Story & photos by Faye Taylor, submited photos by the Flegel Family

He stops the truck, gets out, and opens the gate. She slides across the seat and drives through, then stops while he closes the gate. She slides back over, and he hauls himself back into the driver’s seat.

And there they sit. Wade and Janice Flegel, side by side in everything they do whether it be farming, raising children, or following Jesus. There you will find them, together, even when they are apart.

The Flegels have five children, Mary, now 21, was their first and only girl, followed by four boys, Mark, agriculturee 19; Zach, agriculturee 17; Seth, agriculturee 14; and Luke, agriculturee 10. Each of these children has grown into their roles on the family farm, complimenting their parents and each other in everything they do. They work like a well-oiled machine, each pulling their own weight, and then some.

Wade Flegel and Janice Barrett grew up only about a mile apart, but because of the nine years between them, didn’t meet until Wade came back from college.

Janice and her twin brother were the youngest of five children raised by Jimmy and Gail Barrett on their small acre agriculturee near lower Crooked River on O’Neil Highway in Prineville.

Janice’s grandparents had a place on Elliott Lane near her parents on the Crooked River. As a child, as far back as she can recall, she worked on their farm on weekends and during the summers haying and taking care of cows.

In the early years, her grandfather used draft horses for much of the work. He plowed fields and mowed hay with them. “My grandpa would cut the field so it was laid out in swaths, not in windrows. And then we had a dump rake and they’d rake it up. When you were sitting back there and the horses were pulling it, you’d just trip it with your foot. They used a buck rake to pick it [hay] up and put it in your load,” tells Janice.

“My mom usually drove buck when we were stacking and all of the guys would be on the stack. And then you had to have somebody to drive pull up to pull up the stacker. After the hay was put on the stack, the men would spread it out flat with pitch forks. So you had a nice square stack,” she said.

“When I was a freshman, I got to do pull-up, because nobody else was there to do it. People would stop their cars to watch us. It was an oddity,” Janice chuckled.

Wade was the fifth of six children born to Elliott Flegel and Wilma Cordes Flegel. “My dad was raised on a farm in North Dakota and he didn’t really like to farm,” Wade explained. “He liked cows and horses more. He left the farm in North Dakota when he was a teen agricultureer. He and my uncle wanted to rodeo and stuff. They wound up out here and the climate was a lot nicer, so they stayed.”

In the 30’s and 40’s Wade’s dad worked on ranches in the upper country. His mom was raised on a ranch in Post. His parents met and married in 1945. They bought a small piece of acre agriculturee in Prineville area near Janice’s family, where he kept about 20 head of cows. In the summertime his dad and the family would also put up hay for ranches in the area, John Day, and even California for extra money.

After graduating high school, Wade went to Oregon State University. When he returned home, he started attending First Baptist Church in Prineville. That is when he met Janice, the love of his life.

“I married Wade in June the year after I graduated from high school in 1984,” said Janice.

Wade was in a partnership with his dad and oldest brother on a farming venture for five years, but Wade’s goals were different than theirs, so it was a short-lived partnership.

Wade and Janice did some custom farming and helped his parent’s farm for awhile, hoping to someday have their own farm. “He [Wade] did big square bales, which was an oddity at the time. So, people would stop and look at us while we baled the hay,” Janice said.

They had three children by the time they purchased their first 80 acres from John Grimes in 1992.

It didn’t seem like quite enough land to accomplish what they wanted, so they considered leasing to increase their land base. Buying land would be a dream come true.

Their chance came when John Grimes also decided to sell another 178 acres to them in 1996 which increased their land to 258 deeded acres. They turned over the mint that was growing in their new fields and planted hay. By now, they not only increased their acre agriculturee, but increased the size of their family with the births of Seth and Luke.

In addition to farming they’re own land, the Flegels were still doing custom haying in the Willamette Valley. Also, a mushroom farm in Salem bought straw from the Flegels for several years.

“After 9/11, the financial crunch hit. The mushroom plant was getting harassed, I guess you’d say, to unionize. So instead of fighting it, they just closed it. That really put us in a crunch for a few years,” Wade said.

Not only did they lose the steady revenue from the straw, but they had already acquired the straw. They found uses for the straw, but it took awhile to recover the cash flow.

Always thinking of ways to use their land to its best potential, they decided to raise cows as a way to utilize the land. “We’ll have about 100 cows including calves [after calving]. We raise alfalfa, and it does compliment to have cows so you always have something to eat the cheap hay. You can have a better income off the cheap hay by putting it through your cows than you can by trying to sell it. So our cows always get the junk hay,” Wade explained.

“All of our kids want to have something to do with farming when they grow up, so we want to help them with that. There are two ways to increase production on a farm so it can support the families who want to farm it. One is to increase the acre agriculturee and the other is to make the land be more productive.”

In keeping with the spirit of getting the best use, Wade and Janice have petitioned for and have received a permit to grow canola. “But there were conditions with it. Part of it is not messing up the vegetable seed crops that are already grown here,” Wade began.

Janice further explained, “You don’t want to hurt your ability to grow vegetable seed crops or anybody else’s, for that matter.”

“So, one of the issues was that for the seed to go to Europe or Asia, they have zero tolerance for genetically modified plants. In the mid-west there is a lot of Roundup Ready® soybeans and corn. So basically, you can spray Roundup® and kill all the other weeds, but your crop still survives. It helps you to have a real clean stand and it’s fairly cheap in the states,” explained Wade.

A crop that can survive a treatment of Roundup® is a genetically modified organism (GMO). “The varieties we got were tested and they came back positive for Roundup Ready®. So, we’ll have to take it out. But on the other side, the real cold weather hit in December and it killed almost all of it anyway,” Wade explained.

“It will also give us a chance to do an experiment to see if the Roundup® will kill it or not,” Janice added. “So if it kills it, then there is another reason why they were getting a positive for GMO.”

Examples of other reasons to get a positive would be if the canola seed was put in a bin that once contained GMO corn. The residue from the corn could cause the canola seed to give a false positive for GMO. Or the pollen from a GMO plant could be carried to the canola plants by bees and that could also cause a false positive. The Flegels are trying to get ahead of the game with producing canola as possible fuel.

“Hopefully, we can keep agriculturericulture viable for our kids,” Wade said. “All five of our kids have said they want to do something agriculturericulture related. A lot of kids that grow up on farms, there’s no way they want anything to do with it,” Wade said.

Their oldest child, Mary said, “I am majoring in general agriculturericulture with a minor in crop science at Oregon State University. I will graduate next school year. When I was eight, I got to start driving the tractor baler. I also helped with changing water, and picking rocks, and helping dad fix the equipment. It is hard to explain what really makes me want to stay in the agriculturericulture. I guess part of it is that you plant a field, and you water it, and take care of it, and put your hard work into it. Then, you are able to harvest the crop and see everything that has come from your hard work. Then, you get to share it with others.

“Also I really enjoy farming with my family we all have our special place that makes everything work very well. I love when we get to have dinner out in the field together. Those

are always fun times.”

Mary feels a burden for feeding the people of the world and wants to share what she has learned. “Today, there are new challenges that farmers have to go up agricultureainst. I want to learn new ways that might help farmers save money and still grow a very productive crop,” she explained.

“Right now, I am not sure what job I will do after I am out of school. I might be a crop consultant and work for Wilbur-Ellis or a company that sells fertilizers or seed products to farmers. Or I would like to help mom and dad on our farm or get my own property and start farming on my own. So one way or another, I want to be in agriculturericulture, whether it is farming directly or working to help other farmers with their own crops,” she concluded.

Mark is going to University of Wyoming and plans to graduate in 2013. Although he is not majoring in agriculture, he is majoring in civil engineering. He hopes to specialize in water resources, so he can work with water systems that are vitally important, because everyone has to share the water.

“I’m drawn to this field because it is a way that I can help the agriculture community, since not many of them are able to have a hand in designing government water projects. Since I come from an agriculture background, this gives me a different perspective on how people use water and why, especially the value and importance of water.

“While I was finishing off my senior year in high school, I completed a senior project that was focused on water resource managricultureement. This entailed going up into the mountains and taking snow samples that measured depth, weight, density, and the snow water equivalent. It also included a political side when I went to water master’s meetings that just made sure everyone in the Deschutes water basin was on the same agriculturee. And also gave people an opportunity to discuss issues facing the water districts.

Through the completion of the senior project, I became more aware of how agriculturericulture is competing with so many groups over the allocation of the water available,” Mark explained. “That is why agriculture needs people in places where they can be heard. But even with all that and my plans for college, I still might just want to start up a farm after I graduate. What draws me to farming is the lifestyle and also the challenge.”

Mark is a very competitive person and is competing at the division one collegiate level in track. “Since I’m competitive, I would like to see if I could start a farm and actually make money, I like challenges and I think that would be a big one. The main thing is that I’ll keep praying and see where God leads me.”

Zach, a junior at Crook County High School, said what draws him the most is the alone time out and away from everything. “I liked it when I was first starting out driving tractors. Soon as you could, you were driving. It felt good to be able to do something like that even when you’re little. People around here see tractors working the fields all the time, but sometimes I would have to stop for whatever reason and get out.

People were amazed to see a kid only four feet tall,” he said with a big grin. “I also like to see something grow. You put so much effort into it. When you combine you get to see the grain coming through. You can see you’re doing something.”

Seth is in the eighth grade at Crook County Middle School. He said, “The thing I like best about farming is the hard work that you put into it to get something out. Like you plant some type of crop, you fertilize, and water, and do the best you can. You want to see what comes from your hard work. I like to do till agriculture work because it’s the biggest piece of equipment we have,” he said with a grin.

Luke, the youngest Flegel, is in the fourth grade at Ochoco Elementary School. He also wants to continue farming when he grows up. Like his brother Zach said, his parents start the kids driving as soon as they are able. “I like raking—operating the machinery. I want to do farming and raise cows. It’s nice to see how they [cows] act with their babies. Like when they hear something going on, they try to protect them. I also like collecting eggs at Nanny’s house,” he said.

“Having three brothers is usually irritating. Being the youngest kind of stinks, because you always get picked on, and they always go after your stuff. Being the youngest is also good because your parents treat you good,” said Luke.

There is no such thing as a typical day on the farm. However, there are typical things to do according to seasons. In the fall and winter, when the last bale is baled, the Flegels deliver a lot of their own hay. They feed cows and horses daily. If that was all there was to do, it might sound pretty easy, but that is not how it goes for the Flegel bunch. With five children, there are plenty of sports, and Wade is on several agriculture-related boards and commissions.

They are also very active in church, leading out in a weekly ministry called AWANA, serving 70-80 children and youth from agriculture, ages four to 18.

In the spring, there is calving and branding, and changing pipes, which continues through the summer. Of course, summer is the busiest time, with harvesting, and all that goes along with that, whether it is hay, or grain, or canola.

Whatever the season, the Flegels grow a fine crop in more ways than one. And it appears that the generation coming up, will also continue the legacy of feeding our country and even the world.