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Monday Mailing

Year 23 • Issue 10 21 November 2016 1. Festive farming: Harvest Time Comes for Willamette Valley Christmas Tree Growers 2. Keeping Family Farms Afloat 3. For Renewable Energy in Oregon, Trump Win Brings Uncertainty, Fear 4. After Election, Oregon Legislature Poised to Focus on Transportation and Tax Proposals in 2017 5. State Economic Monitor 6. 6 Innovative Small Business Models in Small Towns 7. Restoring the Past 8. Open Permaculture School 9. New Entrepreneurial Growth Agenda 10. Creating a Path for Renewable Energy on Public Lands 11. I Voted Clinton. You Voted Trump. Let’s Talk.

1. Festive farming: Harvest Time Comes for Willamette Valley Christmas Tree Growers CHESHIRE — Kirk Stroda faces a choice with each tree at his family’s 160-acre Christmas tree farm northwest of Eugene: cut it or keep it.

Cutting the tree means cashing in the crop. Keeping it means letting the investment grow.

Quote of the Week: “The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but reveal to them their own.” ~ Disraeli Oregon Fast Fact: The state of Oregon has one city named Sisters and another called Brothers. Sisters got its name from a nearby trio of peaks in the Cascade Mountains known as the Three Sisters. Brothers was named as a counterpart to Sisters.

After 25 years in the Christmas tree business, Stroda, the owner of Stroda Bros. Farm near Cheshire, has developed a solid sense of when to harvest and when to hold onto trees.

“Mostly, what it comes down to is the quality of the tree,” he said.

To access the full story, click here.

2. Keeping Family Farms Afloat When most people go out to enjoy a meal at their favorite restaurant, they don’t give much thought to where the food comes from. But if advocacy groups like Friends of Family Farmers are successful, they will change that, and it might benefit both the diner and the farmer alike.

The group has emerged in recent years as an alternative voice for smaller Oregon farmers focused on more sustainable practices, working in tandem with consumers who share common goals.

One of the ways they do that is community outreach programs and events, like Portland Fill Your Pantry, held Nov. 6 in Northeast Portland. Designed to connect Metro-area residents directly with local farm producers, such events enable participants to order bulk quantities of staple and storage crops directly from farmers, and then meet producers at a central location to pick them up.

To access the full story, click here.

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3. For Renewable Energy in Oregon, Trump Win Brings Uncertainty, Fear In the wake of Donald Trump’s election victory, renewable energy businesses and backers in Oregon were both uncertain and worried — and taking some comfort in being in a region doing a lot to support a clean energy transition on its own.

“Certainly the populations in Washington and Oregon have made it clear they want more clean, homegrown, renewable energy in the region,” Rachel Shimshak, executive director at Renewable Northwest, an industry-backed advocacy group, said in an email.

Earlier this year, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown signed into law a requirement that Portland General Electric and Pacific Power deliver 50 percent of their energy from renewable sources by 2040, without counting hydropower, and stop using coal by 2035.

To access the full story, click here.

4. After Election, Oregon Legislature Poised to Focus on Transportation and Tax Proposals in 2017 The 90 Oregon lawmakers who will be gaveled into the 2017 legislative session face a difficult task after a bruising campaign season that ended in the thumping defeat of a $3 billion-a-year tax measure.

Beset by rancor over Measure 97, they must frantically figure out who will lead Oregon on the two issues that observers say will matter most next year – addressing a budget shortfall that could hit $2 billion, possibly by raising new revenue, while crafting a transportation-funding package that's eluded Salem since 2015.

"Put those two together and you've got the main event," Ryan Deckert, president of the Oregon Business Association, said of the budget gap and transportation deal. "Nothing else even comes close."

To access the full story, click here.

5. State Economic Monitor The State and Local Finance Initiative’s State Economic Monitor tracks and analyzes economic and fiscal trends at the state level. Its interactive graphics highlight particular differences across all 50 states and the District of Columbia in employment, earnings, housing, and taxes.

To access this resource, click here.

6. 6 Innovative Small Business Models in Small Towns You don’t have to settle for a normal business. Rural businesses are exploring new shapes, new locations and new ways of doing business. Here are six innovative ways people are building businesses in small towns today.

1. Pop-ups These are temporary business that may last from just one day to several months. You’ve seen shortterm vendors setting up tents and booths around special events, and this extends the idea to all kinds of businesses. You can experiment and gauge demand in a small town before committing to a more expensive permanent business.

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Pop-ups can be as small as a booth for a day, or as big as a full-size building rented just for the holiday season, or anything in between.

Pop-ups are a good fit for: restaurants, retail stores, and artists.

To access the full story, click here.

7. Restoring the Past When the Ross Ragland Theater opened its newly renovated doors in March 1989, it gave the town of Klamath Falls more than a new entertainment venue. The Art Deco theater, built in 1940, quickly served as a catalyst for renovation of the downtown area. Side benefits included extension of the city’s geothermal line and a revived community interest in the performing arts. Today, the Ross Ragland Theater and Cultural Center serves more than 100,000 people each year.

The restoration of theater buildings can be an economic engine for towns such as Klamath Falls. The historic preservation group Restore Oregon found in a 2015 study that historic theaters in the state held over 61,100 events that brought in a total of $23 million in revenue. Theaters also provided jobs to 193 full-time staff and 504 part-time or seasonal staff.

Restore Oregon, along with several partners, is in the midst of a multi-year initiative working with Oregon’s 127 historic theaters, hoping to spur further economic redevelopment in struggling downtowns.

To access the full story, click here.

8. Open Permaculture School The world of permaculture is an exciting, challenging, and rewarding one, and we’re thrilled that you’ve chosen the Regenerative Leadership Institute – the school trusted by over a quarter million students in 190+ countries – to be your guide on this journey.

This course is designed to give you a solid grounding in the basics of permaculture. Through 100+ hours of video lectures (available below) and an engaging discussion forum, you’ll develop the foundation for a successful future with your permaculture designs. Each course lecture comes with a transcript, an audio-only version, and a quiz that tests your comprehension of the content.

At the end of this open and free course, you will have gained the necessary knowledge and skills for you to successfully and confidently begin your new journey in permaculture. You’ll be as comfortable and knowledgeable about permaculture designs and principles as we are!

If you have any doubts, questions, or concerns, please let us know by posting in the discussion forums. We’ll be more than happy to help you on this exciting and noble endeavor! Again, welcome on-board, we’re thrilled to have you!

To register for these free courses, click here.

9. New Entrepreneurial Growth Agenda Entrepreneurship drives economic growth, propels job creation, and creates opportunities for upward economic mobility. Yet, fewer Americans are starting businesses today than in the past, and overall, the economy has been growing slower than in the post-recession periods of decades prior.

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Seeing these trends in 2014, the Kauffman Foundation announced a two-year initiative to develop new ideas for how to spur broad-based economic growth and opportunity through entrepreneurship.

The result is the New Entrepreneurial Growth Agenda, a collection of essays written by the nation's leading researchers and policy experts offering recommendations for how national, state, and local governments can foster entrepreneurship. These essays are rich in content and cover myriad issues that affect entrepreneurship and vice versa, from technology creation and destruction, to inequality, talent, and education improvements, to a focus on cities, overall policies, and politics.

We commend them to you and look forward to robust debate and, ultimately, the implementation of policy that helps entrepreneurs and spurs growth.

To access the full story, click here.

10. Creating a Path for Renewable Energy on Public Lands Particularly during these contentious political times, Sustainable Northwest is pleased to work at the radical middle of economy, environment, and community to pioneer natural resource solutions that work for people and nature. We believe a healthy economy, environment, and community are indivisible, and all can be strengthened by wise partnerships, policies, and investments.

Creating a sustainable energy future is one of the most pressing issues of the 21st century. It is imperative to the health of our land, air, water, and communities that we move beyond fossil fuels to sustainable energy use and generation.

Less than a month ago, Sustainable Northwest gathered over 60 community leaders, businesses, elected officials, and state and federal agency partners in Roseburg, Ore., to share practical tools for growing local clean energy programs. Through building connections with other like-minded communities around the state, we learned what strategies work and what barriers exist in energy planning, programming and development.

To access the full story, click here.

11. I Voted Clinton. You Voted Trump. Let’s Talk.

They are siblings, co-workers, classmates, friends. One voted for Donald J. Trump, the other for Hillary Clinton.

Since Election Day, they have harbored toward each other feelings of betrayal, mystification and fury.

But they have not talked about it. Until now.

In a series of raw, candid and emotional conversations, The Run-Up asked different pairs of voters to talk to each other about why they voted the way did they, how they both feel about it, and why it has been so difficult to discuss.

They were guided by a set of questions, prepared with the advice of social psychologists, that were designed to encourage honest and civil conversation.

To access the full story, click here.

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