This news is sad. Any members have some insight?
After Home Orchard Society ends 45-year run, volunteers step in to help food growers
I see in related news that the Home Orchard Education Center is having a Scionwood Fundraiser
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I think the obituary linked in that article is pretty accurate. The president, and the contractor who managed the Arboretum were doing the lion’s share of the work - which we’d known for years wouldn’t be sustainable long term, but weren’t able to come up with an alternative. Things kind of came to a head with the pandemic, making things even more difficult, but that wasn’t the cause.
" All this was a tremendous amount of work for the board and other lead volunteers, especially when the membership grew to more than seven hundred. The old-timers who had been growing, pruning, and grafting fruit trees all their lives, who knew how to foil the Northwest’s formidable confederacy of microbial and insect pests, were dying off, and younger members lacked time, experience, or both. The membership director resigned, and no one else wanted the job. Joanie Cooper, the organization’s longtime president, was now running the Temperate Orchard Conservancy , a living collection of five thousand apple varieties, and couldn’t take on more responsibilities."
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I had some strange experience with a few local fruit clubs.
They go through phases.
Youthful exuberance
Middle age
Power struggles
Oligarchy and death.
Was once pressured into becoming the local club President
Only to be hounded to death by some
Senior members.
The club had over extended itself
and was putting pressure on the members to go here and there as volunteers.
A certain Oligarchy was pushing the new members to
Keep it going
It became a chore
People began to chafe
I wearied of all the micro management
The club went from 50 members
to 5:
The inner circle 
.
I have been on the board of directors, and treasurer of, a local garden club. It is awfully hard to find people who have the drive and expertise (both horticultural and administrative) to fill those key positions. If you’re lucky enough to find them in the first place, it’s hard to keep them from burning out because they are constantly overworked. JME.
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Is there any mechanism to order scions from past members? Or has any scion exchange replaced theirs?
I am looking for a number of euro pear scions and their list is outstanding. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks
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Temperate Orchard Conservancy has all of the apples. I think they intend pears but I don’t recall if they are growing pears yet.
The Home Orchard Education Center took over the arboretum, and also sells scions of the trees in that collection.
One may be able to get scion wood from the Germplasm Repository in Corvallis.
Are you looking for something in particular? There’s a trading post here, plus lists of other places from which to order scion.
There are lots of smaller exchanges hosted by Agrarian Sharing Network, although they are all South of Portland I believe.
There’s a good sized exchange up by Seattle each spring.
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Home Orchard Education Center continues to submit postings for events/classes to local print and online newspapers, it is still an active entity with a full orchard of plantings.
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Currently on the TOC website, the latest scion list is from 2021. Do you know if the list will be updated before the next ordering season to include varieties from the Home Orchard Society’s old scion list?
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The people at TOC are great to interact with, and at all manner of orchard related things, but would be the first to admit that they don’t know much about computers or websites. That’s not their passion. Plus I think they are likely still relatively underfunded, understaffed and overworked.
The 2021 information and list were valid for use in the 2022 season. I suspect that it will be again for 2023 if there isn’t an update. I can check in this winter if reminded.
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