REICHERT: Change, that inevitable constant, we see it all around us.
And those who accept It, who seek out change even when it's not exactly easy -- can often find success.
KODY YOUREE, FARMER: Oh, I'm not afraid to try a new methods.
You know, the guys that try at first, they might have a mess right on the road, but they're trying it.
And after a few years, it'll start to looking better and better and better.
REICHERT: Sometimes a change of just a few degrees can result in business plans designed to weather the coming storm.
DR. BRITTANY BRAND: DIR.
OF HAZARD & CLIMATE RESILIENCE INST.
: And so we're seeing a decrease in snow pack.
We're seeing a decrease in winter days and we're also seeing a little bit less snow falling in the winter and more rain.
REICHERT: And then there are those moments, when you just know it's time to move on.
Time to relish the past and look toward the future.
DOUG TIMS, CAMPBELL'S FERRY: We've reached an age where we're getting far too much practice in the grieving process, losing friends and family.
And so you can identify with it because Campbell's Ferry was so embedded in your soul.
REICHERT: Outdoor Idaho explores ways individuals and even organizations are turning the page to the next chapter.
ANNOUNCER: Funding for Outdoor Idaho is made possible by the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation committed to fulfilling the Moore and Bettis Family Legacy of building the great state of Idaho by the Friends of Idaho Public Television, by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
BRUCE REICHERT: The Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness: it's the largest forested wilderness in the Lower 48, where, according to the legislation that created it, "the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man.
Where man himself is a visitor who does not remain."
But that's not entirely true, because the Frank was born of compromise.
Homesteads, and even airstrips, continue to exist here, surrounded by protected wilderness, and Campbell's Ferry is one of those special places.
PHYLLIS TIMS, RETIRED DEAN, FINE ARTS, UNIVERSITY OF UTAH: The first time I saw this place, sometime in the early 1990s, I can remember it clearly, and I thought, "Wow, what a gorgeous place this is!
I wonder who's lucky enough to get to live in a place like this."
DOUG TIMS, RETIRED RIVER OUTFITTER: Then in 1999, we were dating, and Phyllis comes up from Salt Lake to visit me in Boise.
In my condo, I had a picture on the wall.
She's looking at it.
She says, "What is this picture?"
I said, "Well, that's Campbell's Ferry."
She says, "Well, why do you have a picture of that?"
I said, "Well, I own it."
PHYLLIS TIMS: And now I know who's lucky enough to get to live here.
REICHERT: Doug Tims had moved to Idaho for the white water.
Later, he became an outfitter and co-owner of Maravia Boats.
Tims and some conservation minded partners had bought the 85 acre wilderness homestead sight unseen.
DOUG TIMS: The easement made it a reasonable price, and so I told him, I said, "Well, let's buy it."
Hadn't even seen it, but I just knew the character of these places that it had to be beautiful because it was in the Salmon River Canyon.
REICHERT: Campbell's Ferry once played a large role in what is considered by many to be the last major gold rush in the Lower 48.
Settled only seven years after Idaho became a state, it was William Campbell who built and maintained a ferry across the treacherous Salmon River, allowing gold seekers coming from the north access to the fabled Thunder Mountain gold strike at the turn of the 20th century.
DOUG TIMS: One thing that Campbell's Ferry represents to me, it's like the bleeding edge of civilization.
There's no more homesteads past it.
You look at the history of the people who tried to settle it, and it was rough on them.
A lot of them died trying to do it.
So just this litany of the folks who were out here.
Taking the chance to live this close to nature's wild heart.
And paying a high price for it.
WAYNE JOHNSON, RETIRED SALMON RIVER OUTFITTER: Robert Hilands completed the homestead at Campbell's Ferry and got into some financial trouble during the depression.
Joe Zaunmiller paid off his bills for a half interest in the ranch.
Joe and his wife Emma moved in.
Then Emma died in 1938 when her horse bolted in the orchard and she hit her head on a limb.
Then Frances came into the picture.
She grew up in Texas, and Joe hired her as a cook, and eventually Frances married Joe.
Then Joe died of a heart attack and she eventually married Vern Wisner.
She outlived all of them.
She died in '86.
So this wilderness area is unique in that it has this extensive human history while remaining a wilderness environment, very unique place.
REICHERT: By the time Tims and his partners purchased Campbell's Ferry in 1990, the place had really fallen on hard times.
DOUG TIMS: Frances lived here in her advancing years, so the place didn't get much care.
It was suffering from a couple of decades of neglect, and then for four years after she died, the place was vacant.
Any place out here, you leave it vacant for long and nature starts to take it back.
The rodents move in, the forest creep.
So when we came here, it looked like a third world landfill.
We realized right away that we were in for some serious work, but it was a labor of love.
We redid the porch, put a new roof on it, cleaned all the logs.
All of those things with the help of the Idaho Heritage Trust.
PHYLLIS TIMS: It was a mess, but it was beautiful, and there's almost a spiritual way that I think we've begun to see this place.
We hadn't been living here very long, maybe a week or two, and I'd be out and I'd start thinking there were voices.
I'd look around, nobody's here, and I thought, "Well, I'm losing it.
I'm not going to say anything to Doug because he's going to think I'm going crazy."
DOUG TIMS: Yeah, I've been out and I hear Joe Zaunmiller and his friends laughing at me thinking, "What is this city slicker out here trying to do?"
I came into the cabin and told Phyllis, "I've been hearing voices."
She says, "Oh, thank God.
I'm glad you said that.
I've been hearing them too."
DOUG TIMS: You know, we know in our logical minds, it's the wind and the trees or the sound of the river, but it really developed into a connection with the folks who've been here before.
It became very much the inspiration for us doing the research and writing our book about the history of this place.
PHYLLIS TIMS: We found things they had written.
We found their own words, and so it made them come alive.
It made them real.
There's a kind of connection to those people with the past where you feel the importance of protecting something so precious.
REICHERT: Within a year of settling in, one thing became apparent.
The original conservation easement connected to the property was completely unworkable, allowing no cutting of trees or brush, keeping wildfires a constant threat to the homestead.
DOUG TIMS: We had big fires here in 2006 and '07 and '15, so we developed a conservation plan for the place.
We had help through Idaho County and the Forest Service.
We got grants for the Firewise Program, which helped us put piping underground and now have standpipes at all the historic buildings so water's readily available to wet everything when the inevitable next fire comes.
REICHERT: It took 17 years, but eventually the Forest Service bureaucracy agreed to sign a new easement, one which guarantees that Campbell's Ferry will remain a significant historic landmark for the state of Idaho.
DOUG TIMS: 6,329 days later, yes, we finally got it done and signed a new easement, and now it's 730 pages.
But if you read the easement, it's very clear.
It lays out in great detail all that's here, and the owners and caretakers will forever have the tools to do the work that it takes to preserve a place like this.
For generations, people will come out here and see the way this place was before and will remain, and learn from the lessons of the ancestors about what it was like to live at a place like this.
When we put together the interpretive and educational plan, had the signs produced, showed people that we were sharing it with folks, and demonstrating an understanding of the importance of the connections this place has to the wilderness, and the Wild & Scenic River designation.
that was the key that got the Forest Service to believe in what we were doing.
DOUG TIMS: We're aging.
We need to start looking for the next conservation owner of Campbell's Ferry.
We had tens of thousands of people take a look at this place, but they would look at the easement and say, "What do you mean I can't drive to the place?
What do you mean I can't build my own house or McMansion?
What do you mean the public is allowed to come up here?"
All those folks, the easement stopped, and where we ended up was with a couple that's happily looking for their own place in the backcountry and are perfectly happy to come out here and live in 512 square feet.
STEVE WELLS, NEW OWNER, CAMPBELL'S FERRY: We've always worked hard, and this is now going to be a labor of love and not just working to work.
MEGAN WELLS, NEW OWNER, CAMPBELL'S FERRY: We've owned a cattle ranch, so we've done a little bit of everything, and we love this place and we're super excited to take it on to the next generation.
DOUG TIMS: We found the right people and the easement dictated that when we met these people and got to know them.
DOUG TIMS: You just know.
That just long live the Ferry.
The Ferry will be okay.
PHYLLIS TIMS: The sale happened quicker than either of us thought.
We thought we'd be here this whole year.
We thought it would take a longer time.
This is a grieving process for us because you've cared for something for so long, and we are embedded in this place.
And when we walk away, part of us stays in this ground.
It will never leave me.
I know this, and honestly, it's become one of the things we treasure the most is that kind of solitude for the two of us to be together.
That was a gradual evolution through, I think, our time here.
REICHERT: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
The old adage provides sound advice for hardy appliances - but it's far less applicable when it comes to something as nuanced as farming.
A better saying might be, "If it ain't broke, try a whole buncha things to make it even better."
Kody Youree is among a handful of farmers in the Magic Valley who are taking the time to learn a few sustainable farming methods.
KODY YOUREE: We run a family farm, me and my wife and three kids.
And my dad, uh, helps out in my uncles.
We grow sugar beets, corn, wheat, barley, alfalfa, and a few dry beans.
REICHERT: The farmers are learning these methods from an unlikely ally, The Nature Conservancy.
But for Kody Youree, this isn't about political leanings, it's simply about the bottom line.
YOUREE: I lean so far right that I try not to even use my left blinker.
There's some talk about the government requiring farmers to farm certain ways.
It's not there yet.
We don't need to be told what to do.
You show a grower a better way to grow his crops.
He's gonna do it.
He doesn't need to be told that.
REICHERT: That's exactly what Brad Johnson is trying to do.
The agricultural strategy manager with The Nature Conservancy is using a farm outside Twin Falls to demonstrate a different way of doing things, showcasing farming techniques that will keep farmland and the surrounding areas, healthier.
BRAD JOHNSON, THE NATURE CONSERVANCY: I build that relationship with the farmer and ease their minds that we're not going to tell them how to operate their farm.
We're just here to help them make these changes in a non-forceful way.
Their land is still their land.
YOUREE: If it makes financial sense, we're going to do it.
They didn't have to ban the horse when cars came around.
So guys will come around to this, if it makes financial sense.
And if they grow high quality crops too.
REICHERT: The Nature Conservancy is in the business of conserving and protecting land - and although the environmental organization doesn't own this farmland, it can see the benefit that treating it well will have on the land and people around it.
JOHNSON: We feel what we get out of it is healthier communities, healthier food.
We can lessen the impacts of climate change and we can help clean up the waterways in Idaho.
Farmers can be more economical.
Their profits can be higher if we heal the soil.
It has huge benefits for the Snake River and all other tributaries coming into it.
REICHERT: Todd Ballard is the farmer lending his land to demonstrate the methods.
TODD BALLARD: That's pretty desirable desirable this cottage cheese structure.
REICHERT: And he knows what conventional farmers might think of him.
TODD BALLARD, FARMER: They're thinking this guy's crazy.
Or maybe there's something to it.
They don't know that a lot of people are just on the fence.
REICHERT: The farming methods being demonstrated here aren't new - they're used up north in the Palouse and in other parts of the country - but for some farmers, it's a grand experiment.
One method is no-till.
That's leaving the soil as-is after harvest.
JOHNSON: We leave the worms in the soil intact and we increased the worm population.
Anytime we, till the soil, we, we break up those soil particles into finer soil particles.
And what that does is we don't have the pore space in the soil that can store oxygen and water.
It just takes more and more water to grow a crop.
REICHERT: Another method is planting cover crops.
BALLARD: This isn't going to blow away this winter.
It's not going to erode if we have a big downpour, it will probably absorb it.
It's more like a sponge.
BALLARD: If you lose that much soil over, over one acre equals about eight tons, so about a dump truck load.
REICHERT: But change isn't easy, especially when it may affect your income.
Youree decided to look into these methods after a couple rough seasons.
YOUREE: Each farmer has his kind of his crop that he takes a little bit extra special care of, and ours is sugar beets.
Last two years, they got blown out because of the wind.
We did conventional tillage.
So the soil surface, it was, uh, just bare dirt on top.
There was no residue to hold the ground when the big wind came up.
First times, Mother Nature, second time that's on me, so we're trying to figure out a way to keep the, uh, beets in the ground long enough to get them up growing good before, you know, before the wind starts affecting them too bad.
REICHERT: The no-till method means fewer tractor passes across the fields - and that in turn, means fewer dollars spent on fuel.
And in farming, less money spent means more money kept.
JOHNSON: Even if you lose a little bit of yield due to no- till and other kinds of things, your input costs are so much lower because not, you're not running that tractor as often.
And maybe you can cut back on some fertilizer if you put the right cover crops in that are building some nitrogen and recycling the phosphorus and potassium that are already in the soil.
YOUREE: Produce the same crop with less inputs.
It only makes sense to try it at least.
Any time you can, uh, figure out a way to be more efficient, you're much better off, and you'll stay on the game a lot longer.
The guys that won't adapt, I don't see them being in the game a whole lot longer.
This new breed, you know, guys, my age, you know, thirties, forties, I think you're going to see more guys try and these, more, no-till or strip-till just for all those facts of the higher input costs, uh, labor shortages.
I think you're going to see more guys trying this.
REICHERT: Sometimes change is our choice, but sometimes it's forced upon us.
And how we respond to that challenge, can make all the difference.
BRAD WILSON, GM OF BOGUS BASIN: We're planning for the worst and hoping for the best, but absolutely.
No good business plan is built around a weak theory.
REICHERT: Brad Wilson is the general manager up at the Bogus Basin Recreation Area - the non-profit ski area situated 16 miles up a windy road that serves as a backdrop to the Boise foothills.
Wilson is in the unique position of trying to figure out ways that the ski resort can survive in the future.
WILSON: Historically we used to open around Thanksgiving on natural snow.
So we have a 50 year graph of snowfall and opening dates and it was, probably an average of around the third week in, in November for us opening.
Now it's the second or third week of December to open on natural snow.
REICHERT: That's where snow-making comes in, Bogus Basin has expanded its ability to 'make' snow.
They've increased the size of their pond from which the water comes, they've doubled their number of snow guns - and they have plans to double their pumping capacity.
NATE SHAKE, DIR.
of MTN.
OPERATIONS: We can cover 75 acres of skiing with, with the snow making system.
So we can open up four top to bottom runs and and the beginner hill, SHAKE: We'll keep blowing snow clear up usually through about February, you know, once we have the runs established, then we can, we can freshen them up with new snow from the snow guns, really improves the grooming quality.
REICHERT: A necessity in a world where both snow fall and temperatures are unreliable and unpredictable.
WILSON: We're snow farmers.
So, you know, we look up into the sky and hope for the best and, you know, we still depend on cold temperatures and, uh, this year we had the warmest November on record or very close if it wasn't.
And so we struggled a bit even getting open at Thanksgiving.
So, we know we're gonna battle temperatures, from here on out.
REICHERT: A changing climate is the unfortunate reality that we seem to be facing - and although we hear about it plenty, understanding it is a whole other thing.
DR. BRITTANY BRAND, DIR.
HAZARD & CLIMATE RESILIANCE INST.
: We've seen a dramatic increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere and it's primarily due to burning fossil fuels.
It's due to deforestation, it's due to the release of methane from, from cattle herds and from landfills.
And directly correlated with that increase in, in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, we see an increase in the global temperature.
One degree Celsius or almost two degrees Fahrenheit.
It doesn't sound like a lot, but it's, it's tremendous the rate at which the temperature has changed.
We're seeing ice caps melting.
We're seeing sea levels rising.
We're seeing our oceans warming and acidifying.
And because of all of that, we're seeing major changes to global weather patterns.
REICHERT: But not only is the environment suffering, the livelihoods of Idahoans are too.
BRAND: With the really hot days and the smoky days, you're getting less people out recreating.
Ranchers and farmers are having to figure out how to pivot to change their water use, the types of crops they grow and plan for earlier or changing growing seasons.
REICHERT: Up on Bogus, Brad Wilson knows these facts --- but he's not here to debate them, he's here to make sure the next generation of Idahoans has a place to spend a Saturday.
WILSON: It's hard to argue that there's nothing going on.
Um, you know, we, we all should be aware of it and we are all aware of it.
Uh, we can sit here and talk about why it's happening.
Um, I'm not in that game.
All I know is it is happening and, you know, we need to adapt to it.
REICHERT: So, along with snow-making.
[We can see blue skies, it's not smoky] REICHERT: Bogus Basin has turned itself into somewhat of a summer destination.
WILSON: We have free yoga on the lawn every weekend in the summertime.
[MUSIC PLAYING] WILSON: We have pretty much weekly music events and then we have a very huge mountain bike program, both downhill and cross country.
SHAKE: We started running lifts for mountain biking in 2016.
And then after 2016, we started adding downhill specific bike trails and every year since we've been adding more trails, with up to, uh, nine new trails.
And this summer we saw mountain biking really take off in a big way.
WILSON: We have the mountain coaster, the only one in Idaho right now, and it's super popular.
Kids love it, adults love it.
SHAKE: We know we're going to have a warm dry summer here in Idaho, and we're gonna have lots of sunny days and lots of people want to come recreate.
And that's kind of our backup plan.
Should we have a disastrous winter, we'll always have a good summer and that'll help keep Bogus Basin in a sustainable organization and keep us skiing and recreating in the future.
REICHERT: Bogus Basin's attempts to ensure its viability, also have an added benefit.
WILSON: We have now put sprinklers on all the snow making hydrants for fire suppression.
So if we do have the unlikely event of a wildfire, we can turn the snowing system on and wet down the whole mountain almost and protect it from wildfire.
REICHERT: The resort is also working to reduce its carbon footprint by buying renewable energy credits from Idaho Power.
BRAND: It's hard to see how climate change is impacting our daily lives, which makes it feel abstract or not urgent.
But the changes are happening now.
Climate change is threatening everything that we value, it's threatening our water, our food, our recreation, and what we value in nature.
And it's severely threatening our natural resources, which we need to have balance with, to, to survive as a species with this planet.
WILSON: Oh, it makes me sad.
I mean that my kids or my grandkids or their kids won't have the same opportunities I did.
You know but I have some confidence that we're gonna get a handle on this, and try to make some changes.
Uh, we still have some time, not a lot, but some time, and, uh, if we can make the changes necessary, we could slow down the process at the time, maybe to even have more adaptations.
ANNOUNCER: Funding for Outdoor Idaho is made possible by the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation committed to fulfilling the Moore and Bettis Family Legacy of building the great state of Idaho by the Friends of Idaho Public Television, by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
To find more information about the shows visit us at IdahoPTV.org
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