On our second day of visits, we traveled to three different producers: Williamson farms, Cloud view Eco Farms, and Royal dairy. Each were in the Colombia River Basin and relied on the canal systems to supply the water to their operations.

The Williamson farming operation covers nearly 6,000 acres in the basin area near George, Washington. The family has been farming since the late 1800s, starting with a dairy farm in Oregon and slowly transitioning into the vegetable operation they have today. The vegetables they grow are mainly used for processing, with very little going towards fresh produce. These vegetables include peppers, garlic, sweet corn, and carrots. As we toured their facility, we were able to see the different types of equipment used in the planting and harvesting process. The peppers are their highest revenue producing crop on the farm and require a special piece of equipment as they needed to be transplanted into the soil. They used to do this by hand, but now use a Ferrari planter system that can plant six acres of peppers a day. We were taken to look at the fields and went inside the large potato storage facility. In addition to the crops, they use the waste products as part of their cattle backgrounding. They have a lot where they take in grass fed cattle to background until they are taken back out to pasture. The entire operation is moving towards being more efficient using new technology to track soil moisture and crop rotations.

The second stop of the day was the Cloudview Eco farms, an orchard located near Royal City. The orchard specializes in mainly organic production, relying on other measures to tend to the apple and cherry trees. It is a smaller operation, with only 300 acres of orchards and 1,500 of cover crop and vegetables. We took a tour of the apple rows, learning about the grafting process and how the workers pick blossoms and tie branches by hand. The head producer is very invested in making their operation regenerative and keeping the soil healthy. Old tree lots are chipped and put back onto open soil lots along with cover crops to add organic matter back into the soil. We also looked at the canal system where the water for the drip irrigation systems comes from and watched as workers set up rain nets for the cherry rows.

On our final stop of the day, we went to Royal Dairy in Royal City. Royal Dairy is on the cutting edge of regenerative agriculture. In the process of recycling the manure waste from the dairy, they separate the solid manure and slowly drain the liquids into holding lots where worms are used to reduce the methane emissions and add nutrients to the dirt. The mixture is then dried and sold to different companies. The dairy itself milks nearly 6,000 cows a day, with two milking shifts that last nearly twelve hours. We walked into the milking parlor and watched as workers moved efficiently from cleaning the finished cows to prepping the others to begin milking. The entire system can be monitored by a control panel, where workers can see the status of the three milk tanks and which pens are still be moved. We traveled to the maternity barn, where 30 calves are born every day. It was impressive to see the size of the operation and learn how the workers continue to look for more cost-effective ways to care for the herd.

Overall, it was a very productive day! We learned a lot about some very different operations and saw how each were working towards becoming more self-sustaining in their fields.