2017 Ag Journal - Fall

Ag Journal Daily Record Fall 2017

n Green

Bow Farm sprouting at new location n Dreams alive at Cloudview Farms 401 N. Main Street Ellensburg, WA 98926

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Ag Journal Editor Joanna Markell

Publisher Heather Hernandez Advertising Contact us: Ag Journal 401 N. Main Street Ellensburg, WA 98926 509-925-1414 The Ag Journal is published three times a year by Kittitas County Publishing LLC. Contents copyrighted 2017 unless otherwise noted.

On the cover: Brian Myrick / Daily Record

The former Mason’s Jersey Dairy building is currently being refurbished at Green Bow Farms along Vantage Highway.

MAhindrA’s inventory cleArAnce

Table of contents New Cattlemen executive

Cloudview Farms

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Page 4

Green Bow Farm Page 12

Munching on the field Page 23

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Dreams are alive and well

Cloudview photo

School children, with fresh carrots in hand, tour the pumpkin patch at Cloudview Farm near Ephrata at fall harvest time.

Grant County Cloudview farms attract next generations

By MIKE JOHNSTON Special to the DAILY RECORD

J

im Baird not only wants to put high-quality, locally grown organic fruits and vegetables into the stomachs of communities in the region, he also wants to feed their minds with

understanding.

Baird, a lifelong Grant County resident, wants adults and children to know where and how their food is produced and to understand how it can be done in a self-sustaining way in smaller operations.

With those quests in mind,

Baird established Cloudview EcoFarm on a ridge in the Royal City area in early 2007 and began Cloudview Farm near Ephrata in 2012. In 2013 the farms gained their nonprofit status.

The Royal City-area EcoFarm, at 20 acres, produces more than 30 diverse vegetable and fruit

4 | 2017 Ag Journal - Fall

crops through the work of farm managers, young employees, seasonal interns, apprentices and volunteers. They use natural soilbuilding techniques including reduced tillage, biomass or cover cropping, mulching and amending the soil with trace minerals.

In addition, the EcoFarm has about 24 acres in hay and pasture and two acres in tree fruit.

Those living and working on the farm save seeds for the coming season and put in flowering and edible plants that attract pollinating insects, doing away with having to bring in commercial hives to do the work. The EcoFarm is a U.S. Department of Agriculture-certified organic operation.

Teaching others

Cloudview Farm near Ephrata grows similar crops in the same way, but also is the showcase site for up to 40 tours and educational field trips a year involving mostly kindergartners through sixthgraders from throughout the region, Baird said. It’s over two acres in size.

See Cloudview, Page 6

Cloudview photo

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Cloudview Continued from Page 5 In addition, groups from colleges, universities and other adult training programs often visit for tours and workshops.

The farm also hosts seasonal festivals that attract attendees from around the region and has an annual three-day farm camp in July for kids in second through fourth grade.

Baird estimates more than 1,000 school children a year, including their teachers and parents, come to Cloudview Farm to discover the wonders of soil, seeds, plants, roots and leaves and what and how they grow and produce from sunlight and water.

“We provide a high-interest,

Contacting the farms n Cloudview EcoFarm: cloudviewecofarms@gmail.com, 509-3984624, 509-859-4224 n Cloudview Farm, Ephrata: cloudviewephrata@gmail.com, 785-342-6114

hands-in-the-soil experience to these kids and, really, for anyone scheduling a tour with us,” Baird said. “We’re all for connecting them to the soil and how our food grows and how it can more healthy. I guess it’s my mission in life, to plant the seeds of understanding for the coming generations. To pass on my passion for spreading the benefits

Cloudview photo

Vegetables fresh out of the field being cleaned at Cloudview EcoFarm.

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of smaller-scale, sustainable farming to the wider population.

Well, that’s what we all want to do at Cloudview.”

Who they are

The two farms are run like a family-owned cooperative, Baird said recently. Those working the farms share meals when they can and also share in on-farm responsibilities. They also have a say in the farms’ directions.

Baird said they put into action the ethics of recycling, composting, and ecological yard and farm landscape tending, along with humane animal care.

See Cloud View, Page 9

Cloudview photo

Cloudview EcoFarm's produce booth at the Kittitas County Farmers Market in downtown Ellensburg in a past season.

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Cloudview Continued from Page 7 They can, freeze and dry as much as they can for their own food.

The Royal City farm also has acreage in hay, pasture and orchards, in addition to cover crops, vegetables and field crops.

The two farms’ operations are often modified to find better ways to create healthier soils without having to utilize chemical pesticides and fertilizers, along with experimenting with different crop rotations.

See Cloudview, Page 10 Cloudview photo

School children take in an interactive presentation by farm teaching staff at Cloudview Farm near Ephrata.

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Cloudview Continued from Page 9 Some of the major crops are garlic, potatoes, carrots and mixed vegetables. Animals raised have included cattle, pigs, goats (for milk), chickens for meat and eggs, ducks and sheep.

Many of those working on the farms have eco-agricultural experience, training or related degrees. Some come to make into reality what they’ve learned or come to learn more, and some to explore whether sustainable, organic farming might become their life’s work or a vocation they can practice elsewhere.

Some won’t go into farming, Baird said, but they’ve experienced producing food from seed to sales, knowledge that will stay with them for years to come.

Baird said supplying farmers markets, school districts and

restaurants in the region with organic produce, and providing weekly boxes of varied fresh fruits and vegetables to area residents through a subscriptionlike program, puts a face on the farmers and grows a friendly, trusting relationship between growers and consumers.

“This mission, to grow locally and healthfully and sustainably, has embraced my life,” Baird said.

Less enamored

Baird, 64, a fourth-generation agricultural producer for more than 40 years, also operates big-scale apple orchards and large-acreage wheat, alfalfa and other field and row crops, with about 1,500 acres in production.

In 2006, he was becoming less and less enamored with conventional big-acreage farms and the thinking that chemicals can handle anything. He started researching agro-ecological farm production and was reassessing his life goals.

4th Generation Farmers in Kittitas County

He then met a young couple who had recently completed an internship practicing permaculture farming in Western Washington and was looking for about an acre of land for an organic market garden.

Baird let them use some of his acreage in the Royal Slope area that had well water, and he joined in to help whenever he could.

He lived in a yurt near the small acreage.

He uses the words like “energizing,” “great fun” and “satisfying” and “meaningful” to describe his experience with the couple’s small-scale organic crop production. Baird said he had a more enjoyable time with those two than his time running regular big acreage farming that’s traditional in the Columbia Basin.

The couple sold their produce at farmers markets in the region.

Baird said his time working with the couple connected him personally to the local food and organic food movement.

“I experienced the benefits up close and personal, you could say, with my hands in the dirt,” Baird said. “I visualized the potential it had to not only to feed us but connect us back to the producer, the farmer, and to the land. It became my passion.”

Can be done

Baird hasn’t given up on largeacreage farming but has incorporated organic and alternatives to chemicals whenever he can in his commercial-scale apple, wheat and alfalfa operations that he shares with his oldest son. They also have partnerships with other nearby orchardists.

He said he and his son and partners are always trying to apply the latest technology in orchard mechanization of certain tasks.

They also have joint ventures in organic potatoes, onions and other crops.

Baird acknowledges he’s part of both agricultural worlds: the big-acreage and the smaller

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Cloudview photo

An aerial view of Cloudview Farm near Ephrata, used as a community teaching and exploring site, especially for tours of young children. This one of two Cloudview farms in Grant County. organic operations. He believes there still exists much more capacity for smaller, organic farms to multiply in numbers and supply a growing base of consumers wanting to support sustainability.

He also sees Washington state as having the potential to become a national leader in more healthy food production that’s marketed more locally.

He also believes that the world can be fed organically, but it will take much more work, cooperation and commitment to adopt healthier farm practices as producers see such efforts as something they morally and ethically should strive to do.

Selling produce

Baird said the two Cloudview farms showcase the existing and future benefits of smallscale production to the wider community.

At this time, the two operations rely less on sales at farmers market and of boxes of communitysupported-agriculture produce, Baird said. More recently, the farms have significantly increased sales through an organic cooperative based in Spokane, LINC Foods.

Cloudview now supplies fresh, organic fruits and vegetables in bulk quantities through LINC to more than 12 school districts in the region, Baird said, and that number will likely increase.

“Getting the next generations involved in understanding how they can grow their food in a sustainable, healthier way for the benefit of the land and for all of us is my way of giving back to the community,” Baird said. “Really, it’s the way everyone associated with Cloudview farms gives back.

We all want to leave behind much, much more than we take.” n

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Raising understanding

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

Christina Miller and Matthew Cox stand in front of the former Mason’s Jersey Dairy building they are currently refurbishing at Green Bow Farms along Vantage Highway. Miller and Cox plan to keep the dairy building’s unique red-and-white siding and landmark checkered silo as they transform the interior of the building into a farm store and chicken processing and freezing facility.

A family’s dream takes shape: Green Bow Farm is sprouting

By MIKE JOHNSTON Special to the DAILY RECORD

A

family’s dream has grown new roots in the Kittitas Valley and is taking shape two miles

east of Ellensburg in the form of the 56-acre Green Bow Farm off Vantage Highway.

Green Bow is a holistically managed, pasture-based meat and egg farm operated in a sustainable

manner by Christina Miller and Matthew Cox. Their farm is now fully settled on the historic Mason’s Jersey Dairy property in refurbished buildings that the couple is repurposing for the on-farm processing

12 | 2017 Ag Journal - Fall

and sale of their naturally-raised products.

Miller and Cox moved to the Vantage Highway land during the 2016-17 winter, the second time they and their three young boys

established a home and family farm in the Ellensburg area.

They acknowledge they’ve come a long way from when they first arrived in the Kittitas Valley more than five years ago and began directmarket farming off Howard Road.

Cox said after five years of work at the Howard Road site they agreed they needed to expand if farming was going to be their life’s work. They were selling at farmers markets in the region (including Seattle and Wenatchee-Leavenworth) and to a number of direct subscription customers through community-supported agriculture.

Their search locally didn’t yield rural property that fit their needs or presented a realistic option for purchase.

See Green Bow, Page 14 Brian Myrick / Daily Record

Chickens roam the barnyard at Green Bow Farms along Vantage Highway.

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Green Bow Continued from Page 15 They had just made the decision to “stick it out” where they were when the Mason family land became available on Vantage Highway.

Having been repeatedly disappointed in their search up to that point, the couple visited the land ready to be disappointed again and to put further property searches behind them.

“What we found was comparable to unicorns jumping through rainbows despite the mess,” said Cox. They saw nothing but great potential despite the large amount of repair and cleanup needed at the site.

That was in mid-2016.

They are now on the verge of establishing a farm store on their Vantage property that will offer yearround their pasture-raised eggs, grass fed and finished beef and lamb as well as pasture-raised pork, chicken and turkey. This is on top of having great pasture land for raising their animals and instituting rotational grazing.

Mason family ties

The store will be in the front of the refurbished Mason’s Jersey Dairy building, once a local farm store operated from the late 1940s through the early 1970s by Thelma Mason, the mother of the late cattle rancher and veterinarian Jerry Mason.

The rear of the building, a former milking barn, has been repaired and upgraded and is a state-approved chicken processing and freezing facility. The processing facility will

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

Bees enter a hive at Green Bow Farms along Vantage Highway east of Ellensburg. allow them to produce bone broth and herb rubs. Beef, pork and lamb raised at the farm is slaughtered, cut, wrapped and frozen at USDAcertified and inspected facilities on different ends of the state.

A landmark

The dairy building’s unique

red-and-white siding and landmark checkered silo, visible from the highway, will be kept in its original style as much as possible, hearkening back to the small, family-farm era.

See Green Bow, Page 16

Green Bow Farm Owner-operators: Christina Miller, 39, and Matthew Cox, 45 Children: Harlow, 9; Boden, 7; Malcolm, 4.

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Starting out in the Kittitas Valley

By MIKE JOHNSTON Special to the DAILY RECORD

Many who have frequented the Kittitas County Farmers Market in the past few years recognize the Green Bow Farm booth in downtown Ellensburg with its dark-green banner in the background and large ice chests with frozen meats.

Matthew Cox and Christina Miller weren’t known locally in early 2012 when they were brand new farmers hailing from the Seattle area. They started on 20 acres of property they purchased off Howard Road, 10 miles northwest of Ellensburg.

The couple met while living the central Puget Sound area and shared a desire to become a more active, productive part of the local-food

movement. Cox had been working for 16 years in the arts in Seattle, and Miller had worked for Puget Soundbased PCC Natural/Community Markets for 12 years after college.

Before college, Cox worked as a sous chef and found he enjoyed cooking for others and producing meals, but he didn’t want to go back to restaurant work.

Miller said feeding people with locally-raised and grown foods is the continuing impetus for the couple’s farming quest. First it was raising and cooking their own family meals, then making and enjoying meals with friends.

That morphed into wanting to be able to feed as many people as possible and help them with the

skills they need to cook pastureraised and grass-fed meats in the best way possible.

“We were looking for a business venture or, at least, self employment and had been tinkering with backyard food production including chickens,” Cox said. “We decided we would have a go at farming and just sort of dived in head first.”

The sale of their Howard Road property is pending, and they are fully committed to making the Mason family property their own long-term family homestead.

Moving to and developing their Vantage property took up a lot of their resources and time, and required temporarily cutting back on production, but “we are starting to

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get our feet under us again,” Cox said.

Miller said she and her husband share a goal to always get better with their operation.

“Farming is a unique job in that you wear many hats, but you also have endless ways that you can improve season after season,” Miller said.

Their children helped name the farm Green Bow. “A bow made out of green wood is strong but also very flexible,” Miller said. “It felt fitting because we were new farmers coming to it with very little experience and we were going to have to be very flexible in the years to come to adapt and learn as we went along.”

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Green Bow Continued from Page 14 It’s believed the oldest part of the structure went up in the late 1920s.

Jerry Mason, before he passed away in September 2016, told Cox about helping his father, Clarence Mason, build the silo. Mason also had memories of the hard work of early morning and afternoon milkings and taking care of the land and his family’s cows.

“He told us some stories of building the silo with his father and how proud he was of the property and what it meant to him,” Cox said. “I was hoping we would have a chance to visit more after we secured the deal, but it wasn’t in the cards. Jerry passed away a couple months later. I was glad to have had that brief hour with him that I did.”

Farm store

Cox and Miller have high hopes that locally grown produce and a variety of farm-made products from other direct-market farms in the area will be showcased and sold at their store, too, possibly including dairy products.

From the animals they raise they also produce hides, tallow and herbal-based soaps and hand salves, Icelandic Lopi yarn and wool dryer balls.

“It’s a big challenge to make it financially when you’re only selling through farmers markets with limited hours, and selling to a number of (consumer-supported agriculture) customers,” said Cox who estimated the farm feeds at least 100 families with what they raise.

“Something that’s open more full-time at a definite place, where customers can get to know the farmers and their products personally, and they can visit and buy repeatedly anytime throughout the year, well, that can make a huge difference for all of us.”

The store could serve as a food hub for other small growers and producers in the region. They estimate there are perhaps six direct-market farms in Kittitas

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

Matthew Cox and Christina Miller stand in the rear portion of the former Mason's Jersey Dairy Building now being refurbished and transformed into a chicken processing and freezing facility at Green Bow Farms along Vantage Highway east of Ellensburg.

County and many more in neighboring counties.

Kitchen

A commercial farm kitchen also is planned in the dairy building in the future, allowing cooking classes using seasonal ingredients.

“Some of these could be very small informal classes taught by the farmers where we could demonstrate how we put together simple meals made up entirely of local food,” Miller said. “Others could be more formal and involve bringing in chefs and artisans to teach their craft.”

She said it’s her dream, too, to conduct classes in the kitchen like bread baking, fermenting vegetables, cheese making, sausage making, curing, “you name it.”

Cox said he also wants to use his cooking experience to “offer some hands-on opportunities

to get people back into their kitchens, to take home a whole chicken with the utmost confidence that they are going to make a great meal and share it with people they love or, at least, admire.”

The couple say their overarching goal is to make a difference in the lives of their customers by giving residents in the region a wider, more natural choice in what they eat and from where they obtain it, knowing how and by whom it was raised.

“We will never be the richest farmers in the valley or have the largest market share, but we have the satisfaction of feeding people while taking care of the land that feeds us,” Miller said.

Permaculture

Green Bow Farm humanely raises Scottish Highland beef cattle, Icelandic sheep, hogs, chickens and turkey using land-

16 | 2017 Ag Journal - Fall

and animal-sensitive practices.

Some call the practices permaculture, or using on-farm agricultural and grazing ecosystem practices like putting chickens on rotation pasture land. The chickens keep weeds down, deposit chicken manure that enriches the soil, and scratch open the top soil for better pasture plant growth that makes way for lamb, beef and hog grazing.

The chickens are raised for meat and eggs, too.

It’s also about not using chemicals and chemical fertilizers but enhancing soils using natural means. Cox said there is deep satisfaction in providing natural, locally-raised meats for customers they know my name.

“Our customers value knowing where their food comes from above all else, and that the animals they consume experience joy in their lives doing what they were

designed to do,” Cox said. “Happy animals simply taste better.”

Green Bow Farm and others like it need to charge quite a bit more than grocery stores selling commodity-produced foods “and we hear about it often at our farmers markets,” Cox said.

Unlike in the general food system in the United States in which everyone shares in the cost and revenue to produce, transport, process, market, distribute, sell and consume foods, the direct-market farmer shoulders all those costs except those of the consumer.

“For our model, we are responsible for being the producers, transporter, processor, marketer and grocer,” Cox said. “That generates a lot of expenses, and the payoff doesn’t come until the last pound of ground beef is sold from the steer we raised from birth and carried through two hay seasons, delivered to the USDA butcher and then picked up

again as cut and wrapped meat.”

Making a difference

The couple also see their operation making a difference through on-farm education and building relationships.

Miller said their family farm is one of the sites used by the Ellensburg-area Discovery Lab program, an independent child and family education initiative. It teaches home-schooled students (kindergarten through third grade) and focuses on high-interest hands-on projects using exploratory methods and group collaboration with parents.

“When my older son started going there (Discovery Lab program) it felt like the perfect fit for their educational model to add on-farm days at Green Bow where the students could learn about our farm animals and farm operation,” Miller said.

See Green Bow, Page 18

Green Bow gets help through t-shirt project

By MIKE JOHNSTON Special to the Daily Record

Christina Miller and Matthew Cox recently completed a community fundraising project to help cover the costs to complete projects associated with refurbishing the interior of the dairy barn. Bright green Green Bow Farm T-shirts went on sale with the funds going to finish several smaller projects inside the barn, including needed equipment and shelving.

Miller said their family is extremely grateful to everyone who assisted through ordering a T-shirt and through other donations that are helping to bring the dairy barn work that much closer to completion.

According to Miller, 116 T-shirts were sold, and with cash donations to the booster campaign and from farmers market customers, the total raised was $3,200.

They’ve gotten help in other ways, too. A friend operating a new commercial electrical firm, Eckson Electric, provided assistance.

“He has worked to make our electrical service future minded in the event we need to expand it or improve it,” Cox said. “He and his family are quite excited to see the project completed and excited about our move. We couldn't have done it without them. They're family is very supportive of us.”

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Access to land, and the high cost of land

By MIKE JOHNSTON Special to the Daily Record Christina Miller and Matthew Cox agree the steadily rising price of agricultural land and stagnant prices for commodity-sourced food combine to make it increasingly difficult to purchase and develop smaller acreage, directmarket, sustainable organic farms.

“That has been the case for decades, and it’s why the sale of agricultural land is considered a farmer’s final crop,” Cox said.

Although there’s been an increase in the number of directmarket farms around the state, and a few more becoming established in Kittitas County, Miller said the continuing challenge to attract young farmers to an area is to have access to rural lands in some way because so many can’t afford to buy their own land.

“It takes landowners who are willing to lease their land inexpensively to help many of these operations get established and really make a go of it,” Miller said.

“Another part of attracting young farmers to the valley is proximity to successful farmers markets.”

While being a couple of hours from larger farmer markets is attractive, Miller said it’s also important for local residents to have a connection to local farmers.

“We have such a rich agricultural history yet the vast majority of people buy their food at grocery stores instead of their local farmers,” she said. “We want to help change that and make it easier for people to buy local food by opening up our farm store several days a week and by having food from other farms available.”

Green Bow Continued from Page 17 Students and parents take part in sheep shearing day, harvesting crops, exploring the outdoors, seeing up close the life cycle of animals and carry out small learning projects.

The farm has been the site of occasional tours for other direct-market farmers organized by Tilth of Washington, and Miller said they are interested in hosting public tours if time allows.

The farm hosted a Farm to Fork dinner earlier this month.

Rustic Roots and Harrow & Hive assisted the couple who believe the dinner to be the perfect way to end their first season at the new farm site and a great way to celebrate

the completion of refurbishing the dairy barn, “the center for all things related to local food,” Miller said.

Cox said the enduring motivation behind Green Bow Farm will always be connecting people with their food.

“Not just farming but eating and cooking in their home with their family and friends,” Cox said. “It’s our social connections that make us happy people. Not money or things or social media. It’s relationships we have with people in our homes and communities.

Strengthening that and building on that can only make the world a better place, and I see us as having a small role in that.” n

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Farms are what we do best!

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

A grain silo, familiar to locals driving along Vantage Highway stands next to the former Mason's Jersey Dairy building currently being refurbished by Christina Miller and Matthew Cox of Green Bow Farms. Miller and Cox plan to keep the dairy building’s unique red-and-white siding and landmark checkered silo as they transform the interior of the building into a farm store and chicken processing and freezing facility.

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Cowpeas, anyone?

Mike Johnston photo

WSU-Kittitas County Extension specialist Tip Hudson (in white hat) meets with Kittitas Valley farmer and rancher Mark Charlton last summer in Charlton’s field of cowpeas northeast of Ellensburg. Charlton is growing the trial acreage to see how they do as cattle feed and a cover/rotation crop.

Finding alternative cover, rotation crops crucial for local farms

By MIKE JOHNSTON Special to the DAILY RECORD

I

n a field off Lyons Road north of Ellensburg this past summer, timothy grower and beef cattle rancher Mark Charlton grew about 70 acres of cowpeas in an exploration to find a rotation crop that fits his farm operation.

Charlton, a fifth-generation rancher-grower in the Kittitas

Valley, said a crop he was planning for that field didn’t work out, and he connected with the Washington State UniversityKittitas County Extension office to try something different.

“Cowpeas like a somewhat warmer, drier and longer growing season, but they could work here to put a good amount of nitrogen back into the soil and provide good feed for my cattle,” Charlton

said in mid-summer. “The idea, hopefully, is feed costs might be reduced and the field is ready for another crop with the nitrogen.

But we’ll have see about all that, whether it works out or not.”

Tip Hudson, the WSU-Kittitas County Extension office director and associate professor of rangeland and livestock management, is assisting Charlton in the evaluation effort.

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What are cowpeas?

Cowpeas, an annual legume, fix nitrogen inside the plant’s bulbous root nodules in a bacterial action, Hudson said. The existing nitrogen gas in the air throughout the soil is turned into a water soluble compound in the nodules that are rich in nitrogen that plants can readily use, he said.

What about the economics?

Hudson also is interested in the economics in using cowpeas, as is Charlton. Hudson wants to know whether it is just a break-even operation in costs to use cowpeas for feed and soil nitrogen, whether growers can save on money, labor and irrigation water, or whether it costs money.

“And just how much biomass can it create per acre given our particular climate here in the Kittitas Valley?”

Hudson said. “Is there a long enough growing season here for it?”

The Kittitas Valley’s limited acreage to farmers, and rising production costs, make it important to find cover and rotation crops that not only help the soil thrive but also do economically.

Mike Johnston photos

Above: The sign for Charlton Farms, which is using cowpeas as a rotational crop.

longer growing season, Hudson said, including the U.S. South and countries with subtropical and semiarid climates. Some varieties are used for food (protein) from its peas, and are known for not requiring a lot of water or chemical inputs.

Charlton, along with a few other growers in the valley, also grows sunflower seeds destined for use by other farmers to raise sunflowers for oil or food. He’s into his fourth year growing sunflowers for seed.

In addition, he is growing on a somewhat trial basis corn that’s raised for its certified seed. He’s growing about 50 acres this year. Last year he began with seven, seven-acre plots in a trial operation. n

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Hudson said to his knowledge, cowpeas have never been grown as a possible cover or livestock feed crop in Kittitas County.

Cowpeas typically are grown in areas where there is a much

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“Mark will turn out some of his cattle into the field, and the plant and its pods and peas become feed for grazing,” said Hudson. “At some point what’s left in the field after grazing will be plowed under, along with the cattle manure, to further prepare the field for some kind of seeded crop.”

That crop could be a field of new timothy grass seeding for hay, he said.

Fields must be occasionally rotated out of timothy to replenish soil nutrients and make way for stronger plants through new field seedings.

Overseas buyers are looking for strong stands of timothy that produce hay that’s bright green throughout a hay bale with big, solid heads and thick stems. The Kittitas Valley is known for producing that type of hay.

Hudson said cowpea plants leave quite a lot of organic material under the surface in the form of roots and the nodules.

Charlton has an Angus cow-calf production operation. Hudson is monitoring how well the cowpea plants grew, how well and widespread the below-ground nodules formed and how the cattle did eating the aboveground plant.

No stranger to beef

Sarah Ryan is the new head of state cattlemen

By MIKE JOHNSTON Special to the DAILY RECORD

Sarah Ryan hit the ground running as the new executive vice president of the Washington Cattlemen’s Association in mid-June.

She’s no stranger to the on-theranch side of raising beef cattle, to animal science and to the challenges facing family ranching and beef processing businesses.

Ryan was hired by the statewide association after former executive vice-president Jack Field left that position earlier in the year to become the executive director of the Washington Cattle Feeders Association.

Field started in 2004 with the cattlemen’s association, which has main offices in Ellensburg.

Ryan grew up in the Palouse region of Washington state on her family’s ranch and wheat farm.

“The lifestyle growing up with daily involvement in agriculture allows me to completely understand the challenges, successes and opportunities presented to those who get to be involved in the production of our food supply,” she said.

It was on the family ranch and farm, and in 4-H and FFA, that she learned leadership skills, she said, personal responsibility and a love for livestock production.

Ryan said she always was drawn to the ranching side, working with animals, especially horses and beef cattle. The family ranch is a commercial-sized, mixed-breed, cow-calf herd.

Ryan has undergraduate and graduate degrees in animal science and industry, and has put her

skills into practice professionally in recent years. Before finishing her degrees she attended WCA and Kansas Livestock Association conventions and was a member of the American Society of Animal Scientists. This included presenting research papers to animal scientists and interacting with other graduate students from around the nation.

“My professor made sure I could explain my research to cattlemen by having me give several presentations to county cattlemen’s meetings,” Ryan wrote in the WCA’s Ketch Pen magazine.

She’s worked for the national and international AllFlex USA firm that produces high-tech, individual animal identification systems and livestock traceability programs, and for Agri Beef Co. at its corporate headquarters managing the company’s Wagyu bull leasing program and its annual purebred Angus and Sim-Angus bull sale and assisting with risk management activities.

She’s been involved with the Washington Cattlemen’s Association and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, as well as other related groups, for more than 10 years. She is presently in the two-year national Excellence in Ag Leadership program offered by the King Ranch Institute in cooperation with the national cattlemen’s group.

Ryan has also worked for the El Oro Cattle Feeders, a division of Agri Beef.

Some of her work included developing animal records and analysis to identify and improve the genetics evaluation process.

Impressive list

Tyler Cox, president of the Washington Cattlemen’s Association from the Walla Walla area, said Ryan brings an impressive list of capabilities and experiences with her.

“I have always loved the people in the WCA, their values and their striving to provide solutions to issues presented to the industry,” Ryan said. “Working for them just makes sense.”

Ryan said her focus with the Washington Cattlemen’s Association is on reaching out to rancher-members and their fellow producers to hear concerns and needs, and connect them with what the association can do to help. She also sees her role as being an active participant in government legislative and regulatory arenas to represent members’ interests and to develop policies that work within cattle-raising industry practices.

She said a commercial beef ranchers’ involvement in county, state and national affiliations is a producer’s way to have a voice in affecting a number of issues, to be represented at the table. The “table,” she said, could be with government legislative representatives and agency officials, or with local governments or with those involved with the promotion and marketing of beef.

Some of the challenges state beef ranchers are facing include developing better means to transfer family ranch ownerships between the generations in a way that assists the younger ranchers who are returning to the family operation.

Other concerns are the effect

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Sarah Ryan Residence: Ellensburg Employment: Executive vicepresident of the Washington Cattlemen’s Association.

Began work: Mid-June 2017.

Past employment: Two years as regional sales manager with Allflex USA; nearly seven years with Agri Beef Co. in various positions related to purebred herds and risk management, including nearly four years at El Oro Cattle Feeders, a division of Agri Beef.

Education background: bachelor’s of science degree in animal science from Washington State University; master’s of science degree in animal science and industry from Kansas State University.

WCA contact: www.washingtoncattle.org, 509-925-9871, wacattle@ kvalley.com of regulations and the ongoing challenge of ranchers’ increasing operational costs not being fully covered by what ranchers get for the sale of their animals.

The WCA, she said, works to limit regulation on ranching “and provide opportunities for producers to improve their bottom line be it through education or promotion.”

“The WCA strives to be the solution oriented association, promoting our producers’ interests and values,” Ryan said.

Some information for this story came from the WCA’s Ketch Pen magazine.

Munching down on the field

Sheep belonging to the S. Martinez Livestock company based in Moxee graze on plant stubble in a hay field east of Ellensburg off Vantage Highway last winter.

The livestock business arranges with local farmers to have their flocks graze on

what's left of the crop from last season's harvests, utilizing available feed and stretching the company's feed budget. The livestock company's major sheep grazing areas in warmer months are designated areas of the Okanagon-Wenatchee National Forest.

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Photos by DALE MICKELSEN

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