Don Weathers Oral History Interview, September 24, 2014

TIAH EDMUNSON-MORTON: Ok, whenever you're ready. Your name?

DON WEATHERS: I'm Don Weathers. Tiah is here to ask me a lot of questions. Today is the nice rainy day in September 24th, 2014. Go ahead, Tiah. Start asking me questions. I'll see if I can answer them.

TEM: Alright, excellent. So let's just start with you being born. Where were you born?

DW: I was born in west Salem. I guess I was born at home. In those days, the doctors came and delivered. I weighed 10 pounds then, believe it or not. [Laughs] It was in my grandmother's house.

TEM: And what date was that? What's your birthday?

DW: May 9th, 1931.

TEM: And how many brothers and sisters did you have?

DW: I had 2 brothers and 2 sisters. My oldest brother passed away about 20 years ago. And the rest of them are still alive, some barely.

TEM: And what order are you in the-

DW: Right in the middle. [Laughs]

TEM: And were they all born in that same farmhouse?

DW: No. Mostly of them in same area.

TEM: OK. So we've talked about how much you guys moved around, your dad moving 00:02:00around. Was he born in Oregon?

DW: No. He was born in Missouri. And he moved down here when he was about 8 years old. Like Rosalie was saying, there's a story and a book we have over here that will give you a lot of information on the family and how moved down here from Missouri. My grandfather had a small farm in Missouri. And they also worked in the mines, the lead and zinc mines. And he did not want his kids growing up to be miners, develop a black lung and that sort of stuff. So he moved them out of there before they got big enough to work. TEM: When they moved here, did they start farming?

DW: Yes, they did. They farmed right around Keizer area, get around it locally, as he ran a farm for getting soaps. He had a lot of other enterprises. He had 00:03:00various company here in Salem and some trim farms and whatever. Anyway, they grew up in agriculture.

TEM: So what year did they move from Missouri?

DW: I think it was around 1920, 1919/1920, yeah. Maybe early, I don't know.

TEM: And then they started farming.

DW: Yeah.

TEM: And what was their main crop that they farmed?

DW: At the time, it was prunes and peaches, and some cherries.

TEM: So then your dad grew up here. And did he continue farming? Was that something he wanted to do?

DW: Yeah. Dad, when he graduated eighth grade, he went to town to go to high school. Well, he didn't go to school, anyway. He got a job at an electric shop, cuz he was good at it. He liked that. And he grew to be an electrician. And later on, after he was married-I don't remember how old I was, I think I was 4 or 5 years old at the time-dad was working on the powerline, 11000-volt line, 00:05:00and his climbers on the pole. And they swung him a hot wire, which he was used to that. So he reached out to grab the hot wire and forgot his climbers were touching a telephone line. So it fried him pretty good. Got him off the pole and shocked him, got his heart beating again. But in doing all of these, the recovery time, he lost an arm.

TEM: Oh.

DW: But that didn't slow him down much. [Laughs] Because he'll do just about anything to learn to use his left hand pretty good.

TEM: What about your mom? Where was she born?

DW: Mom was born in Missouri. They didn't know each other in Missouri and they were quite a distance far. One was in Athens and the other one was Joplin. So they didn't meet until they got a dance, they said, somewhere and fell in love. And 6 weeks later, they were married. Thing happened quick in those days. [Laughs]

TEM: So what year were they married?

DW: Probably 1925.

TEM: So after you father lost his arm, then was there a quick switch to farming?

DW: Yeah. When he lost he arm, firstly, he worked for the Klamath Horse Company which, at that time, was the largest hop-growing farm-I know it was the largest in the United State and, possible, the world. After dad was hurt, was electrocuted by heat, he got a small settlement from losing the right arm. And 00:08:00he bought a farm not far from here and starting farming on his own from there. He didn't have hops on it at that time, but he still worked the hops. For years after that, he went back and helped in it with the spring farming. And then they brought him back as a head drier man every harvest.

TEM: So he would work on his own land with his own crops. And then during harvest, or during time when they need help-

DW: Yeah, cuz we do berries and peaches, grains, and grass seeds, etc., depends on where he lived.

TEM: Yeah. So was that common for farmers to have their own farms and their own crops, and then just give them the harvest schedule that they would help out during harvest too? DW: Some of them, I think, yes. It's hard enough to making a 00:09:00living farming, back in those days and even now. I know Rosalie and I, when we were farming, we also had other businesses too. We invested denim to supplement the farming.

TEM: So how long did you, as a family, stay in this county, in this area, before moving east-right?

DW: We were mostly around Marion County but Linn County and the Yamhill, Deschutes, all over. Rosalie Weathers: How many houses did you build?

DW: I don't know. Three or four, I guess.

TEM: So you said "build"? So you would build house?

DW: My dad was, kind of, a self-taught architect/engineer, even though he didn't have much education. He had a real mind for putting things together.

TEM: Yeah. When you moved, would he buy land or lease land?

DW: Always buying something. And usually chase it up and sell it. We always excused him of having Gipsy blood cuz he couldn't stay in one spot.

TEM: So what was that like for you growing up?

DW: It was not fun. I don't know how many schools I went into and had fight your 00:11:00way in. It wasn't really pleasant.

TEM: Do you think you were close to your siblings? Or, were you close to your siblings and was that a sort of comfort in that moment.

DW: Oh yes. Joint at the hip, you mean, practically? [Laughs] My older brother and I, we did a lot together. We were both pilots, we married sisters, we farmed together and separately. Yeah, we were very close.

TEM: And what was your brother's name?

DW: Carl. He and I were the envy of the industry.

TEM: How far apart were you?

DW: Three years.

TEM: Three years. So what are some of the fonder memories of that Gypsy nomadic, 00:12:00yet still grounded in farming, time? What are some of the things you remember about?

DW: Other than moving so many times when we were growing up and living in different parts of the state, well, I said that we were able to have a place of our own, you don't have to carry us out. Planting our feet in cement buckets cause we're not moving! [laughs]

RW: Told me that and we got married. [Laughs]

TEM: So have you, as a whole family, moved back to this area, and that why you 00:13:00settled here? Or was there a farm as of this part?

DW: Yeah pretty much so. During World War II, we lived in Linn County, grass seed and crops. And then, there again, dad's old place. We lived there for 5 year-five and a half years, something like that. Then he bought a seed grower house in Donald, Oregon. My brother and I stayed there and did the harvesting in summer.

RW: How old were you?

DW: I think I was 12, 11/12. Brother, of course, was 3 years older than I was. But then after two years in the seed plant, dad got into hop business. We were looking to buy a farm and he met with-he knew-Rosalie's dad-because we also ran a hop warehouse in Donald. So they went into see Rosalie's dad, cuz he was a broker for S and S Diner and a buyer in New York, to see if we could get a hop 00:15:00contract from this group that he had, small pieces. "Why you wouldn't buy that? Why did you buy this buy this other place?" - "Didn't know it was for sale. I don't have that kind of money." And he said, "well, they were the only suit." [Laughs] And they did, so-we had put together-we bought this ranch that's added up to a little over 600 acres at the time. And we ran that ranch during all the war years and the rest of 'em. And they got wanderlust again, I think, sold it, bought a dairy farm and-

RW: Chicken?

DW: Oh yeah, I think there was, from there on, chicken ranch. Anyway, then we had moved two or three times. And then they sold the farm that we had just build 00:16:00a brand-new house on. Somebody wanted worse than he did, so sold it to them. Got a hold of Rosalie's dad and offered-see if he would be interested in buying this ranch back that we had sold, and use it with a hop ranch, divide it. So he did. And the Kerr family still owns that ranch. Now we're getting data every two years. But that's how, really, I got into the hop businesses. When Rosalie and I were married, I had the opportunity to buy a farm. And it had a hundred and 00:17:00twenty some acres of hops. It was a 250-acre farm but it had a lot of stumps and etc. which later in the years I cleared and battled in, which is now the home farm for my son Doug. But he has gone from that 250 acres-he bought some other properties and we bought some more, anyway-with all that right now, he's farming about 800 acres. He's done a very good job and I'm very proud of him. All the 00:18:00boys that got into hop were doing well.

TEM: When did you two meet?

RW: When our parents bought the farm together and divided it.

DW: The girl next door.

RW: [Laughs] His brother and my sister got married a couple years before we did.

TEM: What year did you guys get married?

DW: '58.

RW: Yes, 1958.

TEM: So what year did your families buy and split the farm?

DW: 1950...?

RW: 1950 would be my guess.

DW: Yeah.

RW: I know what grade I was in school. [Laughs]

DW: 1950, yeah. Anyways, that's about the story of me moving around the state, etc. Anything else you want to know would be more important than that. [Laughs]

TEM: Well, so you landed back in this part of the state, which, obviously is pretty good for hop growing. Did you want to grow hops? Was there something about that particular crop?

DW: I always like growing hops, you know. It's just the opportunity to have something of my own, and didn't have to worry about going into another school or packing up and moving.

TEM: Yeah. And this is when it would be good if we had two lavaliers. So what 00:20:00about you? Did you want to stay in the hop business? Was it something--?

RW: No, I just wanted to be with him. [Laughs] Whither would thou goest. Thank god he said he was gonna plant his foot in a cement.

TEM: So you started with your 250 acres. And all of the plant-able land at that point was hops?

DW: Just about, yeah. There was a little over the ground that was-I think it had-some pasture and then some alfalfa. That was about it. The rest of it is all stumps.

TEM: Yeah.

RW: And floods.

TEM: So talk about what the hop industry was like in the 50s. What was it like to be a grower? How much did you work with other growers?

DW: Oh it was really interesting. Of course, we only grew-for starter, we only had-one variety.

TEM: Which was?

DW: Which was the Fuggle hop which is an early variety. And eventually, we got into a couple of other varieties and that really, really helped. As we progressed from that, I worked with Oregon State and got different off-station 00:22:00trials for the different varieties. And we grow them for three or four years for the brewer's organization and they would evaluate them and tell you "oh we like this hop", "no, we don't like this hop." I was very fortunately having a couple sweet varieties that are still cherished to this day, especially in the home brewing trade or the flat brewing industry.

TEM: So one of those was the Cascade, right?

DW: Yes. I had that first off-station trial with Cascade. And another one, of course, was the Crystal which kind of fell out of favor with the large breweries but the craft industry liked it. So that grew from 2 acres to 7 acres, to now 00:23:00over 150 acres of that variety.

TEM: What was it like to work with Dr. Honnel, and the USDA, and Oregon State? What was that relationship like?

DW: I think quite well. For starter, it was Dr. Stan Brooks. He's the one that developed the cascade hop. Al Haunold developed the Nugget variety which is kind of the favored alpha hop for Oregon anyway. And about until this to the last couple of years, it was even immune to the powdery mildew which is devastating for some crops in Washington and also in Oregon, finally got down into Oregon 00:24:00and the Willamette Valley. And we still, now, have testing in the Nuggets. So I think they can combat that pretty successfully if they start early enough. But it's very expensive to keep that number up.

TEM: What was the point that you transitioned away from Fuggles?

DW: That was mostly grown for Anheiser-Busch. And they transitioned from Fuggles to Willamettes. The only Fuggles, I think, there's only a couple growers that have a few acres of Fuggles now. And I'm not sure where those go. But they must 00:25:00go to the craft industry somewhere.

TEM: So you mentioned working with the Brewers' Federation. That was in the late 50s, early 60s?

DW: No, that was the 60s. And then 60s, 70s, right along in there, the hop industry was really struggling, and we got a federal marketing order which worked very well for 17 years straight. And then for some reason, now there's change in administration and etc. So, struggled with payment, the sector of 00:26:00agriculture eliminated it. But was a very good tool. It's too bad that it was abused somewhere along the line. Most of the argument was that "you guys had monopolized this. Nobody can get into it." That's not so. And it was always base available. And even my kids, when they first got into the hop industry themselves, they could borrow the money from the bank to buy a base. And of course, they did. I would try and lease them to ground and that's how they got their start in the industry.

TEM: So you and your brother farmed together?

DW: Separately.

TEM: Separately?

DW: Yeah.

TEM: Oh okay.

DW: We lived together before separately. And then we bought a couple of the joining farms together. And then our kids are growing up. They're starting to marry and come into the fold, more. We were a very close family. And, of course, all the kids being doubled cousins before there was ever any friction bringing in outsiders. "Before we are having these kind of problems down the road, let's split our holdings" and that we retain the harvesting portion of it 00:28:00together-thought we'd split our holdings. We each had our own farms prior to that but we also had two more that we had purchased together in a partnership.

TEM: So you would grow separately but then have then same facilities for harvesting. OK, that makes sense. So how many children did your brother have?

DW: Seven.

TEM: And how many of those children stayed in hops?

DW: None of them. In fact, my son has bought all of their property.

TEM: And how many children did you two have?

DW: Six.

TEM: And how many of those stay in hops?

RW: Two, I guess.

DW: Two are still in. It was three but he sold out to his brother.

TEM: Did all of your children stay in the area? Did they stay in Oregon?

DW: Pretty much so. Yeah, in Oregon. One son is the pilot for Alaska. And another one has a high-end pet food store in Medford. And my daughter, she can't leave things alone-she had a big business and sold that, and she bought another one. She just wants to get better and build up for ten years, and then maybe she'll retire. [Laughs]

RW: What about your hop-related businesses?

DW: Like I said, we had different businesses that we ventured into along with the farming. The first one was-Rosalie's dad had a supply company-supplying hop growers with burlap and paper twine, and a few other small items. We bought that business from him and expended that into a lot of other smaller items along with 00:31:00them. And after the industry changed around to food-grade plastic bathing cloths which is pretty much 100% now. And the paper twine-I bought a third of that. I have two partners now. We have the manufacturing paper twine which we have located in Toppenish, Washington. We have a property up there, right downtown Toppenish, which is about three acres now. And it started out with an old rain building, but now we have way over 100,000 squared feet under roof with the 00:32:00paper twine. We just have one building-well actually, we have two buildings. But all the rest of the buildings are AIB approved. One of my partners has a multirole paper bag so I think there're 5 bag machines in there now, 5 tubers in there. These manufacture bags for C and H Sugar and the potato industry, all kinds.

TEM: So it's not just hop-related?

DW: No, that's his business. But we own the buildings

TEM: So what are those two partners' names?

DW: Macy Wall and Tom Sauve.

TEM: And what is the company name?

DW: The company that owns the buildings, and the lands and those, we call it Fish and Fly which is an LLC. And then the manufacturing paper twine, we call Bio-Twine. That's owns just the manufacturing. And they do own the lave though, the equipment. But we own all the buildings, inseparably.

RW: Confusion. [Laughs]

DW: Oh, yeah, rather confusing. [Laughs]

TEM: Makes sense. [Laughs]

DW: But that's been a very good business for us. It took a long time to get the hop industry in the other states. Oregon, has predominately been paper twine, 00:34:00which was around four or five thousand acres in paper-the rest of it was in crop, which we sell too. That would only take around six hundred palettes of string. Now we're up to, with Washington and Idaho, we are producing about eighteen to nineteen hundred palettes of strings which equates to way over half of the hop industry and maybe United States.

TEM: So is there a supply center in Oregon too? Are there other stores?

DW: Yeah, on the farm. We have it in the warehouses out there.

RW: Tony.

DW: Yeah. And since then, we've sold our Kerr supply business to Tony. He takes care of all Oregon growers and etc.

TEM: So when you two started farming, what was that farm called?

DW: Actually, it went corporate right off the bat. It was called Mission Bottom Farms.

TEM: And then what about when you split? Did you split names as well?

RW: No, that was just our farm.

TEM: Oh ok.

DW: That was just our farm. And then my brother's farm was Wyatt and Weathers 00:36:00Hops. And then one of our partnerships was Finney Lake Farm because there's the lake back there on the end of property-adopted that for the farm. The airship back here is called Finney Lake Airport. It's on the state aeronautical map but on the Fed's. We didn't put it on there. We didn't go through liability. My brother and I both flew and bought several waterplanes. But that was just 00:37:00recreational hobby more than anything, to get us away from the dust of the hop growing, cuz when you were flying, you didn't think of anything else.

TEM: So what is your reach? Do you still fly?

DW: Yes, I do.

TEM: So what was your reach? We were talking about this a couple weeks ago, how far you would fly-

DW: To Cabo, and we've gone to Brownsville, Texas, but mostly all places this side of the Mississippi.

TEM: Did you fly too? Was it a big enough plane that you would all fly together?

RW: It was a four-passenger. But they would each take their own and someone else would go with them.

DW: Sometimes we'd go together. My brother had a 6-place airplane. When we went 00:38:00to Brownsville, we took his 6-place airplane.

RW: Well, how about when you ferried airplanes.

DW: Yeah that was another fun thing to do that we just did for the local [inaudible] here. We'd go back to Wichita and fly out new airplanes. And then all they'd have would be a compass. [Laughs] So you better knew how to read maps pretty well. But I never did like the old E6B calculators. I could do better by-you know. I do mostly the navigation. And I would use a little hand-held 00:39:00calculator and I could tell the wind drift, and I could calculate to compensate for that and give where I'm heading at the time when I would hit our check point. That was fun. That's back to basics. That's like the old airmail guy that flew all kinds of weather. [Laughs] But that was fun, back to basics.

TEM: So how was it timing-wise, being a farmer and flying? Was it a sort of complimentary timing?

DW: Yeah. It also was a pretty effective tool, as far as irrigation. We could 00:40:00tell if there was a field or neighbor, or just even a spot in the hop field, that got missed with the sprayer, because you could tell a lot by flying over it. And you could see every plug sprinkler on irrigation. It was a effective tool.

TEM: Did you do it for your neighbors too?

DW: Oh yeah.

TEM: People hired you out to fly over?

DW: Yeah. I wasn't a commercial pilot. I couldn't touch with charging for anything. But yeah, I would go and I'd fly to the hop yards and report to them-they might wanna switch to the other field or go over the other side of 00:41:00that field-"obviously you had some problems there", "get the right amount of spray on" or something. Especially with spider, it really shows up on the top of the wire.

TEM: Oh that's interesting. Yeah, so you could see not just what they consider crunchiness.

DW: You'd have to know what you're looking for.

TEM: What year did you start flying?

DW: Before I was married. [Laughs]

RW: Then he kind of was grounded for a while. [Laughs]

DW: Yeah. I didn't start flying again until eleven, twelve years after we were married.

RW: Probably, somewhat.

DW: Then I thought, "well, maybe I could afford flying now."

TEM: So all your kids were born in this area. You guys never left. And what's 00:42:00the distribution-when was the first one born?

RW: '59.

DW: Yeah.

RW: Nine months later.

DW: And one week. [Laughs]

TEM: Are they all relatively close together in each?

RW: The first three especially are.

DW: Yeah. Doug, being the oldest, and then my daughter. It was interesting-I have sort of a pun in here. Rosalie was pregnant with Denise and Douglas was just 2 years old. On 4th of July, we took a camping trip. We went to the High 00:43:00Lakes. It was 4th of July and I wasn't feeling too good for some reason that one morning-had sore throat, went out. RW: We borrowed a neighbor's camper

DW: We had your dad's camper.

RW: Oh yeah.

DW: Anyway, I started sweating a little bit. Though we started heading back towards home, closer I got to home, the more I wanted to be home. I got home so on the Monday morning, I went to the doctor. He said, "I think it was something else. I'm afraid you got the mumps." He said, "You go home and go to bed." I was down for three, four weeks. [Cross Talk] The doc, he would come out to the house 00:44:00and check on me everyday. And the last day, he said, "if not better by tomorrow, we're gonna have to lance."

RW: So we figured, "ok we got two kids. They're alright."

DW: "Guess I'm never having more kids" [Laughs]

TEM: That wasn't right. [Laughs]

RW: When we first moved there, it was a big, old two-story house. And it was 00:45:00built on logs. The foundation was a log sew, like if you went from this room to that room, there'd be a log across there so it's kind of "ugh", and then down again, all of the rest of it. And there was originally no heat at all in the place. But there was an oil circulator in what was large dining room. And that was the heat we had. We ended up being able to add on, put a furnace in. And we wouldn't put our children upstairs although it was a lot of room there originally, because the electricity would come out of the wall with one of those turn switches and then it was the cloth wiring that would go up to the roof.

DW: It was exposed.

RW: That was Don's biggest goal-was to build a house. And that's the one that Doug and Ambury live in now.

DW: I drew a ten-year plan-took me 11 years to accomplish it.

TEM: So you designed the house?

DW: No, we really didn't know what we wanted. I had a friend of mine that had just built a house. Actually, he's our accountant, he and his mate too, his architect friend which Rosalise and I had become very good friends with. I employed him to do that. We told him a few times what we kind of like. One day I was in Rosalie's dad's office, he took me aside and said, "if you're half as 00:47:00smart as I think you are, I'd give Rosalie a pretty free hand." [Laughs] And I went, "Ok, I'd love that." [Laughs] So anyways, we built this house of ours. I did a lot of the work with them. And I finished the basement, I said "we had 4400 squared feet in that house and I had three bedrooms downstairs and a tv room, and a play room and an office, and a rumpus room."

RW: One room was blank but we ended up finishing that room too.

DW: That was fun.

TEM: So then when did your dad move back to that same farm space? Cause you built him a house, am I remembering that -

DW: He wanted to put a mobile home on ther e, I guess. There again, Rosalie's dad says "Won't you just build him a house?" --"Eh good idea."

RW: That he couldn't move [Laughs]

DW: [Laughs] The longest as he ever lived in one place in his life.

TEM: So he continued to move around?

DW: Yeah. I don't know how mom put up with him as she did.

RW: I know, your sister told me that when they went to move, they had everything 00:49:00done, organized as soon as they moved the other house-they had the curtains up, they had the beds made, they had it down to a science.

DW: We always had to jump to move, we moved too often.

TEM: Yeah, it's a way of clearing out.

DW: That help you out a whole lot with hop industry, but-.

TEM: So what about the Oregon Hop Commission, setting that up, establishing that? How did that come about and what was your role or involvement?

DW: I didn't get involved at the beginning. Rosalie's brother did, however. He was gonna run for the charter board members of Oregon Hop Commission.

TEM: At what's his name?

DW: Roger Kerr.

RW: He just passed away here, just recently.

DW: And it was a few year later when I really got involved. I was an ordinate on the hop growers' HAC.

RW: HAC, yeah. Never know what it stands for. [Laughs]

DW: It was Hop Grower of America da da da... It was the control board for the hop quarter that we had with, actually it was government controled. It was all 00:51:00funded by hop growers. The government was just there to put the teeth into it and see that the rules were followed. But they didn't contribute any money towards it. It's all held out to grower's crops. So anyway, I was on that. And then I got into the hop commission. I chaired the commission in two terms. And I also was the Oregon Hop Growers-chaired that through, I don't know, 4 years or something like that. Everybody can taste a term.

TEM: Assuming that you think it is helped the grower, how has that helped the 00:52:00growers? What changed when the commission was established?

DW: There again, the commission is controlled by the state. And they would receive the seat content of the different inspections that we had to go through. And also, it's like any of the commodity commission, they're plenty exact, set 00:53:00of rules you had to follow.

TEM: Ok.

DW: I don't know if that's really a necessary thing but they work out.

TEM: So how did the farm expand and change during your time there? And then when did you retire, or shift? Maybe "retirement" was the real word. [Laughs]

DW: Whenever a piece of property came available-it was called zone-we, my 00:54:00brother and I, were luck to acquire some of that. We've let a lot of properties slip through our hands that we didn't buy. When we were first married, we had the opportunity to buy another farm which is now a state park and zoned it. Fred Viesco he paid us to take that far, "just take it and just pay me interest for a couple of years, anything." And Rosalie saw me back and my brother's wife, and their father had an interest in a farm Hermiston and along with the office in 00:55:00town. So he was hardly ever on the farm. He'd get things going in the morning, "I really need to head to the office." Or he'd go to Hermiston and then they'd have, with his partners, a day.

RW: More of businessman than a farmer. [Laughs]

DW: So she didn't want to be like her mother and raise all these kids by herself-thought we would be too busy. So we let a lot of things like that getting by us, sadly.

RW: Yeah.

DW: Yes, dear.

TEM: [Laughs] I'm glad to hear listened to what he said, [Laughs] about the house and that. So when you bought property, where you looking to acquire existing hop farms?

DW: No. None of them had existing hops farms. But we expand it.

TEM: Were hop farms, were growers that survived prohibition and survived the mildew-was there a point where there were hop farms that were for sale and people were leaving the industry, when you were thinking about acquiring?

DW: Oh yeah, a lot of them.

TEM: What was the change maybe from, I don't know, maybe the 30s, 40s, into the 60s?

DW: Well, during the war, there was OPA, Office of Price Administration. They fixed the price. They told you what you could sell at crop for, what you had to 00:57:00pay for that whatever. And there was just stabilization. So after war when that went off, the market just went in the toilet.

TEM: Oh.

DW: And a lot of growers got out of business. At one time, there was way over 400 hop growers.

RW: What about the mechanization on the dusting and springing. Did that make a difference on that too?

DW: Oh yeah, you can't use dusting anymore anywhere. The only dust you see 00:58:00flying out is from a line truck cuz you couldn't control the drifts. And environmentally, it was not a very safe product. Everything now is sprays.

RW: You wouldn't, from handpicking from when I was a child-my dad had hops so people would come-

DW: Right after the war, then you couldn't get pickers,

TEM: You couldn't get pickers?

DW: You couldn't get hand-pickers to here to get the job done. So mechanizations started coming in.

TEM: So do you think mechanization-did it emerge out of the worker shortage? Or was it kind of just time?

DW: Yeah, kind of. I'll tell you one-I told you about the family horse ranch that my dad worked on. I was pretty young. We lived there during hop harvest and they had a building and they put the first stationary picker machines, hop picker machines in. They were experimenting, trying to perfect this mechanization of hop picking. They had to put arm guards around that building to keep the pickers from burning it down because that was going to take their job 01:00:00away. But that soon vanished. You couldn't get enough people to come pick any more.

TEM: Where was that horse farm?

DW: Independence.

RW: During its hay day, train loads of pickers would go to Independence.

DW: That would increase to at least 40,000 people getting there. There were some large ranches around there back then. At one time, this is the known hop camp over the world. And then when mildew came in at '35, '36, '37, it kind of wiped out some of the crops. So a lot of them moved to Yakima Valley.

TEM: So was it more of a slow decline. Starting with mildew, and then after the war and the OPA office, is that right?

DW: Yeah, Office of Price Administration.

TEM: So it sounds like from the late 30s through the 50s, it was kind of one after another changes.

DW: You could make money at the price it was at during the war because everything was fixed-labor, fuel, anything that you used, and you could buy a tractor or a truck, or anything like that as long as it was new. If it was used, 01:02:00it would've got at us, who know how cut of price you would get for-it was all under the tables back then. I know my dad had a '42 Pontiac car that he bought just before the war started in '41, and drove that all through the war actually. But when they got the first new car into Salem, dad got it because they wanted his car at '42. Can't get something at '42 more than they could sell the new one. That new was around $1200, $900 and some bucks with his new car. And he 01:03:00could get a lot more than that for his old '42.[Laughs]

TEM: So by the time you started farming, was mechanization the norm?

RW: Yeah.

DW: Oh yes. They have improved it a lot since then, and then continued to improve the harvesting equipment.

RW: Where Doug's office is, well, that was originally part office-it was a restaurant. So during hop harvest, at first we had one that was on skids, and it was just a little building. And volunteers, or whoever wanted to run the restaurant, would run it, and it would just be a little thing . But when it went over to the other building there, during hop harvest, Don's mom and the sisters 01:04:00would run the restaurant there. And that's during our time, prior to when they originally own that ranch that they ended up kept going back and rebuying with my father. There was a regular camp there for hand-pickers. So, a lot of people. And they ran a really big restaurant down there. People would come from outside just to come in and eat. [Laugh ns]

DW: Yeah, it was about 300 people that lived there during the harvest time.

TEM: Were there permanent cabins?

DW: Yeah, they were all cement floors. They weren't very big.

RW: Kind of like a grey, big tent, in size.

DW: Yeah, but it wasn't a tent. It was tidy. I remember we would go in there before harvest and have to clean all over the bunks. We'd use straw, wheat straw and you'd have clean that all up, hose everything down, disinfect it, then put in new straw wheat stand in. [Laughs]

TEM: Are those still standing?

DW: No, they're all gone now. That was one of the very few camps in the state of Oregon that had flush toilets. We had large buildings and all had flush toilets 01:06:00in them.

TEM: What year would that be?

DW: This was during the war. This was '43 and '44. And it continued on for a couple years after that until at least '46, '47.

RW: It's still kind of a wooded area there.

DW: I remember, during the war, there was a Professor Morrison from Oregon State. And he worked a lot of with new engineering type methods for controlling 01:07:00bugs back then. So he, and dad and I, I got to go with him. We drove down to-it was a suburb of-San Francisco. It was on this side-it was Emeryville. And we went in to Besler Corporation and picked at the fog machine, the artificial fog. Of course, you know, this was during the war and I was very privileged to get to go through that.

TEM: Yeah.

DW: Because you'd have to sign your life away when you got a badge. Anyway, we brought one of those back and we used it for controlling aphids and spider 01:08:00mites, and anything else that you wanted to kill.

TEM: Did it went through the fields? And it was like a smaller-

DW: We would just go around the outside of the field, maybe down through it once. And we'd create a fog. We'd use just water and xynoline, and then DDT at that time.

RW: Yeah, good old. [Laughs]

DW: Or we'd use Blackleaf 40, the nicotine. But Morrison, he'd always try to skip the leaf and have little stuff-"No, we got a crop there." And he said, "I don't care. Let's kill them first. Put it up in there. We know it'll do the job" 01:09:00But they were always looking for the economical part of it. But he don't get 100% kill. "But they're back."

RW: They're good at reproducing.

DW: Oh yes. And then it was just like a big steam machine, or steam cleaner. They had a solar power plant on it. They'd crank that thing up and it was loaded up with DDT, water xynoline, and went to the campgrounds. The campground would just have a lot of big huge old-growth fir trees. We'd say it's still up there. 01:10:00But anyway, it would just rain bugs out of the thing. [Laughs] But we didn't have any mosquitos, we didn't have any flies.

RW: Yeah.

TEM: Were there other farms that had those same machines?

DW: No, we were the only ones at that time.

TEM: I think we may have a picture of that, as part of the records that Morrison had. People came to see, they would have hop field, they would come to watch.

RW: I wish I had my computer which has gone capuzzi, but I'd love to show you some-I've got some-historical hop pictures. Everything is on my computer. But what about the machines that your dad built? And that machines you and Carl built?

DW: Hop industry, you know, is such a small industry that, like John Deere and Deering, they never built the equipment-they're on PR list. But the profitable one that those always end up selling well. By the end, you build your own, or modify something.

RW: What about the duster your dad did?

DW: Well, Dad would, I remember we were working at the plane at the shop-I was pretty young. This is back in the 30s, '36. I was probably 5 years old. And dad 01:12:00would go to the junkyard or the used car places, and buy old Stars and Durants and the Grant Paige. Well, not really the Grant Paige cuz that was before we got the Cadillac, cuz they were too heavy. But the Stars and the Durants-the Star was, for whatever reason, it [inaudible] Anyway, he would buy those, bring them home, strip them down to the bare frame. And then he would take the frames and narrow them up, take the axel, and cut those down and narrow them up. So he'd go 01:13:00down through a hop yard and he'd build the dusters. He would take two of those cars to make one, cuz he'd take the transmission out. We run two transmissions so one would actually really gear the tractor, the duster down to low speed and you'd need lots of power up. And then also he would run the duster off of it. I thought we have some pictures.

RW: I do have a picture but I think Doug may have it in his office.

DW: He might have them, yeah.

RW: And then what about the side hoes you and Carl built?

DW: Yeah. One of the hop growers from St. Paul came back when he went to Europe 01:14:00on a hop tour. Then when he came back, and he was telling us about-he saw-something they don't use anymore. It had a post-row, hop hoeing machine. My brother was very mechanic so we put some planks together and kind of threw things out in the shop. We built a post-row hoeing machine. All of this was hydraulically run blade. And then we had a bumper. You would go up and hit the 01:15:00post and it would swing back, go around it.

TEM: Oh, ok.

RW: So anyway, we used the kind of a pop soft spring.

DW: We built several of those which is still used till this day. And also my dad, my brother and I, we wanted to build a top cutter. We bought one but it went on to the back of the tractor, raise 'em down-. It was not as efficient as it should be. Anyway, we built this. Drew it all out so it was hydraulic. You'd 01:16:00have hydrostatic control on the power plant. And then our operating control cage went up and down with these two arms. And we designed that, built that-I don't remember how many years ago, at least 30 years ago, I know on that. We still use it. We've improved it a little bit from that, but yeah.

TEM: So as he was growing up-Doug and Tony are still in the business-was it 01:17:00pretty clear that they were interested in the hop business and they wanted to stay?

DW: Pretty much, yeah. Especially Doug, he took a lot of interest even when he was very small. He went to Oregon State for two years and decided he'd rather farm than go to school. Similar with Tony, he went to Chemeketa then. They both went into the hop business, with me of course.

TEM: And then when did you transition out away?

DW: I must have been about 70-it's been 15 years ago.

RW: Well we've been here for 20.

DW: I knew, but we were still farming.

RW: Still farming and still running that supply business.

DW: But I was turning this farm over to the boys to operate before that, cuz they had their own farms too. But we still ran everything through the harvesting facility. I guess I moved off the farm because when people would come for parts 01:19:00or whatever, they'd ask me, and Rosalie says "we gotta get out of here." I said, "Yeah, if we're gonna turn this over to the kids." So we bought this place. We're done with the farm. And that's how the transition started, and then we sold the farm to Doug, had another farm I sold to Tony. And then Tony and his brother, Terry, we bought a farm and had adjoined Doug's property on Hopmere. So 01:20:00there, they've all been farming business together.

TEM: How often do you go back now?

DW: Every day.

TEM: Every day?

DW: Almost. [Laughs] I still go back, not to do any decisions. I just like being with my boys.

RW: I think the boys bounce a lot of thing off of him.

TEM: How far is it from here? How long does it take for you to get there?

DW: It's 5 miles from here to the farm.

TEM: Did they name Hopmere after hops? That's why it's named. It's not some 01:21:00weird coincident?

DW: Yeah. I guess why it's called Hopmere is because of all the hops around there. Our neighbor would bring in trainloads harvesters from Portland to Eugene, all over Oregon City. And there was a huge warehouse terminal there for Oregon Electric. And they offload there, and people would come pick 'em up in their windings and take them to the camps.

RW: Did you meet someone that was looking for the farm where his parents used to-was that you? Someone said that their parents choose to get off at that 01:22:00station and they wanted to find the farm they used to go. But we didn't know where they meant.

DW: I don't know. Don't remember that.

TEM: So what about grandkids. Will it transition again from your kids' generation to the grandkids? Is there an interest there?

DW: Yeah, I think so. Of course, our kids never have as many kids as we had. [Laughs]

RW: Our granddaughter-

DW: Yeah.

RW: Go ahead, tell them.

DW: Ok. Well, Doug's daughter. I think he might have named her after-

RW: Erica? Maybe not.

DW: A year and a half ago-or something like that-her husband was a state cop. 01:23:00And he had Deschutes from Madras to way down below, some river on 97. 97 is a drug route. And he's been on a couple of drug busts there, just accidentally through a routine stop. And it was shortly after he came over here that his 01:24:00buddy was shot. Anyway, Doug asked Erica and Jake if they would consider coming to the farm and helping him, kind of take over because they have two little boys. Jake was pulling night duty all the night working. And so they thought, "yeah, maybe we'd like to do that." Doug said, "You go home and think about it. Then come back and we'll talk if you're sure you are interested." Well, they didn't change their mind, [Laughs] So yes, there is another generation. Jake has 01:25:00taken to this like a fish to water. He's really doing a good job. And Erica has taken over some other books for Doug, has all the payroll which in fact is a big job with all regulations and reports, etc.

RW: And we don't have to do it anymore.

DW: Yeah. I think it's set for another generation.

RW: Yeah.

TEM: So I'm curious whether the hop tours, with the brewers bringing buses of people to see where the hops are picked, is that a relatively recent phenomenon?

RW: Three years?

TEM: Ok.

DW: They've been doing it. They started out pretty small. It's been five or six years.

RW: Has it been that long? That's right, because I remember telling people that first they came in a car, then a van, then two vans, then a bus. And this is the first time I see two buses for two days.

TEM: Yeah.

DW: I don't know if you've seen this or not. [Shows a picture]

TEM: Oh, I do.

DW: Are you in that one?

TEM: I don't remember her doing this. I feel like I would have remembered. But I think I was over on the edge. I feel like I would have remembered that pose.

RW: Don said he could see the top of his head on the corner. [Laughs]

DW: I'm the one right with your thumb there.

RW: Don, don't forget your microphone

TEM: Oh, you really tucked it back.

DW: Right there, those white hair right there.

TEM: You've got hops growing out of your head. [Laughs]

DW: Yeah. [Laughs]

TEM: So do other brewers do the same thing?

DW: Oh yeah. We're not the only ones.

RW: They're starting to, yes. And there are some brewer growers now too.

DW: That's why Doug had made that a show place. It's not necessarily a food product but it's a food additive. So you've got to have a clean environment and a show place. They love coming there.

RW: Yeah.

DW: Put on a good feed for 'em. Doug used to fund it but he got so big that you 01:28:00have to pay for it.

TEM: It's a lot of people, I mean, two days especially.

RW: And they're bringing either their sales force or sometime the manages of the pubs use their beer. So it's their promotion too.

DW: And now, of course, the Ninkasi now is bringing a big bunch.

RW: That's the first time they had.

DW: They're doing it too but not too that extend.

TEM: So, to say that things have changed to craft brewers is an understatement?

DW: Oh yeah, absolutely. When that opportunity came along to be part of the Hop 01:29:00Union, I told Doug and said "if you don't do it, I will. I think that's only gonna be your salvation." And it has three Oregon growers and three Washington growers in the Hop Union

TEM: What are the other growers, the other five?

DW: Now, of course, they've merged with another company so there's more growers than then. But now they're the world's largest hop suppliers.

TEM: So that's Washington and Oregon. Anybody from Idaho?

DW: No, just Oregon and Washington. They're a big company now. This may not be for publication but Doug told me that they were seeing to have well over a hundred million dollar coming in.

TEM: How many acres is there for the whole company?

DW: There's quite a few. I don't know how big they are now since they did a merger with Yakima Chief.

TEM: I know there are some filberts but is the prime crop hops for all those 800 acres?

DW: Yeah. Anything else is just incidental. A lot of times I wish we had more so we could do some more rotation. And from grass seed and grains what not, and give that ground a rest from hops. Even that now what we plant in the yard, we 01:32:00like to fumigate first cuz there has been disease brought in from other areas. I know we had, on Tony's place a lot of money into that thing and their crops kept growing down. Even Oregon State couldn't put finger it. Until just recently, they were able to come up with the Red Crown Rot. And that was probably from some hops from Washington. Stock from Washington.

TEM: So is there still a good feedback loop relationship with OSU? Do they still 01:33:00use your farm as a tester?

DW: Yeah. I think there isn't a lot of that that goes on now, but there's still new varieties that they develop down once it gets new leaves. In the past, we had a real good relationship with Oregon State.

TEM: So what's the future for you two? You're heading south soon?

DW: Yeah. I used to say three days of rain and I'm out of here. But this is not 01:34:00rain, yet. [Laughs]

TEM: Just a little cleaning fluid. [Laughs]

DW: But I think we will go down probably the end of October. Go down and clean the place up, make sure it's still there. And come home for Christmas. I think some of the kids are coming down for Thanksgiving. We try to maintain how we are.

TEM: Well, it sounds like you have an incredibly close family. So it has to be nice to have everybody close by and then have them come visit you.

DW: Yeah.

TEM: Probably really nice for them to have some place to visit too. [Laughs]

RW: Years ago, something traditional was started. My dad started when my mother 01:35:00was in a nursing home and that first Christmas was really hard. So we went, Pat, Chris, altogether-our family had it altogether. They didn't do it till years after he was married to Margarita.

DW: Yeah.

RW: He ended up remarried later. Anyway, the Sunday before Christmas, we would have-my brother, my sister's family and my family, and all the grandkids-dinner over at Eola Inn and, of course, Santa Clause came cuz a lot of the kids were little at the time. And I don't know how many years we did that. Well, probably almost 20 year.

DW: You know, Rosalie, we did, for a long time, have this. Cuz we had this 01:36:00planed, I think, it was for your mother's birthday.

RW: Maybe it was. Maybe it was longer than that. We did that and now it's only our family, cuz that's gotten so big. [Laughs] I used to have them all here and we'd have thirty some people in that living room. [Laughs] And not only that, but we'd have in-laws so we'd always have a lot of people.

DW: But now it's either at Doug's or Tony's, or my daughter's place.

RW: Yeah. It's big enough.

DW: And now Erica, she's got the huge place too. [Laughs]

TEM: It's natural to be thinking about what questions I might have asked, or 01:37:00things that you would want to share. Are there things that we didn't talk about that you would want to include as part of this?

DW: No, I don't know. We've touched on a little bit of everything. But if you could pick one thing out and then we could expand on that a lot. No, I think you've covered it pretty well.

TEM: As soon as we turn it off, then something will spark. [Laughs] That is what happens.

RW: Well, it's not bad for an eighth-grade education. [Laughs] His dad got to 01:38:00the fourth grade.

DW: Dad, he graduated eighth grade.

RW: Huh, I thought he did.

DW: Oh, my grandfather.

RW: Oh, your grandfather

DW: My grandfather, yeah. He got kicked out of school cuz he was chewing tobacco.

TEM: In fourth grade?

DW: Yeah. Until he was 77 years old. [Laughs]

TEM: How long did your dad live? When did he passed away?

DW: He passed away in-

RW: Well, he was 81, correct?

DW: No he was 83.

RW: 83? Ok.

DW: '91. We were building that harvesting unit out there that we have now. They 01:39:00were just working on that. Brother and I had made reservations back in Oshkosh for the annual big air show back there, Holy Farm, so we went back to Oshkosh in Wisconsin. And one day I thought we'd seen enough of air show for a while and my brother says, "You saw this little golf course?" And I say, "Well, maybe I'll stop by and play 9 holes of golf."

Again, I'll have to blame the golf for this. It's 20, 30 miles out form Oshkosh where we stayed, the closest place we could get. So we'd have to commute everyday back and forth. So anyway, we were out there playing golf. And we got a 01:40:00call from Rosalie and says "I just put your dad in the hospital." So we were able to change our flights and get a flight out to Chicago back home, which we did. And we got up to the hospital, see my dad. And kind of fast forward it a little bit, he had had a blockage. He had to remove part of his intestine on the end. One hand, the back and that. They kind of perk him up so that-

RW: Yup, he was sitting up, visiting all of us.

DW: Yeah, he was getting along pretty good then. And I got a call the next morning, 4 o'clock in the morning. And Dad passed away. He died in his sleep. Don't know what happened, whether they didn't all poison out again or what. I don't know. I know he was swallowing a lot. But anyway, he was 83 years old.

RW: And how old are you? [Laughs]

DW: I'm the same age. [Laughs]

RW: I shouldn't have said that, huh. [Laughs]

DW: We're going over to be beach at three or two. Here we have what we called 01:42:00the over-eighty-bunch that plays golf. We're supposed to play golf tomorrow.

RW: It might be raining.

TEM: The grass will just be watered.

DW: Yeah, that's right. [Laughs]

RW: Can't think of anything else?

DW: Not really. [Coughs]

RW: You just coughed out the last thing. [Laughs]

DW: [Cross talk]

RW: You know how to spit it out, don't you?

TEM: Well, there's always a follow up. It's never the ending. Talk about stories.

RW: He always has really big memories-he remembers very well, I don't. We did a 01:43:00lot hunting and fishing with his parents, as a family-as grown, before we were married-and not just the aunts and uncles. They'd set up a city, I swear, looking at the binge they had, very innovative.

TEM: So was your extended family in Oregon as well, you father's siblings?

DW: Yeah, pretty much so.

RW: And this one says in 1917, Jim and his brother Charles, which is his grandfather, his wife Dorian and their 6 children, of which Wilford was 10 years old and Earl was 8. This is Don's uncles reminiscing of this thing. They talked 01:44:00about the trip and that's why I made copies of it for you. But yeah, deer hunting was a big family affair. I've seen pictures of them. And then you started flying

DW: Yeah.

RW: And fishing. He likes to go to Alaska every year to go fishing.

DW: I have to tell you the story about Doug. He and I have always been pretty close. Anyway, I was getting my car serviced of something, and I hear this phone 01:45:00call, going "Daddy, you gotta be around quickly." Cuz we were supposed to be doing a photo shoot. "What?" -"Yeah, I need you here." It's the bigger driver. So anyway, I should have left [inaudible]. They had been doing photoshoots all over it anyway. They took the whole way round into a hop field, and started talking about different varieties and how they started and what not. So he's stand over there and he's getting this into one spot, how there's a photographer saying "I want you to move", "I want you to stay right in those spots" cuz the light was just right. So he introduced Doug and he says "Doug, I'll have you 01:46:00interview the gentleman next to you." Doug, just standing here, he says "This is my father and my best friend."

RW: He'll never forget about that.

RW: Your daughter kind of likes you too.

DW: They're all good.

RW: Yeah you're likable. [Laughs]

TEM: That's what we hope our children will say. [Laughs]

DW: I just helped my daughter yesterday. She bought this business. So she wanted 01:47:00a few things done. All these things-had some inspector come in and tell what needed to be done. This was the previous owner. All this is what you need to do to be compliance with OSHA

RW: Proactive.

DW: Yeah. So she went and says "I want you to earthquake proof all these cracks for me. Figure out a way to do that for me. Just to keep them from falling out." And you gotta be able to reload the racks with these big boxes, etc. So, "Okay, 01:48:00I could do that." So I did all that, put all the cables in. All they have to do is hook it and not get unloaded, or take parts out, load them back. So it would pass OSHA. Then she says, "I got the price up for ya." [Laughs] Cuz you needed toolkits on all the upstairs-they didn't have that full edge slip on. "Ok." So yesterday, I had this stuff made and was sitting there. So I got it out to her yesterday, put it all together for her. All the stuff is done now.

RW: You hope.

DW: Hopefully. Guess I might not have to do it anymore the longer its out. [Laughs] But anyway, I have to keep doing what I can.

RW: Yeah, he's a lot like his dad and his brother that there's nothing they can't fix or make. I don't think I have ever had a repairman, unless its computer. [Laughs]

DW: I'm not much on the computer.

RW: You've done pretty good. You're into that iPad and texting. I'm impressed.

DW: Well, one thing I've learned is I don't like any major moves without 01:50:00consulting my accountant and my attorney.

RW: What about your wife.

DW: Secondary. [Laughs]

RW: That's the second thing. [Laughs]

DW: If I listened to you I'd still be working for somebody. [Laughs]

RW: Yeah, I'm very conservative. I'm not a risk-taker. We make a good combination.

DW: So where are you headed from here?

TEM: I will say thank you, and I'll turn this off.