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By JANET COOK
News staff writer
November 22, 2006
As Craig McCurdy sat at his family’s
busy fruit stand between customers on a glorious mid-fall day, he
gazed across Tucker Road to the undulating hills that rise from the
banks of the Hood River. They’re covered with fruit trees practically
as far as the eye can see, interrupted only by the road before
continuing up the hill behind the fruit stand and beyond.
What Craig knows, and what most farmers know — but what many other
people probably don’t know — is that the trees on those dozens of
acres of sloping hillside are growing in some of the richest
tree-fruit growing soil in Oregon.
“It’s bottomless,” Craig said. A soils map produced by the U.S.
Department of Agriculture Natural Resource Conservation Service
indicates the area as a prime pear- and apple-tree growing area for
the make-up and characteristics of the soil.
Pear and apple farmers Heather and Craig
McCurdy want to preserve their family agriculture roots. The sign at
their Tucker Road fruit stand lists just a few fruit varieties
produced by their orchards.
It’s that dirt — and the similarly rich
soil deposited throughout the Hood River Valley (more than 35,000
acres are designated as prime pear- and apple-tree growing areas by
their soil characteristics) — and what could happen to it because of
Measure 37 that is upsetting to Craig, a second-generation orchardist.
“Why do we have to build subdivisions on the richest soil in the state
of Oregon?” he asked. Ironically, Craig arrived in Hood River as a
5-year-old because his parents were fleeing the rampant development of
the once-ubiquitous citrus groves of Ojai, Calif. The elder McCurdys
decided they didn’t want to raise their kids in a paved-over former
fruit-growing mecca, so they headed north.
They had heard about the Hood River Valley and decided to check it
out. When they got here, they took a driving tour of the valley that
took them along Tucker Road past what is now the McCurdy Farms fruit
stand.
They fell in love with the place and bought a 30-acre pear orchard on
that hillside covered with black gold. That was in 1968. Today, Craig
and his wife, Heather, farm the same orchard. The couple and their two
children, Malcolm, 12, and Miga, 10, live in the original farmhouse on
the property.
The McCurdys were surprised and shocked when Measure 37 was passed by
voters in November 2004.
“I don’t think people understood it,” Craig said. He thinks people not
only misunderstood what the measure meant in terms of potential mass
developments, he thinks people who were in favor of it don’t get the
implications of those potential mass developments.
Hood River News file photo
Bottle-grown pears for Clear Creek Distillery are a signature product
from McCurdy Farms.
“To me, it’s like a pyramid scheme,”
Craig said. People with the “best developable land” will develop their
property first, he said. “Then people are going to start losing their
shirts.
“Who’s going to buy a half-million dollar home if there’s no land use
regulations and you’re looking at a tract home development?” he said.
“It’s going to create a whole lot of disasters.”
Craig’s lineage in the Hood River Valley predates the 1973 passage of
Senate Bill 100, which implemented the protection of the valley’s
farmland. But Heather’s legacy goes back nearly a century to the
valley’s early days.
Her great-grandfather, Sydney Gorham Babson, came to Hood River from
New York in 1907 and bought an 80-acre homestead near Parkdale. He
hired Japanese laborers to help clear the thick timberland and within
a year had planted 30 acres of apple trees. As more land was cleared,
he planted pear trees.
As the land was handed down through the generations, the original 80
acres grew to 150 acres — the farm that Heather grew up on and helped
work as a teenager. After graduating from Whitman College in Walla
Walla, Wash., she came straight back home and got a job working for
Mt. Adams Orchards for a couple of years, to gain a “new vision.” Then
she went to work for her family’s Avalon Orchards. Until recently she
continued to manage the family’s 150 acres in Parkdale while her
father ran other family orchards in Wasco and Klickitat counties.
Her family’s deep roots in the valley cause her to “bring emotion” to
the Measure 37 debate, she said. But she’s also frustrated by what she
sees as a sort of self-inflicted wound that has seemingly irreparably
hurt some orchardists.
“In the 1980s, people were making money hand over fist,” Heather said.
“Farming got to be easy. Things got a little soft and there was no
innovation.” That was dangerous, she said, because “in this business,
you have to constantly improve.”
When global competition came along in the 1990s, many orchardists were
blindsided. “People weren’t paying attention to what (orchardists)
were fighting in Wenatchee,” said Heather, referring to the fruit
growing region of central Washington, which can be a mirror for Hood
River’s conditions.
“Now you have to compete, and in order to compete you have to manage,”
she said. The lack of control farmers have over fruit prices makes it
mandatory to stay on top of innovations and maximize fruit production.
“It’s all about high density,” she added.
Both Heather’s family and the McCurdys have weathered the ups and
downs in the fruit industry with innovation and value-added products.
Heather’s family took a cue from Washington fruit growers years ago
and began planting pear trees on trellises to maximize production. At
McCurdy Farms, several blocks of Bartlett pears are grown in glass
bottles each year for sale to Portland’s Clear Creek Distillery, which
makes a pear eau-de-vie. The McCurdys’ fruit stand also has benefited
from the recent surge in agri-tourism.
But Heather is the first to admit it’s hard work. During her last
harvest at Avalon Orchards, she was in charge of packing 250-300 bins
of fruit a day for nearly 60 days straight.
“It’s really scary and really stressful,” she said. “But there are so
many incredible benefits.” With her own fond memories of growing up on
a farm surrounded by fruit trees, she wouldn’t want it any other way
for her kids.
“Malcolm gets to make skateboard jumps in the cold storage,” she said.
“We have dogs and animals. And in the winter, if we’re lucky, we get
to go to Hawaii for 10 days.”
Craig concurs. “It’s so important for us to have a vision of what we
want to see,” he said. “People need to figure out what they want this
valley to look like 30 years from now.”
*****
Jennifer Euwer and Steve Hunt live partly in both of the two worlds
that Measure 37 has created. Jennifer is a third generation Hood River
Valley native, descended from Eugene C. Euwer, a lawyer-turned-farmer
who came to the valley in 1912 from Pittsburgh. Eugene, Jennifer’s
grandfather, bought and cleared 80 acres of forest land near Parkdale
and spent the rest of his life as an orchardist.
Jennifer grew up on that same land, which, over the years, grew to 150
acres. After graduating from Hood River Valley High School in 1977,
she went away to college at Stanford.
But farming was in her blood, and she returned after graduating. She
married Steve, a newcomer to the valley and a recent graduate of
Oregon State University. The couple was committed to a life of farming
and in 1982 bought a 90-acre pear orchard on Dee Flat.
As Jennifer’s parents aged, she and Steve eventually took over
management of the Euwer family’s 150 acres in Parkdale. Today, they
manage nearly 250 acres of orchards — 20 acres of cherries, 1 ½ acres
of apples and the rest pears.
Measure 37 is upsetting to the couple — who have two sons, age 12 and
16 — on many levels.
“Part of our situation is we both came here, deciding to farm, based
on land-use planning — based on the knowledge that our investment in
our orchard was protected,” Jennifer said. “We made a huge investment
of money, time and our future in something that’s now threatened. It’s
like the goal posts have completely moved.”
Jennifer and Steve also are concerned about paving over valuable
agricultural land.
“High value farmland — that’s where we get vitamins, minerals
nutrients,” Jennifer said. “Fruits and vegetables come from high value
farmland. It’s a health issue for the U.S. If we want to grow those
things inside our borders, we’re going to have to protect them.”
Jennifer points out that there are relatively few acres of land in
Oregon which are optimal for growing fruits and vegetables.
“The U.S. ought to care if it can grow actual nutritional food, not
just calories,” she said. “If you don’t like going to war for energy,
just wait till you have to go overseas to keep Safeway filled.”
Steve was on the county planning commission in the mid 1990s, and he
recalls the commission wrestling with land use decisions that
sometimes seemed too restrictive. Although he was shocked at the
passage of Measure 37, he said it was “in some ways an understandable
backlash.”
“Flexibility came too late,” Steve said. “Now there is no
differentiation between farmland that we’ll miss and that which we
wouldn’t.”
But he sees the debate over high value farmland in stark terms.
“Everybody in society accepts regulations in order to have clean
water, clean air,” he said. “We accept regulations and limitations on
our activities in all kinds of areas. But not when it comes to land
and our use of land. And that’s unwise — it’s shortsighted. Husbanding
farmland is just as important as husbanding water and air resources.”
Steve and Jennifer are also concerned about the potential impact of a
loss of farmland on the valley’s packing houses.
“What worries me is a lack of critical mass if we lose even one
packing house,” Jennifer said. “I want all the packing houses wanting
my pears. It keeps the price higher. Losing one packing house would
really hurt us.”
Jennifer says she has “a great deal of respect for my neighbors – even
those filing Measure 37 claims.” She and Steve have felt the same pain
all valley orchardists have felt over the past few years as prices
have been pinched by imported fruit and other uncontrollable factors.
They grow a wide variety of pears — and have a 1,100 foot elevation
range in their orchards — so they weathered some of the hardships more
easily than others.
Still, they “lost a lot of money for a couple of years,” Jennifer
said. “But things are looking up.” And she thinks that is the key to
thwarting potential rampant development of the valley’s agricultural
land.
“We have to keep farming profitable,” she said. “Right now, we have
things in our favor. The Pear Bureau is doing a good job (with
marketing). Things are actually looking pretty good economically. It
can change so easily, but it’s a positive economic climate that will
help us weather this land use crisis.”
Steve, who calls himself “an eternal optimist,” thinks “the pendulum
is going to swing back.”
“I think Oregonians are going to realize that what we had in land use
planning was good,” he said. He cites the case of the Bay Area of
Northern California, where he grew up, which “became a huge sprawling
metropolis in the span of about 10 to 20 years.”
“I think if we get a little taste of that in this state, we’re not
going to like it,” he added. He also doubts whether the county has the
“carrying capacity” in terms of infrastructure to add hundreds —
perhaps thousands — of new homes. He sees some kind of land use
compromise as the most tenable solution.
“Maybe some parcels out there are not as valuable, and we could have
some flexibility with those,” he said.
In the meantime, Jennifer remains concerned about what the next few
years will bring.
“We’ve spent 20 years investing everything in making these orchards
work,” she said. “To wake up one morning and realize there could be a
subdivision next door, you feel like the contract has been broken. At
this point, what do we do? Do we invest in our business more?” |
