Amy’s Trail

Our County Extension Agent for many years, Amy Grotta, passed away in 2019. Amy was devoted to her work with local landowners and always on the lookout for solutions.

Amy is the one who got me interested in the CoCoRAhs the Community Collaborative Rain Hail and Snow network where I monitor my own rain gauge with a 7am vengeance. (As a side note, I looked up the CoCoRAhs number of participants and there are over 7000 individual stations that are set up to report each day in the United States alone with stations all over the world.) Amy instilled that passion in me for monitoring the weather patterns and changes in nature as well as waking up the desire to observe my own forest practices with how they relate to the environment.

I cannot put a number to the amount of phone calls, emails and in-person meetings that I had with Amy over the years, but she was always considered my ‘professional’ to look for answers to every question from an unusual fungus growth (Amy told me it was ‘dog poop fungus’, not really dog poop but that was the name of it!) to garden Ph levels, to tree root rot observations.

The area that Amy was in charge of spanned Columbia, Washington and Yamhill Counties. How she managed all three when in the past they each had their own Agent is beyond me.

Just a couple years before Amy passed away, she was surprised by donation of a forest property that was willed to Oregon State University. So along with all her regular duties of advising, teaching, processing, wrangling those tough questions from all three counties and writing her Tree Topics stories for OSU blog, she was ‘gifted’ a new lab of over 100 acres.

Amy spent many hours researching the property and walked every inch to assess and plan what OSU should do with the gift. Small woodland owners had the opportunity early on to have outdoor classes on the property. A particularly interesting one involved drones with cameras to view the contours of the land while being able to determine the canopy of the trees and spot those areas where more investigation would be needed such as possible infestation, root rot issues or invasives.

Washington County Small Woodlands Association hosted Amy to give detailed information on the history of the property that she was able to piece together through County Records, relatives, community neighbors and personal stories.

Amy’s work on the Rubie Matteson property put a solid base in place for the future of the forest/lab from all her dedication. Areas of thinning and logging management are on schedule, observations that span decades are on track, data is being collected on soil, water, weather in relation to flora and fauna in the area. She envisioned an area for learning as well as doing while engaging the public, and that is what is happening.

With all Amy had done for us over the years we have been given the opportunity to give back with a trail in the forest that she had devoted herself to. Members from the Counties along with OSU have been meeting at the property over the last two years for work parties on Amy’s Trail.

You will hear more about the dedication in future stories.