Author: Hailey Rice

Despite growing up in the grass seed capital of the world, Hailey’s childhood connection to agriculture ran no deeper than a girl’s voracious appetite for Little House on the Prairie books and an inherent love of animals. She thought she might like to grow up to be an accountant until she spent her 19th summer on a hay crew with a farm boy. That’s when everything changed. She fell in love with long days spent under a sunny, summer sky doing good, honest work. In the years since, she’s learned to drive a tractor, bucked her fair share of hay bales, and worked on a grass-fed cattle ranch with its own direct-marketing program. She graduated from Oregon State University with a B.S. in Agronomy focusing on forage production, plant physiology, pasture-based agroecosystems, and soil health. She still loves grass and sunshine almost as much as the farm boy and their yellow lab, Hesston. Hailey is interested in economically and ecologically sustainable agricultural practices so that farming families everywhere can stay on their land, do what they love, and make a profit. Her Little-House-on-the-Prairie heart hopes for a future where folks understand and appreciate the precious connection between farmers, their animals, and the land.

October 19, 2020

Want to Know How to Get the Most From Your Pastures? Ask a Dairy Grazier

When Oregon dairy farmer Jon Bansen decided Double J Jerseys was going all grass fed in 2017, he faced a challenge. Milk production requires a tremendous amount of energy, so pasture forages really need to pack a punch. He also needed resilience, and feed that would hold up through heat, cold and drought. Finally, milk […]

October 5, 2020

Getting Paid For Good Grazing: The Carbon Market of the Future

Oregon Forage and Grassland Council’s free Zoom series “Lunch With Forages” kicked off last week with a look at a potential new revenue stream for graziers: trading good grazing practices for cash. Debbie Reed, the Executive Director of Ecosystem Services Marketing Consortium, was the featured speaker and she described the carbon market and making it […]

August 24, 2020

Make Sure Your Equipment Doesn’t Turn Into Just a Pile of Steel

“I need you to come right away. The driveline just snapped off the baler” “IT DID WHAT?! Shut it down. I’ll be there in five minutes” Click. The heat of the afternoon sun smacks me in the face as I scramble down the steps of the big, blue New Holland PowerStar 120. I hit the […]

April 27, 2020

Why Bother With T-posts? How Costa Rica Adjusted My Attitude

As an Agricultural Sciences student at Oregon State University, my brain is nearly always marinating in sustainable agroecosystem concepts. I fall asleep with thoughts meandering between pollinator concerns, cover-cropping, soil microbes, grazing, and how in the world I fit into the overall picture. I bore my family to death with intricate details of grass growth […]