Posts by Trista Crossley
Crop advisor Q&A
Sam Kimmell has been a crop advisor with The McGregor Company for nine years. He typically works with about 30 farms every year, helping them make planting and crop input decisions. He grew up on a farm in North Idaho, but after high school, joined the Navy. He and his wife returned to Eastern Washington…
Read MoreSound advice
The 2024 Agricultural Marketing and Management Organization’s (AMMO) schedule kicked off last month with sound advice on financial planning, planning for retirement, and taxes. Jordan Thayer, a financial advisor with Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, and Joe Cerrillo, a CPA with CliftonLarsonAllen, presented the information to growers at the Washington Wheat Foundation building in Ritzville, Wash.…
Read MoreManhunt
In August 1902, Washington’s Lincoln County briefly became famous for more than just its grain when the manhunt for escaped convict Harry Tracy ended in a wheat field southeast of Creston. Tracy was born Harry Severns in 1875 in Wisconsin to Sarah Catherine Atkinson and Orlando Nye Severns. Details about his early life are conflicting,…
Read MoreOlympia Days 2024
Last month, 19 wheat representatives spent a day and a half visiting 49 state legislators and agencies to talk about the industry’s priorities during the Washington Association of Wheat Growers’ (WAWG) annual Olympia Days trip. Cookies were also involved. “We had some very good discussions with legislators on both sides of the aisle,” said Michelle…
Read MoreWatch for this weed
Ian Burke, weed scientist at Washington State University, has seen a lot of weeds in his career, but few worry him more than Palmer amaranth. “In every metric possible, it’s capable of outcompeting other broadleaf crops. It’s not even a fair fight. It also appears to have methods of adaptive capacity that most other weeds…
Read MoreNorthcentral Washington settles down
In 1936, the state of Washington began a project to preserve the lore of its earliest pioneers. Elderly people receiving old age assistance through the State Department of Public Welfare were interviewed, and excerpts from those interviews were published in three volumes, the last one in 1938. “Told by the Pioneers. Reminiscences of Pioneer Life…
Read MoreStakeholders dispute dam agreement
The fight over the lower Snake River dams reached a milestone in mid-December when the Biden Administration officially announced an agreement with plaintiffs to the litigation regarding the lower Snake River dams that prioritizes fish recovery and was written with little to no input from agricultural stakeholders. “The plan announced by the Biden Administration regarding…
Read MoreWarning … Advocacy ahead
As the 2024 legislative season begins, leaders and staff of the Washington Association of Wheat Growers (WAWG) are kicking up advocacy efforts at both the state and national levels. “Over the next few months, we’ll be traveling between Olympia and Washington, D.C., to present the concerns and issues that Washington wheat growers are facing,” said…
Read MoreNot just fun and games
One of the highlights of the Tri-State Grain Growers Convention is the variety of topics available in the break-out sessions. This year’s sessions included topics on retirement, land values, markets, estate planning, barley, mental health, and crop insurance. Here’s a short summary of several break-outs. Succession planning Pinion estate plan advisor Kevin Bearley told producers…
Read MoreProgram seeks to develop leaders in natural resource sectors
After nearly a half century of success, Washington’s vaunted natural resources leadership program, AgForestry, is taking a hard look at itself and its role going forward. AgForestry was established in 1977 and designed to develop leaders in natural resource sectors. At the time, it was based on a similar program in California, and now, over…
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