« rarer specialties, this is ex tixmely limiteii And now, who knows that another small special ty crop may not he on th«» hon zon, since th«' first of this year a New York firm has queried t h «• stall department of agriculture to ki*»w if any of «*ir Oregon |»'ople would be interested in growing cr.tnip onmmerically' On th«- livestock, osir prydoinin ant piaxiuction is be«'f cattle, diary cattle am! sheep, hogs, turkeys and chickens. The thousand« of horses ol th«- earlier day haw long since 4 given way to the motor age, but the interest in the pleasurehorse continues to grow and in spite of Mr. Ford's invention we still have a few thousand horses on farms Beex Here Since 1X44 Specialties in the livestock cate gory include bees, which have been with us since 1844, rabbits, goats, geese, ducks and a very lively mink industry. Most recent ven tures with fur-bearing animals are chinchilla and nutria, but to date pelt sales have not been encourag ing Our varied agriculture produc tion goes hand in hand with the diversity of soils, climate and top ography. Rainfall runs the gamut of heavy to light as one progresses from the coastal region to the vast highlands east of the Cascades Snowfall is in reverse Elevations range from scarcely more than sea level to towering Mt. Hood's 11,225 feet. Many farms in eastern Oregon are at elevations -IODO feet and above. Matching the contrasts in our ctops, our climate and our land scape are the sizes of our farms They range from small tracts to thousands of acres. In fruit-grow ing Hood River county, for ex ample, the average farm contains only 30 acres; in cattle-raising Wheeler county, the average farm approaches 5,000 acres, not includ ing uses of public grazing lands, of which Oregon has more than 20 million acres. From our principal crops alone, last year. Oregon produced more than 5.3 million tons (not our rec ord year» divided like this: field crops which includes the grains and hay and potatoes. 4.4 million tons; seed crops. 72,000 tons; tree fiuits and nuts, 262,090 tons; ber ries. 58,000 tons; and vegetables. 436,000 £ tons. Division of Farm Income No breakdown is yet available on cash farm income from 1958 agri cultural commodity groups, b u t heir’s what the returns at the farm gate divided into for the you 1957 Livestock — Cattle and calves. $63.422,000; dairy products, $47. 040,000; eggs. $18,839.000; sheep lambs and wool, $14,023,000; hogs, 59.362.000 broilers. $5,345,000. farm chickens and other poultry, $3,417, 000; all other livestock, including mink as the largest single item. $6.095,01». Crops — Field crops, including principal seeds and vegetables. $150,318.000; fruits, berries and nuts, $54,283.000; greenhouse and nursery products, $11.664,000; and farm forestry items, $7,337,000 Agriculture on Oregon's 54,442 farms (1954 U. S. census figure which will drop some on the next 5-year tally because Oregon un doubtedly is following the national trend) shows wide differences in various sections of the state. Mountains Divide State The 18 counties west of the Cas- cades — western Oregon — have 40.022 farms containing 4.546.946 acre«; the 18 counties east of th«' Cascades eastern Oregon — have 14.410 farms containing 16.- 515,394 acres So if you don't already know you will guess from these figures that our specialty crops and animals are raised mostly in western Ore- gor.; and that our vast rolling wheat fields, cattle ranches and hay fields belong to th«1 wid«1 open lands of eastern Oregon This is a general statement which does not completely hold water, because we have surprising contradictions on either side of th*' dividing mountains East of the Cascades you will fin«! grown un dei irrigation specialty seed crops virtually all of our commençai po tato production, melons, onions, le gume and pasture seeds. Hops ami peppermint, long considered a western Oregon pnxiuct. are grown successfully in some eastern Ore’gon areas Conversely, th«' western thin! of Lie state has farms of 1001) acres or mor«', grows considerable »heat aiid other grains, is raising nuire hr and more beef cattle — and more than a decade ago robbed eastern Oiegon of the title of having the No. 1 sheep county in the state. (Sheep were once primarily a ranging operation in eastern Ore gon; now the industry is divided fairly evenly between eastern and western Oregon. > Water Is Important So much for generalities about our agriculture, except for another mention of irrigation. Water play ed an important part in the early settlement in Oregon; that is why riost of the Century Earms “dis covered” by the Oregon Histori cal Society and the State Depart ment of Agriculture last year lie in valleys along rivers and streams The first water diversion for ag ricultural irrigation in Oregon oc curred in Jackson county in 1852 when Jaeob Wagner diverted the waters of Wagner creek to i Tri gate a vegetable garden on ll i s donation land claim. Farm irriga tion has grown slowly from 500,- 000 acres in 1900 in a rather con sistently stepped-up tempo since Today irrigated lands approxi mate 1.5 million acres on nearly 20,000 farms scattered throughout the state. Klamath, major potato growing area, has more than 277,000 acres under irrigation on over 1000 farms; Malheur has o- vcr 200.000 irrigated acres on more than 2300 farms. Long irrigation ditches and huge conduits that glit ter in the sun are familiar sights in eastern Oregon's irrigated areas Iir.gation is gaining momentum on farms and acreages in western Oregon; crops that not too many years ago were cons ide re>d strictly "ary land” are now aide-d to high er production by irrigation, usually from a farm portable sprinkler sy stem Even the Willamette valley, often likened to the’ Valley of the Nile, has approximately 141,000 about acres under irrigation — half of whir'll has come in the last five or six years. We have talked about eastern Oregon and western Oregon as two rather distinct farming re guns In describing the agricul ture of Oregon these broad re gions are each sub-divided into three sections which have indivi dual characteristics. Six Farming Areas Thus we talk, in finer terms, a liout six farming areas Coastal and lower Columbia; Willamette valley; southern Oregon; Colum bia basin; south central counties and the Snake River counties The first and last named lie on th «■ western and eastern borders of the state, as the map outlines Let's look briefly at each area The Willamette Valley — Stretch ir.g along the Willamette river ba sm IK) miles from Portland and east and west from 30 to 60 miles COMMONWEALTH. Inc. • Industrial & Commercial Property • Property Management • Mortgage Loans • Sales & Leases COMMONWEALTH, Inc Branch Office: Salem, Ore. .K. ’ , THE OLD AND THE NEW IN THE GRAIN FIELDS. Multitude of horses in inset picture are shown cutting the wheat in an Oregon field as it was done before modern machinery, shown at the top. invaded the farm area and made the harvesting process much simpler, faster and less expensive. Equitable Bldq Portland, Oregon Brooch Office: Boive, I data between the Coast and Cascade mountains, this is the center of our first farming and today the heart of Oregon's diversification. Here you’ll find everything from wheat and beef cattle, drug crops and nuts to berries and tea sels and pansy seed. You'll have to look for the teasels, though, b e - cause this is a Clackamas county exclusive specialty item. The bur o' the teasel is valuable to produce the soft nap finish on fine fabrics, particularly woolens. Growing the teasels and preparing them for market is a tedious process, but the Oregon climate is excellent and at least one man has specialized in pioduction of teasels You've prob ably seen wild teasels without rec ognizing them as such; but the com mercial product is a special var iety native to southern Europ»1 Home of Holly In addition to all the crops we've mentioned to this point — except sugar beets — the valley is the home of Oregon's holly industry, anu growers here have made mon ey from cane for sorghum, golden seal. sunflowers, sage, pyrethrum, mushrooms, Jerusalem artichokes and fibre flax. Production of fibre flax hit a peak during the last world war but has since dwindled to a romparatively small opera tior. in the Jefferson area of Mar- icr. county. This valley is seat of the straw berry and caneberries — Logan berries. Boysi'nberries, blackber ries, red and black raspberries, gixisebemes and currants, as well as small vegetable production These crops, along with the tree fruits, explain why th«' major share oi our canneries and freezing plants are located here Poultry and turkeys center here, tco; and dairying is a big enter prise Travel along the major roads and you'll see farm flock after farm flock of sheep, ham sters, muskrats, skunks, game birds and Shetland ponies are raised on minor key. A large share of the bee and mink population is here. Most farmers in this valley di versity their production to avoid the calamity which sometimes falls when all the eggs are put into one basket. Incidentally, not all coun ties emphasize the same crops. Linn county, for example, has long been Oregon’s No. 1 production* center for forage seeds. Dairying Moves East Coastal and Lower Columbia Counties — A generous rainfall and lush pastures contribute to emphasis on dairying, particularly in Tillamook and Coos counties Until the last four or five years. Tillamook was the undisputed dairy queen of Oregon; Malheur forged ahead by a few cows on the last census. The coast, especially Coos and Clatsop, has the cranberry field er we should say bogs — all to it self Early daffodils reach far market.*» from the Brookings area of Curry county — which is al- (Continued on page 5) This special Centennial •ection hat been printed especially for Oregon weekly newspapers on our high - speed web offset presses — the only presses of their type in Oregon. We welcome inquiries concerning all types of printing. PORTLAND Daily Journal Of Commerce 711 S.W. 14th Ave. Portland, Ore. Royd's Subites Oregon s Centenni a H In I'XM), I’ Boyd began delivering his premium- I’knd of coffee door-to-door. I hen, for a long period, Boyd’s Cotfee was available only in fine restaurants. Popular de mand put Boyd’s on grocer’s shelves, in vacuum packed cans in 1955. Oregon's Centennial Year marks a milestone for Boyd’s, too. w, enjoy Boyd’s Instant ly! 1 lb. or 2 oi. lidi worth 5c co»h. 2 lb. or 6 ox. lid* worth 10c ca»h. Aeiv Royd s lids — nsati/i tour treat* *r* X™’ Register now’ Hrue Rovd's Cofftt, P.O Rox /.yj, Portland 7, Ortgonjorfull information
