Monthly Archives: July 2010

Some conversations at our place are quieter than others.

My wife and I are breathing a vast sigh of relief. Recently we picked up some hand-held radios to carry on our ATV’s. On our place, it’s easy to go over a hill and drop into a canyon when looking for a missing critter. When one of us needs a hand or an extra pair of eyes, these radios make our lives easier.

Before the radios our conversations across canyons—some people call them yelling matches—would go something like this…

“I see the sheep. They’re using their cloaking devices to hide in the rocks.”

“I can’t hear you…can you see if they’re in the rocks?”

“NO! Left, bear left…they’re in the rocks.”

“RIGHT, I’ll go that way…they usually hide in the rocks though!”

“NOOOOOO!! LEFT…IN THE ROCKS!!!”

“LEFT?? MINE OR YOURS???

“YOURS…NO WAIT, MINE…I DON’T CARE…SOMEBODY’S!!!!”

“QUIT YELLING…I STILL DON’T SEE ‘EM…I’M HEADED TO THE RIDGE TO SPOT THEM!!!”

After taking a half hour to do a job that should have been no more than five minutes, we meet back at the sheep pens, hoarse and croaky. The conversation continues…

“YOU ALMOST RAN THE SHEEP OVER WITH YOUR ATV…”

“IF YOU’D JUST TOLD ME THEY WERE IN THE ROCKS…”

…even though we’re standing four feet apart. Not much gets done for the rest of the day.

These days the radios have helped us a lot. We have fewer conversations at decibel levels loud enough to cause rockslides.

Now, with a radio, when I’m using the ailing tractor to load hay on the feed truck our conversations sound more like this…

“This bale got damp and is a little heavy, would you pull the truck forward so I don’t need to torque the hydraulics to get it square on the bed?”

“How far…a couple of feet?”

“Yeah, about that…Hey, while I’m thinking about it, would you like to take a break after chores and run into town for dinner tonight?”

“Sure, sounds good…that far enough?”

“Yeah, OK here goes…I’m in the mood for Mexican tonight, what about you?”

“Fine with me, be careful…do you remember where the ATV trailer is?”

…CRUNCH…GRIND…

“HEY…WHO PARKED THE TRAILER THERE WHERE I COULDN’T SEE IT?”

Just before the radio goes dead, a quiet voice comes through my speaker and says, “I think you did, dear.”

So these hand-held radios have saved us much time and effort over the last year. They’ve helped us reduce the volume of many ranch conversations.

However, they haven’t done much to help distracted drivers.

Maui Meyer, left, sits down with friend and business partner Chef Ben Stenn at the Celilo Restaurant and Bar in Hood River.

HOOD RIVER, Ore. – Maui Meyer was a young
world-class wind surfer when he came to Hood Rive
r the first time. He fell
in love with the town and he hoped that someday he could retire in such a place. Meyer did come back, but he is far from retired. The Hood River businessman is working hard to keep Hood River true to the same great place he fell in love with.

“Hood River was great when I came here the first time and my goal is to help keep it great,” Meyer said. “It is a place where town and farm is a cool thing; a place that is great not because it is untouched but because it is well managed.”

From Hawaii to Hood River

Meyer, named Maui after the island of his ancestors, was born and raised in Hawaii. The youngest and only boy in a family of six sisters, he was a world-class wind surfer while still in his teens. At 21, he enrolled at Cornell University, an agriculture land grant college in upstate New York. Four years later, armed with degrees in hotel finance, food and beverage and real estate development, Meyer came back to Hood River.

Maui Meyer holds a photo that hangs in his office showing himself wind surfing in Hawaii at the age of 15.

“When I got out of college with no money and no job, I decided that if I was going to be broke and jobless somewhere, I might as well be broke and jobless in Hood River,” Meyer said of his obsession with the town. “That was in 1991, and by the next year, I opened the 6th Street Bistro and was in the restaurant business. It was also my good fortune that Ben Stenn wandered in looking for a job two years later. Ben was a recent New York University graduate and French-trained chef and as partners, we opened Celilo Restaurant and Bar in 2005.

Maui turned restauranteur

“Ben and I are both committed to a healthy and sustainable future and we make every effort to buy fresh naturally raised products that have been grown as close to our doorstep as possible. We also reuse or recycle all of our glass, plastic, paper, aluminum and tin, compost all our vegetable and coffee grounds and use unbleached paper sourced from consumer recycled fiber. We think each small step is important.”

A colleague weighs in

Julie Davies O’Shea, executive director of a nonprofit resource solution company for rural communities called Farmer’s Conservation Alliance, has worked with Meyers almost since she arrived in Hood River seven years ago.

“Like many of the people here, I came to Hood River as a kayaker and Maui was one of the people that gave me a job and we still work together on a lot of projects today,” O’Shea said. “Because he is an owner and/or partner in five community-related businesses and a second-term Hood River county commissioner, it is easy to see how committed he is and the sacrifices he and his family make by giving so much time to the community.

“What I don’t think people know enough about is how much he invests in young people. He has his business model and his social model and he is constantly hiring, supporting and mentoring young people through those businesses. Maui listens to people and he does so with what I call a very good ear.”

Hood River still the best place to be

Growing up in Hawaii with a father in the hospitality business, Maui has an innate ability to understand the importance of blending long-term agriculture with the hospitality and tourism industry in a place like Hood River.

“We need to fight to make sure we in Hood River determine our own future and ensure that our future here doesn’t just happen to us,” Meyer said. “We are a diverse ag and tourism-based community that cares about the regional farms, our manufacturing, our healthcare, our tourists and the people who live here. We work together and it is a wonderful place to be.

To contact Maui Meyer, call Argonaut Investments, 541-386-2330 or e-mail maui@gorge.net.

– Jan Jackson © 2010; See Jan Jackson’s Bio

…Be getting this on your calendar…

Henry Dill (center) enjoys a glass of wine with Jennifer Pantovich and Jamie Graybeal during a standing Friday Night Girls Night Out at the Glockenspiel Restaurant in Mt. Angel; photo by Jan Jackson.

MT. ANGEL, Ore. – To know Henri Dill, is to understand how she could be the one that built Mt. Angel’s monumental downtown chalet-style Edelweiss building with the glockenspiel tower in it. Henri credits the people of Mt. Angel for making it happen, but they know it’s there because she moved back home.

Henri, short for Henrietta, is a second generation Mt. Angel native of Swiss and Bavarian ancestry who friends call a can-do lady. Her father and grandfather were wheel barrowing bricks from the brick yard to the building site in the early 1900s to help build the church that still dominates the town. After traveling the world for 25 years with her career Air Force husband and their five children, the pull of Mt. Angel was strong enough to draw her back.

Henri Dill turns journalist

The youngest of six children, Henri attended St. Mary grade school and Mt. Angel Academy before leaving for Seattle University to study journalism.

Co-owners of the Glockenspiel Restaurant in Mt. Angel, business partners Henri Dill (left) and Mary Grant go over new additions to the menu; photo by Jan Jackson.

“I’m not sure where the urge to write came from unless it was from those early days working with my mother at the Benedictine Press,” Henri said. “The writers all worked upstairs which was a place I wasn’t allowed to go. I said to myself, ‘Someday I will be a writer and I will be upstairs.’

“As it turned out, journalism suited me well. I could write and I had a nose for a story and it didn’t matter that I couldn’t spell because journalists had editors who took care of that. I published a military magazine while we were in the service but after 22 years I was tired enough of deadlines that I knew I wanted to do something else.”

Henri Dill turns business woman

Henri moved with the family back to the Mt. Angel farm house where she was born and leased the Mt. Angel building to start what turned out to be Oregon’s first managed antique mall. Within a month Ernie had it painted, Henri had renters for all the stalls and they opened Engelberg’s Antiks. Six months later they opened a second one in downtown Salem.

“I didn’t know anything about antiques, but I rented to dealers who did,” Henri said. “There was a time I thought I couldn’t bear to have one more person tell me I could tell antique glass by feeling it because I couldn’t. But, that was 25 years ago. Today I can tell antique glass by feeling it.

Henri Dill, second generation Mt. Angel native, is what her friends call a can-do person; photo by Jan Jackson.

“While Ernie ran the Mt Angel store, I ran the mall in Salem and much like going to work with my mother, our kids (who were school-age by then) came with me. Since then, four grandchildren have been totally raised in the shop and one partially was. This table across from the cash register doubled for years as a changing table and the kitchen has seen years as a playroom. Today, they claim that they used to beg customers to take them home with them and that they had to promise to keep their toys picked up or I would sell them in the shop. Our daughter Lori, son Hank and grandson Taylor still work here.”

Mt. Angel Glockenspiel Restaurant is born

Mt. Angel’s Glockenspiel came about when Henri unsuccessfully tried for three years to remodel and earthquake-proof the Mt. Angel Engelberg Antiks building they now owned. The project took seven years start to finish but she kept at it and found a way to tear it down and partner with Marion County Housing to build it up again. Today, crowds of tourists gather at the building’s European style glockenspiel to listen to the music as it’s life-size painted hand-carved wooden figures dance about.
Henri Dill’s reputation as a can-do person

Connie Lauzon, who worked with Henri on the Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors, had nothing but praise for her friend and fellow Mt. Angel volunteer.

“Henri is the kind of person that can dream and when she gets a good idea she doesn’t let anything stop her,” Lauzon said. “When she gets a vision she’s like a dog that gets hold of a bone. She doesn’t turn it loose. She is the most can-do person I’ve ever known and Mt. Angel always benefits.”

– Jan Jackson © 2010; See Jan Jackson’s Bio

ASHWOOD, Ore. – Ann Snyder was nine years old when she begged her father not to sell the family farm, but her tears

Determined some day to have a ranch of her own, Ann's dream came true in Central Oregon.

didn’t change his mind. Determined someday to return to farm life, Ann now raises sheep, meat-goats and market-hogs on her own ranch.

“I was heartbroken when my folks sold the farm, and no matter how hard I tried to convince my dad that I could run it when I grew up, it didn’t do any good,” Snyder said of her early childhood in Molalla, Oregon. “We had 350-acres of grain and grass seed and raised cattle and sheep. It was in my blood.”

During the growing season, Ann rises at 5:00 am, hits the shower, grabs a cup of coffee and does the chores. Once done, she and her husband Bing load coolers of meat, fleece, hand-spun yarn and display tables for the booth and drive the 24 miles to Madras Saturday Market.

Snyder and her hard-working dogs return from early evening chores.

Life at the Madras Farmers Market

“I enjoy the social part of the markets, but the work involved in setting it up and taking it down isn’t easy,” Snyder said. “It is fun though, to greet the locals who come back each week and the people who come through the area from all over the world. We especially enjoy what we call the motor home gypsies who travel through and stock their freezers before moving on to their next stop. They love being able to buy fresh lamb, pork and goat raised without antibiotics or growth hormones.”

Snyder the volunteer

In addition to her ranching, Snyder is on the board of directors for the Natural Colored Wool Growers Association and the Madras Saturday Market. She was one of the volunteer planners for the recent highly-successful first annual Shaniko Wool

Snyder specializes in fresh lamb, pork and goat raised without antibiotics or growth hormones.

Gathering, she is a volunteer writer for the Black Sheep Newsletter magazine and a founding member of the American Romeldale/CVM Breeders Association. In the off season, when more of Snyder’s life alternates between caring for the livestock and doing business on the computer, she is researching recipes for and better ways to market her products.

Living the dream

“Bing and I are two people following two dreams. His dream is writing, radio storytelling and photography and mine is my livestock. I could do without the coyote problems and the housework and sometimes it’s hard to stay on track when you work for yourself but I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”

– Jan Jackson © 2010; See Jan Jackson’s Bio