DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — An odd thing has happened in wheat country — a lot of farmers aren’t planting wheat.

Thanks to a global grain glut that has caused prices and profits to plunge, this year farmers planted the fewest acres of wheat since the U.S. Department of Agriculture began keeping records nearly a century ago.

Instead of planting the crop that gave the wheat belt its identity, many farmers are opting this year for crops that might be less iconic but are suddenly in demand, such as chickpeas and lentils, used in hummus and healthy snacks.

“People have gone crazy with chickpeas. It’s unbelievable how many acres there are,” said Kirk Hansen, who farms 350 acres south of Spokane in eastern Washington, where wheat’s reign as the king crop has been challenged.

American farmers still plant wheat over a vast landscape that stretches from the southern Plains of Oklahoma and Texas north through Kansas, Nebraska and the Dakotas as well as dry regions of Washington and Oregon. However, this year’s crop of 45.7 million acres is the smallest since 1919.

North Dakota harvested wheat acres are down 15 percent, Montana 11 percent and Nebraska 23 percent, to the state’s lowest winter wheat acres on record.

Fewer farmers planted wheat after a 2016 crop that was the least profitable in at least 30 years, said grain market analyst Todd Hultman, of Omaha, Nebraska-based agriculture market data provider DTN.

Many farmers took notice of a surging demand for crops driven by consumer purchases of healthy high-protein food.

“The world wants more protein and wheat is not the high-protein choice and so that’s where your use of those other things come into play and are doing better,” Hultman said. “Up north around North Dakota you will see more alternative things like sunflowers, lentils and chickpeas.”

How long the new trend will continue is unknown. While some farmers will likely switch back to wheat when profitability returns, others may keep planting the alternatives because demand is expected to remain strong, keeping prices at attractive levels.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, acres planted in chickpeas, also known as garbanzo beans, are at 603,000 this year, up nearly 86 percent from last year.

North Dakota more than tripled chickpea acres planted to 44,100 and Montana increased acres 150 percent to 247,000. Nebraska increased chickpea acres 79 percent to 5,200 acres.

The USDA says lentils reached a U.S. record high 1.02 million acres planted this year.

A farmer in southwest North Dakota, for example, could expect to earn $105 an acre on small chickpeas and around $89 an acre planting lentils this year, according to data compiled by North Dakota State University. The same farmer would lose $21 an acre on winter wheat and $4 an acre on spring wheat.

Wheat profitability has fallen precipitously.

In Illinois, wheat fell from more than $7.13 a bushel in 2012 to $4.30 this year, while for the same period land costs rose 10 percent.

Lentils are increasingly used in cereals, energy bars, chips and pasta as a way to boost protein and fiber content. General Mills now offers Cheerios Protein, which includes lentils, and Barilla Protein Plus pasta contains flour from lentils and chickpeas as an ingredient.

About 20 percent of U.S. consumers now say they eat at least one meatless meal daily and get their protein instead from plant-based sources, said Kelly Weikel, director of consumer insights at Technomic, a Chicago-based market research firm that tracks food trends.

“We’ve been able to maintain a strong demand for these crops, which is why farmers in that northern Plains and Washington and Idaho area continuing to grow them and increase their acreage,” said Tim McGreevy, an eastern Washington farmer.

High-protein snacks that were once found primarily in health food stores are now available in typical grocery stores.

Hummus is a good example. Made from chickpeas, the dip and sandwich spread was considered an exotic Middle Eastern food just a few years ago but is now found in more than a quarter of U.S. households. Hummus sales have grown to $700 million to $800 million in recent years from $10 million in the late 1990s.

USDA reports show other crops have been pushed to record planting this year by changing consumer tastes including canola and hops.

Canola, used for frying and baking and as an ingredient in salad dressings and margarine, was planted on 2.16 million acres this year, 22 percent higher than the previous record set in 2015, the USDA said.

Oregon wildlife officials killed a fourth member of the Harl Butte wolfpack Aug. 25, a day after authorizing the killing of two wolves from the Meacham pack following a series of attacks on cattle this month.

Both wolfpacks are in northeastern Oregon.

That makes four wolves from the Harl Butte pack, in Wallowa County, that have been killed. The most recent was a non-breeding adult female. Another wolf, also a non-breeding female, was killed Aug. 17, according to ODFW. The pack is now believed to include six adult wolves and at least three pups, the department said.

The Meacham Pack, in Umatilla County, is responsible for four confirmed attacks on calves in August. The cattle all belonged to the same producer and all were on private grazing ground.

In announcing the Meacham pack decision, ODFW detailed the non-lethal deterrence measures taken by the rancher. As was the case with ranchers and the Harl Butte pack, the producer requested ODFW kill the entire Meacham pack. The pack included seven wolves at the end of 2016 and is thought to have added four pups this year.

ODFW staff may kill the wolves but also issued the producer a temporary permit to shoot two adult or sub-adult wolves himself, but not pups. The permit is limited to the grazing area where the attacks have occurred, but it does not require the producer to catch the wolves in the act of biting or chasing livestock. They can be shot on sight.

In announcing the decision, ODFW Director Curt Melcher acknowledged many people oppose killing wolves for any reason.

“While it’s disheartening for some people to see ODFW killing wolves, our agency is called to manage wildlife in a manner consistent with other land uses, and to protect the social and economic interests of all Oregonians while it conserves gray wolves,” Melcher said in a prepared statement.

“It’s important that we address and limit wolf-livestock problems while also ensuring a healthy wolf population. Lethal control is identified in the Oregon Wolf Plan as a needed tool we use when non-lethal measures alone are unsuccessful in resolving conflict.”

The department will reassess the situation after the two Meacham wolves are killed, Melcher said.

The Oregon Cattlemen’s Association believes ODFW’s incremental approach won’t work. Todd Nash, the OCA’s wolf committee chairman and who lost a calf to the Harl Butte pack in August, called it a “poor decision.”

“They’re toeing a political line rather than a scientific one,” he said.

A coalition of conservation groups, including Oregon Wild, strongly opposes killing wolves in response to livestock depredations. Eighteen groups have called on Gov. Kate Brown to intervene; to date she has not.

“We continue to believe that there should be no kill orders until ODFW can finally update the wolf conservation and management plan that is over two years out of date,” said Sean Stevens, executive director of Oregon Wild. “If two wolf packs with kill orders in two weeks is what ODFW views as successful wolf management, they are living in an alternate universe.”

According to ODFW, and as required by the Oregon Wolf Plan, the producer took a series of defensive steps to deter the Meacham Pack.

The rancher removed livestock carcasses the same day they were found and removed weak cattle that might become a target for the wolves. The producer employed a range rider five days a week to maintain a human presence in the pasture and to monitor the wolves — none of which wear a tracking collar. The producer put larger, more mature calves in the pasture and delayed turnout for 30 days in hopes the wolves would move on and to give the calves time to gain size that might make them more difficult targets.

The pasture typically would be used until October, but 90 percent of the cattle that normally use it have already been moved, according to ODFW. For the past two years, the producer has chosen not to use a sheep grazing allotment on public forestland adjacent to the private pasture.

Online

ODFW depredation reports are online:

http://dfw.state.or.us/Wolves/wolf_livestock_updates.asp

NYSSA, Ore. — The Idaho-Oregon onion industry’s rebuilding efforts following the heavy damage to storage and packing facilities caused by this year’s harsh winter are in full swing and going well.

But with the main onion harvest set to begin about mid-September, some onion growers and shippers say they won’t be ready in time.

“There are definitely people who are delayed,” said Shay Myers, general manager of Owyhee Produce, an onion grower-shipper company in Nyssa, Ore.

About 60 onion storage sheds and packing facilities in the Treasure Valley of Idaho and Oregon either collapsed or sustained major damage under the weight of several feet of snow and ice.

Owyhee Produce lost four storage sheds. Its packing facility was damaged but continued operating.

Myers said his company was “fortunate” in that its buildings were some of the first to collapse so it got a relatively quick start on rebuilding.

Because most of the 1 billion-plus pounds of Spanish bulb onions grown in the region are stored and marketed later in the year, it’s important for the storage sheds to be rebuilt in time to house this year’s harvest.

Owyhee Produce will have its storage sheds rebuilt in time for harvest, but barely.

“We will have them done just in time for harvest,” Myers said.

Across the Snake River in Payette, Idaho, Partners Produce lost four buildings to the snow and ice, including its main onion packing line.

Despite its best efforts and people working seven days a week, Partners’ lost storage capacity will not be replaced before this year’s harvest begins in earnest. Its new packing facility won’t be ready until about Thanksgiving.

“We’re scrambling, all right,” said Eddie Rodriguez, director of sales and part owner of Partners. “I will have some problem finding storage and may have to rent some storage, if available, from other packers or growers.”

Partners’ packing facility in Ontario was not damaged and continues to operate.

While some rebuilt storage sheds won’t be ready in time, industry leaders say onion yields could be down significantly this year, which means the lost storage capacity won’t be quite as important.

“I think yields may be down and that might be a saving grace this year,” said Stuart Reitz, an Oregon State University Extension cropping systems agent in Ontario. “That might take some of the pressure off.”

“With the yields we are going to have, it’s likely to be less of an issue than it could have been during a normal onion production year,” Myers said.

Myers and Rodriguez said the industry will bounce back stronger in the long run because companies like theirs that have to rebuild are putting in state-of-the-art equipment and more automation.

The rebuilding process “may be a little slower coming than we were hoping for,” Myers said. “But the new infrastructure and new dedication people are putting toward the future will be better for the industry as a whole.”

ELLENSBURG, Wash. — Hay exporters are beginning to rebound from more than two years of oversupply and low prices, but they say business is still lacking.

“Overall quality is up but demand is flat to down and shipments are down because of a rapid price increase. Export volume is down versus this time last year,” said Mike Hajny, owner of Hajny Trading, an Ellensburg hay exporter.

“The timothy market has improved. Alfalfa continues to be underpriced in export markets. There continues to be more processing capacity for export than demand. We need more growth in export markets,” said Mark T. Anderson, president of Anderson Hay & Grain Co., a large West Coast exporter in Ellensburg, Wash.

While prices have improved they are still low for growers and exporters compared to their costs, Anderson said.

Exporters lost money on a lot of hay last winter to clear out an inventory build-up caused by a union work slowdown at West Coast seaports in 2014 and 2015. A long, cold winter and cool spring increased domestic feeder hay demand and helped reduce stockpiles.

In the Columbia Basin, the price of premium export alfalfa increased from $120 to $180 per ton in less than six months.

The sharp price increase met some overseas buyer resistance and while Japan, South Korea and China began buying more U.S. hay they will also be looking for cheaper alternatives, Hajny said.

“Pricing in China continues to be low compared to U.S. market conditions,” Anderson said.

The average farmgate price of big bale premium timothy was $245 per ton in the Columbia Basin on Aug. 18 and $155 to $175 for alfalfa, according to the USDA.

Shawn Clausen, a Warden, Wash., grower, said hay prices are now slumping because corn and wheat prices fell in just the last two to three weeks. At lower prices, grain will be attractive to overseas livestock owners who normally buy hay, he said.

Exporters are leery of buying hay at $175 per ton and being unable to sell it profitably overseas, he said.

Third-cutting alfalfa in the Columbia Basin was compromised in quality by about two weeks of smoke from British Columbia wildfires, Clausen said.

“It created a false cloud cover. The sun didn’t come through and that created high humidity and a lot more bleached out hay that took a couple more days drying time,” he said.

Smoke had a “big impact” on third cutting quality, Anderson said.

Analysis and color of alfalfa is generally better this year, but timothy quality is “outstanding, the nicest we’ve seen in years” with second cutting following far enough after the smoke to not be damaged, Hajny said.

“Essentially, Ellensburg and Idaho went up with no rain on timothy and it caught limited showers in the Basin,” Hajny said.

First-cutting yields were light because the weather was too cool in May, and Columbia Basin tonnage undoubtedly will be down 10 percent this year, Clausen said.

He normally gets yields of 9 tons per acre but will be closer to 8 this season, Clausen said. He plans to begin swathing fourth cutting on Sept. 11 and finish baling by Oct. 1.

“Overall the hay industry is better this year than last without a doubt. I have a chance to break even and pay my bills. Last year was a loss,” Clausen said. “It’s a slow comeback from the port deal. I won’t be planting more alfalfa next year. I don’t do timothy, but I may next year.”

U.S. hay exports, mostly along the West Coast, were developed in the 1970s for the dairy and beef markets in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. In the last 10 years, China and United Arab Emirates became big markets. Exports peaked at 4.5 million tons in 2013, were just under 4 million in 2014 and were about 4.2 million in 2015 at a value of $1.3 billion, according to the University of California-Davis.

Volumes have been published on conservation approaches to benefit embattled Western sage grouse populations, but economist John Tanaka believes researchers have largely overlooked how such strategies affect ranchers’ bottom lines.

Tanaka, associate director of the Wyoming Agricultural Experiment Station, and his research team have started working on a model to estimate the economic impacts of sage grouse management practices on ranches of varying sizes and distributions of public and private grazing land.

The model will be used to develop at least 36 enterprise budgets covering hypothetical ranches in Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Wyoming, Montana and Nevada.

“From an economic standpoint, nobody has ever looked at if what we’re proposing ranchers do to enhance sage grouse habitat is going to enhance their bottom line,” Tanaka said, adding the data should help guide decisions of land managers and ranchers.

Local USDA offices will help Tanaka’s team recruit ranchers to serve on small focus groups and provide baseline data on regional industry practices. To model likely outcomes of management practices, Tanaka’s team will interview scientists, land managers and ranchers.

“We’re trying to find a representative response, not a specific ranch response,” Tanaka said. “We’ll use expert opinion and anecdotal evidence where we need to.”

Tanaka’s team also includes principal researchers Kristie Maczko, director of the Sustainable Rangelands Roundtable, and University of Wyoming agricultural economist John Ritten. Their work is funded by a nearly $500,000 grant from USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, and they expect to complete the model by next May.

They’ll be improving upon a previous ranch-management model Tanaka developed with retired University of Idaho economist Neil Rimbey and New Mexico State University emeritus economist Allen Torell. Rimbey believes the economic data will help land managers address a common void in their environmental reviews.

Rimbey said concerns about sage grouse sometimes lead land managers to implement grazing permits requiring ranchers to delay grazing by a month, or to remove cattle a month early, “with no idea of the economic impact, and they can have very dramatic impacts at the ranch level.”

Tanaka anticipates the project will show economic benefits resulting from some common sage grouse conservation practices, such as adding off-stream watering, thereby dispersing cattle to graze land more evenly, or removal of junipers to improve both sage grouse habitat and livestock forage.

John Peavey, who has implemented conservation practices on rangeland near Carey, Idaho, believes practices that reduce the risk of wildfire provide the greatest benefit for both cattle and grouse.

Farm Bill programs under the NRCS Sage Grouse Initiative cover up to 75 percent of ranchers’ costs of implementing approved conservation practices. Sage Grouse Initiative coordinator Thad Heater said the program has facilitated conservation across 5.6 million Western acres in its first seven years.

Heater explained that voluntary conservation efforts helped avert an Endangered Species Act listing for sage grouse in 2015, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is scheduled to review progress in 2020.

SALEM — As the Oregon State Fair prepares to open its doors Friday, 4-H’ers Jessica Simpson and Kaitlyn Bloom are excited to show off their Boer goats and make new friends.

“Showing is my passion,” Simpson, 14, said. “At the state level it’s more competitive.”

But she’s not worried. She described herself as being “really competitive” as well.

Simpson has been part of 4-H for five years. She is a member of the Livestock Royalty group from Deschutes County in Central Oregon.

At age 13, Bloom is attending her first Oregon State Fair. Originally from Sonora, Calif., she has been a member of 4-H for four years. She is part of two groups, the 40 Swiners for pigs and one for goats.

Bloom enjoys showing because she gets to know her animals’ characteristics better.

The fair starts Friday, Aug. 25, and runs through Monday, Sept. 4, at the Salem fairgrounds. Hours are 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. The carnival opens daily at 11 a.m.

This year the fair features a new Agricultural Showcase Stage, six new rides and new special events and featured performances.

The fair also continues hosting signature agricultural events, such as the 4-H and FFA competitions and the Open Class Livestock exhibits.

“We are proud of the increasing popularity of the Oregon State Fair — and are thrilled we’ve continued to grow from year to year,” said Dan Cox, a fair spokesman. “The event uniquely combines the excitement of today with the nostalgia of yesteryear. As soon as fairgoers enter the gate, there are events, experiences and activities to remind them or inspire them — no matter what their age.”

Starting Friday, the Agricultural Showcase stage will feature presentations and activities related to agriculture. It will be in a tent on the west side of the Forster Livestock Pavilion. The purpose of the stage is to allow “an opportunity to bridge the gap between producer and consumer,” Brooke Broadbent, organizer of the showcase, said.

“The stage is an opportunity to show different aspects of the industry as a whole, and the importance of agriculture in everyday life,” she said.

Events include the Oregon leaders’ annual Goat Milking Showdown, the Dairy Princess meet and greet, country-western dance lessons and Oregon Agriculture in the Classroom “Egg Day,” when they’ll give out 1,500 eggs on a stick.

There will also be speakers from the Capital Press, and Oregon Forest Resource Institute, as well as booths from agricultural organizations, such as the Oregon Department of Agriculture and the Oregon Farm Bureau.

Elsewhere this year, the fair will also offer animal attractions, such as Creature Feature Extreme and Dog Town, as well as the horse shows and competitions and livestock competitions.

The horse shows are featured throughout the day, with events including a drill team competition, a miniature horse demonstration and Tennessee Walkers.

The livestock competition categories are Open Class Livestock and 4-H and FFA horses, along with small animal competitions.

Agriculture and horticulture competitions include farm and garden, floral, honey and other products of the hive.

New this year are Cirque Ma’Ceo — an acrobatic equestrian show — and the Colors of Fun Fire Finale, featuring the Sacred Fire Dance Company and its nightly exhibition of pyrotechnic special effects.

Tickets are available at the Cirque Ma’Ceo website and the 20-minute fire show is every night free with admission.

Eleven concerts are in the 2017 line-up: Dwight Yoakam, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, the Salem Symphony, Josh Turner, For King and Country, Kenny Loggins, Third Eye Blind, Vince Neil, Trace Adkins, the Salem Symphony and Eddie Money.

All of the 11 concerts are free with fair admission except the Salem Symphony performances. Limited VIP seating is available for all of the performances for $35 online.

In addition to the 40 carnival rides, the fair is offering six new ones: the Vortex, Shockwave, bumper cars, Mardi Gras and the new Rainier Expo Wheel. One ride ticket is 50 cents, 120 tickets are $50 and 250 tickets for $100. An unlimited ride wristband is also available for $50.

Other contests include Creative Living Competitions, featuring a new First Lego League Global Scientific Challenge, and four culinary and beverage contests, including the 58th Gerry Frank Chocolate Layer Cake Contest.

There are 10 opportunities for deals and discounts, including Senior Day, Free Kids Day and Two Dollar Tuesday.

For more information and tickets, visit oregonstatefair.org.

The combination of two obscure passions — for the Russian language and exotic fruit — led Jim Gilbert to success in his career as a nurseryman.

Gilbert launched his nursery roughly a decade before his first visit to Russia in 1990, when the communist Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse.

There, he discovered uncommon varieties of seaberry, honeyberry and Cornelian cherry, among others, to bring back to his Northwoods Nursery near Molalla, Ore.

“I had a feeling of opening up a treasure chest,” said Gilbert.

In the Soviet era, a lot of Russia’s agricultural research was devoted to home gardeners, he said. While commercial production was carried out on collective farms, many fruits and vegetables were grown by city dwellers on small intensively managed plots.

“That’s how people survived, by growing their own food,” Gilbert said.

Plants that can endure Russia’s brutal winters are often suited to growing in the Pacific Northwest, where they still experience the necessary winter chill but not extremely low temperatures.

Over time, Gilbert expanded his network of plant contacts in former Soviet states, such as Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine and Belarus. He also traveled farther east, collecting rare persimmon varieties in South Korea and pineapple guava in New Zealand.

Among the nursery’s signature products are unusual varieties of common fruits, such as columnar apples, which gardeners with small yards favor for their vertical tree structure. Gilbert has also found success with previously little-known American fruits, such as paw paws.

Nursery stock that produces fruit has generally been more resilient during economic downturns, he said.

“I’ve always liked growing edible things,” Gilbert said. “It’s not just ornamental, it actually gives you something.”

Originally, Gilbert specialized in chestnuts, black walnuts, black locusts and Norway maples, but he had his fruit “breakthrough” in the mid-1980s due to the popularity of hardy kiwis.

As he delved deeper into rare cultivars, Gilbert found that some information wasn’t readily available in English — prompting a reacquaintance with the Russian language, which he studied in high school and college.

Aside from easing plant research, his increased proficiency in Russian helped Gilbert complete his bachelor’s degree in the language in 1997, which he’d begun roughly three decades earlier.

These days, Northwoods Nursery grows hundreds of varieties of roughly 60 types of fruit on 66 acres, with about 60 percent of the production dedicated to containers and the rest to bareroot stock.

Managing this broad assortment of species isn’t easy, he said. “For a lot of plants, there is no guidebook. You have to figure it out on your own.”

He is now facing a problem common in agriculture: insufficient labor. Despite strong demand for his products, Gilbert’s growth is constrained by a dearth of employees.

“It’s a really frustrating situation,” he said. “We’re going to cut back on what we grow.”

Labor shortages forced Gilbert to sell off his retail operation, One Green World, in 2015, allowing him to focus on wholesale marketing to independent garden centers and mail order nurseries that sell through catalogs.

However, his nursery operation is finding way to improve efficiency and make the best use of available workers.

For example, employees now graft buds onto trees with Parafilm — a wax-based adhesive — rather than plastic tape, avoiding labor later in the process.

“It breaks down on its own. You don’t have to go back and cut the tape,” Gilbert said.

He’s also covering rows of plants with sheets of plastic — thereby suppressing weeds while reducing water usage and boosting growth. He also recently invested in a more efficient potting machine.

“There have been some major changes in the way we do business,” he said.

Jim Gilbert

Occupation: Owner of Northwoods Nursery

Hometown: Molalla, Ore.

Family: Partner, Lorraine Gardner, and four grown children

Age: 73

Education: Bachelor’s degree in Russian Language from Portland State University in 1997

Quote: “I’ve always liked growing edible things. It’s not just ornamental, it actually gives you something.”

Oregon wildlife officials authorized killing two wolves of the Meacham Pack after a series of attacks on cattle this month.

The pack is the second targeted for lethal control this summer. Department staff have shot and killed three wolves from the Harl Butte Pack in Wallowa County and as of Aug. 24 were intending to kill a fourth as well. The Meacham Pack, in Umatilla County, is responsible for four confirmed attacks on calves in August. The cattle all belonged to the same producer and all were on private grazing ground, not on public range.

In announcing the decision, ODFW detailed the non-lethal deterrence measures taken by the rancher. As was the case with ranchers and the Harl Butte pack, the producer requested ODFW kill the entire Meacham Pack. The pack included seven wolves at the end of 2016 and is thought to have added four pups this year.

ODFW staff may kill the wolves but also issued the producer a temporary permit to shoot two adult or sub-adult wolves himself, but not pups. The permit is limited to the grazing area where the attacks have occurred, but it does not require the producer to catch the wolves in the act of biting or chasing livestock. They can be shot on sight.

In announcing the decision, ODFW Director Curt Melcher acknowledged many people oppose killing wolves for any reason.

“While it’s disheartening for some people to see ODFW killing wolves, our agency is called to manage wildlife in a manner consistent with other land uses, and to protect the social and economic interests of all Oregonians while it conserves gray wolves,” Melcher said in a prepared statement.

“It’s important that we address and limit wolf-livestock problems while also ensuring a healthy wolf population. Lethal control is identified in the Oregon Wolf Plan as a needed tool we use when non-lethal measures alone are unsuccessful in resolving conflict.”

The department will reassess the situation after two wolves are killed, Melcher said.

The Oregon Cattlemen’s Association believes ODFW’s incremental approach won’t work. Todd Nash, the OCA’s wolf committee chairman and who lost a calf to the Harl Butte pack in August, called it a “poor decision.”

“They’re toeing a political line rather than a scientific one,” he said.

A coalition of conservation groups, including Oregon Wild, strongly opposes killing wolves in response to livestock depredations. Eighteen groups have called on Gov. Kate Brown to intervene; to date she has not.

According to ODFW and as required by the Oregon Wolf Plan, the producer took a series of defensive steps to deter the Meacham Pack.

The rancher removed livestock carcasses the same day they were found and removed weak cattle that might become a target for the wolves. The producer employed a range rider five days a week to maintain a human presence in the pasture and to monitor the wolves — none of which wear a tracking collar. The producer put larger, more mature calves in the pasture and delayed turnout for 30 days in hopes the wolves would move on and to give the calves time to gain size that might make them more difficult targets.

The pasture typically would be used until October, but 90 percent of the cattle that normally use it have already been moved, according to ODFW. For the past two years, the producer has chosen not to use a sheep grazing allotment on public forestland adjacent to the private pasture.

ODFW depredation reports are online: http://dfw.state.or.us/Wolves/wolf_livestock_updates.asp

BROOKINGS, Ore. (AP) — Cooler temperatures and coastal moisture allowed fire crews to make progress Wednesday fighting a large blaze in southwest Oregon and keep another conflagration in the central part of the state in check, authorities said.

No new evacuations were ordered for the 156-square-mile blaze in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest near Brookings, just north of the California border, said Zach Ellinger, a fire spokesman. The blaze is burning the scars of a notorious fire from 2002 that scorched 800 square miles.

After smoldering for more than a month, the lightning-caused blaze was listed as the top firefighting priority in the nation Tuesday after rapid growth last week. On Wednesday, Gov. Kate Brown announced a mobilization of an additional 125 Oregon National Guard resources to support others working on the fire starting Thursday. The fire has destroyed five homes, officials said Tuesday.

“Our local and state responders, as well as nearby community members, are facing a very challenging fire in the Brookings area,” Brown said. “These additional resources are needed to prevent further harm.”

Ellinger said Tuesday that the weather Tuesday was cooperating.

“We have cool marine moisture coming in off the Pacific Ocean. And that’s keeping fire activity down and allowing our fire crews to go in and put down those containment lines that they’ve been wanting so badly to do” he said.

In central Oregon, fire crews reported no significant growth overnight on a blaze about six miles west of the tourist town of Sisters. About 600 people who had been under mandatory evacuation orders were allowed to return to their homes, but they could be asked to leave again if conditions change, said Ronda Scholting, a fire spokeswoman.

Crews were able to light a backfire overnight to help contain the fire’s spread. By Wednesday morning it was cool, with a very light rain falling for a brief period, she said. There was concern that afternoon winds could push the flames to the east, where Sisters is located, she added.

That blaze is now 19 square miles in size and is 23 percent contained.

August is typically the worst month for wildfires in Oregon. Resources are mobilized around the state to help contain them.

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said he’s recommending that none of 27 national monuments carved from wilderness and ocean and under review by the Trump administration be eliminated.

But there would be changes to a “handful,” he said.

Zinke told The Associated Press that unspecified boundary adjustments for some monuments carved out of wilderness and ocean over the past four decades will be included in the recommendations he planned to give President Donald Trump on Thursday. None of the sites would revert to new ownership, he said, while public access for uses such as hunting, fishing or grazing would be maintained or restored.

He also spoke of protecting tribal interests and historical land grants, pointing to monuments in New Mexico, where Hispanic ranchers have opposed two monuments proclaimed by President Barack Obama.

Zinke declined to say whether portions of the monuments would be opened up to oil and gas drilling, mining, logging and other industries for which Trump has advocated.

If Trump adopts the recommendations, it would quiet some of the worst fears of his opponents, who warned that vast public lands and marine areas could be lost to states or private interests.

But significant reductions in the size of the monuments, especially those created by Obama, would mark the latest in a string of actions where Trump has sought to erode his Democratic predecessor’s legacy.

“There’s an expectation we need to look out 100 years from now to keep the public land experience alive in this country,” Zinke said. “You can protect the monument by keeping public access to traditional uses.”

The recommendations cap an unprecedented four-month review based on a belief that the century-old Antiquities Act had been misused by past presidents to create oversized monuments that hinder energy development, grazing and other uses.

The review raised alarm among conservationists who said protections could be lost for areas that are home to ancient cliff dwellings, towering sequoia trees, deep canyons and ocean habitats. They’ve vowed to file lawsuits if Trump attempts any changes that would reduce the size of monuments or rescind their designations.

Zinke had previously announced that no changes would be made at six national monuments — in Montana, Colorado, Idaho, California, Arizona and Washington. He’s also said that Bears Ears monument in Utah should be downsized.

The former Montana congressman declined to reveal specifics on individual sites in an interview with the AP. He offered no further details on his recommendations for the two New Mexico monuments — Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument and the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument.

He also struck back against conservationists who had warned of impending mass selloffs of public lands by the Trump administration.

“I’ve heard this narrative that somehow the land is going to be sold or transferred,” Zinke said. “That narrative is patently false and shameful. The land was public before and it will be public after.”

National monument designations add protections for lands revered for their natural beauty and historical significance with the goal of preserving them for future generations. The restrictions aren’t as stringent as national parks, but some policies include limits on mining, timber cutting and recreational activities such as riding off-road vehicles.

The monuments under review were designated by four presidents over the last two decades. Several are about the size of the state of Delaware, including Mojave Trails in California, Grand-Staircase Escalante in Utah and Bears Ears, which is on sacred tribal land.

Many national monuments were later declared national parks. Among them were Zion National Park in Utah and Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona.

No other president has tried to eliminate a monument, but some have trimmed and redrawn boundaries 18 times, according to the National Park Service.

Many times, presidents reduced monuments only slightly, like when Franklin Roosevelt removed about 52 acres from Arizona’s Wupatki National Monument in 1941 to make way for a dam. But occasionally the changes were drastic, like President Woodrow Wilson’s move in 1915 to cut Mount Olympus National Monument roughly in half to open more land for logging.

Environmental groups said the 1906 Antiquities Act is intended to shield significant historical and archaeological sites, and that it allows presidents to create the monuments, but only gives Congress the power to modify them.

U.S. milk production in July at 18.2 billion pounds was up 1.8 percent year over year on an additional 74,000 cows and an extra 20 pounds per cow, according to the latest milk production report from USDA National Agricultural Statistic Service.

However, production in the Northwest and California, was down, with fewer cows and lower milk production per cow reported in Washington and Oregon, fewer cows in California and lower production per cow in Idaho.

The cow count in Idaho increased 2,000 head to 601,000, but monthly milk production per cow was off 10 pounds to 2,155 pounds. That dropped total production by 0.2 percent.

The main reason is a long, hot summer that’s dragged on for a couple of months, said Tony VanderHulst, a Wendell dairyman and president of the Idaho Dairymen’s Association.

“Cows are tired. They’re recovering from a long winter, and then they get a hot summer. It hammered on them; it’s a double-whammy,” he said.

Feed quality is fine, but cows are weary, milk prices are low and everybody’s just trying to buckle down. It’s a roller coaster ride, he said.

Mornings have been cooling off the last couple of weeks, but it’s been a hot couple of months and milk production isn’t going to turn around overnight. Fall is coming on, and cows will be using their energy to put on winter coats, he said.

“So they’re getting over one winter and getting ready for another, and the Farmers’ Almanac is expecting it to be another rough one,” he said.

California’s steady decline in milk production tapered off a bit in July, down only 0.2 percent. Cow numbers are still heading south — down 13,000 in July year over year to 1.75 million — but milk per cow saw a 10-pound boost.

Oregon was down only 1,000 cows from a year ago, but per cow production dropped 40 pounds. Washington was down 2,000 cows and 30 pounds per cow.

Production was up markedly in other Western states, with New Mexico up 8.4 percent, Arizona up 6.3 percent, Colorado up 6.8 percent and Utah up 9.6 percent.

Texas was up 14.8 percent and has posted double-digit increases all year. Cow numbers in July were up 25,000 head year over year, and production per cow was up 130 pounds.

Some of the Lone Star State’s impressive increases this year are reflective of the industry’s recovery from winter storm Goliath that hit in late December 2015, but producers have expanded herd size beyond pre-Goliath numbers, said Ellen Jordan, dairy specialist with Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service.

The cow count on Texas dairies — 461,000 in December 2015 — dropped to 455,000 in January 2016. In July, it was up to 515,000, according to USDA.

Herd growth was somewhat subdued last year. Growers refilled their pens after Goliath but have continued to add cows. A couple of good crop years have allowed them to finish filling their facilities. They might have added some pens, but there aren’t any new facilities or parlor expansions, she said.

“So I think we’ll continue with slow growth but not at this pace,” she said.

In addition to the Northwest and California, production declines in July were seen in four other of the 23 reporting states. Production was down slightly in New York where the cow count was up 4,000 head but milk per cow was down 15 pounds. Losses in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia were due to fewer cows.

Low falling number test results have posed only a mild problem for Northwest wheat farmers this year, a researcher says.

Falling number is a test that measures starch damage in wheat that reduces the quality of baked goods and noodles. Farmers were caught off guard in 2016 when roughly 44 percent of soft white wheat samples and 42 percent of club wheat samples tested below 300, the industry standard.

The industry estimates the damage last year cost farmers more than $30 million in lower prices.

This year, Camille Steber, a USDA Agricultural Research Service molecular geneticist in Pullman, Wash., reported the lowest falling number test scores in several soft white wheat field trial locations: 265 in Anatone, 275 in Connell, 284 in Lind, 274 in Dusty, 289 in Pullman and 217 in St. Andrews.

No falling numbers below 300 were reported in Ritzville, Pasco or Dayton.

Steber believes the cause of low test scores was likely late maturity alpha amylase, an enzyme required for wheat seed germination. It is caused by large temperature swings the last week of June, a critical point in wheat development. Rain before harvest can cause sprout damage and also lead to low falling number test results.

Some of the usual-suspect wheat varieties were below 300, but the numbers are much higher than those in 2016, Steber said.

She called the data “encouraging.”

“It is possible that enough farmers switched over to resistant varieties that the high falling number grain will be enough to dilute out the grain that is a bit below falling number,” she said. “I have my fingers crossed that Northwest farmers will have a good, profitable year in 2017.”

Steber hopes there’s enough high falling number wheat that growers won’t be docked for their wheat with low falling numbers.

“It’s just a mild problem, it looks like this year, unless it rains a great deal,” she said. Steber recommends harvesting early.

Phil Garcia, manager of the state grain inspection program, said the tests his agency has run this year have been very “generic,” with the number of samples going down “dramatically.”

“We’re in the hundreds rather than the tens of thousands of samples run,” he said.

That’s normal, he said. “It’s business as usual.”

Garcia said requests for falling number tests typically dwindle by the end of harvest.

“But you never know,” he said.

For next year, if a high-risk variety performs well for a farmer, Steber recommends also planting a low-risk variety, but keeping them separate during harvest. She posts data about wheat variety performance on her website, http://steberlab.org/project7599data.php.

For the development of future wheat varieties, Steber hopes to identify the genes that lead to low falling number test results.

“If I’m successful, no one will know, because there won’t be a problem,” she said.

PENDLETON, Ore. — Where is it taking us, all this technology? Where is it taking agriculture?

If the presentations and demonstrations at the recent Future Farm Expo are an indication, it’s taking us to Jaw Drop City.

Some of this is already in place:

A network of field sensors and software produces a three-dimensional soil map to help with crop selection, tillage and drainage decisions, and variable rate prescriptions for seeding, fertilizer and irrigation.

Activated and directed by the system, unmanned equipment rolls to the field to carry out the farming plan. The machines weed, prune, spray, measure, monitor and harvest, sharing information among themselves and working at any hour. One sensor, derived from military technology used to detect roadside bombs, sniffs the orchard for signs of disease.

Out on the range, a rancher pulls a small drone from his saddlebag and sends it aloft to find and count his cattle. It reads solar-powered RFID ear tags from the air and sends their GPS location back to the rancher, then goes off to check the stock ponds. If needed, it can drop to within 2 meters to read a cow’s eyeball temperature, an indicator of health.

John Church, a professor at Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia who advocates using drones for “precision ranching,” gleefully suggested they could be deployed against Pacific Northwest ranchers’ most fearsome foe: wolves.

“What if you put pepper spray on board?” Church said. “Send a drone out to the GPS and spray them all.”

Young Kim, CEO of Digital Harvest, said he was inspired a couple of years ago by the da Vinci surgical robotics system. A doctor sitting at a control panel across the room or even across an ocean can operate on a patient using technology that replicates a surgeon’s hand movements to manipulate micro-instruments.

Kim, a former U.S. Air Force pilot with experience in drone technology, had been speaking earlier with one of Oregon’s premier winemakers, Ken Wright, about the severe labor shortage facing vineyard owners and others in agriculture.

What if, Kim asked himself, you removed the requirement that the workers had to be physically present in the field? What if, like the surgeon, they could do the work remotely? Then there would be plenty of ag workers; they could be anywhere.

From that came the Remote Operated Vineyard Robot — ROVR — now in development. Wearing a virtual reality helmet and gloves, workers could manipulate tools mounted on a robotic vehicle that moves through the vineyard rows. They could prune, pick, lift wires that support vines and other tasks. The vehicle — a converted golf cart is serving as the test platform — could follow a navigation wire buried in the ground, so it wouldn’t need a complicated guidance system.

“A dumb robot with a human operator equals a smart robot,” Kim said during the Aug. 15-17 expo in Pendleton, Ore.

He envisions ag employees teleporting to work, harvesting grapes in the cool of night for delivery to the vineyard crush pad at 7 a.m. The job might be especially well-suited to people close to his heart: “wounded warriors,” military personnel injured in action.

He hopes to have ROVR operational by 2019. His development partners range from Yamaha to staff at the Pendleton Airport’s Unmanned Aerial Systems Range and students at Walla Walla Community College. Business Oregon, the state business agency, in August granted the project $100,000 to help develop a prototype.

“This project proceeds at the speed of cash,” Kim said.

The proving ground is Echo West Estate Vineyard, west of Pendleton. Across the way, a remotely piloted Yamaha RMAX helicopter lifts off, finds its bearings and drops down to spray a vineyard. It covers the length of a row, then flies in reverse to spray the next one over.

It’s a miniature bird, 2.75 meters from nose to tail — a little more than 9 feet — and can carry 16 kilograms, 35 pounds, of spray. It’s been used for 25 years in Japan, where it’s primarily used to spray rice fields. Yamaha has more than 2,500 RMAX operating in Japan and perhaps a dozen in the U.S., and three of them are at Pendleton’s UAS Range. California vineyards are beginning to use the helicopters to replace workers with backpack tanks, and Oregon’s may follow suit.

The vineyard is owned by Lloyd and Lois Piercy, who also operate a winery tasting room in the small town of Echo. They’ve opened their vineyard to testing the ROVR, as well.

Lloyd Piercy, 66, a former World Cup ski racer who turned to farming in 1974, sees the technology as an extension of the evolution that replaced mules with tractors and eventually added GPS guidance and auto-steer. The technology is a leap in food safety and farmworker safety, he said. With an unmanned sprayer, for instance, “Nobody is sitting in that cloud of spray.”

Piercy said the technology is “an absolute sea change” for agriculture.

“Here it is,” he said, “here it is.”

Jeff Lorton, who produced the Future Farm Expo and is something of an evangelist for ag technology, believes the same. He moved his advertising agency from Yamhill County, where he’d done economic development consulting, when Pendleton was chosen one of only six UAS ranges in the country in 2014.

The Columbia Basin, including Southern British Columbia and Alberta in Canada and the Pacific Northwest states, is “one of the most productive agricultural zones on the planet,” Lorton said. Producers in Oregon, Washington and Idaho grow wheat, potatoes, apples, wine grapes, berries, livestock and much more, producing an annual harvest worth $20 billion before processing, he said.

“When I say $20 billion in farmgate sales, that gets people’s attention,” Lorton said. “It’s the perfect place for an ag tech accelerator to exist.”

George Kellerman, chief operating office of Yamaha Motor Ventures and Laboratory in California’s Silicon Valley, was keynote speaker on the first day of the expo. The company works with Young Kim on ROVR and has its RMAX helicopters at the UAS range.

“You are at the leading edge,” he told expo attendees. “This is the future of farming.

“In the future, all farm equipment and vehicles will be connected to the internet,” Kellerman said. “They will have a sense of their environment and some form of artificial intelligence. (Farm equipment) will look at the environment and act on its own.”

Not all of the technology will be devoted to agricultural production. Country Financial, the Midwest crop insurance and financial services company, recently announced it expanded its “crop claims” drone fleet from four to 12.

In a news release, a company loss control executive said, “A crop claims adjuster using a drone can scout three times as many acres as an adjuster on foot. This innovative technology will provide our customers extra peace of mind knowing all their crop damage is accounted for.”

The engineers and entrepreneurs involved in agricultural technology acknowledge they are designing systems for 24-hour operation.

Young Kim, of Digital Harvest, said night will become the default time for spraying. Less wind at night means less spray drift, he said during a panel discussion. Drones fly better at night, too, he said. Another panelist said lasers work better at night as well.

“Fortunately, robots don’t get tired,” said Stewart Moorehead, a field robotics manager for John Deere who also was part of the panel.

“This march from automation to autonomy is going to change how farming is done,” he said.

But what happens to the farmer? What is his or her role? Is the farmer relegated to machine tender? Data analyst? Marketer? Or is the farmer simply a landholder, and the farm’s machines become the farmer?

Several Future Farm panelists noted the world population is projected to reach 8.6 billion by 2030, a billion more than now. By 2050, the earth may have nearly 10 billion people to feed.

The venerable family farm may not be up to the task. It’s more than an American concern; the Future Farm Expo was attended by scientists, researchers and innovators from Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Canada, Japan and Germany.

“We can’t afford to have people die of starvation,” said Jake Joraanstad, CEO of Myriad Mobile Solutions, based in Fargo, N.D. His company sells an application that lets grain elevators communicate directly with farmers, storing and sharing data.

“There’s a clear path toward completely automated farming,” Joraanstad said. “To solve the hunger problem, we have to be going there, that has to be the future.

“Ideally, with artificial intelligence, it should be better at farming than we are.”

An Oregon Appeals Court ruling broadly allows farmers to use cellphones for agricultural operations while driving, but a new law will soon nullify the decision.

An $80 traffic ticket issued to hog farmer Michelle Renee Bennett was overturned by the appellate court, which held that she was allowed to coordinate pork deliveries on her cellphone while driving.

Mobile devices generally can’t be used in Oregon while operating vehicles, but the prohibition currently has an exemption “for the purpose of farming or agricultural operations.”

Contrary to the State of Oregon’s interpretation of the law, farmers can use cellphones for delivering goods or other agricultural operations while driving and aren’t strictly limited to the “agricultural production phase,” the ruling said.

Agricultural operations don’t necessarily occur on farmland, as they include the “whole process” or “business activity,” such as marketing crops and livestock, according to the appellate court.

This characterization of the law is backed up by legislative history, since Oregon lawmakers realized the language could be interpreted broadly but chose not to narrow the exemption, the ruling said.

The Oregon Department of Justice said it’s reviewing the decision.

However, growers will only have roughly a month to take advantage of the ruling, since a law passed this year eliminates the agricultural exemption on Oct. 1.

Due to concerns about increased traffic fatalities, lawmakers approved House Bill 2597, which created harsher penalties for using mobile devices while driving and eliminated exemptions to the statute.

Bennett, of Sweet Briar Farms in Eugene, Ore., whose traffic ticket was reversed by the recent ruling, said she’s a law-abiding citizen and will abide by the stricter prohibition.

Bennett said she believes distracted driving is a problem, but felt comfortable using her cellphone that day in May 2014 because she was traveling slower than 10 mph in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

A police officer who pulled Bennett over didn’t agree that her cellphone conversation planning pork deliveries was covered by the exemption, and neither did a judge from Multnomah County Circuit Court, prompting her to appeal the decision.

“I felt so strongly I wasn’t breaking the law or putting anyone in danger,” she said.

Both sides of Oregon’s wolf management issue asked Gov. Kate Brown to intervene in ODFW’s handling of continued livestock attacks by the Harl Butte pack in Wallowa County.

ODFW staff shot three of the wolves this month and intends to kill a fourth as part of its “incremental” approach to controlling the pack. The pack, thought now to include at least seven adults and three pups, is blamed for eight confirmed livestock attacks since July 15, 2016, all within 9 miles of each other. The most recent was Aug. 16, when a range rider found a dead 450 pound calf on private grazing land leased by rancher Todd Nash, who is a Wallowa County commissioner and longtime wolf committee chair for the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association.

Tracking collar data showed that OR-50, the pack’s alpha male, was at the carcass 15 minutes before the range rider found it. The calf probably had been killed an hour or two earlier, according to an ODFW report. It had more than 100 bites and portions of its upper back legs had been torn away. Nash provided a photo to the Capital Press.

Nash and OCA Executive Director Jerome Rosa spoke this week with Jason Minor, the governor’s natural resources adviser. Rosa said he was encouraged by the conversation; Minor seemed well informed on wolf depredation issues and “asked all the right questions.”

Rosa also sent Minor a letter, suggesting he ask the governor to end the “needless suffering and killing of our cattle in Eastern Oregon.”

“OCA strongly recommends lethal removal of the ENTIRE pack to prevent continued needless suffering, injury and death to our defenseless cattle,” Rosa wrote. He said killing four wolves, the action ODFW settled on, will not be an effective deterrent.

“Our biggest concern is that progress can get slowed down,” Rosa said in an interview. “We hope (Brown) will reach out to ODFW to speed up the process.”

A coalition of 18 conservation groups, including Oregon Wild, took the opposite view. They asked the governor to intervene, saying ODFW’s recent action “clearly demonstrates the need for stronger requirements for transparency and public accountability.”

The groups said they are willing to work with ODFW to adopt a wolf management plan that achieves those goals. The state’s plan is up for review and possible revision this year by the ODFW Commission, a citizen panel.

ODFW spokeswoman Michelle Dennehey said the department has kept the Governor’s Office informed about the Harl Butte pack and ODFW’s lethal control decisions.

“The governor has not asked us to change any decision,” Dennehey said in an email.

Meanwhile, ODFW investigations confirmed two wolf attacks on calves on private land in Umatilla County. The Meacham Pack was blamed for injuring a 550 pound calf found Aug. 15 and a 450 pound calf found Aug. 17, both in the Sheep Creek area. In addition, the ODFW also confirmed the Walla Walla Pack killed a calf found partially consumed Aug. 13 on private land in the Government Mountain area.

ODFW wolf depredation investigations are online.

CAMP SHERMAN, Ore. — Surreal darkness accompanied the steady drop in temperature.

Excited shouts echoed from the neighboring homes, open fields and nearby unseen viewing places where others watched. All of them waiting, waiting, waiting for totality, the moment the moon would cover the sun.

The process that began from our eclipse viewing place in Camp Sherman shortly after 9 Monday morning seemed to suddenly accelerate.

Within a half-hour what began as a tiny nibble on the sun’s northern flank had gobbled about half its surface. Wearing our special eclipse glasses we watched, excitingly barking a series of whoops and wows.

Within another 15 minutes what remained of the sun looked like a Cheshire cat’s narrowing grin.

Alternating bands of light shimmered as the coverage continued. Points of light — Baily’s beads — appeared as streams of sunlight rolled across the moon.

Then, split seconds before totality, oohs and aahs echoed as the diamond ring effect briefly but brilliantly glowed around the blackening moon.

Shortly after 10 — no one was watching the time too closely — the moon fully covered the sun.

Totality.

Everyone cheered, some focused on the moment, others madly clicking away photos on cameras and cell phones.

The corona, a bluish white glow, emitted an ethereal fluorescent hue, its intensity seemingly evolving each second.

With totality, stars magically appeared, but the brightest point of light was the steady, brilliant glow of the planet Venus.

It lasted only about a minute, but the impact of totality was, well, totally involving.

Actually, the experience was days in the making. Friends and I had arrived in Camp Sherman, a small community near Bend, on Saturday, wanting to miss the feared bumper-to-bumper traffic. Tucked away in forestlands near the Metolius River, the community — like others in Central Oregon — had been preparing for the invasion for months.

The Camp Sherman Store was ready with eclipse glasses, T-shirts and other souvenirs. Its owners organized impromptu dinners outside the store Saturday and Sunday nights. Popular trails along the Metolius River, called by some Oregon’s most magical river, and campgrounds swelled with hikers and campers.

On Sunday morning, seasonal and year-around residents were joined by visitors like Steve, Allen and me for a special “Egg-lipse” pancake breakfast at the community hall.

Camp Sherman has a history. The first homesteaders arrived in 1891, mostly wheat farmers and their families from high desert areas of Sherman County seeking to escape the summer heat to camp, hike and fish along the Metolius. The Forest Service began leasing lands along the river for summer residences in 1916.

Legend says Camp Sherman got its name in unusual fashion. To guide other farmers to the community, it’s said someone hammered a shoebox to a tree at a fork in the road with the name, “Camp Sherman.” The name stuck.

While others stacked nearly side-by-side in freshly harvested fields in and near the suddenly populated cities of Madras and Prineville — dubbed by some television networks as the nation’s best region for eclipse viewing — we and others savored the experience with a smattering of old and new friends.

And even as the moon gradually yielded sunlight, we knew that — like millions of others across the nation — had shared a mystical experience, not only the moment the sun disappeared, but the eternity of a memory.

ONTARIO, Ore. — The effort to build a major rail transload facility in Malheur County that many people say could be a game-changer for the area’s onion industry is reportedly off to a good start.

The facility would allow the bulb onions grown in the Treasure Valley of Oregon and Idaho to be placed on rail cars heading to major markets on the East Coast, instead of being trucked 216 miles West to Wallula, Wash., before making that journey east.

That would reduce transportation costs and speed up delivery times for onions headed to the East Coast, according to onion industry leaders.

“I think it will be great for our industry. The sooner, the better,” said Eddie Rodriguez, co-owner of Partners Produce, an onion shipper in Payette, Idaho.

A $5.3 billion transportation bill passed by the Oregon Legislature this year includes $26 million for the facility, which will focus on the onion industry but could benefit other commodities as well.

Rep. Cliff Bentz, R-Ontario, co-vice chairman of the committee that crafted the transportation bill, said supporters of the transload facility have been told by Oregon Department of Transportation officials “to move forward with as much alacrity as possible.”

“We are not concerned about having the money. We have the money,” he said. “I think it’s going exactly as planned.”

The Malheur County Court has appointed a seven-member board that will oversee plans for the facility and have authority to enter into contracts necessary for such things as construction, land acquisition and facility leases.

Four of the board members are from the onion industry.

Shay Myers, general manager of Owyhee Produce, an onion shipper in Nyssa, Ore., said the facility is a major deal for the region’s onion industry and needs to be designed with as much foresight as possible.

“I think this is critically important as to whether or not the onion industry exists 20 years from now in this area,” he said. “It’s that big a deal.”

Paul Skeen, president of the Malheur County Onion Growers Association, said the facility can’t come quick enough.

“Our transportation has just become a real bottleneck,” he said. “This is a game-changer.”

The region’s onion industry faces chronic transportation issues, said Kay Riley, manager of Snake River Produce, an onion shipper in Nyssa.

“This should help resolve that,” he said.

Not having to send onions to Wallula first will be one of the facility’s major benefits, Riley said.

“We should have a geographic advantage over Washington, which we’ve kind of lost,” he said. “This should help re-establish that.”

Bentz said possible obstacles to building the facility include talks with Union Pacific breaking down or the community disagreeing on where it should be located or how it should be managed.

There are several possible sites in or near Ontario and Nyssa.

Bentz said conversations with UP are going well and “so far, we’ve been able to avoid those types of disagreements” over location and management.

BROOKINGS, Ore. (AP) — Authorities on Tuesday designated a wildfire in southwestern Oregon as the top firefighting priority nationwide, a spokesman for the Incident Fire Management system said.

Five homes have burned in the 153-square-mile blaze near Brookings, a coastal town near the California border, said Greg Heule, a spokesman for the team, which collaborates with various federal and state firefighting agencies and releases information about blazes around the country.

More than 700 people are under mandatory evacuation and another 1,000 are under an evacuation warning, he said.

The lightning-sparked fire began more than a month ago, but has grown rapidly in the past week with low humidity and strong winds. The weather, however, may start cooperating in the coming days, Heule said.

“Yesterday the fire didn’t move very much at all and today it’s pretty much the same. It gives our firefighters an opportunity to get in there on this and make some progress,” he said in a telephone interview.

There are nearly 800 firefighters on scene and many more crews are streaming in to battle the flames.

No one has been injured in the fire.

It is burning in the Kalmiopsis Wilderness in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest in some of the same area affected by a notorious fire in 2002 that remains seared in the memory of those living along the Oregon-California border. That blaze burned 800 square miles.

The terrain is rugged in the remote area, but the flames have reached to within six miles of Brookings, which is about six miles from the California border. Highway 101 remains open, he added.

August is peak wildfire season in the Pacific Northwest, and firefighters are busy throughout Oregon.

In the central part of state, a wildfire in the Three Sisters Wilderness has scorched 18 square miles. An evacuation warning went out Monday for an area that includes Black Butte Ranch, a resort community.

Last week, hundreds of people living near the Western-themed town of Sisters were advised to evacuate. Fire managers worry that winds will push the fire out of the wilderness and into populated areas.

Defendants guilty of occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge have agreed to pay a total of $78,000 in restitution, according to a motion filed in federal court Monday.

The agreement is between the U.S. Department of Justice and 13 defendants who were either found guilty or pleaded guilty to conspiracy to impede federal officers who worked at the refuge from doing their jobs — a felony.

U.S. District Court Judge Anna Brown must sign off on restitution agreement before it’s official. She has wide latitude to make changes to the proposal.

The government initially asked the defendants to pay $920,914, according Andrew Kohlmetz, standby council for defendant Jason Patrick, who is among the convicted men.

“We think it’s a reasonable settlement,” Kohlmetz said. “It’s the product of a very involved negotiations by both sides.”

The Department of Interior estimated its total costs for the occupation exceeded $6 million, according to a July 2016 court filing. Law enforcement’s response to the occupation was about $12 million.

The purpose of restitution is to compensate victims for their loss. It typically covers physical and property damages, but generally doesn’t cover law enforcement costs.

Under the proposal, higher profile members of the 41-day long occupation in eastern Oregon could be ordered to pay as much as $10,000, the motion states. While less culpable members could be required to pay $3,000.

“We looked at the totality of the circumstances and concluded that this is the best option for the U.S. government and taxpayers,” said Jason Holm, a spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Portland.

If approved, the money would likely to go to the Friends of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, a nonprofit that supports the mission of the refuge. That’s according to a source with knowledge of the case who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The highest profile members of the occupation — brothers Ammon and Ryan Bundy — were acquitted of charges by a jury in October. While they’ve been cleared of wrongdoing in Oregon, they remain in custody awaiting trial on charges stemming from a 2014 armed standoff between ranchers and the Bureau of Land Management in Nevada.

The funds from the Bundys’ 13 co-defendants who were guilty would be due immediately, but the government may make considerations for defendants who are incapable of paying, Monday’s joint motion states.

“In exchange for defendants’ agreements to make such payments, the government agrees to forgo all other restitution claims,” the parties wrote.

Kohlmetz said there were so many contested line items in the government’s initial request it could’ve led to another trial.

For example, he said, the government asked for $324,000 for deep cleaning of the refuge buildings.

“I’m sure the buildings needed that, but it struck [Jason] Patrick as a very large line item that needed further explanation,” Kohlmetz said.

Kohlmetz said another factor in restitution is a defendant’s ability to pay.

“All of these gentlemen with the exception of Ammon Bundy had indigent defense council appointed,” he said. “Everyone else had court-appointed lawyers.”

In addition to restitution, many of the defendants will serve time, possibly years, in detention centers.

So far, three of the defendants have been sentenced: Geoffrey Stanek, Eric Lee Flores and Travis Cox.

Brown sentenced them to between two and six months of home detention, plus probation.

Here’s a list of the 13 defendants who could be ordered to pay restitution under the agreement:

Jon Ritzheimer — $10,000 

Jason Patrick — $10,000

Ryan Payne — $10,000

Blaine Cooper — $7,000

Joseph O’Shaughnessy — $7,000

Corey Lequieu — $7,000

Brian Cavalier — $7,000

Darryl Thorn — $5,000

Jason Blomgren — $3,000

Travis Cox — $3,000

Eric Flores — $3,000

Wesley Kjar — $3,000

Geoffrey Stanek — $3,000

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A federal jury in Las Vegas refused Tuesday to convict four defendants who were retried on accusations that they threatened and assaulted federal agents by wielding assault weapons in a 2014 confrontation to stop a cattle roundup near the Nevada ranch of states’ rights figure Cliven Bundy.

In a stunning setback to federal prosecutors planning to try the Bundy family patriarch and two adult sons later this year, the jury acquitted Ricky Lovelien and Steven Stewart of all 10 charges, and delivered not-guilty findings on most charges against Scott Drexler and Eric Parker.

More than 30 defendants’ supporters in the courtroom broke into applause after Chief U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro ordered Lovelien and Stewart freed immediately and set Wednesday morning hearings to decide if Parker and Drexler should remain jailed pending a government decision whether to seek a third trial.

“Random people off the streets, these jurors, they told the government again that we’re not going to put up with tyranny,” said a John Lamb, a Montana resident who attended almost all the five weeks of trial, which began with jury selection July 10.

“They’ve been tried twice and found not guilty,” Bundy family matriarch Carol Bundy said outside court. “We the people are not guilty.”

A first trial earlier this year lasted two months and ended in April with a different jury finding two defendants — Gregory Burleson of Phoenix and Todd Engel of Idaho — guilty of some charges but failing to reach verdicts against Drexler, Parker, Lovelien and Stewart.

Prosecutors characterized the six as the least culpable of 19 co-defendants arrested in early 2016 and charged in the case, including Bundy family members. With the release of Lovelien and Stewart, 17 are still in federal custody.

The current jury deliberated four full days after more than 20 days of testimony. The six men and six women returned no verdicts on four charges against Parker — assault on a federal officer, threatening a federal officer and two related counts of use of a firearm — and also hung on charges of assault on a federal officer and brandishing a firearm against Drexler. Navarro declared a mistrial on those counts.

None of the defendants was found guilty of a key conspiracy charge alleging that they plotted with Bundy family members to form a self-styled militia and prevent the lawful enforcement of multiple court orders to remove Bundy cattle from arid desert rangeland in what is now the Gold Butte National Monument.

Bundy stopped paying grazing fees decades ago, saying he refused to recognize federal authority over public land where he said his family grazed cattle since the early 1900s. The dispute has roots of nearly a half-century fighting over public lands in Nevada and the West, where the federal government controls vast expanses of land.

Acting U.S. Attorney Steven Myhre declined immediate comment on the verdicts. He said he’d make a determination later whether to seek a third trial for Parker and Drexler.

Stewart became emotional and reached for tissues as the jury findings were read. He and Lovelien were later taken with their lawyers, Richard Tanasi and Shawn Perez, to be processed by U.S. marshals for release.

Stewart, 38, lives in Hailey, Idaho. Lovelien, 54, is from Westville, Oklahoma, but he led a militia group called Montana State Defense Force.

All four men were photographed carrying assault-style weapons during the standoff near the Nevada town of Bunkerville, about 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas. Each had faced the possibility of decades in federal prison if they were convicted.

Jurors saw images of Parker and Drexler in prone shooting positions looking down their rifles through slots in the concrete barrier of an Interstate 15 freeway overpass toward heavily armed federal agents guarding a corral of cows below.

Defense attorneys noted that no shots were fired and no one was injured. They cast the tense standoff with more than 100 men, women and children in the potential crossfire as an ultimately peaceful protest involving people upset about aggressive tactics used by federal land managers against Bundy family members.

Drexler, 46, is from Challis, Idaho, and Parker, 34, is from Hailey, Idaho.

Parker’s attorney, Jess Marchese, said he hoped Myhre will dismiss the two charges remaining against his client.

Drexler’s attorney, Todd Leventhal, referred to defense teams’ complaints that Navarro set such strict rules of evidence that defendants weren’t able to tell why they traveled to the Bundy ranch.

The judge rejected testimony from five prospective defense witnesses, and Drexler and Parker were the only defendants to testify in their defense. However, the judge struck Parker’s testimony for what she said was a deliberate failure to keep his testimony within her rules.

All four defense attorneys declined Aug. 15 to make closing arguments, a gesture of standing mute that Leventhal said may have had an effect on the jury.

“As much as we were shut down from bringing anything up, the jury saw through it,” he said.