 I'm Ron Bjork we're at my ranch and in my house here on the ranch and I've been running this for years and I also sell a little real estate and I was a mortgage broker I had a mortgage office and also I was a contractor and a dealer had a dealer's license because we were selling some mobile homes at that time so I had all those different licenses and stuff over the years came to Oregon we were we were in California my granddad ran a big ranch for some folks in California for years and years and it was in the process of being sold to be developed and we had bought a ranch my folks had bought a ranch in Nevada in Smith Valley Nevada and we went up there and we were farming there it wasn't it didn't take very long to get from Concord California to Smith Valley Nevada and and we went up there on the weekends and then I spent all summer up there it in the Nevada ranch we we had a situation where we could sell the water for more money than we could generate off of the ranch itself and so what we did was we ended up selling the water and we were looking for a place with really good water and came to Oregon because Oregon has lots of water and I believe you know that's what the perception is but we found this particular ranch and it has really good water rights it's very old water rights and so we're I think about second out of the creek behind the mill in Eagle Point you can see how the how the creek is here and we have a lot of cover we had a problem with beavers in the beavers were not coming to trees down and I finally got the beavers we got rid of the beavers we kept moved in here took possession of it and our first first year here was really 1960 first hay and season you know first year and we put hay up and and that kind of stuff and then we had a bunch of cows we had over a hundred cows in California and we moved them up there and well yeah yeah and we had more we had the ranch across the street another 80 acres and then we had four hundred and sixty acres up at the end of Worthington with some BLM that that was with it anyway we we moved the cows up here and then we we kind of went along and for a few years and and then Nevada ranch the water wasn't worth that hit him you so we had to do something so I kind of went back and forth between Oregon and Nevada and when I go over at Hall equipment over and when I came back I always bought a load of alfalfa which you know it was it didn't sell for too much I mean about $25 a ton and we put it on the truck and haul it over here and we got more than that out of it you know so anyway we started raising went back and that ground we had to work it all up and we put in grain and and one field or two we actually went in and added to what alfalfa was there and planted alfalfa notes and we started raising onions because we got an onion contract so for about four years I or three or four years I raised about 350 ton of onions and some spuds on the ranch over there and then we had a little piece leased out for garlic and so they were raising garlic on the place and then I got drafted in the military and so things just sort of I mean we lost well we sold the range first then we ended up selling the Nevada ranch because there really wasn't anybody to do anything my grad my granddad was in his 80s and he really couldn't do much but he lived over here on the ranch and so I went in the military and they sent me to Germany which was good during the Vietnam time they were drafting people pretty right and left I was class A because I wasn't married or anything you know and and I tried to get a deferment because of the ranches but now they wouldn't they wouldn't see it and I got in the military and I put that request in and about a year after I was in there they came the judge advocate called me and said say you know we say you we shouldn't have drafted you I said well gee that's great but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense right now for me to do anything I might well finish my term and and get out and so I did and then when I got out we still had this ranch over here we'd sold everything else the 160 acres left here and I got out and went back used the GI bill went to school and ended up graduating for Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo and with a degree in business and then after that I went to work for Bank of America in their appraisal department and I was doing a lot of appraisals I was in the Bay Area for about 18 months and then I moved to Reading which was great for me because I could get back up here on the weekends and about that time or just a little before that we sold 80 acres across the road and my grandmother and grandfather moved close to my uncle and my dad down in California so they could take care of them and so I was was down there in Reading and I'd come up on the weekends and started developing the everything on this side of the ranch we built all the barns the shops you name it we built it so early 70s yeah early 70s well it kind of went both ways you know and then in about well I don't know 80 early 80s I moved up here and I bought a bunch of cows and and then I bought some more cows and I started just seemed like it kept buying cows and and I had a couple hundred acres and I had a range over and on the little Applegate and then I ended up with a range next to it in Glade Creek and so I'd haul my cows over there for summer and bring them back and I had another ranch at least where the golf course is here in Eagle Point out on 140 and so I moved you know between those and some other places I had we were getting bigger and then the cow market went to pieces in the 80s and so basically I sold all the cows and the range just to stay afloat so to speak because things were getting tough I mean the banks would have given me a loan but I don't believe in putting a loan on on your home place I think it's free and clear you would need to keep it free and clear so that's what we did and I then I started back doing real estate and I sold real estate mainly ranches then I kept on farming and kept building more cows up it wasn't very long before I was getting more cows again and so I'm running about 40 cows right now it's about all I bet in the past I've run several hundred head but now I'm running about 40 cows that's about what this place will handle and I have another ranch leased up on Reese Creek and so I have another 40 acres of meadow and then this fall I leased another place across the creek over here that about our place and we run cows on all of those pieces and and then we bought the cows home and so anyway that's kind of a synopsis you know right up to date in the meantime I did some of those other things I was a mortgage broker had a mortgage office and then when the real estate market started to turn around I said it's time to get out of this I didn't the real I didn't the real estate because it was okay but the mortgage business I decided I could see what was happening and we didn't do government insured loans we only did basically private money when I say private that doesn't mean that the large institutions like Wells Fargo and Bank of America and Security Pacific and a whole lot of lenders were still out there and they all made private loans but but we could see I could anyway that it was not a thing to be in so I got out and it was it was a good time and when I got out it was they had a rough go for a while there but I had a also along with that I had a dealer to license and a contractor's license and we did a lot of repairs on mobile homes when we had the mortgage business it just seemed to fit you know sometimes things go together and all that stuff kind of went together when I first went to Farm Bureau meetings I went with my granddad it was just kind of a fun thing you know and it was down in Contra Costa County and and we just went to some meetings and they talked about farming and interesting things and and so I continued when I got old enough I had to get car insurance and this that and the other and I could get a good rate with Farm Bureau so I kept Farm Bureau and and just kept it right on from there on I mean I been a Farm Bureau member most of my life in one place or another I was in Contra Costa County and Chasta County and Jackson County when I came up here and here came back I was I was already a member of Farm Bureau and when I actually moved back here I decided I needed to go to a Farm Bureau meeting they have some things of interest that they do at these Farm Bureau meetings and they had speaker that was a really good speaker and so I went and and visited with the people and we had people like Homer Conger and and some of those real real neat older older folks that were in it and before too long I was participating I went to the state convention and and then I became president at that time and I was president for oh I don't know 10 15 years we dealt with a lot of political issue and of course the one thing that we always have been dealing with is water and laws that affect us as far as farming is concerned I know in the in the 70s we had a the land use planning came in in in Oregon and I think I think we had it about 72 I'm not sure exactly on that time but we had land use planning and with the land use planning a lot of the ranchers in this area the old-time folks who had typically sold off the corners the five acres or the two acres that weren't productive all of a sudden couldn't sell anything off and being their property was down zoned the banks had no choice but call the loans and they were all operating with an operating loan from a lending institution probably PCA and and that kind of stuff so lots of them went broke because there was no market at that time for for that and we and I kept going Farm Bureau you know I opposed it the land use thing because it it took away what we could do it took a tool out of our toolbox that was an important tool and I could see these families that had been here came over in by wagon to Oregon and and homesteaded in this area how they lost everything because of the land use planning and they always said well we're gonna compensate everybody with that land use but they never compensated anybody that's government that's that's just talk we started in the 70s with that land use and it just it just killed people it was really tough some of them made it if they were diverse enough at that time they were able to withstand the the loss in property value and there was a tremendous loss in property value and that's an issue that Farm Bureau has always been on and I and Farm Bureau supports the people in the Willamette Valley think that the land use is wonderful because what's happened is and I've seen this and talked to folks well they said the people next to us you know they they might have developed that but they couldn't so they had to rent it to somebody and I rented it from them and I got to I can remember hearing that a lot they those people couldn't couldn't do anything else with their land all of a sudden it's all locked up in big chunks and you can't do anything and so you have to rent it to somebody or try to make your payments or or retire you couldn't retire and you took that retirement benefit away from those folks Jackson County had planning before we had land use planning and most of Jackson County was planned just the opposite of what we ended up with when we got the LCDC and the mandate of what we had to do we had the how the houses going to the hills and the look and the less valued land and the good farmland in the bottom would be saved but then the cities got involved and they decided that they had to have the ability to expand and not go to the hills they wanted to expand in the easy developed land and so consequently what they did was they went ahead and got what you call urban growth boundaries and so they put things in the urban growth boundaries and of course the land that was in the urban growth boundaries went up in value because there is a supply and demand and there is a small supply and a high demand and so we got into this land use planning and I can remember we were we I was a chairman of a local citizen involvement committee and I was also on the county I forget what it was called another citizen type involvement but but we had county people telling us what we were going to do and you know because they had some people that came to our meeting they had a gal from Aslan that used to come to our meeting and she told us what we were going to do and we told her we were we didn't go along with that at all that's not what we wanted and we didn't want this then so she quit coming because we've invited her not to come to our meetings and she got a job in planning later and you know moved on up but we got stuck with with what we got and basically a lot of that was the thousand friends of Oregon were involved and they were going to sue the county if they didn't do what they wanted and at that time we had some county commissioners that were that agreed with all this land use planning and one of them got recalled the other one Isabel Sickles was too close to the end of her time so she didn't get recalled but Carol Dodie got recalled because of what they did to our county Jackson County Farm Bureau has been a leader in at the time opposing the county's plan on our land use planning so that was an interest to me because it tended to keep the value of the farms with the with the people that own it and not let the state take it away but they did anyway so that this goes to show you you really don't own your land you're just they want you to be just to surf on that line and that's basically what we are I mean we have a right to it but we don't have much right anymore they keep taking it away and Oregon don't do that an Oregon Farm Bureau is fighting for us in all kinds of ways to protect our rights as farmers we're fighting and we have the wolf initiative that we've been involved in they're bringing the endangered wolf back that's not even an endangered wolf it's not even the kind of wolf that used to be here but they're brought them in anyway and they're you know harassing cows and causing problems and so Farm Bureau's involved in that we have a couple of packs up above one by Howard Prairin and one up by Lost Creek above Lost Creek Lake the state has done away with their endangered species on wolves but the federal government has not they they didn't do it in the northern the northeast corner of the state they took it away because there was so many packs up there breeding packs that they could do the way so they it's helped some because they can go through and get rid of the ones that are causing the problems and that's a real problem the animals tend to make the the cattle and or sheep graze differently they they don't want to go out because they're going to be harassed run by the wolves and so you know they don't they're afraid of so that was another issue and water of course is always an issue with Farm Bureau and it been an issue as long as I can remember in what regard well the it seems like as we progressed over the years there's been more and more confrontation over water with the state and the state has they came up with 1010 program which was a or is a program and it is in effect right now that shall we say graded the streams and when I say that some of the streams are intermittent and don't even run water part of the year but they said we have to have the ultimate temperature for fish and most of our streams in Jackson County and around Oregon cannot meet the temperature standard we're fortunate on this creek little butte creek always did run plenty of water it has always been a mainstay it is the mainstay of Jackson County it provides water to talent irrigation Medford it does all of Medford irrigation all of Rogue Rivers irrigation plus all of the irrigation along the stream and it has plenty of water there is about 40 40 some second feet that is their springs under Fish Lake and those springs historically always produced about 40 some second feet of water fact about a few a few years ago we had a irrigation company that was complaining that they were supplementing our water because there just couldn't be that kind of water coming out so as soon as the end of the irrigation season happened the water folks measured the water that was coming in and lo and behold there was more than 42nd feet of water in a drought year so they never we never heard any more about that that is they died up dried up but this creek does have lots of water and it does provide road the road valley with with all of the most all of the irrigation now we get some and and and people don't realize that up above around Fish Lake there's a ditch that runs all the way over to Howard Prairie and so during the winter they move water from here over to Howard Prairie which is for talent irrigation district and that's a big ditch and it runs really full and so that's how they get that water over there and then during the the irrigation season they can do some interchanging down below on water so we have water issues all the time and the thing about it is we're getting to a point where we can't develop water anymore because of the quote environmental standards that we have but the problem is if you look at it and you look at this logically why is it bad to develop water and save it and let it run through the streams in the summer and if you're really interested in fish that's when you need to have the water in these streams and so so that was a big issue and in 1964 we had a tremendous flood through here and that's how we started to build lost Crick Dam and we built Applegate Dam that we finally got started on Elk Creek and they went ahead and knocked that but that was part of the water issue we were doing trying to build dams and trying to solve problems right now if we have really heavy rain Elk Creek runs a tremendous amount of water so they have to shut down the other two and of course hopefully it doesn't run too long because if it does we'll have another flood on a Rogue River but that 64 was a was pretty dang good flood I can tell you I was I was right here we're trying to keep our county government on a shall we say way or mainstream that does not adversely affect us in agriculture and they could they could do things with water and air and different things that can definitely affect our cells in this county and we we are also well right now it's it's kind of over but we were involved in the GMO issue and we fought the GMO issue not because of the GMO but it took a tool out of the toolbox of the farmers and Jackson County Farm Bureau supports all types of farming whether it be organic farming subsistence farming GMO it doesn't matter what it is we support them all but we had some folks that moved in as our secretary of agriculture told the folks in Australia they were farmers gardeners that moved into the Ashland area and they're the ones that really pushed this GMO issue I think there is one or two real seed people in that area that could have had some legitimate problems but when you talk to them they really didn't have the problems that the that the quote backyard gardener had so that's why we opposed that it wasn't because of the GMO it was you were taking a tool away from some farmers we had several farmers that sued on the right to farm and they ended up being allowed to keep their alfalfa unbeknownst to the quote gardeners that we had a lot of alfalfa in Jackson County they didn't they could care less all they cared about was they wanted that designation on their organic food but we did have a lot and they sued and the court said yes you can keep your crops until the end of the period of time that they are producing like alfalfa you know six eight years they can keep it until it's done but then you can't put GMO alfalfa back but what it does is on the GMO alfalfa it allows that farmer to produce twice as much hay to be able to sell so what in essence was done was the GMO band that was passed cut the farmers incomes and I don't believe in that I think they should be able to raise what they want to raise on their own place and we have a lot of marijuana now that's being raised we have a neighbor up here has 8,000 plans and I was during that GMO thing I was with the head of the Department of Agriculture at Davis and she really sharp gal and she said you know it's gonna be interesting one day most of your marijuana or cannabis as we like to call it now is genetically modified in some way and the way our band was written it will make us or make the county go out and stop most of the marijuana being raised in Jackson County and Jackson County happens to be produced one-third of the marijuana that's raised in the state of Oregon that was a figure I got out of the Mayo Tribune not long ago if you're you're raising cannabis we have cannabis growers and that fine we've been talking up north we put on our Oregon Farm Bureau put on a large cannabis affair where people come and learn the only problem we have with the cannabis folks is a lot of them are not following the law and that is their stealing water and taking water to water these plants where they don't have water rights and those types of things and that's the only thing that we have at the County Farm Bureau that we can find of any problem now if the federal government the US Department of Agriculture ever comes down and starts to say that cannabis is a crop and then they start to put on rules and regulations as to what they can and can't spray right now there is they can't spray anything on their cannabis because it's all off labor and it has to be on label if you're going to spray it on your crops and so when we go to spray something it has to be a label that says we can use it on this particular crop and when they do that there will be a the US Department of Agriculture will be involved because these people right now are doing it they need some way to control the mites and control the mold situation they have you there's no question about it the mites need to be controlled and some of them are doing it and they're off label they could be liable if somebody ever got sick on that marijuana or cannabis that they raised if they could go back to them and go after them so that's another problem that we see coming up but as far as accounting concerns we have no problem with the cannabis people we're fine they can raise all they long as long as they follow the law that's all we care about because we all have to do it if we just step out of line little we got the State Department of Agriculture right there they have our environmental people say oh they're spraying over here that's bad well as long as it's on the label and we don't have drift and those kinds of things and we use prudent practices then we have no problem even though those folks don't want us to spray there's a lot of people that don't want any spray but you don't have spray you got a real problem it's like grain in this country and soybeans and corn raised in the country without being able to spray it to get rid of those weeds it's a real problem all through the whole country the monument issue as far as County Farm Bureau is concerned we have members that have permits adjacent to the area or in the area that the monument covers and what happened in the past was the BLM begin in the last monument that Clinton put in they started to shut gates shut row put up gates shut roads and cut permits on the permit these because they didn't want them in the monument and it got to a point that they were saying well we're gonna end up having to give this thing up so one of the environmental groups and I don't know which one it was I don't remember I have heard but said well we'll give you so much for your permit and we'll give it back to the federal government and so it was they like to say a voluntary turnover of the permits well it's not what I call a voluntary when they're holding a gun to your head and it's going to put you out of business because of the cuts and that's just what will happen again in this next monument expansion it could could it will run one of the guys is five or six generations right here in Eagle Point it'll run them out of business no question about it so that's a real problem and we also have the problem of fire with out maintaining the roads and gating the place of the roads and that kind of stuff it makes it harder to fight fire and that's a real concern because we get all this smoke in the valley and it's it's really hard on a lot of people but you know we're kind of really do for a big fire over and in the Ashland area where the monument is there's a lot of brush growing up and that tends and without cattle in there you tend to have more grass and so for monument if a fire gets started it burns and it's really hot so that it tend to go higher on the trees and kill more trees and do that kind of stuff so that's a big issue for us it also the county should be concerned in the fact that it's taking revenue away from Jackson County and the common school fund for the state of Oregon that's that's pretty pretty important that we maintain our schools or at least try to maintain our schools and by taking the O and C lands in a checkerboard manner which does not make any sense to me but what it does is it prepares for another expansion of the monument because we'll have a lot of people left inside of the monument and a lot of them will want to get out and it kind of goes up and around a big arm up like this and they'll want to block it all in so and every time you do away with with one of those private lands and it goes into government hands there's no more taxes so it costs our county and cost each one of us more money in the county so that's a big issue with us and then they have the other one over in Malheur County that's going to take I don't know see the 40 or 60 percent the ohi ohi or ohi monument gonna take 60 percent up to 60 percent of the county the counties are the only members of the Oregon Farm Bureau okay so I think there's 32 counties 32 county farm bureaus in the state covers all the counties they are the member for the Oregon Farm Bureau the counties are the ones that tell the state Farm Bureau what to do and we have a policy book and we come up with resolutions at the county level and send those on to the state level where the local when I say that the the state board on that particular issue whether it's livestock whether it's fill-in removal whether it's aggregate whatever the issue water might be taxation gets a hold of it and they get to look at it and say well this makes sense and this doesn't then they send a note back to the county telling us why did this part didn't work but we'll forward it on but we're going to edit it out but they leave it there so that the whole House of Delegates and we have a House of Delegates once a year can see what was originally written and we may not agree with the particular group when I say group I mean taxation maybe we don't agree with their thinking and so we will say no we don't want to we don't want we want to leave that particular wording in so that we can work towards a this down the road and so we'll leave something in even though the committee said no but the full House of Delegates sets all of the policy we set all the policy then we have and we elect representative regional people and they're all the board of directors of the Oregon farm girl and we have our president vice president we have three president first vice president second vice president third vice president the first vice president runs the convention the second vice president handles national affairs and the third vice president handles all of the committees in the state and so you know we always have some expertise from the board on all the committees as well as members of the local County Farm Bureau our local County Farm Bureau meets for a community meeting where we try to surface issues that may be something that we need to talk about in the county or we need to educate the membership something's coming up and we need to be talking about it so that the membership can can be on a equal part with the folks that are bringing that issue forward so we do that at our county and we meet once is once once a month the third the third Tuesday a month and then we also have a board meeting once a month and that's where we take care of the nuts and bolts of the operation in other words we look at the budget we keep the things that have been authorized to pay we pay the bills and you know we send out the the membership billing we do everything that you do in a typical corporation at the board meeting if we don't if we don't know our county government and our officials then we can't go to them and say here's our problem and be able to sit down and visit with them on a one-to-one basis and explain what our problems are and that is something that we need to be able to do to inform them of what our policies are both county and state on a particular issue doesn't matter what the issue is but we need to be able to have that back and forth so we can educate them and they can educate us is what it amounts to and it's very very important if we do the same thing with the state next month we happen to have a senator coming Herman bear sugar for he's part of one of the center Jackson County he will be at our County Farm Bureau meeting and and it's gonna be a Christmas party but he will have a minute to say a few words and we'll just sit and visit I mean you know people visit and you get to know them and so if there is a problem you can go to their office and talk to them and that is just you just can't imagine how important that is yeah I think the effectiveness of County Farm Bureau depends upon the people in that particular County Farm Bureau and those people in that County Farm Bureau deal with the issues that come up we have been working very hard on on our young farm and rancher program it's it's a program that they have a meeting and they learn about farming same as we do excuse me at their meeting young farmers ranchers they have to be 35 or younger and fortunate we have a very good young farm rancher person and I see that as our future down the road they're learning and the more they can learn and be informed the better farmers and or whatever farming turns into will be down the road the actual farmers tends to be in the County Farm Bureau tends to be just holding its own but we have several types of membership and those types of member we have an associate membership and that associate membership is something that was developed when we had the insurance company and we sold the insurance company country company and when we did we kept a relationship with country companies and so if you're a member you want to have a country company policy you have to be a member of the Jackson County Farm Bureau and so it's worked out good for them and it's worked out really good for us and we have last year we had 4944 members in Jackson County in the farm what do we get anything exciting we got the capital press