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, …
By Nellie McAdams How do beginning farmers and ranchers connect with the record number of retiring producers? What should be a straightforward question with a straightforward answer isn’t always so simple. Recent research by Oregon State University, Portland State University and Rogue Farm Corps found that the average age of Oregon’s farmers and ranchers is nearly 60, higher than it’s …
Eric Mortenson | Capital Press | Published on May 11, 2017 Diane Daggett remembers the conversation with the woman who had just purchased the Daggett family’s 440-acre cattle ranch in Northeast Oregon’s Wallowa County, land that had been in the family for four generations. The buyer said she had called her husband, who was aboard their yacht in the Cayman …
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 …