The North American Branch of the Maple Society will hold its annual meeting in the Portland area this October! The conference will be Friday-Sunday, Oct. 9-11, at the Embassy Suites hotel near Washington Square mall in Tigard, Ore. Among the speakers will be Dick Van der Maat, a grower of Japanese maples from Boskoop, The […]
Hot hot heat
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Not to be alarmist, and you probably already knew it was going to be hot this week, but weather prognosticator Rufus LaLone says it could reach 105 in the western valleys of the Pacific Northwest by next weekend. That’s the kind of weather that’s supposed to happen in Vegas (and stay in Vegas, not make […]
Farwest Show Nursery Tours offer ‘special discoveries’
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Issued today by the Oregon Association of Nurseries: Wilsonville, Ore. – Biodynamic farming techniques, Oregon wine tasting, conifer arboretum, a national award-winning zoo and one of the country’s largest cut flower businesses. These are a few of the discoveries in store for guests at the 2009 Farwest Show Nursery Tours. Most important, the tours include […]
Hoop house bill passes House, also
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Yesterday we told you that House Bill 2904 (HTML|PDF) passed the Oregon Senate. Today we can report that it passed the Oregon House by a 59-0 vote. The bill blocks a move by the Oregon Department of Revenue to treat hoop houses as permanent structures on property tax statements. Without the bill, nursery owners would […]
Hip hoop hooray
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Hoop house growers are no doubt rejoicing as House Bill 2904 passed the Oregon Senate this afternoon, 28-0. Next the bill goes back to the House for concurrence.
Headed to the governor
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Senate Bill 570 (HTML|PDF) received final approval from the Legislature today and is headed for Gov. Ted Kulongoski’s desk. The bill would address metal thefts by requiring scrap dealers to keep more thorough records, produce them when demanded by law enforcement, and pay sellers by check mailed to their street address, rather than cash.
Legal language
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The new version of House Bill 2904 that deals with threatened hoop house taxation is now posted on the Web (HTML|PDF). It’s a multipurpose bill dealing with exclusive farm use designations and other matters; the pertinent language for hoop house owners specifically is contained way down at the bottom: A real property building, structure or […]
Hoop house relief
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A whole lot of nurseries may soon be breathing a sigh of relief. Earlier this week we talked about the possibility that hoop houses – the unheated, frame-and-plastic enclosures growers use to protect plants and ready them for market – could be assessed on property tax statements as if they were permanent structures. It’s a change […]
Organic equivalency
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U.S. and Canadian officials have struck an agreement for organic equivalency. In other words, if something has met the Canadian standards to be certified organic, then it is also deemed to be certified organic by the United States, and vice versa. Read about it at The Packer Web site.
Knocked for a hoop
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This spring, the Oregon Department of Revenue (ODR) proposed a rule change that would tax hoop houses as if they were permanent structures – a move that could greatly add to the tax bills of growers who own dozens if not hundreds of the poly-film enclosures. OAN Director of Government Relations Jeff Stone testified before […]