Fred Simon
A farmer who shows up — for his crop, his Board, and his neighbors.
Down where the Klamath Basin’s open farmland runs up against the high desert, just shy of the Oregon–California line, sits the town of Malin and the family that has long worked the ground around it. This is Fred Simon’s home — the place he farms, the community he serves, and the neighbors he shows up for. He grows hay and grain, runs cattle, and holds a seat on the board of Klamath Irrigation District. But ask around the Basin, and you’re just as likely to hear about the year he turned his own farm into a lifeline for ranchers who had nowhere else to turn.
Rooted in Malin
Fred Simon’s roots run deep in this corner of the Basin. He grows hay and grain and runs cattle on the family operation near Malin, and he’s part of Simon Brothers Hay and Grain — a farming and trucking outfit the family built and still runs, moving the Basin’s hay and grain down the road and across the region. It’s the kind of work that starts before sunup and doesn’t punch a clock.
Like every operation out here, the Simons have weathered the hard run of drought and water shut-offs that have tested the Basin in recent years. For a farming family, reliable water isn’t a line item — it’s the difference between a standing crop and a field of dust. That truth is a big part of what pulled Fred toward the work of protecting it.
Answering the call to serve
In January 2023, Fred was sworn in as Director for the District’s Fifth Division, elected by his fellow patrons to carry their voice. It isn’t a seat he took for the title. Serving on the board means helping make good on the District’s promise to the Basin’s farms — to acquire, maintain, and deliver the water they depend on, and to stand up for that water before the agencies and lawmakers who decide its future.
That fight has carried him all the way to Washington, D.C., where he has spoken directly to Congress on behalf of Klamath Basin water rights — pressing for the certainty that lets a farming family plan a season, and a future.
When the Basin needed him most
The summer of 2021 brought the Basin to its knees. For the first time, the Bureau of Reclamation delivered no irrigation water at all — and then the Bootleg Fire tore through, burning more than 400,000 acres of grazing land and taking barns and winter hay with it. Ranchers watched their feed vanish and faced an impossible choice: find hay, or sell off the herds they had spent lifetimes building.
Fred Simon couldn’t stand by. A year earlier, when wildfires scorched the Willamette Valley, Klamath Basin farmers had loaded up hay and sent it west to help. Now, working with Timber Unity, Fred helped bring that kindness home. He turned his own Malin farm into the staging ground for convoy after convoy of donated hay — roughly 1,000 tons in all — and personally saw to the local deliveries, about 500 pounds a cow, enough to carry an animal through a month. For a great many families, it was the help that let them keep their herds, and their footing.
- 1,000 Tons of donated hay delivered to the Basin
- ~500 lbs Hay per cow — about a month of feed
- 400,000+ Acres of grazing land burned in the Bootleg Fire
“These are our farmers, and they need help.”
Fred Simon, on the 2021 hay relief effort
Still showing up
The next year, Fred carried that same instinct onto another board. Through 2024, he served on the Klamath Project Drought Response Agency, which steers federal relief funds — including a multi-year allocation from the Bureau of Reclamation — to irrigators left without surface water. It was one more way to soften the blow of a dry year for the families who feel it first.
Why we feature him
Fred Simon is exactly the kind of neighbor this Basin runs on. He works the land, he carries his community’s water rights to the people who decide them, and when the worst came, he opened his own gate to help. That’s the spirit Klamath Irrigation District is proud to stand behind — the farmers who feed the country, and look after one another while they do it.
More photos
In the news
A few stories that chronicle Fred Simon’s work on the District Board and his relief efforts in the Basin:
- Herald and News Appointments made during Drought Response Agency meeting Fred Simon is sworn in as a director for Klamath Irrigation District.
- Capital Press Convoy delivers hay donations to Southern Oregon Hundreds of tons of donated hay reach Basin ranchers, distributed at Malin during the 2021 drought and Bootleg Fire.
- Capital Press Timber Unity: ‘Rural, working Oregonians who care about other people’ The volunteer effort that brought hay and supplies to Klamath Basin farmers and ranchers.
- Capital Press Timber Unity: ‘We are givers, not takers’ Simon, who headed up the hay deliveries, on organizing the convoys to feed displaced livestock.
