by Amy Chozick Hundreds of years before John Wayne and Gary Cooper gave us a Hollywood version of the American West, with men as the brute, weather-beaten stewards of the land, female ranchers roamed the frontier. They were the indigenous, Navajo, Cheyenne and other tribes, and Spanish-Mexican rancheras, who tended and tamed vast fields, traversed rugged landscapes with their dogs, …
Sarah Sullivan Agriculture is the cornerstone of our rural community, yet farms and ranches are increasingly challenged by fragmentation of farmland, development and other non-farm uses, complex regulations, and planning for generational transfers. Hood River County now has the most expensive farmland in the entire state of Oregon. The average cost of an acre of farmland rose from $11,951 in …