#McKenzieStrong – Janice & Art – Iron Forest

People often talk about how they pour their heart and soul into a business, but speaking to Janice Myers leaves you in no doubt that this has been true for Iron Forest.

As we talk, her husband Art takes a chainsaw to some of the burnt trees in their beloved property. Those trees, Janice explained, had been lovingly nurtured and brought back to health after they bought the land, and she could not bring herself to cut down their remains even now, so Art had stepped in.

Although they had not been living in their McKenzie Valley haven full-time, the couple had a deep attachment to that place. This was where they got married, under an altar that Art built himself, and which turned out to be one of the very few things to have survived the Holiday Farm Fire.

Their business model was to try and grow without taking out loans, so they started out with renting the main cabin as an Airbnb, later expanding as a charming wedding venue. “When we looked at doing weddings on the property, it was natural that ours would be the first,” Janice says.

Before buying the land, the couple regularly spent time in the Valley, where Art had been a Forest Ranger stationed at McKenzie Bridge, and where they also regularly taught firearm safety courses.

They fell in love with the property, which had a 100-year-old barn on site. Art and Janice carefully salvaged as much of the wood as possible, incorporating it into the cabin to give a sense of continuity and history which proved very popular with guests, and makes the loss to the fire even more devastating.

A New Beginning

The original plan had been to gradually grow the wedding business, saving up towards opening a brewery and pub on site.

“Art is a master brewer, that has always been his passion, so we were building towards that dream.”

Finding out that the buildings on the property had been entirely destroyed, however, prompted a pivot. Since they were going to have to start from scratch, why not start with that dream?

“We are moving ahead with opening the brewery, it’s now a matter of figuring out how to finance it, but we believe we can make it work — not only for ourselves, but to partner with other local businesses like we had already started doing with the weddings.”

What’s in a Name

Before leaving Art and Janice to their clearing work, I asked her how they had chosen the name for their business, and the story behind it turned out to be both poignant and somewhat prophetic.

They had come across the term “Iron Forest” when researching local history in search of inspiration. It was a name used by loggers referring to the resilience of the woods in this part of Oregon’s Pacific Northwest, which were so saturated with moisture as to resist burning and recover from wildfires.

Looking around at some of the green starting to sprout so soon after such a devastating blaze, I can see the sense in that. But it also seems to me that the term encompasses more than just the trees; it embodies the spirit of the valley itself.

In the McKenzie there is this iron-clad determination, an unrelenting stubborn streak, and a level of attachment to the land that makes rebuilding almost a foregone conclusion for people like Janice and Art. Although the times ahead look set to be incredibly tough, this valley’s forests, and its people, are tougher still. I have no doubt that I will be raising a glass to their success at the Iron Forest brewpub sometime in the not-too-distant future, and that’s an uplifting thought to get us through the winter.

Cheers!

For the latest information on the recovery and rebuilding of the McKenzie Valley, and to contribute to those efforts, visit McKenzie Recovery and follow @CdcKenzie on Twitter.

About the author: Alice Bonasio is a journalist, writer, and proud McKenzie Valley resident. She is Director of Communications at the McKenzie Community Development Corporation. If you have a great local story to tell, drop her a line on alice@mckenzierecovery.org