Something rotten is happening in the Oregon Coast Range. It has been festering and getting worse for over 30 years, and none of the government agencies or environmental organizations dedicated to protecting biodiversity and watershed function have said boo. There is a theme in human history of turning a blind eye. People and organizations have … Read more

I am a big fan of good data, basic math, and logic. There is so much we can understand about where we are, where we have come from and where we might go with these three simple ingredients. Here is an example: AREA OF HABITABLE VEGETATED LAND ON EARTH: 25.6 billion acres HUMAN POPULATION 2025: … Read more

To the Climate Adapted Plants group (and anyone else that cares): Changing climate translates to changing selective forces. The adaptation of our flora to these changing forces is going to involve novel modes of selection acting on genetic variation that is present or potentially present in our local plant populations. The amount of genetic variation, … Read more

Step right up folks, and feast your eyes on the glorious wonder that is the North American beaver! We have, right here on our farm, the single largest beaver dam in the Pacific Northwest. It is nearly 1000 feet long and over 7 feet high, and most remarkably, beaver have constructed this gargantuan dam, stick … Read more

In their 1969 treatment of Pacific Northwest Iris, Hitchcock and Cronquist noted that Iris tenax, the Oregon iris, with all its remarkable variability in color, was especially to be enjoyed along Willamette Valley highways. Unfortunately, decades of roadside and grass field spraying have reduced this once common plant, and it is now exceedingly rare along … Read more

For those of you involved in the restoration and management of native plants, it’s time to get serious and do the math, assuming you actually want to make a difference, whatever that means for you. For some of you, perhaps it means a future world where nature functions to support a diversity of wild populations … Read more

If you are a plant population biologist, what’s not to love about willows? Don’t get me started…oops..too late! Earlier I introduced to you an undescribed hybrid between Salix prolixa and Salix sitchensis https://schollsvalley.com/notes-from-the-farm-28-september-2025-more-climate-adapted-willows/. This hybrid has emerged spontaneously here at the farm, and it has almost certainly emerged in other locations where these two species … Read more

We tend to think of willows, with their long stamens and dioecious nature, as wind-pollinated, but bees certainly play a role in moving willow pollen around. In fact, willows attract swarms of bees of many kinds, from tiny solitary bees to honeybees to bumblebees, and Scouler willow in particular does it at a time when … Read more

Our farm is the most beautiful place in the world. That’s a pretty grand claim, but for me it is true, and I couldn’t be more grateful. Both my parents came from farm families, and owning my own place has been a life-long aspiration. We bought Half Mile Farm in 2008, moved the nursery here … Read more

Willamette Valley prairies – what’s left of them anyway – are a sight to behold. What an unbelievable Garden of Eden we had here. When white settlers first showed up in the Willamette Valley, they encountered this: Hundreds of thousands of acres of wildflowers were ours to do with as we would and now, there … Read more