Liskey Family History
by Tracey Liskey
My grandfather’s family came to Oregon at least part way by
wagon in 1886. Grandpa was one year old at that time and had 5
brothers and two sisters. They settled in the Swan Lake area
north of Klamath Falls. The family raised cattle, horses, and
mules and also did some farming though out the area.
My grandmother came into the Klamath area a few years after
the big earth quake in San Francisco in 1906. She came on stage
coach and on the paddle wheel into Klamath Falls. She and a lady
friend each acquired a homestead in the area. Their homesteads
were back to back where they built a single home on both
properties and lived together.
My grand parents meet and where married in 1916; they lived
and farmed or ranched in many different places in the area until
settling down at our current ranch on Lower Klamath Lake in the
late 20’s. The farm was on the shore line of surge basin for
Upper Klamath Lake. Most of the land adjacent to the farm was
given to the Bureau of Reclamation to develop and turn back to
private ownership through the reclamation act of 1905. When the
government came out to the area to look at the land, they
claimed it unfarmable and left. This left the private land
owners in the area to develop and turn this ground into farmable
ground. Most of this was grazing ground, then some of the ground
was planted to oat for the cows and it grew very well and was
harvested, and the rest is history.
My grandparents started to grow turkeys in the late 20’s and
in the 30’s. They raised about 3000 turkeys which where the
first turkeys growers in the in the area. They also raised
cattle and one year the cattle got into some dumped pesticide
(arsenic). About half of the cow herd died and the rest were
very sick. This happened when Granddad was out of town and
Grandma had to get the kids up and off to school and then she
and the crew had to doctor the herd. She also had to cook meals
for the crew. If it had not been for the turkeys they raised,
they may have lost the ranch, but they sold well and helped keep
the ranch afloat.
In the 30’s they wintered the cow in other parts of the basin
and summered them at home. When they decided to keep the cows at
home year around, the cows started to starve to death in knee
high grass. They stop raising cattle for many years till Oregon
State found out the problem was caused by a mineral deficiency,
which was a lack of copper. Once they started giving a copper
shot the cattle did fine, we still give a copper boles once a
year.
When the grandparents moved onto the ranch and built a house,
they had to drill a well. What they found was hot water (187
degrees Fahrenheit). This meant that the house water had to be
cooled before it could be used. It was pumped into a 2000 gallon
tank to cool and then used in the house. It was common at this
time to have employees live on the premises. They had a wash and
shower room for the employees, when the crews were big and all
came in for a shower, the last person would get a real hot
shower. We are still one of the only houses in the country that
runs out of cold water not hot.
As the years went by, another well was drilled. It was hotter
(199 degrees Fahrenheit) and about 5000 gallon per minute at a
20ft lift. This was a great resource but how do you use it?
Frost is one thing that all the farmers dealt with because of an
elevation of 4100 ft above sea level. My parents thought that
they could use this heat to help fight the frost. They planted
some corn and pulled ditches throughout the field. This worked
well on the first couple of frosts, but it took about 8 hours to
fill the ditches with hot water to keep the corn warm. One day
it did not look like it was going to freeze so they did not fill
the ditches and it froze the corn.
In the 50’s they where feeding a lot of spuds (cull potatoes)
to the cattle. This is a good feed that fattens cows quickly.
One of the problems in feeding spuds to cows is they eat big
pieces, it gets stuck in their throats and they die. To fix the
problem they started to cook the spuds. They built one ton cages
a dropped them down in the hot water for about an hour, let them
cool and fed them to the cows. This worked very well and they
fed cooked spuds for several years until the value of the cull
potatoes rose making them an uneconomical feed.
Up through the 70’s a lot of people came to talk with us
about using the hot water for many different projects. It was at
this time that my parents decided to try something. They went in
with a partner who knew how to grow forest seedlings, and built
a greenhouse in the late70’s to grow trees. Long distance
partnerships don’t usually work, and our partner lived in
Seattle, so it didn’t work. To add to the finical problems the
interest rate went from 7% to 19%. During the same time we
rented a different parcel of land to a different grower to raise
cactus. Neither our tree enterprise, nor the cactus enterprise
could survive the economy and interest rates, not alone our
being novice greenhouse growers.
After these two enterprises collapsed we tried growing small
crops and also put in fish ponds on the tail water. My sister
than went back to college and got a degree in horticulture and
came back to grow bedding plants. Along with the cattle and hay
operations of the ranch we built a successful greenhouse
operation.
In the last few years we have started to build a ‘geothermal
agriculture industrial park’ in which we have a bio fuel plant,
an organic vegetable greenhouse, a 100,000 sq ft green house
used to grow predator mites, topical fish ponds, and we are
working on installing a 10 Meg electric power plant. We also run
a retail nursery in Klamath Falls. Along with all of this, we (
brother, sister, and myself) still run 300 head of mother cows
and put up around 2000 ton of hay and sell over $600,000 worth
of nursery plants.
Agriculture has been good to our family, so our family tries
to give back something to agriculture. We are involved in many
local organizations and we all work as best we can at the state
level. My sister Vickie sits on the board of the Oregon Energy
Trust, my brother Rocky, sits on the State Vet Board, and I am
1st vice president of Oregon Farm Bureau Federation, and have
been on the Governor’s Sustainability Board.
Our ranch has came a long way from land covered with tulles
to what it is today; beautiful green pasture and hay ground with
many facilities using the natural resources of geothermal hot
water from under the ground. It will be interesting to see what
other ways this ranch will develop in the future. Our goal is to
maintain a sustainable ranch for future generations to come. |
