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Moving day
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When the Pickseed Companies Group acquired Seed Research of Oregon (www.sroseed.com) in early 2005, employees at the Oregon-based company had no idea what changes the new ownership might bring. They certainly never expected to be asked to move a farm, especially a farm where SRO’s director of research, Leah Brilman, and her crew have been developing new turfgrasses for 14 years.
SRO had been leasing its 40-acre farm, so it made good economic sense to use a nearby facility owned by Pickseed — but that didn’t make moving any easier.
To appreciate why the move was so difficult, it helps to understand how a turfgrass-breeding program uses a farm. With most farms, one would assume that the current crop would be harvested and the farmer could easily start over with a new crop in a new location. However, numerous “crops” are grown on a turfgrass-breeding farm, where each small plot has a different cultivar. For some cultivars, turf seed is started in the greenhouse in flats and then transplanted into the fields. In the greenhouse, the breeder also “grows up” germplasm (grasses collected from older golf courses and other sites for evaluation and crossing into existing material). These plants will eventually be moved to outdoor plots.
After the greenhouse plants are transplanted in the field, they must be kept free of weeds, irrigated and treated with fungicides if necessary. Any plant that does not match its cultivar block because of heading date, growth form, color or seed yield is removed. The remaining plants are harvested by hand. These may be single plants, maternal lines (all the plants have the same mother and a select group of fathers) or bulk harvest. The harvested seed must be threshed and cleaned before it is placed in turf trials, used to start more spaced plants or designated as breeder seed for establishment of Foundation fields.
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Seed from some cultivars will be planted at the new farm. However, in order to preserve the genetic integrity of bentgrass and seeded bermudagrass cultivars, individual plants had to be removed from the original field plots and transplanted to flats, where they were watered and carefully tended to ensure that they were alive and growing again.
Moving these plants, which literally represent SRO’s future, was more difficult than anticipated. With virtually no rain in the Corvallis, Ore., area until mid-September, many of the grasses at the research farm had gone dormant and the soil was very hard, making digging difficult.
Once all the plants were removed from the plots and successfully reestablished in the greenhouse, everything remaining in the fields was destroyed by spraying Roundup.
But the farm was home to more than plants: equipment, paperwork, people and even a cat all needed to be transplanted as well. Brilman found herself unexpectedly sentimental about some of the machinery left behind. “We worked hard to find some of the equipment that is being junked,” she says. “It has served us well … It’s like giving up an old car that has been your friend.”
Finding room for all the journals and paperwork seemed overwhelming, until Brilman realized, “Everything is digital now!” In a move worthy of the television show, “Clean Sweep,” she tossed the journals, nearly all the NTEP reports and anything else available online.
And what of the friendly cat, Freddie Fescue, who escorted visitors as they toured the SRO farm? Because the new location lacks adequate office space for Freddie’s human co-workers, the 13-year-old feline will be relocating with Brilman to SRO’s main office. In preparation for the move, Freddie has learned certain skills required of an indoor cat.
Apparently you can teach an old cat new tricks.
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