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The Urban-Rural Exchange bridges Oregon’s greatest divide.
Wallowa barn and landscape
Wallowa County in northeast Oregon was the destination for one of this year’s four exchanges. The young guests from the city arrived in the thick of calving season, a dynamic leap into ranch life. Photo by Lynn Ketchum.

Six lanes of Portland traffic filled the rear-view mirror as the van headed
east on I-84. On the left, the Columbia flowed through its gorge below giant
windmills scattered like toys, turning with the breezes. After a few hours,
sagebrush took the place of Douglas-fir and fern.

The riders from Portland’s Sunnyside Environmental School had reason to be
nervous as they watched the familiar give way to the unknown. And it wasn’t
just the landscape that would change.

The 15 middle-school students were already immersed in a life-broadening experience:
the 4-H Urban-Rural Exchange program, sponsored by Oregon State University
Extension Service. For five years, host families from Grant, Klamath, and Wallowa
counties have opened their homes and lives (sometimes nervously) to city kids.
In turn, Multnomah County families introduce rural students to life in Portland.

Wallowa County in northeast Oregon was the destination for one of this year’s
four exchanges. The young guests from the city arrived in the thick of calving
season, a dynamic leap into ranch life.

students arriving
The Portland students (above) weren't sure what to expect when they arrived in Wallowa County to stay with rancher Charley Phillips and his wife Ramona. Soon, the students were pitching in to help with all the chores, including branding calves at the Birkmaier ranch (below). Photos by Lynn Ketchum.
branding

Deep in the Wallowa Mountains, hosts Tom and Kelly Birkmaier and a crew of
friends rounded up 65 calves for branding. While unhappy mother cows bawled
in the distance, the job was to brand, inoculate, and ear-tag the calves as
quickly as possible while muscling them securely into a metal chute.

This was no spectator sport for Portland middle-schoolers Zoe O’Toole and
Birch Clark. Although reticent at first (“I’m not really sure how I feel about
branding,” Zoe had confided earlier), the girls gamely took turns with both
the branding iron and the syringe.

Down in the valley at another host home, a cow notched up her tail, and three
other city students learned what that meant: the cow was ready to give birth.
Lanie Novick and her middle-school colleagues watched in awe as the calf dropped
from its mother’s womb while Lanie docu- mented the event on her cell phone.
Ramona and Charley Phillips, who hosted the girls at their ranch near Joseph,
were impressed with the students’ enthusiasm and unending questions as they
collected eggs each morning and tossed baled hay from the back of a truck to
a “sea of cows.”

Calving season knows no time clock. After midnight, the girls bumped along
with the Phillipses in their pickup truck, scanning the range with spotlights
in search of cows with newborns. The girls learned that if they spotted cows
bawling and bunched up around their calves, there might be predators such as
cougars or wolves stalking nearby.

snapshot on digital camera
Seventh grader Lanie Novick (above) displays a memorable snapshot of her Sunnyside classmate Julia Glancy holding a newborn lamb. The learning experience includes classroom time at the Imnaha School (below), where five local students make up the total K-8 enrollment. Photos by Lynn Ketchum.
classroom at Imnaha School

Part of each exchange includes spending a day at the host school. Portland
students Morgaen Schall and Joseph Unfred swelled enrollment of the one-room
schoolhouse in Imnaha by 40 percent on the day they went to class with the
school’s five local students.

Morgaen and Joseph both love working with horses in Portland but prefer being
“in the middle of nowhere.” Their stay was not romantic—mending fences seldom
is—but they enjoyed the outdoor work, and to show their appreciation, the two
boys made a special Sunday breakfast for their hosts, Cynthia and Dan Warnock
and their three sons.

More than half of the urban-rural exchange students have kept in touch with
their host families. Sometimes during the summer they cross back over the cultural
divide to reunite with their hosts and to share the experience with their parents.
The exchange expands when parents get involved. Thirty families in Portland
now buy beef directly from a host rancher as part of a new beef cooperative,
an idea that grew from the young people’s exchange.

feeding cattle
Back on the ranch (above), feeding time is fun for students and cows. In Portland, students used mass transit to navigate the city (below). Photos by Lynn Ketchum.
Portland Max train riders

“The basic mission of 4-H is education for youth,” said Jed Smith, a 4-H faculty
member at the Extension office in Klamath Falls. “But 4-H also involves parents
in Extension education. When you get young people in the conversation, you’ve
got a good start towards better understanding between remote rural Oregon and
the rest of the state.” Smith wants his urban visitors to experience first-hand
the life of rural ranchers and farmers. “They see that ranch families are good
with animal husbandry, they’re responsible stewards of the land, but they face
different challenges than urban families,” he said.

One of those challenges is the reintroduction of wolves, which sparked the
creation of the urban-rural exchange. In 2005, after Sunnyside students completed
a class project on how westward U.S. settlement affected wildlife, the students
gave testimony at a state Fish and Wildlife Commission hearing in favor of
reintroducing wolves. The urban students didn’t expect that their opinions
would spark controversy in rural Oregon, where ranchers bemoaned that city
dwellers didn’t understand rural life. To foster better understanding across
the state, OSU 4-H and Sunnyside joined forces to create the first Urban-Rural
Exchange in 2006.

Portland skyline from tram
Students from Klamath County get a tram’s-eye-view of Portland (above) while Hot Lips pizza shows off their spin cycle (below). Photos by Lynn Ketchum.
students at Hot Lips Pizza

Everyone involved that first year, from both sides of the Cascades, ventured
into unfamiliar territory. At least one rancher would have pulled out at the
last minute if the city kids were not already on their way. However, at the
end of five days of sharing chores and meals together, both students and families
described the exchange as one of the best experiences of their lives.

Each year, some of the city students come home thinking that farming and ranching
would be professions they’d like to pursue. “We want them to learn about the
care of natural resources from a rural perspective,” said Maureen Hosty, the
OSU 4-H Extension faculty member who coordinates the exchange. “Sometimes they
take it to a personal level. They want to live there.”

Fewer rural students visiting Portland express a strong desire to relocate
to the city. Perhaps city living is an acquired taste. Dylan Denton and Trevor
Wentz, both from Wallowa County, enjoyed their day exploring mass transit and
gliding over the skyline by tram. But considering that a square mile in Portland
is home to 3,939 people, and in Wallowa County, it’s home to 2, they had to
conclude, “There are too many people!” Nevertheless, according to their host
family mom, Dylan and Trevor readily took to “a crash course” in riding bicycles
in city traffic, even while pedaling in cowboy boots.

dinner on the ranch
The bustle of city life contrasts with the quiet of dinner time after a long day’s work on the ranch. Photo by Lynn Ketchum.

Portland hosts helped their rural visitors understand sustainable urban
living. They climbed to the top of city buildings to see rooftop landscapes
that temper winter stormwater and summer heat. They visited the city’s massive
recycling system. And they walked through one of Portland’s 20 farmers markets,
where they ran into a potato vendor from faraway Wallowa County.

More city kids have made the exchange than their rural counterparts, and Hosty
encourages more students from rural Oregon to visit Portland. “We want to
build a strong bridge of understanding that goes both ways,” she said. The
bustle of city life contrasts with the quiet of dinner time after a long day’s
work on the ranch.

“We have a lot more in common than we realize,” Hosty said. “But if we don’t
spend some time walking in each other’s shoes, then misunderstandings will
continue to divide our state.” The 4-H Urban-Rural Exchange can make a difference.
“Kids are leading the way and are willing to spend some time to learn. And
the real learning happens in family homes at the dinner table.”

Published in: Innovations, People