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Tackling community issues. Celebrating local voices.
Each year, harvest arrives like a freight train: a distant honk, a vibration under our feet, and then it’s on us with a tremendous roar, flying by with noise and intensity, and then it’s gone.
With mild, wet winters and dry summers, precisely suited to growing and harvesting grass seed, the southern Willamette Valley is known as the “grass seed capital of the world,” and supplies the country with orchard grass seed for pastures, annual ryegrass for winter pastures in the south, perennial ryegrass for golf courses and football fields, and fescue for pastures and lawns.
Surely no Grisham novel equals the tension and suspense of farmers watching the weather in March and April as the stalks grow taller and the seed heads form. Are we having too much rain or not enough? What are the seed prices doing? Is the equipment ready for summer?…