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With about three weeks left in flood season, Skagit County Dike District 1 commissioners are feeling pretty good. Fields are soggy, but no “pineapple express” storm has overwhelmed the Skagit River system. If one comes, the dikes will be in good shape – and a new agreement will help prevent future flooding by keeping more water behind Ross Dam, northeast of Newhalem. Each year District 1 invests two-thirds of its annual budget in maintenance and reinforcement of dikes on the west side of the Skagit River between Avon Allen Road and the North...
Jo Wolfe has a lot to be grateful for this Thanksgiving. The executive director of the Skagit County Historical Museum says that its recent fall party netted the museum about $25,000 – a new high for an event that is just three years old. The new fire detection system, paid for by the raise the paddle segment of last year’s fundraiser, is up and running. When problems are detected, the system alerts Guardian Security, which calls the La Conner fire department, all in a matter of minutes. Visitors and participants in museum-sponsored pro...
In veterinary school, Dr. Amber Itle learned to "look for horses, not zebras" when examining an animal. She means "horses" are common, endemic diseases seen often in clinics, while "zebras" are one-offs, "the ones nobody is looking for." As in bird flu, aka, "highly pathogenic avian influenza" (HPAI). As Washington's State Veterinarian, Itle and her regional veterinary staff are working to keep this "zebra" away from domestic birds, cattle and people. The risk of HPAI transmissions increases in...
From start to finish, volunteers made this year's Art's Alive a success. They greeted almost 1,800 visitors during the four-day show the last weekend in October, plying them with wine, beer and appetizers, answering questions and ringing up sales. Before and after, they planned the show, hung its art and took it all down again Monday, Oct. 28. In between duties, they admired one another's art. Six of the 10 invitational artists featured on the first floor of Maple Hall and 16 of the 51 artists i...
Karl the Fog lives in San Francisco, where his soft, mysterious contours come and go as they blanket the city. Karl the ferry lives in La Conner for now – but will soon call San Francisco home, too. The quad-engine passenger vessel ferry was pushed out of the Mavrik building last Friday and will start sea trials at the end of next week. Presuming positive results, by mid-December M.V. Karl will be on his way to join Mavrik-built siblings M.V. Dorado and M.V. Delphinus in the San Francisco Bay Fe...
If ranked-choice voting becomes a reality in Washington state, you can thank former La Conner resident Kit Muehlman. Muehlman, who raised children, made pottery and taught yoga in greater La Conner for 42 years before moving to Bellingham in 2016, is spreading the word about this system of voting, now used by 60 U.S. cities and the states of Maine and Alaska. Ireland and Australia have been using ranked-choice voting for over a century. A proposal to use ranked-choice voting is on the ballot in Oregon this fall. Under this system, when a race...
Surprise! Art’s Alive is two weeks early this year – which looks like a sound decision. With the coming weekend a literal washout and November trending damp, it’s just possible that Oct. 25 will bestow a generous slice of lovely late-fall weather on the annual event, planned and produced by the La Conner Arts Foundation. This year’s show is actually three shows in one. As usual, the Invitational Show downstairs in Maple Hall will showcase eleven artists, five of them new to Art’s Alive. The late Thomas Stream, whose work graces this year’s post...
The poets are coming, the poets are coming! Lori Buher is ready. She is one of 20 La Conner-area residents who will be hosting a poet during this weekend’s 12th Biennial Skagit River Poetry Festival. Her guest, Lorraine Healy, is an Argentinian poet-photographer who lives on Whidbey Island and teaches in the Skagit River Poetry Foundation’s Poets in the Schools program. Healy is one of 35 poets, some internationally famous, gathering for workshop sessions, discussions and readings in intimate La Conner venues. The Festival opens at Maple Hal...
"No one who cooks, cooks alone," the novelist and food writer Laurie Colwin once wrote. "A cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past ... [and] the wisdom of cookbook writers." A cloud of wise "cooks past" certainly surrounds the talented new cooks and farmers showcased in the new cookbook "Genuine Skagit Cooking." Published in April, "Genuine Skagit Cooking" was written and compiled by Blake Van Roekel of Genuine Skagit Valley and writer Stefanie LeJeunesse, with photos by...
A cutting-edge, first-of-its-kind new food waste prevention facility will be unveiled at the Washington State University Skagit County Extension Office next Wednesday, Sept. 25. It’s a Worm Chalet – the brain child of Extension staff committed to preventing food waste. In 2023, staff offered programs and a social media campaign, “Use Food Well,” to begin helping Skagit county residents learn how to keep food waste out of landfills. But this year, as they prepped another season of food waste prevention activities, Diane Smith of the Extensi...
"They are coming out of the woodwork," said Senior Civil Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Will Honea during a public hearing of the Skagit County Board of Commissioners on Monday. He was talking about people proposing "creative new arguments" for locating businesses that are not ag-related on land zoned Agricultural-Natural Resources Land. Honea's remarks came before the microphone was turned over to residents with comments or questions about the six-month moratorium on new event venues on Ag-NRL...
Dredging in the Swinomish Channel will begin Sept. 9 and continue until mid-February, says the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Last dredged in 2018, the 11-mile long, 100-feet wide, 12-feet deep federal navigation channel is dredged every four to six years because “navigation through the channel is essential for commerce in the area,” said Sara Young, executive director of the Port of Skagit. Most of the work during the round-the-clock, six-days-a-week project will take place at the entrances of the channel. At the south end, the Skagit Rive...
A small Notice of Development Application sign in a field on Calhoun Road could signal big changes. Cloudbreak Energy Washington LLC, the Washington state arm of a privately held, national developer of distributed and utility-scale solar and storage projects, enquired with Skagit County about the potential for developing a 15.75-acre solar energy generation facility on land owned by Water & Wastewater Services, LLC owner Kelly Wynn. This is not a use permitted on lands designated...
Preservation is close to the heart of Jeanne Youngquist – preserving agriculture, open space, secure elections and county history. The greater La Conner resident, of Mike and Jean's Berry Farm, was honored at last week's Our Valley Our Future awards breakfast hosted by Skagitonians to Preserve Farmland. She received the Community Legacy in Agriculture award. Daniel Waltner earned the Achievement in Agriculture Award, which comes with a $5,000 scholarship. The Mount Vernon resident graduated f...
Don McMoran’s recent promotion to full professor with Washington State University is built on a lifetime love for Skagit County and its farmers. Born on the driveway of his parents’ home on the dividing line between the Mount Vernon and La Conner school districts, he joined the WSU Skagit County Extension in 2006 as Agriculture & Natural Resources extension educator. He earned tenure a few years later and became the county Extension director in 2012. His two-year quest to become full professor was backed by community members who wrote let...
Ferry #3 under construction by Mavrik Marine had a little sunshine on Thursday, May 16, when its superstructure was rolled from one Mavrik building to another. The hull has been under construction in the taller building while the superstructure has been built in the smaller one. During Thursday's move, the two parts of the vessel were placed side by side and "mated" when the superstructure was lifted onto the hull. Two high-speed, passenger-only, Mavrik-made ferries are already in service on th...
A bumper crop of Northwest potatoes in 2023 is driving the price of potatoes down, but John Thulen of Pioneer Potatoes is not worried – yet. Many of the challenges cited in a March 31 Market Snapshot from AgWest Farm Credit (the new name of the former Northwest Farm Credit in Burlington) concern russet potatoes grown in Eastern Washington. Thulen agrees that overproduction in 2023 has “plugged up” processors like McCain Food USA, whose enormous processing plant in Othello produces 15% of all the frozen French fries, hash browns and tater tots p...
After almost a century of hosting potlucks, weddings and receptions, rummage sales, art shows, dances, memorial services, service projects, polling sites and parties, the Rexville Grange #815 on Summers Drive is showing its age. Water seeps into the below-grade kitchen whenever it rains on Strawberry Hill. "That has caused a lot of rot in the lower cabinets, and damaged the water heater," says Cathy Savage, Grange president. With a kitchen unsuitable for cooking or catering, hosting indoor...
With the snowpack at 69% of normal and spring precipitation uncertain, local farmers have one piece of good news: if a drought develops, they can count on water from the Skagit Public Utility District. On April 9 the PUD approved a one-year interlocal, seasonal transfer for surplus water rights from the PUD to Skagit County Drainage and Irrigation Improvement Districts 15, which supplies water for 8,500 acres on the flats east of Best Road and Consolidated Diking Improvement District 22, which...
The Skagit Historical Museum's annual Sale at the School runs 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Friday-Sunday, April 19-21 at the Skagit City School, 17508 Moore Road on Fir Island. Museum Director Jo Wolfe is excited about this year's sale pieces. The vintage treasures and collectibles include a room of tools, model cars and costume jewelry and other items from the estate of Daralene Youngquist, who died last summer at the age of 99. "Year after year, people save their lovely items for this sale," said Wolfe....
The interim ordinance that places a temporary moratorium on new event venues on land zoned Ag-NRL “is not a free pass for existing venues,” Skagit County Prosecuting Attorney Will Honea said Monday at a post-adoption hearing in the county commissioners’ office. Twenty-six people attending gave testimony on the moratorium, adopted by the Skagit County Board of Commissioners on Jan. 29. The moratorium was a surprise. It essentially ignored the agritourism code changes proposed by the county’s Agricultural Advisory Board and recommended by the...
This year's Tulip Festival is all about traffic – on the road and on social media. Eighty percent of the traffic to the Tulip Festival website comes from people on mobile devices. On its new mobile-friendly website, people can buy display garden tickets, get bloom updates, even check Skagit County weather right from their phones. A large paid media campaign sponsored by the Skagit Tourism Bureau and the Festival has enticed many new website visitors. While "tulips are our crown jewel," said T...
The high-speed passenger ferry MV Delphinus has joined the San Francisco Bay Ferry system after breezing through builder trials and two weeks of sea trials that tested speed, endurance and maneuverability in different marine conditions. The vessel left La Conner on Friday, Feb. 10 and arrived in San Francisco at 9 a.m. Feb. 12. It has been "accepted" by its new owner, Water Emergency Transportation Authority, the operator of the ferry fleet, and will be christened in early March. The trip down w...
Poets are people. They get hungry, make shopping lists, cook. You can find their hankerings and appetites in "The Empty Bowl Cookbook," a new anthology published by the Madrona Project. The celebration rollout of the "Cookbook" takes place 7 p.m. Jan. 20 at the Pelican Bay Bookstore in Anacortes. Twelve writers will read their work along with other favorites from the book. La Conner poet and chef Georgia Johnson, who co-curates these monthly poetry readings, helped assemble this poetry/recipe...
For more than two-thirds of his life, Doug Jones has been a Rotarian. The 95-year-old Channel Drive resident joined Rotary when he was 31. He has been a Rotarian longer than the 52 years he was married to his late wife Ruth and almost, but not quite, longer than he has been a father. "Rotary has been a way of life," Jones told an appreciative crowd at the Dec. 18 La Conner Rotary Christmas party, as his 64 years with the service club were celebrated. The club has been a constant throughout his...
