Resilient Rural Communities in Oregon and Japan

I’m sitting here at the beautiful Krebs’ Family Ranch overlooking the gorgeous grasslands and mountains to write about the latest leg of our awesome journey. That means that we successfully made it to Wallowa County!

We have had a really long day of travel, from Corvallis, to Wallowa County. We left Corvallis at 8 am this morning and arrived in Enterprise at 4 pm. Along the way we got to see the amazing change in landscape that occurs crossing Oregon. If you don’t know the area well, we traveled across the state completely, viewing all kinds of different landscapes!

 

Our trip was filled with wonderful views, great discussions, and tons of laughter! We got to see rivers, log yards, poplar plantations, agricultural fields, grasslands, cows, horses, wind turbines, mountains, waterfalls, and all kinds of beautiful scenery.

When we got to Wallowa county we came out to the Krebs’ Family Ranch and met up with a group of ranchers and farmers within the area. They were all gathered to meet with us, tell us about their lives, their community, and their unique resilience. We circled up and they went around and told us about their individual experiences, and situations. They also let us ask questions and get a better understanding of the way they live, and take a TON of notes. As one of them, Cameron Krebs (he spelled his name out so that we could cite him correctly) said, he walked up and started asking questions and all of a sudden a bunch of tiny notebooks popped out! I was really interested in a sheep production process that he is working on by incorporating sheep grazing into a poplar plantation as a form of agroforestry. We definitely got a good start to our data collection here in Wallowa County!

After the formal discussion, we had a more informal BBQ with the community and got to talk with them on a more personal level. They were so nice, friendly, and inviting! We ate hamburgers, salad, various side dishes, and an assortment of desserts. It was delicious!

The Krebs’ family was also generous enough to allow all 5 of us girls to stay in their bunkhouse for the night. By bunkhouse, that is what they called it, but it is a gorgeous little house, completely off the grid (heated and electricity run through solar panels) with heated floors, unlimited hot water, super comfortable beds and an AMAZING view! The boys are staying at a couple of different houses in Enterprise and Joseph.

 

 

As you can see in the picture above, we spent some time in the city of Philomath today. To practice our observational and interviewing skills, we spent a couple of hours walking around the city, making note of landmarks, important features and general characteristics of the area.

This was interesting because I have driven through Philomath quite a few times, but had never taken the time to closely observe the area. On our walk through town, we saw a cute little shop called Myrtlewood Mystique Gallery. We decided to have a look inside and started talking to the owner. She was really friendly and told us about the store, their specialization in Myrtlewood products, as well as other Oregon hardwoods. She also gave us a tour around the woodshop in the back of her gallery, where they make all of the products! She gave us an interesting insight into the lives of some of the artisans, and niche markets within Philomath and was very open and honest. If you’re ever in the area I would definitely recommend stopping in and checking it out!

Following our walking tour of the town, we visited Philomath Community Services. This is an organization serving the Philomath community made up of a few different programs including a food bank, community garden, Gleaners, and June’s Kids Kloset. These programs are designed to help struggling individuals and families within the Philomath community to have access to food staples and  other necessities. The property on which the Philomath Community Services is located was donated by the E.D. Hughes family, which brought together the different programs and put them all in one centralized location. The building was built all by funding from local donations.

June’s Kids Kloset is a program where once a month parents can bring their children in to pick out an outfit, socks and underwear. This can make a real difference to families without the funds to buy new clothes as their kids keep growing.

The food bank is open to struggling members of the Philomath community. In order to receive food here, they must provide proof of residence within Philomath. Approximately 50-60 families come in once per month and go through the food pantry, which is organized in a shopping setup. This setup is unique in that instead of serving everyone a box of food, of which they have no choice, individuals are able to choose foods that they want and need, reducing waste of unused food. The pantry is all stocked on a donation basis, but they carry toiletries, foods such as shelf stable milk, eggs, canned foods (soups, spaghetti sauce, tuna fish, etc),  baking supplies, pasta, bread, cereal, meat, frozen vegetables, and each family may take one emergency blanket per year.

The customer base for the food bank is fairly constant throughout the year, consisting of families that don’t quite make enough money to get by, handicapped individuals, homeless individuals, and people who are in between jobs. The shoppers must be at least 18 years old to shop for themselves, but food is provided to entire families with ages ranging from newborns to 90 year olds.

 

The Gleaners program is unique in that members are able to contribute something, by contributing 8 hours per month of their time, in return for food. The program has approximately 250 members who are able to come in and pick up food once per week. Differently from the food bank, members are able to go to local businesses and farms where there is excess unwanted food and bring it back to the center. Working with the Linn Benton Food Share, the Gleaners are able to create agreements with local businesses for weekly pickups.

The community garden is setup so that the volunteers work as a team to grow the entire garden, and then get a share of the harvest. Usually, about half of the total yield is donated to the food bank, and the other half is split between volunteers.

It was very interesting to learn about these programs and see a little bit into the community spirit within the “City of Volunteers.”

Another day down in Corvallis! Today was a day spent mainly in the classroom learning terminology in regards to resilience as well as how to create interview questions and conduct interviews.

We learned about models (not the kind that show off the latest fashion, but the ones that are a useful representation of a system). The Sustainability Model has been commonly used.

(http://www.downstate.edu/green/sustainability.html)

This model has been helpful, but it has its drawbacks. It is a very linear system, in that it draws a lot on the past to make predictions for the future. It is also static in nature, meaning that it is trying to achieve a steady state. The issue with this is that it does not account for disturbance. Although the system tries to achieve stability, a stable system is usually the exception, not the rule. In most systems change is occurring much more often than stability.

To account for this, a complex adaptive system can be considered instead that shows the more cyclic nature of a system.

(http://galleryhip.com/complex-adaptive-system.html)

This type of system allows for the resilience of a system to be accounted for as well as the path that a system should take in times of disturbance to adapt and still maintain its basic structure and function.

Following our discussions on models, we had the opportunity to hear from Sarah Cunningham. She has been working on an anthropological study within a small rural community in South Central Oregon. We got the chance to hear about her experiences entering into this community and trying to gain an understanding of their lifestyles and practices. She was able to provide us with some strategies for interviewing and making observations.

Nancy Rosenberger then followed up on this topic by explaining participant observation. This is a technique that we can use to try to make note of our surroundings and observe things that we may not have placed importance on. She also taught us how to create questions to ask during interviews and discussed how to conduct an interview.

At this point, we broke up into teams of four and practiced what we had learned. We created 3-4 questions that we thought would be good to ask in order to understand each others’ high school experiences, then conducted interviews to practice asking questions and taking notes.

Following this activity, we came back together and learned about the two main teams that we will be working in for the rest of the class. The first team, will be focusing their investigations on mainly food and agriculture, while the second team will be more focused on forestry and natural resources.

At this point, we were dismissed from class for the day, but we decided to go to the McDonald Dunn Forest, owned by Oregon State University’s College of Forestry to go for a hike and show the Japanese students and Oregon students from Oregon Institute of Technology and Eastern Oregon University around. We drove out to Peavy Arboretum and hiked up to Cronemiller Lake along an intensive management trail. At the lake, we stopped to enjoy the logging sports arena and take a few pictures.

 

Welcome to the Resilient Rural Communities PBL blog! In case you didn’t know, this is the story of a group of students from Oregon and Japan that are coming together to discuss and learn about the problems facing rural communities. We will be spending 1 week in Corvallis, Oregon USA, 1 week in Wallowa County, Oregon and 2 weeks in Akita Prefecture Japan.

Today was day one of our adventure! We started the day meeting and getting to know each other. Our group consists of 3 professors (Dr. John Bliss, Dr. Nancy Rosenberger, and Dr. Ayumi SUGIMOTO), 3 students from Japan (Ryoko, Kasumi, and Yasuhiro), and 5 students from Oregon (Tiffany (that’s me!) Maya, Holly, Christian, and Andy).

Following the introductions, we started getting out and about right away. We hopped in a couple of vans and journeyed to Fitton Green Natural Area. This is a section of land that was purchased by the Green Belt land Trust and given to the City of Corvallis for use as a recreational area. 

We hiked in a ways and came to a beautiful oak savanna where we had a beautiful view of the town of Philomath. Each of us took about 15-20 minutes to make observations of of surroundings to try to gain an understanding of the history of the land and what we thought the town may have been like, by just seeing it from a distance.

We observed that the town was likely made up of people that were farmers, mill workers, and commuters to the neighboring town of Corvallis. In the surrounding landscape we also noticed a variety in the ages of the timber stands, from what looked to be old growth timber on Mary’s Peak to a freshly cut stand and a wide range in between.

Based on these observations, we came to the conclusion that there were many different landowners, with different management objectives within the area.

Following our observations and a group discussion of our findings, we looked at a map of Oregon, and discussed the layout of the state in terms of geographical regions, specifically pointing out the coast range, valley, Cascades and eastern portion of the state.

In analyzing this map, we noted that there was a distinct moisture gradient between the two sides of the Cascade Mountain Range, leaving the valley with much more precipitation than the Eastern part of the state.

Following our excursion, we returned to Oregon State University, ate lunch, and learned an anthropological conceptual framework for the class. We discussed values and how history, power, upbringing, class, capital, innovation, age, gender, race, ethnicity and other factors contributed to the values that are associated with individuals and communities.

An interesting activity that we participated in was to come up with continuums of stereotypical opposite values.

For example:

Task-oriented ——————————————-Relationship oriented

Economic———————————————————————-Moral

Traditional——————————————————————-Modern

We then had to place our own values somewhere along each continuum. It was interesting to see where we placed ourselves and why. Where would you place yourself on the continuums above? Give it a shot!

Until tomorrow!

Tiffany