Seasons of digital change measured in ag growth online

By Gary L. West
Associate editor, Capital Press

I took last week off. But if I had truly wanted a vacation from agriculture news and information, I went about it all wrong.

I spent most of the week visiting family in Oregon's Umatilla County, smack dab in the middle of farming country, where many of the recent headlines we have printed in Capital Press and posted on CapitalPress.com were affecting my family and a wide swath of the countryside.

For example, the cool, wet spring had crops behind. It was common to see alfalfa fields with windrows of hay on the ground turning brown because the rains wouldn't stop long enough to bale the hay. Some fields had standing water in them from recent flooding of streams like Butter Creek.

There was talk about Hermiston's trademark watermelon crop would be several week's later than the Fourth of July holiday, leaving a short season for growers. And in the dryland areas were large fields of wheat afflicted with stripe rust, giving the grain a golden tint long before it is ripening for harvest.

My dad and cousin work in businesses connected to spraying farm crops for insects, weeds and diseases like stripe rust. My dad attacks the harvest robbing threats from the air. My cousin attacks them on the ground. And conversations with both of them centered on issues like this season's unique challenges, taxes, fees, regulations and just the physically exhausting nature of the work.

Of course, they both took advantage of my presence to get a little work out of me too. For my dad, I shot some photos of his planes at work. For my cousin, I wound up helping him move equipment from job site to job site a few times, and helped him change the massive tires on his ground sprayer one day.

I have to admit, it felt good to be outdoors for several days, enjoying some warmer temperatures than the Willamette Valley had experiences so far this spring. It also felt good to be out taking photos again. It even felt good to be exercising some muscles I don't ordinarily use when sitting at a desk all day in the Capital Press office in Salem.

The timing was interesting too. Because this week marks the anniversary of my start date at the Capital Press. It was 6 years ago today that I came to work here. That vacation vividly illustrated to me how my early life growing up in the country and professional life as a journalist, which once took very divergent paths, have come together.

This anniversary is special, in that it now marks the longest tenure I've spent with any media organization in my 20-plus year career. I've spent some time looking back at my time here too as this anniversary has approached, which led me back to this blog. Nearly 6 years ago, when this blog started, it was a way I could work around some of the shortcomings of our website software. At the time, it was somewhat unusual for an organization connected to production agriculture to be blogging. In one of the earliest posts on this blog, I asked the question: Do farmers blog? In 2005, the answer to that was that a few did, but not many. It was difficult to come up with even a handful of agriculture blogs back then. Now, there are lots of farmers who blog, and/or tweet, and/or have a Facebook page or YouTube account and use a variety of Internet tools to tell their story, connect with business associates or people that eat what they grow. Today, we follow more than 3,000 people on Twitter, the majority of which are posts by or about agriculture topics and we have more than 3,700 following our main Twitter account, plus more than 2,700 fans on our main Facebook page. Today we have several blogs, are about to launch a new podcast, multiple Facebook pages and Twitter accounts, a YouTube channel where we post 5 video news updates a week and other videos related to our stories, and a growing group of websites. And agriculture's use of smart phones and online services have exploded behind the efforts of groups like the AgChat Foundation.

That's pretty dramatic change and growth in just 6 seasons.

Thanks for sharing part of this journey with us. And thank you to the past and current staff of the Capital Press and East Oregonian Publishing Co. for letting me, and others on staff here and at our sister publications, push the edge of that envelope a bit for the last 6 years.

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You can follow Capital Press on Twitter @capitalpress or follow Gary's behind-the-scenes tweets at @CapitalPressglw or connect with Capital Press on Facebook or connect with Gary on Facebook.

Feeling lost on Christmas Eve

I think it may be time to get a GPS. I should have put that on my gift list. I need to know where I am.

For some reason, YouTube seems to think I'm somewhere across the pond in the United Kingdom today. I'm not sure what's going on there. I thought I was in Salem, Ore., but every time I venture outside and see snow all around me, I'm not so sure. So maybe I have been transplanted and don't even know it.

Wherever you are this Christmas Eve, I hope you have a happy, healthy and safe holiday. I am sending out holiday greetings — from wherever I am.

I wonder if NORAD can track my whereabouts. I don't have Santa's clout through.

Waiting for final word on COOL

So what does the new country-of-origin labeling law mean for food processors? Well, that's still a little hard to say, as the following video from the Idaho Farm Bureau illustrates.



One way to know what's in food is to watch it being made, or make it yourself. Here's a little video story by Cookson Beecher on making apple juice in Washington.

Tips for hanging flower baskets

As an usually warm heat wave is predicted for the West later this week, people who may have already put up their hanging flower baskets may wonder what is the best way to care for them.

Capital Press reporter Cookson Beecher bought some baskets herself a few days ago and realized other people might also appreciate the tips she was receiving from Cheryl Loeb at Summersun Nursery and Landscaping at Mount Vernon, Wash.

Using her new small camcorder, Beecher taped some of the tips — and we've now posted the video on YouTube.

Remember when channels were only UHV and VHF?

We have created a new YouTube channel for posting videos created by Capital Press staff (and perhaps even freelancers).

Up to this point, the members of our staff you have been experimenting with video have all created their own channels to get videos online to our readers could see them. But moving forward, to try to keep the videos together, we opted to create a channel we could give all of our staff access to for posting purposes.

So, check out our channel below, which features our more recent videos.

Portland-area market promotes 'buy local' philosophy

The folks at New Seasons Market want to give consumers a change to meet the folks that raise their food. They've done a nice little video to promote a lamb-tasting event they've got going on this weekend.

I stumbled upon it this week on YouTube, which was pretty exciting to see something about agriculture right here on the West Coast in an online video. In this case they are promoting the whole "buy local" philosophy.

I've been toying with the idea of highlighting agriculture related videos here on the Blogriculture site. So I thought, as something of a test drive of that idea, I'd share the New Seasons video with Blogriculture visitors. It's interesting to see how those in and around the ag industry are using the Internet.

New Seasons also has some videos on its YouTube channel to introduce people to farmers and ranchers who grow for their markets.

Flying Christmas trees

Steve Brown of the Capital Press has posted a video story about Christmas tree harvest using helicopters on a tree farm in Turner, Ore. The video will also be available soon on the Capital Press website, but for now the Blogriculture site and YouTube are the only ways to find it.

High-tech school report on farm chemicals

I came across a video today that was done as part of a high school project at High Tech High School charter school in San Diego. Given it's title, "Earth Watch — Agriculture Chemicals," I expected it to contain a pro-environment (i.e. anti-agriculture) message. But I was impressed that the student(s) who produced the video report put together a video that recognizes there are benefits to using agriculture chemical, like fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, as well as dangers if they are misused.

The information contained in the report may not contain information unknown to people working day-to-day in the ag industry, but I thought it was worth sharing anyway. If nothing else, is shows how the process of doing a school report has changed. Apparently writing a report isn't enough anymore and school reports have gone multimedia, at least at this Souther California charter school. Note the long list of credits at the end of the report (although I challenge anyone to actually read them and decipher what they say in this YouTube format).

When I watch such things, I always wonder what my dad's reaction to it would be. My father owns an agriculture aviation operation that applies agriculture fertilizers and chemicals by air. I'm sure he would have field day with the part of the report where the narrator is talking about pesticides over video images of an airplane using a spreader to apply some sort of granular material, which I'm assuming is fertilizer. Maybe it's a good thing Dad isn't part of the YouTube generation.

Our first official video story

Freelancer Jacqui Krizo was kind enough to shoot some video for a story she is working on for Capital Press and send it along. She did such a good job with it that we rushed to get it posted. We'll add more details, but check it out.

A look under the Farmers' CAP

I often joke that I have a face for radio and a voice for newspapers. Now you can see for yourself.

A Steven Spielberg production it's not...

... but it is a short film premiering today. This one is a Capital Press production, available on YouTube and and on a page attached to our podcast site.

Our web guru here at the Capital Press, Debbie Evans, is not in the office this week, but I managed to figure out her secret and added a link to the video to the multimedia section on our website too, where you can find links to other multimedia items, like photo slide shows and audio recordings.

My apologies for the production values of this video. This was, literally, the first time I have ever used a video camera in my life. Hey, cut me some slack, I started out as a still photographer. I still like the power of a still image, but don't let it be said I'm afraid to try new things. OK, I was afraid, but I figured no one would actually ever watch this video even if I could managed to record it and edit it, so the risk was low for total humiliation.

So for what it's worth, here is what I believe is only the second Capital Press video we've ever posted online and the first one I've every tried. We do have some other videos listed on the multimedia page, but they are videos made from still images and supplemental audio.

This video goes with the story about the Hermiston watermelon giveaway that was held Friday, Aug. 3, in Portland. See the story and this post for more details.

New features for Blogriculture

We have added a couple of new features to the Blogriculture site for you viewing and interactive pleasure.

We are including links to YouTube videos, via Google, that we hope will mostly include agriculture-related videos. But if you post any farm or ranch-related videos online through your blog, or any online video service, let us know. We'd be happy to share with other folks what farmers and ranchers and doing online.

We've also added a poll to the blog site. We've featured a poll on the capitalpress.com site for years now, but now we have added one on here, just for kicks.

You may also have noticed a couple of blog posts from Kevin Duling. Kevin is sharing stories with us that we will share with you regularly on Fridays here at Blogriculture. Kevin is a wheat farmer and freelance writer from Maupin, Ore.

So that's some of the new stuff we hope you will enjoy.

By the way, loyal readers, if you've been wondering why you haven't seen a post from Elaine Shein, Blogriculture's most prolific poster and executive editor of the Capital Press, it's because she's enjoying some vacation time. She's scheduled to return to the barn later this week, so keep an eye out for more of her insights either later this week or next week.

Cute kids, farm animals and YouTube

So less than two years ago a couple of guys created this Internet company that basically allows people to share homemade videos, most of which we wouldn't want to watch if they were our best friends or family members, over the Internet. And now Internet-tech behemoth Google decides to buy them for $1.65 billion (click here for the AP story).

So why is it farmers bust their humps for so little return, year after year, decade after decade? It has to be for the love of the life, the land and the magic of taking part in the cycle of life.

Life on the family farm is quickly disappearing from the collective consciousness of many Americans. But the following video shows that there is still magic there when you bring together a cute kid, farm animals and a little patch of ground were things grow.

And thanks to YouTube.com, you too can experience the magic without getting your shoes dirty.



By the way, if any of our readers have videos online related to agriculture in the West, let us know. If we like them and think they are appropriate, we'd be happy to share a link with our blog readers.

Agriculture
Videos
Google
YouTube

Technology brings back an extinct Northwest species

Sooner or later, everything makes it online.

A few weeks back I met a couple of old friends after work. Both are professional photographers and we were photo colleagues back in college at Oregon State. We were doing our own version of VH1's "I love the '80s," reminiscing about people, places and things we once knew.

Perhaps since we were in a bar, the subject of beer came up. Now, beer is often a favorite topic in the Northwest, which has long been reknowned as a hop growing region. Of course Portland and the Northwest led the microbrew revolution, which introduced so many people to beer that actually had flavor -- not that American-style pilsner that mass market breweries spit out by the oceanful.

But before the microbrew revolution hit, the Northwest had several regional breweries known mostly for making inexpensive versions of an American pilsner. These were the original Northwest microbreweries before the macrobreweries swallowed them up and in most cased killed them off. Names like Henry Weinhard's, Blitz and Olympia were some of the more popular brands.

One of the cheapest -- in price as well as taste -- was Rainier. But their advertising campaign was pure quirky gold. Everyone in the region knew the RainBeers, large Rainier bottles with legs that were chased all over the Northwest by men equipped with oversized bottle openers.

And, of course, there was the one with the motorcycle.

My friends and I, somehow got on the topic of Nothwest beers from back then and someone says: Remember Rainier. One of my old friends and I break into the tagline in unison, doing our best talking-motorcycle impersonations, winding up through the gears.

"Raaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiii-nnnnneeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrr-beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeer."

It was worth a smile and a laugh and one of those "those were the days"-type coments.

Well, tonight, while cruising around the Internet, what did I find, but that very commercial, posted on YouTube.com. Thanks to The Brew Site and Beervana for showing the way.



Fun commercials, but bad, bad beer.

Yep, sooner or later everything ends up posted online.

Agriculture
Pacific Northwest
Hops
Breweries