Elk Island Eco Retreat & Resort

06/28/2024

After years of operating as a video production company in Douglas County, Spiderking Studios will now have a studio space in Roseburg.

06/20/2024

We have finished a one-mile cardio/nature trail at Madrone Grove Estates. 15 years of planning since finishing the main house, then Josh Woodard and Rusty Lininger designed and cut the trails around 2 to 3 years ago and now the complete system has been mulched by our mulching team over the last 2 months. In this video Faith and Airian will take time (almost 30 minutes) to take you from the rocking chairs on the front porch then all along the trail and back to the house in Roseburg Oregon. More Cardio/Nature trails to follow so stay tuned!!

At our Madrone Grove Estates, named after the evergreen trees, that continuously change their bark and leaves, we have created a one-mile-long cardio and sce...

06/13/2024

9 Month and 3 Month Update!

So now we are in this tent camping program, legally sanctioned by the City of Roseburg, for 9 months (started 9-13-2023) for the Washington Bridge Tent Camp and 3 months (started 3-12-2024) for the Pine Street Tent Camp. The Washington Bridge Tent Camp is at somewhere around 3884 Day/Nights of stays and Pine Street Tent Camp around 900 Day/Nights of stays.

The Bridge Camp has helped at least 2 families stay there as emergency shelter until they could get into the Navigation Center, which is much better than having children outside, plus several other people served until they could get a more stable place. The Pine Street Camp has helped immensely to keep areas of Pine Street clean as well as parts of Deer Creek Park at the point.

That is 4,784 Day & Nights that someone had toilets, a place to put garbage, potable water, BBQ grills, a gathering tent, picnic tables, security fence surrounding them and the Washington Bridge Camp even had a hot a shower. People staying legally not being cited to move every time they put up the tent in an illegal place.

To the public that is 4,784 day/nights that people have not been camping in your parks or public places. With our Elk Island Trading Group, LLC efforts and the city or Roseburg Oregon police department and enforcement's efforts against illegal camping you can see a difference as even "many" of the illegal camps we are seeing are cleaner than before. If you have never spent one night outside with no legal place to go you should do so at some point to see exactly what one night feels like...then understand we have stopped 4,784 of those nights for someone. We can make a difference.

We have a third camp approved but cannot get it ready until we have other financial partners joining in to help with expenses. That camp could possibly be for the most chronic homeless people with mental conditions that carry stuff around our community and argue into the air...at no one. Think about it $2000 a month for lot payment and insurance, $2,000 for fencing, and then about $400 a month for porta pots and garbage. Around $3000 a month or $300 a month per tent could get the 10 most chronic and mentally ill folks from camping on our city streets if we would go in this direction.

And yes we do have enemies out there as I have stated for years that there are drug pushers living in these illegal/unmanaged homeless communities that want to keep the status quo. They have cloaked themselves in homelessness to prey upon bad situations. Each person we pull out is one less potential client they have to profit from so we have to keep pulling!!!

Bernie Woodard Elk Island Trading Group, LLC

05/26/2024

Yesterday, Venus and I were hard at work, raking out the bean bed, when we both were stopped in our tracks by a bird call neither of us had ever heard. It was one of those wide eyed (look-at-each-other-did-you-hear-that) moments. This picture absolutely does it zero justice, but we looked in the direction of the sound and about 300 feet from us, perched in a tree at the edge of Elk Island, a huge bald eagle sat for about 5 minutes or so. We stopped our raking and enjoyed its majestic presence. What a special moment that neither of us will soon forget!

05/23/2024

Great job J&M Farms! Helping create a new vibrant Roseburg waterfront by restoring the past. Please like or follow their page.

05/22/2024

Roseburg Oregon In May of 1924, 100 years ago this month was when the swinging bridge to Farquar's Island and Ice Cream Park was finished. At that time overgrown since Mr. Thomas Farquar, who had grown it into a two season vegetable farm and became Oregon's first shipper of produce, had died about 30 years prior and his family lost the island due to financial difficulties. The Elks Lodge turned the island into a very attractive social center of Roseburg for years until they lost the island and it was not known to have been used for cultivated farming since then, This year my son Josh and daughter-in-law Mollie (J&M Farms at Elk Island) have worked to reach into the past over 100 years to recreate the farms of Mr. Farquar and his family to produce fresh local vegetables fresh from the old Farquar's Island and Ice Cream Park. More to follow soon!

https://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/2003260227/1924-05-10/ed-1/seq-3/ =IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR0jZFPcX-tRnLAUZuQLWZ4oX6zT7yzihVgSVyUF4ayFoAjGEbVqLwA41wU_aem_AX4vhV66y0HBCeVWplq04QqHLKVMiQ--HHODh49PnQMrwR5Fawodv5hsYmjRGIuSfj_gYVoTxl_02kPQ7Fvt3DSy

05/16/2024

Elk Island Trading Group, LLC & Alternative Living Solutions, Inc. have just passed the 8-month anniversary of Washington Bridge Tent Camp and 2-month anniversary of the Pine Street Tent Camp with an average of 24 to 32 people staying nightly/daily in the camps through our Day Pass system program!! We are close to 4000 day/nights of stays. Folks having a legal safe place to stay with potable water. toilets, garbage disposal, showers, and even as our Camps to Village program comes together camp enforced security to protect participants belongings as they work, look for work or other services. We have a long way to go but we keep learning!! 4,000 legally sanctioned stays and on schedule to be at over 6400 before our 1 year anniversary on September 13, 2024!!

05/02/2024

Roseburg Oregon we are transitioning to a college town in downtown with several old properties being purchased by Umpqua Community College Umpqua Community College Mainstream Newspaper UCC President Rachel Pokrandt for students to live downtown... so what could be done to create clean fun for these young adults and the young high school kids growing up in Roseburg? In my opinion this is another type of homeless solution as lets help get people excited on life.

Do we have a teen and young adult center with arcade games and maybe young adult kinda music with a dance floor in Roseburg? No, there might not be lots of money in this type of venture (I watched both my dad and grandpa do small game centers in Southern Illinois) but it creates clean options which should be what parents and grandparents are all about.

05/02/2024

Thanks to City of Roseburg Parks and Recreation Commission for given me extra time to speak today regarding our projects!! Hopefully we can all move Roseburg's Waterfront forward together to make it spectacular!!! I liked being at this commission meeting...I think I got to start speaking around the 1:23 mark of the meeting and the group was very courteous to let me get my say out. Same as Tyler (whom I just met this morning) that had some disc golf questions before me.

04/24/2024

If you are following the homeless issue from City of Grants Pass vs Johnson here are the links to yesterday's oral arguments at the United States Supreme Court. Whether you want to read it (183 pages) or listen (2 hours, twenty-five minutes and fifty-seven seconds) to the arguments here are the links:

2:25:57 Audio: https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/audio/2023/23-175

Text 183 pages:https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2023/23-175_dc8f.pdf

04/19/2024

Thank you to Rotary Club of Roseburg Morning and Heidi Marks for the invitation to speak at today's Rotary Club meeting regarding our work of both eliminating illegal and unmanaged camping in the Roseburg area and beyond, but also providing a safe place to live/thrive for those who are displaced. A sustainable way to provide managed legal camps to communities for actual alternative living for the unhoused for the future. Thanks Max Stafford for inviting me to join and share our joint view for the future on how we as a community can work together to solve many of the issues we face together. 7 months of legal camping and we are over 3400 nights of legalized and safe camping in Roseburg Oregon.

03/29/2024

For decades Elk Island, its owners over not just the decades but owners all the way back to Thomas Owens who came to Oregon in 1843, yes about 10 years before Aaron Rose in the early to mid 1850s have fought for Deer Creek Settlement now known as Roseburg to have a vibrant waterfront...even Thomas Farquar as he owned not only the island which became known then as Farquars Island and Ice Cream Park (1870s through early 1900) created an incredible area together. Mr. Farquar and his family farming Farquars' Island and owning most of the Pine Street area along the waterfront and Mr. Owens and his family operating Deer Creek Settlement Ferry, later Owens Ferry, from the 1850s to the 1880s when the Lane Street Bridge was built. Later owners of these properties gave a right of way for the old steel Oak street bridge then the newer 1960s/1970s concrete Oak street bridge to later an easement even for the Washington Avenue bridge...always working for the better of what became Roseburg, Oregon. Even today we keep fighting for real solutions to create a vibrant waterfront that we can enjoy today. So I will say that even though the city management has created a terrible situation for us in their allowing, even guiding illegal camps up against the north side of all of our properties, we (Elk Island Trading Group) will fly our flag high providing safe place for local families to be able to come and enjoy the waterfront at our bridge properties and Elk Island! The RMC law states people can camp on private property for up to 48 hours so we invite the Roseburg Oregon families to contact us and once the water has gone down in the overflow channel that "families" can visit and camp up to the 48 consecutive hour rule. We are going to continue to fight for the Roseburg Oregon waterfront and bike paths until there are real solutions for our community. City of Rosement management our community requires you to clean up our city parks and waterways of ALL illegal camping so the community as a whole can enjoy the waterways, parks and keep the values of our properties!!

03/27/2024

Here is the Homeless Commission Meeting link from Monday March 25, 2024 which had an official update from the Navigation Center. When I compare the numbers of housed to the actual costs, we as a community just have to reevaluate this and the effectiveness of a homeless commission that now other than Mayor and a City Council member... ONLY has the commissioner that is CEO of UCAN that is operating the Navigation Center under a $3,250,000.00 two year contract.

According to the live recorded update right now the center is at maximum capacity with 41 people that includes 8 children. These people are either in 10 outdoor pods or inside sleeping in a big room with lots of beds within like 3 feet of each other. Also since the City of Roseburg entered into a contract with UCAN in like March of 2022 there have been only 92 total people stay overnight at the center. Meaning 51 have gone on somewhere else which according to the UCAN Navigation Center manager the center is hitting 75% of people being housed to either their own housing, living with family or living in a camper somewhere. So folks if that 51 x 75% = 38 people found some type of housing which they did not have numbers to separate between housing of their own, a couch with the parents or a camper. But even if this was 38 people being aided to get into a house/apartment or anything else...almost $5,000,000.00 in total cost is just too much to keep this going. Even the $3,250,000.00 is too much as that ends up being $85,526.31 per person that actually stayed at the navigation center then got housed. That would even include those that went to live on a family couch or in a camper somewhere. Another way of looking at this is the $5,000,000.00 spent and only 91 total people ever stayed there would be $54,945.05 spent as an average on every person that has gone through in almost 2 years. This money is better spent figuring out real alternative housing opportunities because we could have built about 250 tiny homes (at $20,000 each) for this money and almost every homeless person in the area taken care of.

Please Note: On May 22, 2023, lack of a quorum led to the inability to conduct official business, so the Homeless Commission only heard updates. The unofficial meeting also started late -- at 8:22 into the recording.

03/27/2024

03/27/2024

Although this drone video published under "Bums vs Drones" was probably published in an attempt to make our first legal camp group look bad...it missed the mark as people are organized with many of their immediate needs being met. Take a look!

A small homeless community under the bridge. ...

03/21/2024

Believe it or not, many people like living outside most of the time, while others pay big money to get away for a few days to the outdoors. We just need to find the best methods of making this an alternative housing city approved thing across the country. Something that looks good to the public while working for those living that way. But this has to be on private property like the city of Roseburg has approved NOT in our community parks, commercial areas and waterways!

Camping with coffee ☕ 🏕️

03/15/2024

This is just infuriating that we go through all of the hoops and then some to get legal camping in places, but instead of the city saying "what can we do to help you?' they allow all of these camps right next to us on very very dangerous city park land. This property is in the 100% Prohibited Zone.

As of our 6 month anniversary of doing this legally came and went we hit 2500 nights of people staying in our legal camps. What that means is 2500 day/night 24 hour periods that people had toilets to use, they had potable water to drink, they had places to cook, they had hot water, they were sheltered and dry AND THEY WERE OUT OF OUR COMMUNITY PARKS, STREETS AND COMMERCIAL AREAS in a safe place to work on themselves. Plus with the second camp open our goal is hitting 5000 Day/Night periods within the next 6 months with our limited tent camp approvals.

I just hope our Roseburg city council sees through these strong arm tactics of attorney letters (yes) for insignificant crap on Elk Island and the administration continuing to weaponize these homeless people up against our Elk Island and Pine Street Waterfront Overlay properties in what seems like an attempt to devalue them. This can all be fixed but it takes private/government partnerships to do so not wars between all parties.

03/12/2024

While Roseburg city officials continue to look for a location for an urban campground to house the area’s homeless population, one local resident is opening a second such site on

03/12/2024

Well the people spoke out tonight in the city council meeting in Roseburg Oregon. An interesting comment was made around the 1 hour and 50 minute mark of the video or 8:50PM on the clock that the city was starting rumors about me as to why they did not want to work with Elk Island Trading Group, LLC on the solutions we have already created and those in the works. If anyone knows this gentleman's name that stated that please let me know as I wany to speak with him.

We are going to get this done to find solutions and clear up our waterfront, city parks and commercial spaces whether or not someone wants to start rumors. Homelessness devalues everything from businesses, home values, to even the hope of those homeless and it is time for action...not grade school rumor telling.

https://fb.watch/qLC-jGEPOf/

There were so many great comments made tonight from the comment to the mayor "if you know there will be another incident at a warming center why would you put one in a residential area with young kids across the street? Folks the incident he was referring to was at the senior center center almost a year ago when it was used as a warming center...one night an assailant came in and stabbed multiple, like 5 or 6 people, then the assailant was shot dead by the local police because they could not control him!!

Another great comment was put up a temporary building on the huge parking lot behind the police and fire building for a warming center. That would be like $5,000 to $10,000 in lieu of $325,000 in a residential area... If this is done then heat, air conditioning and porta pots can be added at not too much costs.

Then there was a very real question about property values and if the city would compensate all landowners in that general area because there will be decreased property values. Me and Elk Island Trading Group, LLC know that from our 8 year plus fight with the city of not taking responsibility for the homeless in Deer Creek Park which has diminished not only our property values and plans for our properties in that area BUT FORCED US TO GET INTO THE BUSINESS OF TRYING TO FIX THIS PROBLEM! So I guess I can see why someone with the city would want to start rumors against us because we have tried to force them to do what is right and so should every citizen and landowner in Roseburg Oregon.

KUDOS to all 8 city council members who stood up against the mayor (who has controlled this homeless issue from the beginning) tonight and keep asking questions and listening to real community concerns. Hopefully they will all look at the real solutions that have been presented to them, without letting anyone filter the data or start rumors to stop real movement.

03/12/2024

Well the people spoke out tonight in the city council meeting in Roseburg Oregon. An interesting comment was made around the 1 hour and 50 minute mark of the video or 8:50PM on the clock that the city was starting rumors about me as to why they did not want to work with Elk Island Trading Group, LLC on the solutions we have already created and those in the works. If anyone knows this gentleman's name that stated that please let me know as I wany to speak with him.

We are going to get this done to find solutions and clear up our waterfront, city parks and commercial spaces whether or not someone wants to start rumors. Homelessness devalues everything from businesses, home values, to even the hope of those homeless and it is time for action...not grade school rumor telling.

https://fb.watch/qLBkhzWnFw/

There were so many great comments made tonight from the comment to the mayor "if you know there will be another incident at a warming center why would you put one in a residential area with young kids across the street? Folks the incident he was referring to was at the senior center center almost a year ago when it was used as a warming center...one night an assailant came in and stabbed multiple, like 5 or 6 people, then the assailant was shot dead by the local police because they could not control him!!

Another great comment was put up a temporary building on the huge parking lot behind the police and fire building for a warming center. That would be like $5,000 to $10,000 in lieu of $325,000 in a residential area... If this is done then heat, air conditioning and porta pots can be added at not too much costs.

Then there was a very real question about property values and if the city would compensate all landowners in that general area because there will be decreased property values. Me and Elk Island Trading Group, LLC know that from our 8 year plus fight with the city of not taking responsibility for the homeless in Deer Creek Park which has diminished not only our property values and plans for our properties in that area BUT FORCED US TO GET INTO THE BUSINESS OF TRYING TO FIX THIS PROBLEM! So I guess I can see why someone with the city would want to start rumors against us because we have tried to force them to do what is right and so should every citizen and landowner in Roseburg Oregon.

KUDOS to all 8 city council members who stood up against the mayor (who has controlled this homeless issue from the beginning) tonight and keep asking questions and listening to real community concerns. Hopefully they will all look at the real solutions that have been presented to them, without letting anyone filter the data or start rumors to stop real movement.

03/07/2024

On Monday evening March 4, 2024 we (Washington Bridge Tent Camp) passed having 2300 Guest Nights Served (GNS) which is my term for folks that have come into our program under our Day Pass and stayed a full day and night keeping to the Day Pass agreement. That is 9 days before our Washington Bridge Tent Camp at Roseburg Oregon hits its 6 month anniversary.

The camp sanctioned (or approved) on September 13, 2023 under the City of Roseburg Tent Camping Ordinance that was approved by city council in January 2022.

Think about this: That is 2300 nights of tents not in our parks, commercial areas and waterways nor carts being pushed on the streets during the day... but instead they are in a safe area with several amenities where the guests actually become a community and tent enclosure their homes. This is a grass roots solution where every dollar and effort goes directly to the benefit of those living in our camp/s...no middle men needed, but the by product is our community starts getting the parks. waterways, commercial storefronts and views from our windows... back one tent move at a time.