Document text
A sticky situation Mail Tribune / Jim Craven Longtime orchardist Dunbar Carpenter is one of a dozen property owners in the Foothill Road and Coker Butte area who want their land - which they say is poor for farming - included in a 50-year growth plan so it can be developed. Some who farm the clay soil near Foothill Road say the land is better suited for development, but that's not the city's plan By MELISSA MARTIN Mail Tribune W hen regional planners look down rows of pear trees along Foothill Road, they see prime farmland that needs to be protected from development. But longtime orchardists look past the tree trunks to the earth - "the big sticky" clay soil that tends to produce small, imperfect-looking pears. "I think this is not one of the better farmland areas," said orchardist Dunbar Carpenter, whose uncle planted some of the valley's first pears in 1909. "We have a heavy clay soil that's hard to work. I think that may be part of the reason we have a reduced yield per acre." From sticky soil to success story Bartlett, Bosc, Comice and d'Anjou trees covered the Foothill Road region in the 1900s, rooted in soil known as the "big sticky." "It's called that because when you're walking around in it during the rainy season you come back with five pounds of dirt clods on your boots," said orchardist Mike Naumes. He serves on a technical committee that gives advice to planners during the regional growth process. "The soil out there is either too wet and it buries equipment or it's too dry and cracks. It's real tough ground to farm." Leonard Carpenter, who arrived in Medford in 1909 and started Veritas Orchards, described the Foothill area this way: "When I arrived, the only thing you could see up there where my place was, was rocks," he told Kay Atwood, the author of "Blossoms & Branches: A Gathering of Rogue Valley Orchard Memories." "The ground was thick with rocks ... two parts of that 60 acres were absolutely wild. Nothing had been there before." But modern-day orchardist Ron Henri has turned that sticky soil into a success story. "The soils out there are incredibly rich - a clay soil that's highly retentive of nutrients, but at the same time, highly retentive of moisture," said Henri, senior vice president of orchards for Bear Creek Corp. and a member of the regional plan technical committee. "It's not an easy site to farm," Henri said of Bear Creek's 500-acre orchard at Foothill and Vilas roads. "We purchased that property with every expectation that we'd have to farm it differently than past generations." Their secrets include using soil-compacting equipment and a sophisticated irrigation system. They've built raised berms like the borders used on rice fields in the Sacramento Valley and adjusted tree rows to allow roots to better aerate during wet periods. "We've planted ground cover crops to allow us to travel on that soil without collecting mud on our equipment," Henri said. "We schedule activities better and stay off the field when conditions exist that are detrimental to soil structure. We knew going in we'd have to manage our agriculture operations quite differently than in the past." Bear Creek's purchase of rural orchard sites is driven by its need for locally grown fruit for its gift-packing business. Harry and David Fruit of the Month Club packages featuring Rogue Valley pears are sold around the world. "We decided to invest locally based in large part on the commitment of state and local government authorities and public support for protecting agriculture and natural resource lands in this area," Henri said. Carpenter is among about a dozen property owners in the Foothill Road and Coker Butte area who want their land included in a 50-year growth map. While all cities draw 20-year plans known as urban growth boundaries, this is the first time planners in 10 cities and Jackson County have created a common 50-year map. It will determine where houses and businesses will be built through 2050. The Medford City Council will consider the "Greater Bear Creek Valley Regional Problem Solving" report during its March 7 meeting. Medford has 63,154 people and is expected to grow to 111,068 by 2050. Those additional residents will need almost 20,000 new homes or apartments. But the map that city leaders will look at next month won't show future growth along Foothill Road, despite the desires of area property owners. "Our charge is first to demonstrate we have a need for the land based on population projections and then to pick the land least capable of being productive," said Medford senior planner Mark Gallagher. Planners can be picky about where to put houses because "it's clear we have enough land in the valley for 100 years of growth," Gallagher said. There's even debate at City Hall about where Medford will grow. City traffic engineers plan to eventually build an Owen Drive "expressway" from the Costco/Wal-Mart shopping area to Foothill Road. It would route traffic away from a crowded Delta Waters Road to the thousands of new homes planned along North Phoenix Road, said Alex Georgevitch, city transportation manager. "I think there is a need for more east-west connectors in that area, especially looking at the regional transportation system - North Phoenix Road serving as a bypass from Fern Valley Road, all the way to Delta Waters," Georgevitch said. With traffic buzzing through the middle of farmland and a shopping center a mile away, the Foothill Road region is more suited for development, said developer Laz Ayala, who owns two Coker Butte orchards that he wants on the 50-year map. After farming for three years and turning no profit, Ayala will soon take the orchards out of production. "This would be an opportunity to have a master plan and build the kind of development the city wants to see, similar to the Southeast Plan," Ayala said. "This could be the Northeast Plan." Agreeing with Ayala are most of his neighbors. Monte Penwell, general manager of Reter Fruit, recently stopped production on a 100-acre orchard along Foothill Road and Coker Butte. Lloyd Thompson bought an orchard behind Reter Fruit's and is temporarily leasing part of it back to Associated Fruit. Builders Lou Mahar, Gary Whittle and W.L. Moore own former orchard land near Abraham Lincoln Elementary School. And Steve Skinner, a Portland sports company executive, has owned Foothill Road property since 1983. But some neighbors don't want on the map, including Bear Creek Corp., which has a 500-acre orchard at Foothill and Vilas roads that helps supply its multimillion-dollar gift packing business, and the Mormon church, which operates a small orchard at Foothill and Delta Waters for its food pantry. A retired Oregon State University horticulture professor believes orchardists who can't make a profit in the clay soils along Foothill Road should try another crop. "That region has a nice slope," said Porter Lombard, citing nearby Hillcrest Orchard's move toward converting its acres to grapes. "It's clay soil, but it's suitable for late grape varieties such as cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, merlot, viognier and syrah." The leader of the Fruit Growers League, however, said local grape growers are in the same boat as pear and apple orchardists - they are not making a profit. "Grape growers are in a situation that, unless you can sell direct, you lose so much money in distribution," said league Executive Director Dennis Hofer. "Any agricultural endeavor is a factory without walls, with labor and production costs," Hofer said. "If you don't make any money, you can't keep the factory open and you can't stay in business." Value, like beauty, may be in the eye of the beholder, according to OSU's Lombard. Representatives from Sonoma and Napa wineries recently have visited the Rogue Valley looking for a value in agriculture land. In the Napa Valley, farmland sells for $50,000 an acre, compared to $10,000 an acre in Medford, Lombard said. Remaining unconvinced of the area's profitability as farmland is Carpenter, who grew grapes for 13 years on a steep hillside. Small orchardists face obstacles such as cheap foreign fruit flooding American stores, rigid marketing requirements and consumers who care more about the fruit's appearance than its taste. "It used to be that pears were sold in grocery stores that had produce departments and managers who knew their fruit," Carpenter said. "The Rogue Valley pears always had a better flavor and we were able to sell them on that basis. "When the large chain stores came in, they were interested more in appearance. The pear growers gradually went out and the packing houses had to have fruit so they acquired the orchard lands. Now that's finally catching up with the packing houses and they can't make it either." One way to encourage farming may be changing Oregon's land-use laws to allow people to build a home on land they farm, said Ron Henri, senior vice president of orchards for Bear Creek Corp. He's a member of the Resource Land Review Committee, one of the technical groups offering advice during the regional planning process. "Our committee is considering what incentives might be available for encouraging agricultural activity in the valley," Henri said. "We recognize that agriculture is not a high-return activity, but we recognize that many people, just the same, want to be involved either in full-time or part-time farming." Farming's future has been a concern as Rogue Valley planners map five decades of growth, said John Eads, regional problem solving project coordinator. "It's hard and the choices that are made will be difficult and obviously please some people and disappoint others," Eads said. "Policy makers are doing now the hard work so that it won't have to be done in a sort of come-from-behind mechanism a few years down the road. "It's awkward and it hasn't been done before," said Eads, the hearings officer for Jackson County. "But we are perched - sometimes uncomfortably - on the cutting edge of urban growth planning." Reach reporter Melissa Martin at 776-4497, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.