When retired French soldier Pete Pieri settled in Walla Walla around the turn of the 20th century, he planted onion seed he had brought from Corsica. His new neighbors, Italian gardeners who had settled there earlier, admired the ability of the onion to winter over in the ground, which gave it a good size for an early summer harvest. The bonus, notes Walla Walla horticultural historian Joe Locati, was its mild flavor. The Italians called it the “French onion” (though it was actually Italian), and by 1910, it was about the only summer onion grown in the area.
One place you must add to your “must-visit-before-I-die” list is the Wenatchee Valley during full bloom of the pear and apple orchards in late April. Perhaps you’ve seen Van Gogh’s lovely, but not often reproduced, painting “The Pink Orchard.” It’s very simple, a small orchard in bloom. But it’s so simple and lovely it will make you cry with desire. Now imagine it juxtaposed with one of those sublime Western landscapes by Bierstadt. Impossible? Of course. But keep trying. Imagine these vast orchards, all in bloom. And behind them loom the magnificent Cascades, still etched with late spring snow. Once you have it in focus, … » More …
Dan Snyder can remember when local grocery stores would only buy one case of Cougar Brand Smokies at a time. Now, it’s unusual for them to buy fewer than three or four. And when they run out, the Washington State University Meats Lab manager’s phone starts ringing.
The meats lab building is tucked into the parking lot behind the Lewis Alumni Centre. It is primarily a teaching facility, used for animal science classes and agriculture industry professionals to learn how to evaluate live animals and grade and process animal carcasses. It’s also home to one of the most popular meat products on the Palouse.
In the September 10, 1951, issue of Life magazine is a picture of a bulldozer mounding apples in the Yakima dump. Seven acres of apples worth $6 million dollars rotted as pigs rooted through them, the result of failing foreign markets and high tariffs. At the time, if Washington’s apples didn’t sell, orchardists paid $5 a ton to have their culls hauled off to rot.
Culls are rejected from the fresh fruit market due primarily to shape, size, or color, but they are perfectly sound for such traditional uses as juice. The … » More …
Science has been predicting and measuring our warming planet for more than a century now. But it was only in the last two decades that most Americans came to believe the earth’s temperature was indeed rising and that the main culprit is the growing amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.
Now scientists are giving a lot of thought to another culprit: nitrogen. Like carbon dioxide, it’s seemingly benign—colorless, odorless, tasteless, and a foundation of life on our planet. Left alone, it tightly binds to itself in inert, two-atom molecules, or N2. It’s ridiculously commonplace, making up four-fifths of our atmosphere. It’s also a modern … » More …
Holly Ferguson knows her cow pies about as well as anyone. In the first study of flies in managed pastures in the Pacific Northwest, the entomologist has spent an unusual amount of time traveling the state and assessing its cow pies.
No matter the obvious jokes, dung dispersal in pastures is serious business. Wherever there are cows, there will be cow dung, and lots of it. A beef cow can produce nearly a ton of manure per month. And if that ton sits there untended, there will be problems.
Oddly enough, the conditions of the cow’s other major habitat, the feedlot, reduce the problem … » More …
The Food Quality Protection Act of 1996 initiated the gradual phasing out of organophosphate pesticides. By 2012, the major chemical defense against wormy apples will no longer be available. But not to worry, thanks to a continuous refinement of Integrated Pest Management and collaboration amongst growers, industry fieldmen, and WSU researchers.
With just a whiff of irony, let’s sing a song of praise for gasoline.
A single gallon contains more than 30,000 calories. You wouldn’t want to drink it, but in straight-up energy terms, that’s enough to power a human for about two weeks.
Gasoline is convenient, portable, and for the most part, cheap. For the purposes of this story, I used it to log more than 1,000 miles around Washington State and make appointments, easily, and always on … » More …
As King County's farm specialist, Steve Evans '78, '82 has watched agriculture disappear from the area. But now some of the land is going to smaller farms with high value crops. Meanwhile, small farms agent Bee Cha helps East African refugees farm in the urban Pacific Northwest.
A cultural link between women and cattle seems unlikely in this age of turbo-powered technology. Yet, cows are all around us as decorative symbols, from the large fiberglass art-cow statues that decorated the streets of Chicago and New York recently, to their widespread presence in gift shops and department stores. Their whimsical countenances appear on a myriad of kitchen towels, coffee mugs, and cookie jars. This surge of interest in all things bovine by giftware manufacturers, who market a plethora of calendars, aprons, refrigerator magnets, and so on, all depicting clever or cute cows, is directed at women.
