2015 Ag Journal - Summer

Ag Journal Daily Record Summer 2015

Generations on the farm ■ A day with a ditch rider ■ Upper County hay farms ■

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Ag Journal

Table of contents

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 2015 unless otherwise noted.

On the cover: Brian Myrick / Daily Record

Breanne Combs, 11, Samantha Combs, 9, and Annie Combs, 6, are an integral part of the farm and the grandchildren of Well and Winnie Bartsma.

A day with a ditch rider

Farming with drones

Page 4

Page 15

Upper County hay farm

Family of farmers

Page 8

Page 19

Veterinarian on the move

Grant County ag representative

Page 11

Page 23

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Controlling water flows Ditch riders help control, monitor water delivery in Kittitas County

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

Chris Sandvig, a ditch rider with the Kittitas Reclamation District (KRD), stands on the fish ladder down stream of Easton Dam on June 17.

By MARY SWIFT For the Daily Record

C

hris Sandvig stood on a platform adjacent to the top of Lake Easton Dam and smiled.

Across the way, a lone otter — one of half a dozen that call the dam area home — scampered up the rocks and along the side of the opposite bank,

looking for all the world like a child at play.

Directly in front of Sandvig, water flowed out of Lake Easton and over the spillway, plunging 40 feet straight down into a frothy pool below. There, a bright rainbow forged of tiny droplets of moisture melded perfectly with sunlight hung improbably above the water.

For Sandvig, who is the dam tender as well as one of six ditch riders for the Kittitas Reclamation District, it is a familiar piece of heaven sitting right outside his door. The dam, owned by the Bureau of Reclamation and operated by the Kittitas Reclamation District, is closed to the public within Lake Easton State Park. Sandvig, his wife, Debbie, and their 8-year-old Jack

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Russell named Winston, live on site just a quick stroll from the dam.

“I used to think if there was reincarnation I'd want to come back as an eagle,” Sandvig said, looking out across the water. “Now I think I want to be an otter. They always look happy. They always seem to be having fun. This place is always good for a little inspiration on a good day.

“And if the sun is out there will always be a rainbow.”

From drums to a dam Raised in the Thorp area, and after graduating high school, Sandvig worked as a boat laminator on the West Side before returning to Kittitas County where he worked as a drummer with several local bands.

“Of course, I worked a lot of funky jobs to make ends meet,” he says.

He went to work for the KRD 20 years ago, moving up to Easton in the spring of 1996 to become the dam tender as well as a ditch rider.

“The next winter was the deepest

snow we’ve had in years,” he says. “I had a six-volt tractor we had to start.

It was an old clunker.”

Ditch riders like Sandvig, one of six in the KRD, control and monitor the delivery of the water that is the lifeblood of Kittitas County’s agricultural economy.

KRD customers are assigned allotments and charged for the portion of the allotment they draw down. Five days a week, the ditch riders take orders from their customers for how much water they will need and when they will need it.

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Brian Myrick / Daily Record

Water flows on the fish ladder downstream of Easton Dam on June 17.

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WATER Continued from Page 5 “We ask customers to give us 24 hour notice,� he says. Ditch riders operate equipment, opening and closing gates that regulate where water goes in the system and patrolling the canals and ditches, removing debris when necessary and looking for signs of damage.

It’s no small task.

The KRD canal, which begins at Lake Easton Dam, ends when it rejoins the Yakima River 78 miles downstream.

The sixth largest irrigation system in the state, the KRD has 330 miles of canals and lateral ditches and serves about 60,000 acres, approximately two-thirds of the county’s irrigated land. The number of KRD-assessed landowners is up more than 30 percent over the last decade as farmland has been subdivided to make way for houses. So the amount of irrigated land remains the same while the customers who need to be served grows.

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

A matter of timing As dam tender, Sandvig’s role includes monitoring gauges and water levels and operating various equipment including the gates that let water flow out of Lake Easton into the KRD canal on the far side of the dam. “It’s more complicated than it looks,� he says, explaining his role. “It’s a unique job. There aren’t many people in the county that have a one-man operation.�

Sandvig says the way the system works is this: Once ditch riders have taken their orders and the KRD water master in Ellensburg

Chris Sandvig, a ditch rider with the Kittitas Reclamation District (KRD), stands atop Easton Dam on June 17. knows how much water is needed, the water master notifies the river master at the Bureau of Reclamation in Yakima. The bureau river manager then remotely adjusts the gates of the Lake Kachess and Lake Kecheelus reservoirs to release the appropriate amount of water into the Yakima River which carries the water to Lake Easton and then continues over the dam.

Timing is everything. “We time it so he makes his release before I need the water,�

says Sandvig, noting that it takes hours for the water released from the reservoirs to enter Lake Easton.

Once the water allocated for irrigation is in the canal, “then I take off down the ditch and deliver water to my customers,� Sandvig says.

Relationships endure A normal irrigation season starts in July and runs until mid-October.

This year will be different because of the drought. KRD has junior water rights (rights granted after

1905) which means that in drought years it receives less. This year, the KRD is getting 44 percent of a full supply. “It’s brutal,� Sandvig says, grimacing. “The plan is we’re going to run up until the first of August.

It’s really going to hurt everybody.�

A lot of farmers will get only one cutting of hay, he says, noting that farmers with sprinkler irrigation systems tend to get more mileage out of their water allotment than those with pipe systems.

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While frustrated and understandably concerned, most KRD customers are understanding and don’t take their frustration out on him, Sandvig says.

“You can’t not get to like a lot of your customers,” he says. “You see them almost every day. Some of my customers are just the nicest people. In a little while here someone will call and say, ‘My corn’s ready. It’s by the tree.’

Or someone will offer zucchini or potatoes.

“I like to pick blueberries. I freeze them. So I reciprocate with frozen blueberries.”

Controlling water loss Even in a normal water year, KRD employees work to reduce water loss where they can. Evaporation causes water loss. So does seepage in unlined dirt ditches. To address that, KRD employees sometimes treat the dirt ditches with sawdust to slow water loss. But Sandvig notes that the water lost to seepage isn’t purely a negative. It helps

support water in wells and in wetlands, “so it’s not all bad.”

Another thing: If you happen to spot people with fishing poles hanging around the canals, they’re not just hopeless optimists.

“Some of the best fishing in Kittitas County is there,” he says with a laugh. “There’s fish that live in the canal.”

Once KRD starts reducing water flow as the season ends, “they’ll hole up in the deep siphons because they can sense we’re cutting the water down.”

A deceptive attraction In his role with KRD, Sandvig also tries to make people understand the dangers associated with irrigation canals and ditches. Canal water looks cool and inviting on a hot day when temperatures soar. But the current is treacherous, so strong in some places that it’s a recipe for tragedy.

“A couple of times I’ve caught people getting ready to put inner tubes in,” he

says. “They thought they were on the river. I had a guy call me up once and say a dozen people had just floated by his place. I figured out where they were and how soon they would get to another place and I called the sheriff and had him meet them there and tell them to get out of the water.”

Siphons — long enclosed tubes used to move water from one level to another — are especially deadly, he says. “The pressure of the water going down will roll and tumble you like a washing machine on the concrete bottom. The Yakima siphon (at Sunlight Waters) goes down 600 feet. Even small siphons kill full grown game.”

Despite efforts to keep animals out of the canal, elk, deer and even family pets end up dead in the irrigation system, unable to withstand the pull of the current. When that happens, KRD hires someone to remove the carcasses.

For safety, concrete-lined ditches have hand rails at

intervals on the sides, but it’s difficult to pull yourself out of a fast current, he says.

And while ropes hang at the entrance to siphons to help in a potential emergency, Sandvig doubts many would be saved by them. “To be honest,” he says, “it would be physically difficult to hang onto one, let alone guide yourself to a railing.”

Then there is the dam itself, a magnet for the foolishly curious.

Some time before he became the dam tender Sandvig says, “two college boys trying to impress their girlfriends” jumped off the side of the dam into the pool below. One survived; the other didn’t.

Even now, some people ignore the fencing and the signs declaring the area off limits to the public and try to get in, Sandvig says.

“I’ve had to chase people away from here,” Sandvig says, nodding toward the spillway and shaking his head at the stupidity. “It’s just plain dangerous.”

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The few and the proud Hay farms are scarce in the Upper County — but stalwarts remain

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

Hay is stacked for transport during baling operations in a field off Masterson Road in Cle Elum on June 11.

By NICOLE KLAUSS staff writer

T

imothy hay growers in the Upper County are rare.

Growing conditions in the Upper County aren't too different from Ellensburg, but the lack of hay farms comes from a lack of space, said Ed Wakkuri of Cle Elum.

"Everything is houses," he said.

"It's all so divided up. When I was

a kid up here and up until 20 years ago, there was acres of farms. Now it's all houses."

Wakkuri owns 57 acres of land and grows timothy hay on 51 acres.

He grows timber on the rest. Ward Rugh has taken his hay since 1994.

"I've been farming here all my life," he said. "My dad started in 1931 with 10 acres and we grew from there up until a few years ago."

Weather differences Wakkuri said one difference between hay farms in the two parts of the county is a shorter growing season due to the weather.

"We have a short season up here," he said.

Brett Bierek, another Upper County timothy hay farmer, echoed Wakkuri's statements that there wasn't much difference between growing hay in the two areas.

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"We're about three weeks behind them (lower county) weather-wise, except for this year," Bierek said.

Because of the warm weather and lack of snow this winter, Bierek's hay is about a month earlier than usual, and was well into first cutting in early June. In normal years, cutting doesn't start until the last week of June or early July.

See UC Hay, Page 11

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

A harrow bed is driven through a field during baling operations off Masterson Road in Cle Elum on June 11.

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UC HAY Continued from Page 9 Bierek said the first cutting will be the only cutting he’ll have this year due to drought-related water restrictions. The work won’t stop though.

“We have fields we’ll prepare for ditching,” he said. “We’ll still be working.”

A disappearing trade The Bierek family has owned its farm on Upper Peoh Point since about 1992, Bierek said. His family initially purchased the land to use for motorcycle riding, but had to repurpose it based on county requirements.

“My dad bought 40 acres to put in a race track to race motorcycles,

but they (the county) told him he had to farm it,” Bierek said. Since then, the family has farmed the land for a living. They sell their hay to No. 9 Hay Trading Co. “That’s basically what I do besides selling our pickup flatbeds,” Bierek said, referring to his year-round business Dieselwerx, which sells truck beds and sled decks.

Most of the farms in the area have been divided into smaller parcels, and not enough people have the equipment to farm timothy hay, Bierek said.

“It’s not cheap to farm,” he said.

“It’s kind of like logging. It’s going away.”

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

A harrow bed is used to pluck bales of hay from a field off Masterson Road in Cle Elum on June 11.

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Veterinarian on the move Mobile vet takes care of county’s animals, runs one-person operation

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

Paula Thompson uses a rasp to file the rough edges of a horse’s teeth on June 10.

By MARY SWIFT For the Daily Record

S

he lives where she was raised, on property her parents bought in 1950.

From the time she was young, Paula Thompson had a thing about animals. She loved being with them; she loved caring for them.

Half a century later, nothing’s changed except her age.

At 58, Thompson is still doing what she loves, spending her days — and when necessary her nights — caring for animals.

An Ellensburg High School grad, she went on to Washington State University where she earned a degree in range management and went to work as a range manager for the U.S. Forest Service in Idaho.

But by 1989, ready for a change, Thompson headed back to WSU, this

time to earn a degree in veterinary medicine. In 1993, she returned to Kittitas County as a veterinarian and established Kittitas County Mobile Veterinarian Service.

When she was a kid, she says, her family had nurse cows and raised calves. The late Dr. Don Mee would come out to treat the animals.

Thompson, who now has Jersey nurse cows and raises calves of her own, loved tagging along to watch him.

11 | Summer 2015 Ag Journal

“I thought he was a cool guy, a nice guy,” she says. “He was caring, liked what he did and he helped me get established here.”

Kittitas County is blessed with a corps of well-respected veterinarians. Other area veterinarians make ranch calls in addition to operating clinics, but Thompson, who runs a one-person operation, is the only one operating exclusively as a mobile vet.

See Vet, Page 12

GROWING TOGETHER

VET Continued from Page 13 “I’m on call all the time,” she says. “One thing I like about my job is that it lets me be more flexible. When I’m out on a call I’m not anxious about getting back to my office. It gives me a chance to build a more personal relationship if the client wants that.”

Life as a rural vet It’s a sunny day with the thermometer on its way to 90-plus degrees and Thompson is in a barn at Victor and Linda Dickson’s place in Ellensburg “floating” the teeth of a 2-year-old quarter horse named Parker. The term refers to using a long handled rasp to file off any sharp points or edges on a horse’s teeth. Before starting, she gives Parker an injection to help him relax.

“I use hand floats,” she explains as she reaches into his mouth.

“But I do have an air-powered float. If I have a horse with a bad bite it takes a long time. A horse’s teeth grow all the time. They can

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develop points that affect how they take the bit.”

Parker, young and in good shape, needs only minor attention.

Next up: Parker’s mom Ginger, hopefully pregnant. Thompson, who is doing an ultrasound, puts on a glove attached to a long plastic sleeve that extends to her shoulder, then lifts Ginger’s tail and reaches inside the horse. Ginger whinnies a hint of indignation.

The verdict: She’s not pregnant.

As a rural vet, Thompson’s work ranges from the ordinary — dealing with a dog who has a run-in with a porcupine to doing checkups on livestock, breeding horses, delivering calves and spaying barn cats — to the unexpected, like the elk calf born when its mother was struck by a vehicle on I-90.

The newborn needed colostrum, known as “first milk,” which provides the antibodies it needs to resist disease.

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Ideally, Thompson says, newborns should get colostrum in the first few hours of life but they need to have it in the first 24.

Thompson didn’t have elk colostrum but she did have something close: colostrum from her Jersey cows that she’d frozen.

So the newborn elk calf was brought to her place in Thorp.

“It wasn’t nursing so I tubed it,” she says, referring to the method of getting nutrients to the elk. “The next day I tubed it again.”

It survived and was taken to a wildlife rehab center in Wapato.

There’s a seasonal rhythm to her work, she says. Fall is busy with progress checks. February brings the rush of calving season.

March to June or July is busy with horse breeding. On this particular day, she’s headed out later to do TB testing on some livestock. A few days earlier she’d been busy running blood tests on 15 horses used as rodeo stock.

Nationally, she says, there’s a shortage of large animal vets.

“It’s easier to be a small animal vet in a clinic in the city and have an 8-to-5 job,” she says.

But it’s not for her?

“No,” she says, and smiles.

A straight shooter Standing in the Dicksons’ barn, she’s holding a can of Diet Pepsi as she chats. It’s her guilty pleasure, she admits.

“I drink them all day long,” she says. How many depends on the day. “Just enough.”

She’s been skiing for 45 years and still tries to get away to the slopes when time allows, but being an on-call vet limits those opportunities. As for her work, “the best day is any time you can save an animal,” she says. “And sometimes the worst day is when you try to save an animal but can’t.”

Calving season can be a challenge.

“Most of the time when I get called out for calves it’s not going well and they have already tried all the easy stuff they know how to do,” she says. “I have an affinity for calves. I hate to lose one.”

That’s true, says rancher Sam Kayser.

“If she loses a calf she takes it personal,” he says. “You’d think she’d be immune after all these years, but she isn’t.”

Kayser has known Thompson for decades. “I watched her play

basketball with my sister when she was in high school,” he recalls. “She was a really good basketball player.

She was tough. It was like, don’t mess with her.”

The tenacity and toughness she demonstrated on the court shows up in her work as a veterinarian, Kayser says. Once, he says, they were doing something when he heard a commotion and went to see what had happened. A gate kicked by a cow flew back and hit Thompson in the face, bloodying her nose. She went on working without saying a word.

“If it had been me, you could have heard me cussing from here to Canada,” he says. “She doesn’t quit. She doesn’t have an ounce of backing down in her.”

And she is absolutely straight spoken, he says.

“Don’t ask her a question unless you want a straight answer in her opinion,” he says. “Because she’s not going to sugarcoat it and just tell you what you want to hear.”

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Keeping perspective Compassionate by nature, she is pragmatic about a role that sometimes requires her to put an animal down.

“People say they couldn’t be a vet because they have to euthanize animals,” she says. “You have to keep the right perspective. It’s all about suffering. When an animal is suffering it’s humane to put them to sleep.”

When their health declines or they’re seriously ill or injured, larger animals like horses are harder to nurse than smaller animals like dogs which means it may be more humane to put them down sooner than might be done with a smaller animal, she says.

But she refuses to euthanize any animal simply for human convenience.

“I don’t euthanize animals because they’re digging in a yard or their owners are moving and don’t want to take the animal with them,” she says. “I do what’s best for the animal, not for the convenience of people.”

She also recognizes the bonds that form between people and their animals, bonds that can mean true emotional loss for a person who has to have an animal euthanized.

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See Vet, Page 14 13 | Summer 2015 Ag Journal

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Brian Myrick / Daily Record

Ranch hand April Snyder, at left, holds onto a horse being sedated by veterinarian Paula Thompson on June 10. On this day, the horse, named Parker, was scheduled to have his teeth tended to by Thompson.

VET Continued from Page 13

A two-legged dog Thompson’s love of animals means she sometimes goes above and beyond to save a life.

Case in point: Ten years ago a small dog suffered severe injuries when it was hit by a car. Thompson was forced to amputate both legs on its right side. Thompson adopted the dog and named it Lefty.

Now 15, Lefty walks balancing on

his two left legs.

“It was amazing,” says Becky McDowell, who has known Thompson for years and affectionately calls her “a character.”

“She also had a sheep who had to have a leg amputated,” McDowell says. “She kept the sheep, too. She’s like a Dr. Doolittle.”

Every year on the Wednesday before the Kittitas County Fair opens, local vets volunteer to do the vet checks required before animals are admitted to the fair. Thompson has long been among them, says McDowell, who serves on the Kittitas County Fair

Board of Directors. Thompson also serves as the fair’s “master vet,” McDowell says. In the event there’s a disagreement about an animal’s condition, Thompson is the one who makes the call.

Although Thompson doesn’t have to be on-site during fair week, she spends much of her time there, McDowell says.

“She does what she does because she loves it,” she said. “She loves the youth. She loves working with the youth. She wants the kids to know how to do things correctly and she helps with their education.”

14 | Summer 2015 Ag Journal

The best dog ever Thompson counts her own animals among her favorite companions.

Besides the cows and calves, her personal menagerie includes mammoth donkeys, several mules, several horses, a llama, an emu and seven dogs.

Which dog is her favorite?

“They’re all my favorite,” she insists, avoiding the question with an emphasis on “all.”

Then she flashes a grin and laughingly admits to telling each dog the same thing: “You’re the best dog ever,” she’ll say. “Don’t tell the other dogs.”

Farming with flight Drones coming to ag producers’ tool box

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

A HoneyComb drone flies through the sky at a farm southeast of Ellensburg on May 21.

15 | Summer 2015 Ag Journal

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

Steve Gardner, right, of Quincy throws the HoneyComb drone into the sky.

Do-it-yourself overflights likely to increase soon

By MIKE JOHNSTON senior writer On a sunny May day, Steve Gardner used a drone to demonstrate how agricultural producers can fly over their pastures and fields without once leaving the ground.

“It can see so much more in such a short time, things that we probably won’t ever see on the ground,” Gardner said after the demonstration at the annual field day of the Kittitas County Cattlemen’s Association.

“Drones are becoming a great tool for farmers, ranchers, fruit growers, just about anyone raising a crop or managing a lot of animals.”

The field day was at the Badger Pocket farm and ranch of 2015 cattlemen of the year John and Julie Sorensen. The couple’s son, Eric

Sorensen, works for Washington Tractor in Ellensburg and invited Gardner to give the demonstration.

Washington Tractors of Quincy began selling Honeycomb propellerdriven, fixed-wing, battery-powered drones in November 2014. They’re also investigating the possibility of leasing them in the future.

Gardner heads the ag management solutions office of Washington Tractor, assisting producers in applying technology, including GPS, into their use of water, fertilizer, seeding and harvest.

Like a big bat The drone has a 50-inch wingspan and looks like a bat with huge, dark flat wings.

See Drone, Page 18 1299354 AGJ15 MW

16 | Summer 2015 Ag Journal

DRONE Continued from Page 17 The equipment comes with online analytics and computer help. The drone can stay aloft for about 55 minutes. In that time, with planning and somewhat calm winds, it can survey and digitally photograph about 800 acres.

The digital color and infrared cameras on board the drone take still photos.

After surveying a field, pasture or orchard, the grower lands the craft, retrieves the cameras’ cards and downloads them online.

The system puts the photos together digitally depending on what is being investigated by air.

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

Steve Gardner of Quincey works on a drone on a farm southeast of Ellensburg.

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DRONE Continued from Page 16

“A lot of the time we can’t see it, but the drone’s cameras can see what you’re looking for,” Gardner said.

The online system soon makes the images and related information available to the agricultural producer in a private, secure way. The producer can view and study the images and information anytime he or she wants.

From there, decisions can be made by the producer for what needs to be done.

What’s up?

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

Steve Gardner demonstrates use of a drone for agriculture on a farm southeast of Ellensburg.

Gardner says a multitude of concerns can be pinpointed by the drone’s photos, such as plant diseases, water stress (where not enough or too much irrigation water is being applied), insect infestations, soil conditions, seeding patterns and more.

As an example, Gardner plans to use a drone to overfly a relative’s garbanzo bean field in the Palouse area of Eastern Washington that was recently damaged by a torrential downpour during a thunderstorm before Memorial Day. “There’s likely areas damaged by erosion. The data from the drone could help make a claim for

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18 | Summer 2015 Ag Journal

crop damage,” he said.

For a rancher, the drones can check the herd in far flung areas and the condition of his pasture ground.

Use of the drones isn’t just something for the owner of large tracts of farm ground. He said the HoneyComb drone can cover about 150 acres in 15 minutes.

A challenge facing farm drone users in rural areas where non-farming residents live nearby is convincing neighbors the drone that might go over their property isn’t live-streaming video or any other data back to the drone operator.

“It’s not invading privacy,” Gardner said.

“It might need to go over someone’s property momentarily to get in position for going over a farmer’s field, but it’s only taking still photos and they only pertain to what’s going on in the field.”

Once the overflight is done, the images and the data from them are easy to control and interpret, Gardner said.

“We’re going to see more and more drone use in Eastern and Central Washington,” he said. “It’s all about better production, more efficiency and better stewardship of the land.”

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Family of farmers Bartsma family puts it together in Badger Pocket

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

Breanne Combs, 11, Samantha Combs, 9, and Annie Combs, 6, are an integral part of their family’s farm in Badger Pocket.

By MIKE JOHNSTON senior writer

K

ittitas Valley residents Well and Winnie Bartsma and one of their daughters, Jade Bartsma, raise timothy and alfalfa hay and wheat for seeds. In the process, they also are growing close family relationships that will last a lifetime.

The farm operation 13 miles southeast of Ellensburg in Badger Pocket represents a valley farm tradition going back to the early 1970s when Well’s parents, Claude and Shirley, started a local farm raising cattle and hay.

The family’s farming roots go back much further than that in the Artesia, Calif., area where Claude and Shirley Bartsma had a longtime family dairy

operation that came from Claude’s father and mother and grandparents.

The dairy was about 30 miles southeast of Los Angeles.

“It was in Southern California and the growth there, all the homes, the development, just squeezed agriculture out of the area,” Well, 53, said recently.

With extended family members now

19 | Summer 2015 Ag Journal

dependent on the Badger Pocket farm, Well doesn’t want the same thing to happen in the Kittitas Valley any more than it has.

Winnie said there’s also concern that in the valley and around the nation there are too few younger farmers ready to take over operations from the older generation.

See Family, Page 20

FAMILY Continued from Page 19 “A lot of the farm kids leave to try a different lifestyle, some returning and some taking a different road,” Winnie said. “We need to encourage the young people who have an interest in farming to take on the challenge. Farming is a lot of hard work, but the benefits and self satisfaction you get from it is so worth it.”

Second nature Well and Winnie Bartsma have three grown children. One of their daughters, single mom Jade Bartsma, 29, and her three kids, Breanne Combs, 11, Samantha Combs, 9, and Annie Combs, 6, are an integral part of the farm.

“It’s such an honor to have Jade want to follow in our lifestyle,” Winnie, 53, said. “Since she was raised on the farm it is like second nature to her. It’s everyday life for her and she just knows what ‘Dad wants done and how he wants it done.’ It is so special to now have our granddaughters riding in the equipment with us and learning the trade.”

Winnie said the grandchildren are excited when they get to help around the farm.

“And again it is great to be able to have them with us all the time when they are not in school. We feel very blessed to have Jade and her girls living and working beside us daily.”

Winnie, Well and Jade, along with hired worker Brent Linsley, have been busy getting the first cutting of alfalfa dried, baled and put into the barn.

At times they’ve had to bale at night and in the cooler early morning hours. If it’s too hot and dry during the day and baling takes place, the small alfalfa leaves may drop off, affecting the export value of the hay, Well said.

They started first cutting of timothy for export on June 7.

By June 12 about 80 acres of the family’s timothy acreage had been cut with hay drying in windrows in the field.

Jade said growing up she went through phases like every child does. There were times she wanted nothing more than to work beside her dad and make him proud, and then there were times when all she wanted was to get out of the small

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

Winnie Bartsma operates machinery on the family farm near Badger Pocket. community and not have anything to do with agriculture.

Coming back While finishing work for her high school diploma online, Jade was able to work full-time for her father. She later worked at Kittitas Country Hardware and took online college classes, gaining an associate of science in medical billing and coding.

This took her to work as a medical receptionist and as a medical billing worker. In 2007 she gained a medical assistant degree and worked for a local medical clinic in Ellensburg. She then set her sights on becoming a nurse through Olympic College in Bremerton, “but being a single mom I just couldn’t pull it off,” she said.

“I did one year then realized I would rather be working outside with my dad on the farm and see my kids a lot more while making a decent living for my daughters and I,” Jade said.

She came back to the farm a couple different times. The last

time, four years ago, was for good.

She said through life experiences she realized that farming is truly her identity, not just because of her dad but because she shares his same passion for agricultural production.

“Honestly, the only thing leaving the farm taught me is how much I love farming and how rewarding all the hard work really is,” Jade said.

“My outlook on life has always been if you want something you have to go out there and work your butt off

G I B

for it. Nothing is impossible when you work hard enough.”

Jade said after harvest time with little sleep and long, hard hours of work “you are emotionally and physically exhausted.”

“I always have a day or two (about that time) where I think it would just be so much easier to go work in town, but then I remember how much I dislike working inside and how much I missed the farm the few times I did leave it.”

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Drawn to the life Jade said she’s always been drawn to farm life growing up. She began going out into the fields with her father soon after she began walking.

“But I never dreamed I would be able to do it for myself one day just because of the fact I was a girl,” Jade said. “Growing up I didn’t have any friends that grew up on farms or that wanted to farm, but my friends always loved to come out and help me during the summer. It was such a different lifestyle to them.”

As a youth she did chores around the farm including taking care of dogs, rabbits, cows, horses and other critters.

Later she checked irrigation water, flipped baled hay in the field, started baling hay with machinery when she was around 10 and by 13 was running all the various farm equipment.

She participated in 4-H Clubs and raised and exhibited swine, lambs and steers. She was in a 4-H horse club for a while and later showed paint and pinto horses in circuit competition. She’s also competed in barrel racing, pole bending and goat tying.

All three of the Bartsmas’ children did chores around the farm which included feeding and watering animals morning and night, helping with housework, mowing the lawn and weeding flower

beds.

Staying thankful Jade acknowledges that farm work as a single mom is tough at times, and means caring for children on top of long hours of exhausting labor outdoors.

“There have been so many days when I felt I just don’t think I can do it, but it always passes and I’m thankful for what I do,” Jade said.

“It was a lot harder when the kids were younger, trying to find the time to put so many hours in at work and still keep up with household chores, kids’ school work, cooking, and sleep.”

There’s some flexibility with the kids on the farm, and sometimes they can be with their mom on certain farm jobs, or they can be watched over by one of her parents.

“The most satisfying thing is being able to see my kids way more than if I worked any where else,” Jade said. “I get to show them what hard work really means, but they also are learning the benefits. They see how hard I have to work but know if you put the extra time and effort into work you can do fun things, too,” like yearly vacation trips in winter months when the demands of farming are low.

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

Well Bartsma picks up bales of hay on his farm with Mount Rainier in the background.

See Family, Page 22

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FAMILY

work hard enough.”

Continued from Page 21

Winnie and Well grew up on family farms, with Winnie also learning the business and bookkeeping side of work in Idaho through her father’s construction business.

Well, after graduating from high school, started his own custom harrowbedding business and later expanded his firm with more equipment. He later purchased his own farmland to add to the home place and began his own farm operations.

Winnie, after marrying Well and moving to the Kittitas Valley from Idaho, worked for the Kittitas School District first as a teacher’s aide then as the district’s accounting assistant and finally as the district business manager.

She left district work when the responsibilities of both the school district and farm grew too much to handle.

“So I decided to stay home and farm with my husband,” she said. “I have never regretted that decision.”

Well says his wife and Jade work right along side him on the farm,

Mom and Dad

The hardest part is definitely trying to find time to rest, she said, adding sometimes she’s working from sun up to sun down.

“Farming takes a lot out of you and there’s not much energy left at the end of the day to play with the kids,” Jade said.

She said one of the most meaningful aspects of being closer to her kids on the farm is having opportunities to share with them that, despite some of the unfortunate events in her life, that they can grow up to be strong independent women, and that they never have to rely on someone to take care of them.

“I also hope they realize when they are older, though, how hard it is and what a toll it has taken on me and hope they learn from mistakes I made so they can have an easier life,” Jade said. “But, all in all, I want them to know that no matter where their desires and passions bring them, there is nothing that they cannot do if they

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

Well Bartsma talks to his daughter, Jade, on the family farm in Badger Pocket. and Winnie’s business skills are used in tracking the economic and financial side of the operation.

“Winnie’s my partner in all this,” Well said. “We’re all family. We’re together in what happens every day.”

Breakfast and lunch together nearly each day allows talk about priorities and what needs to be done each day, Well said.

Jade said she couldn’t take on fulltime farm work without the help of her parents.

“I owe them so much for all the help they’ve given me, even if it’s my mom bringing the girls down to clean my house while I’m working just so I don’t have to do it during my little time off,” Jade said. “They have been amazing and I couldn’t do it without them.”

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committee, a group that tries to resolve differences between interest groups before they become rant County farmer contentious and expensive and rancher Aaron court fights.

Golladay is in the Golladay farms with other middle of the sometimes family members on the contentious issue of how to 4,000-acre Stokrose Farms maintain water quality in near Warden in the southeast rural areas statewide and corner of Grant County. He determining agriculture’s represents the Washington part in it.

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CONCERNS Continued from Page 23 “Sooner or later more family farms and ranches are going to be affected by a water-quality issue,” Golladay said recently during a break after putting up the first cutting of alfalfa. “We want to be an influence on this committee to help all sides in an issue to understand how new standards and rules affect everyday agriculture operations.”

The Washington Agriculture and Water Quality Advisory Committee was formed in March 2014 by the state Department of Ecology after controversy arose related to concerns by some farmers and ranchers with the agency’s enforcement powers and actions.

These related to letters sent to producers indicating the potential of their ag operations to create water pollution and, therefore, a violation.

In addition, two bills in the state Legislature that year aimed at reining in Ecology’s authority

because of the concerns.

Ecology Director Maia Bellon, who co-chairs the group, called for the committee’s formation last year. On June 4 Bellon announced that Golladay, who’s been on the committee since it began, would be the new co-chair.

He replaces Twisp rancher Vic Stokes, former president of the Washington Cattlemen’s Association.

Golladay, a first vice-president of the state farm bureau, has lived in and around Grant County most of his life but also lived in Douglas County for a stretch.

He has family ties with the Golladay and Stingley families in Kittitas and Yakima counties, and his uncle is former Kittitas County Commissioner Max Golladay.

“I suppose a lot of people see what I’ve done in my life so far and figure I can represent the perspective of a big segment of the state’s agriculture,” Golladay said.

Growing up country Golladay grew up on a farm with diversified operations, including growing row crops dryland wheat and hay and raising cattle.

He’s also worked in the fertilizer industry, helped manage a large potato growing operation, assisted his father-in-law in growing sugar beets and running a beef cattle feed lot, and joined with two brothers-in-law to establish Stokrose Farms.

The family operation raises alfalfa hay for export, a variety of grains, garden beans and sunflowers for seeds for planting, and registered black Angus beef cattle.

He came forward to volunteer on the Ecology committee in response to seeing more state regulations coming in regard to beef cattle operations.

“I could clearly see where the argument was going and believe this was an opportunity for me to get agriculture’s voice in on the front end of what could be coming our way,” Golladay said.

After several meetings of the group he has a better understanding of Ecology’s job and Bellon’s efforts to balance the demands of her agency with what farmers and ranchers face on the ground in their operations.

“She’s an Ecology director willing

to listen and is trying very hard at better understanding agriculture,” Golladay said. “She may not always take and use our suggestions, but she is willing to see what the outcome (of new Ecology policies and rules) could be for our ranchers and farmers.”

Golladay said the question is whether he sees this type of effort to listen all the way down the administrative line in the Ecology department.

“Well, let’s just say Rome wasn’t built in a day, and there’s some down the ladder who could have a broader, more accurate picture of agriculture,” Golladay said.

Overall, though, the committee with its diversity of viewpoints has moved in a positive direction, he said. It has representatives of tribes, environmental groups, conservation organizations, dairy and cattle groups, commodity associations and shellfish harvesters.

The committee is advisory to the Ecology department, but carries some influence due to Director Bellon co-chairing it and because she is closely involved in discussions and selection of issues, he said.

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Positive An example of a positive outgrowth of the committee, Golladay said, is the department’s recently released guidelines on clean water and livestock operations.

The guidelines, now online, replace a draft manual. The new document is more easily useable by cattle ranchers as a way of assessing whether their operations may pose a risk to maintaining water quality.

Golladay and cattle interests asked Tip Hudson, Kittitas County-WSU Extension’s rangeland and livestock specialist, to make a presentation to the committee on Washington State University’s risk (of pollution) assessment process for livestock operations. Hudson helped develop the process tool.

“Bellon said she wanted something like that coming from Ecology,” said Golladay about the assessment checklist.

Some aspects of Hudson’s risk assessment process became part of the Ecology

guidelines, and some were not.

“A lot of people had a lot to say about developing the (new) document,” he said.

“The department used a lot of our advice and incorporated it,” Golladay said.

In regard to pollution warning and enforcement letters sent out last year

by Ecology that created controversy, Golladay said this year he’s heard that in one Eastern Washington watershed some letters will praise farmers and ranchers for their ongoing work to protect water quality, and others will note ag producers are working to resolve their issues.

“They (Ecology) have done a lot of what we advised them they could do, to be more collaborative in assisting producers in resolving problems and not only be adversarial in their enforcement,” Golladay said. “We know they have a job to do in environmental protection, but they can work on making

their tactics more friendly to agriculture and still do their job right.”

Golladay said the issues surrounding water quality and agricultural production in Washington state will only increase in the near future, and the advisory committee will be there to help get agriculture’s point of view across to all sides.

Issues likely to come up when the committee starts a series of new meetings in September include how new technologies coming to play on farms can affect water quality determinations, Ecology’s citizen complaint system, dryland wheat and tree fruit operations and others.

Golladay said he knows Ecology Director Bellon serves through appointment by the governor and could resign her post in the future.

“I would be concerned if she leaves,” Golladay said.

“She’s been a big influence in helping to resolving these issues.”

Bellon praises cattleman Stokes State Department of Ecology Director Maia Bellon, in announcing Aaron Golladay as the ag and water quality committee’s new co-chair, said outgoing co-chair Vic Stokes, cattleman from north-central Washington, was a positive influence on the committee.

“Vic’s leadership and guidance helped us make progress and get through tough conversations,” said Bellon in a news release.

More information online Learn more about the state Department of Ecology’s Agriculture and Water Quality Committee online at http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/ wq/nonpoint/Agriculture/index.html then click on Agriculture and Water Quality Committee.

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She said she was grateful for his service to ensure that “together we identify longterm solutions to protect clean water and keep working lands working.”

“Our work is far from finished,” Bellon said, “and I’m committed to continuing the exchange of information. “I look forward to continuing the dialogue as Aaron Golladay steps into the co-chair role.”

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25 | Summer 2015 Ag Journal

Changes in state positions New state officials to oversee agriculture, water

By DAILY RECORD STAFF

dailyrecordnews.com

There’s been a changing of the guard in state offices dealing with water and agriculture this month.

Derek Sandison took over as the new director of the Washington Department of Agriculture in mid-June.

He will lead a staff of 750 with a budget of about $158 million.

Sandison, 62, is a Port Angeles native who has a reputation for building consensus and the backing of agricultural interests.

Unlike his predecessors, Sandison is not a farmer. He most recently led the state Department of Ecology’s Office of the Columbia River. Lawmakers created that office in 2006 to seek water solutions for farmers and fish in Eastern Washington.

Sandison was an architect of the Yakima River Basin Integrated Water Resource Management Plan and played major roles in developing water supplies such as the Odessa Ground-

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He previously served as the regional director for the Ecology department in Yakima.

Sandison replaces Bud Hover, an Okanogan County farmer and former county commissioner who announced his resignation in March.

Meanwhile, Tom Tebb will head the DOE Office of the Columbia River.

As director of the office, Tebb will oversee water supply projects along the Columbia River that are essential to the farmers, residents, tribes and environment.

Tebb, a native of the Yakima Valley, has served as regional director of Ecology’s Central Regional Office in Yakima since 2008. He is a geologist and hydrogeologist who began his Ecology career in 1992 with the Nuclear Waste Program.

The Office of the Columbia River is a pivotal player in navigating the complex legal, environmental and political issues to improve water supplies, said Scott Revell, district manager of the Roza Irrigation District and a participant with the Yakima Implementation Committee that advises Ecology on the Yakima River Integrated Water Resources Plan.

“We’ve made significant progress on many of the long-term water supply challenges facing Central and Eastern Washington,” Revell said in a news release. “Tom Tebb has shown that he understands these complicated issues and can bring people together to find solutions and keep us moving forward.”

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Hemp industry enters 2nd year Hazy market potential for newly legal crop

By KRISTEN WYATT Associated Press FORT LUPTON, Colo. — The newly legal hemp industry is entering its second growing season with some big questions for producers experimenting with marijuana’s non-intoxicating cousin.

The federal government has allowed limited imports of hemp seed — in Colorado’s case, this month — for research and development purposes. Companies trying to create a U.S. hemp industry are seeking investors not only for unproven products but for a plant that is still classified under the federal Controlled Substances Act with marijuana and thus cannot be patented.

As a result, it’s too soon to tell whether hemp will become a boon for farmers or stay in mostly boutique products that use imported hemp.

At least 22 states allow hemp cultivation, according to the National Con-

ference of State Legislatures, though most are limited to experimental testing, not commercial industry. Officials with the U.S. Department of Agriculture say they’re not sure how many states are growing hemp or how much is being produced.

Two hemp facilities in northern Colorado underscore the crop’s uncertainty.

A biomass factory about an hour’s drive north of Denver is processing hemp into pulp, sugars and lignin. PureVision Technology CEO Ed Lehrburger is also experimenting with hemp stalks, sensing potential for a broad array of industrial uses but unable to secure enough to see whether it could replace wheat, corn and wood as raw materials for use in things like plastics, fuels and packaging.

“We don’t have enough hemp to process,” said Lehrburger, who created a subsidiary, PureHemp Technology, but concedes the hemp business is a few

years from taking off. He’s paying $500 a ton for the scarce commodity, compared to $65 for a ton of corn stalks.

But Lehrburger is bullish on hemp’s industrial potential. Pointing to a roomsized machine that processes the biomass into pulp, Lehrburger explained that hemp stalks become pulp faster than other raw materials and require less water.

Just down the road, a greenhouse contains a more tantalizing prospect.

The company CBDRx is growing several hundred hemp plants in order to extract cannabidiol — frequently shortened to CBD — a non-intoxicating part of hemp that some believe has a variety of medical applications, from alleviating pain and inflammation to managing seizures.

CBDRx’s owners believe hemp’s therapeutic potential far exceeds any other commercial use. The company, created in January, plans to expand to 200 or

more employees within a year, thanks to a large investment of venture capital.

“We see this as a very huge market, much bigger than the marijuana market,” said Alejandro Bergad, CBDRx’s chief agricultural officer for the company. “We’re poised for national expansion.”

But CBDRx must first to develop a product they can’t yet patent and make sure their plants don’t contain too much of the plant’s more popular chemical, THC, which produces a high.

The federal Controlled Substances Act makes no difference between hemp as a plant and marijuana as a drug.

Plants containing more than 0.3 percent THC are considered marijuana and must be destroyed by law, though licensed hemp growers aren’t subject to criminal prosecution if their plants are too strong. Last year, the first in which Colorado licensed hemp growers, agriculture authorities ordered the destruction of about an acre’s worth of plants after spot inspections, out of 1,811 total licensed acres.

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