Gold Dust & Walker Farms

2016 Winter Wings Festival to Visit The Running Y Ranch!

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Members of the Klamath Basin Audubon Society visited Gold Dust's Running Y Ranch in preparation for a field trip for the 2016 Winter Wings Festival.
Members of the Klamath Basin Audubon Society visited the Running Y Ranch for next year’s Winter Wings Festival

If you’ve spent any time reading our blog or talking to our partners and employees, then you know how proud we are of the Running Y Ranch.  Not only does that farm have amazing soil, terrific water rights and produce some of the best crops in the Basin, but the amount of wildlife around those fields is outstanding.  Elk and deer graze our fields (and raid our hay sheds!), raptors glide through the skies above the ranch while ducks, geese and swans stop by on their migrations along the Pacific Flyway.  If you appreciate wildlife, then you can understand why we feel the Running Y is a more than just another farm to us.

With that in mind, our CEO and partner, Bill, wanted to reach out to the Winter Wings Festival and offer our fields for tours in 2016.  For those unfamiliar with the Winter Wings Festival, it’s a yearly event held by the Klamath Basin Audubon Society (KBAS) over President’s Day holiday weekend that brings birders from all over the world to the Basin to take birding tours, attend workshops about bird behavior and photography, and basically talk birds!  Considering the tundra swan migration is happening that time of year, it’s a great opportunity to show people how agriculture and wildlife can co-exist.

The offer was extended and Diana Samuels, one of the organizers for the Winter Wings Festival, suggested that in preparation for 2016 some members of the KBAS pay the Running Y Ranch a visit. On February 21st, Caleb Sundahl, Mihajlo Matic and Lexi Crawford met the local Audubon Society to take photos, watch birds, look at where to take their birders next year and talk logistics.  Though there was less snow than we’d like for this time of year, it was a beautiful day to watch the swans, answer questions about our farming practices and make plans for next year.

After KBAS’s visit with members of the Gold Dust crew, we’re looking forward to having the birders visit our fields for the 2016 Winter Wings Festival.  Thank you to the Klamath Basin Audubon Society for coming out and seeing what we can share with birders.  We’re looking forward to their tour next year!

 

By the way, before we wrap this up, the photos for this post were taken by Lexi and Bart Crawford’s son, Walker.  Thanks for the snaps, Walker!

Walker Crawford, 6, takes a picture of himself.
Thanks for the photos, Walker!

Gold Dust Recognized At The 94th Annual Chamber Gala!

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Darcy and Tricia Hill, Jan and Bill Walker, Matt and Cassie Thompson, and Lexi and Bart Crawford at the Ross Ragland Theater for the Klamath County Chamber of Commerce's 94th Annual Chamber Gala Awards.
Here’s a well-dressed group of good-looking people!

It’s always nice to get recognized.  It’s even nicer when the recognition comes from your peers in your community!

Back in November, the Klamath County Chamber of Commerce started taking nominations for its 94th Annual Chamber Awards Gala, with the nomination deadline being December 20th.  While the partners were attending the annual National Potato Convention at the beginning of January, we were surprised to learn we were nominated for not just one award – but two!

The first category we were nominated for was Environmental Leadership and the second was for the Big IDEA Innovation Award.  With all the great businesses that operate in the Klamath Basin, it’s an incredible honor to get nominated for one recognition.  But to be nominated twice is incredible!  While we were eager to learn if we’d win an award, we had to wait until the night of the Chamber Awards Gala, which was held at the Ross Ragland Theater on the evening of January 17th.  Local business leaders and some of their employees dressed up for the occasion, which not only consisted of the awards ceremony itself but also some time for socializing before the big event.  Several local restaurants had samples of their best dishes out while floating plates of sweet breads and pastries made their way through the room.  The event was emcee’d by Aaron Orendorff, with members of the Chamber handing out the awards.  Short, funny skits with Chip Massie chasing the performers off the stage punctuated the ceremony.

While we didn’t receive the Big IDEA Innovation Award (that honor went to Gro-Volution), we did bring home the award for Environmental Leadership!  Our efforts for sustainable farming, wildlife habitat preservation, solar energy implementation, soil and water conservation practices, green manure usage, and organic farming efforts were mentioned for the reasons we received the award.  We’re proud of the work we’ve been doing to make our farm more sustainable, and the fact we were nominated with the Oregon Institute of Technology (which is the first university campus to run off geo-thermal power in the USA), REACH and Sky Lakes Medical Center, makes the award truly an honor.

Bill Walker, Tricia Hill, Lexi Crawford, Matthew Thompson and Bart Crawford accept the 2014 Environmental Leadership Award at the Klamath County Chamber of Commerce's 94th Annual Chamber Gala Awards.
We received the 2014 Environmental Leadership Award! Thank you!

Before wrapping up this post, Gold Dust Potato Processors and Walker Brothers would like to thank whomever nominated us for these awards, to the committee for selecting us for the Environmental Leadership award and, lastly, to the Klamath County Chamber of Commerce.  The Klamath County Chamber of Commerce not only does a lot for the businesses in Klamath Falls, but they do a lot for agriculture in the Klamath Basin.  We’d like to not only thank them for how they help businesses here, but also for their advocacy on behalf of farming and ranching.  Thank you!

And congratulations to the other winners and nominees! Here’s to a successful 2015 for all!

Is It The Running Y Ranch Or Running Y Lake?

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A chipping potato field looks like a lake from early February moisture on the Running Y Ranch near Klamath Falls, Oregon.
Lake front property or the entrance to a chipping potato field?

Last fall doesn’t seem very far away. The fields at the Running Y Ranch were busy, full of equipment cutting hay and grain and getting the fields ready to dig potatoes.  Before long bulkers were filling spud trucks, which headed to Malin to store the potatoes for shipping season.  Occasionally, the ground would seem to open up to swallow a truck.  When that happened, you remembered these fields were once part of Klamath Lake.

We were recently reminded of that again.  On February 16th, Tricia called to say the fields were so full of water from much needed rain and snow that you couldn’t see where one field ended and another began.  Not only that, swans, snow geese and Canada geese had flocked to the fields, and in some places there were so many of the white birds it looked like the snow had returned.

By the time we made it to the Running Y Ranch the next day, some of the flooding had subsided and the massive flocks had moved on.  But what was left was still amazing.  If it weren’t for the built up roads that ran along the edges, the fields would have appeared to be one contiguous lake.  With swans and a few Canada geese swimming through the wheat and potato fields of last year, you could almost see how this area was once a seasonal part of Klamath Lake.  And you could also see how these fields became so fertile.

Moments like these remind us how lucky we are to live in the Klamath Basin.  Yes, there’s still a drought and we’re all praying for more snow to fall in the mountains and rain to fill our lakes and reservoirs.  But watching geese swim in these flooded fields and swans pick through the leavings of last year’s grain harvest help give us a moment’s respite of today’s worries and remind us of the power and majesty of Mother Nature.

We hope you enjoy the photos below, and if you’d like to see any of them enlarged, just click on the picture and a gallery will appear.

And let’s all hope for more water!

Gold Dust Featured In PepsiCo Sustainable Farming Report

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A field planted in peas to help fight soil erosion while providing green manure
This pea field helped with soil erosion while providing green manure for next season

If you’ve been a visitor to our Web site and blog, you’re very aware of how proud we are of our sustainable farming program.  Over the years, Gold Dust and Walker Brothers have been striving to lessen our impact on our local environment while leaving a positive impact on our community.  On the environmental sustainability front, we’ve been a part of the Walking Wetlands program, implemented our own green manure program and just last year finished our Solar Power Initiative.  And now, PepsiCo, parent company of Frito-Lay, has given us recognition for our efforts.

On their Web site, PepsiCo has a page dedicated to environmentally sustainable practices farmers and other partners they work with have been implementing.  What makes this even more prestigious in our minds is this isn’t a focus on just the West Coast or even the United States alone, but of all their partners and farmers who grow for them around the world.

In the Sustainable Farming section under Soil Conservation and Preservation, the page reads, “Also, in 2010, Gold Dust Potatoes planted 1,240 hectares of wheat during spring/summer to protect soils from wind erosion.”  As you know, the quality of our chipping potatoes is directly tied into the quality of the soil we grow them in.  Maintaining the quality of our soil also lessens the amount of fertilizer we need and helps keep weeds and pest under control, which in turn lessens the amount of pesticides we have to use, if we have to use them.

Sometimes the message in the popular media and the press is that farmers don’t care about the environment or the ground they make their living from.  The reality of agriculture is just the opposite of that – we love what we do, and in order to keep farming we have to take care of our environment.  And while we’re proud for the recognition we received from this PepsiCo page, we’re just as thankful to be working with a company that is spreading the word about how agriculture is helping make a positive impact on the environment while encouraging others to do the same.

 

Solar Power Initiative Complete!

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The McVay Potato Cellar Solar Station from above
The recently approved McVay Cellar solar station, just south of our packing shed

After beginning the process of  installing solar panels back in January, we are very proud to announce that we have completed installing all six of the solar stations that make up the Solar Power Initiative!

Just yesterday, September 22nd, Lexi received word from RS Energy that the final solar station had been approved and hooked up to the grid by Pacific Power and Light (PP&L).  This station and one other have been completed for some time; however Klamath County needed to give us the thumbs-up on the final installations for both.  We received their blessing for one of them back in August, which PP&L activated. But now with the final solar station being approved, we have one more spud cellar being powered in part with green energy.  For those keeping count, that makes four of our potato storage cellars that are using solar energy, one irrigation pump and our potato processing plant.

The final two solar stations are located just outside of Merrill and on Drazil Road near our packing shed in Malin.  The Merrill station, or the Home Cellar solar station as we’ve come to calling it, has panels located on its roof and was approved back in August.  The McVay cellar, which was approved this week, also has a bank of solar panels installed on its roof.  The Home Cellar solar power station is estimated to produce 13,860 KWH of electricity annually while the McVay Cellar station is expected to generate 124,702 KWH every year.  That brings the total amount of power estimated to be produced by all station in the Gold Dust Solar Initiative to a whopping 326,855 KWH annually.  To put that in perspective, our packing shed alone uses 351,240 KWH of power every year. So, all of our solar stations together are producing almost as much sustainable, green energy as our processing plant uses. That’s pretty impressive!

To celebrate this momentous occasion, we’re not only posting pics of the latest solar stations that have been approved and green-tagged, we have updated aerial photos of all the solar power generating sites.  But before we wrap up this post and get to the pictures, we would like to send out a big thank-you to Lexi for all of her hard work.  She helped Bill’s idea of the solar stations come true and dealt with the various governmental agencies and other related headaches.  Well done, Ms. Crawford!

And now, time for pictures!

 

Johnson Pivot Cellar Solar Station Activated

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Solar Panels located at Gold Dust's Johnson Pivot solar station
These two solar panels will generate an estimated 13,860 KWH of electricity a year

It’s been a while since we’ve had an update on our solar power initiative, but we have good news!  Back in June (the third to be precise) we were given notice that Pacific Power had finished the work needed to get the Johnson Pivot solar station up and generating power as a part of the Oregon Solar Incentive Program.  In other words, the solar station has been green-tagged!

Located a couple of miles east of Malin on Stastny Road, this solar station will provide green energy for the potato cellar that sits nearby.  With the two rows of solar cells facing south, these panels get sunshine all day long and will create an estimated 13,860 kilowatt hours of energy annually.  As mentioned in press releases and other blog posts, this solar station will help keep our power costs down as well as give our customers a “greener” potato.

How many solar stations do we have left to activate?  Three.  Solar panels have been installed on the top of the McVay cellar just south of our packing shed in Malin and solar stations at our Merrill facilities and on top of a cellar near our packing shed still need to be installed and connected.  After those stations are completed, our entire solar initiative will be generating an estimated total of 326,855 kilowatt hours every year.  To put that in perspective, that much energy is almost enough to completely power our packing shed for an entire year.  Yes, those will be big savings for Gold Dust, but that also represents how much less of an impact our operation is putting on the environment. That’s something everybody can feel good about.

Gold Dust and Walker Brothers In The News!

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Lexi Crawford discussing Gold Dust's solar initiative on KTVL
Lexi discussing the benefits of Gold Dust's solar initiative on KTVL Channel 10 News

We’re proud of our solar initiative and have been getting quite a few column inches dedicated to it in various local and industry newspapers.  Now we’re happy to announce news of our solar projects have broken into two more media – radio and television!

Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) visited Gold Dust at the end of May and the result was a June 1st radio story featuring sound bites from Lexi Crawford, who’s been doing a lot of the heavy lifting on the solar initiative, our agronomist Dan Jepsen and one of the partners, Tricia Hill.  Amelia Templeton, OPB’s reporter in the field, put together a nice piece about how we’re using the solar panels and the benefits they’re bringing back to our farm and packing shed.  To read a full transcript of the story, or to listen to it, head over to OPB News and check out Solar Power For A More Sustainable Spud.

Last night (June 8, 2011 to be more specific), the CBS news team out of Medford, Oregon, featured none other than Lexi talking about our solar panels, the benefits to our potato, hay and wheat operations as well as the benefits to the environment.  This report not only features excellent videography of a beautiful June day in the Klamath Basin, but also does a good job of further illustrating how we’re using these solar panels.  If you would like to watch this story, head over KTVL.com and watch Potato Power.

One point that both of these stories make is sustainable farming is important to Gold Dust and Walker Brothers and is going to be the future for agriculture.  Bill has pointed out before, and Lexi mentioned it again in the KTVL story, that as stewards of the land, in order for farmers to keep farming it’s important to adopt practices that benefit the ground we work as well as our surrounding environment.  These solar panels are just one prong in what we do to ensure Gold Dust and Walker Brother will be farming and providing potatoes, grain and hay well into the future.

Before wrapping this post up, we’d like to thank Amelia Templeton and the KTVL Channel 10 News Team for traveling over the hill to Malin and putting together these stories about our solar projects.  Thank you to all!

Packing Shed Solar Station Goes Live!

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Solar panel field with Gold Dust Potatoes sign behind it
These solar panels are now helping power the shed behind them

If you were to ask any potato grower if green potatoes are good, the resounding answer would be no. However, today we are very proud to say our chipping potatoes are little bit greener!  The solar panels at the sound end of our potato processing plant are now connected to the packing shed and we are now using solar power.

At 5 p.m. yesterday afternoon (March 24th, 2011), Winema Electric came to our facility in Malin and connected the solar panels to the inverter device on the shed that converts the energy from the panels into electricity.  After Winema Electric was done, Matt tested our panels to make sure the systems were running without any problems.  No problems were detected and just like that –  we’re using solar power!

This system is expected to produce roughly 42% of the energy needed in the packing shed, or 146,713 kilowatt hours (KWH) a year.  Not only will this allow us to lessen the impact we have on our environment and the power grid, it will also help keep operating costs down as well.

But, what does this mean for consumers?  You can feel better about eating potato chips and french fries!  That’s right – folks such as Frito-Lay and In-N-Out burger who buy our chipping potatoes and turn them into your favorite snack food or side dish are giving you an environmentally-friendly product (well, at least we think so!).  Let the guilt-free snacking commence!

Please see our press release for additional information.

 

Gold Dust Is Going Solar!

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Solar panels being installed at our processing plant in Malin, Oregon
These Solar Panels Are Being Installed At Our Packing Shed In Malin

With almost 300 days of sunshine a year, Klamath Falls has been dubbed the “Sunshine City of Oregon”.  When you consider all of the sunshine in the Klamath Basin, and the fact that Gold Dust is continually working to find new ways to integrate green technology into our farming and potato processing operations, it makes sense for us to add a few solar stations to our operations.

Yep – we’re going solar!  As a part of the Oregon Feed-In program and with help from Obsidian Financial and RS Energy, Gold Dust is in the process of installing several solar stations to a few of our facilities around the Merrill and Malin area.  After evaluating our power usage, we feel these solar stations will help cut down on our energy costs as well as allow us to run a few of our facilities on green power.

All the sites where the solar power stations are being added have been evaluated for their exposure to the sun and the ability to run efficiently.  For example, at our potato processing plant, the solar cells are going to be located just south of the main building, where they won’t have any interference from the potato cellars or other buildings.  The solar cells are also being set up facing south, where they will get the maximum exposure to the sun possible as it passes through the Basin sky.

From working with Fish and Wildlife on providing winter habitat along the Pacific Flyway to our pesticide and water conservation management programs, Gold Dust has worked hard to show our dedication to implementing sustainable farming practices.  As such, adding these solar stations is simply another step towards providing a greener future as well as a stronger bottom line.  After After all, as Bill said in the National Potato Council’s 2010 Environmental Stewardship Award video, “We’re all stewards of the land or we’re not in business anymore.”

Please see our press release for more details about our solar power plans.

 

From Our Farm Blog

We’re Hiring!

Looking for a job? Check out our current Employment Opportunities!

Our farm keeps growing – and it’s planting season – which means we have a lot of openings. From jobs on our farm to office positions in Malin, we’re looking for dedicated, diligent folks to join our team.

If you’re a truck driver with a CDL, be sure to check out our updated compensation package!

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