Your independent hometown award-winning newspaper
Your independent hometown award-winning newspaper
Sorted by date Results 101 - 125 of 144
Most of the poems 4-year-old Lenore Micka-Foos dictates to her dad find homes with her admiring relatives. The first-place poem she wrote for the Great Hunt for Magic Skagit Stories will find a home in print. Lenore’s “The Great Skagit List” was one of 61 entries in the Skagit Historical Museum’s debut writing contest. Youth, teen and adult winners in the poetry and essay categories were announced last Friday during a Facebook Live broadcast from the Museum. “A big part of this contest w...
“We’re still big smilin’ even though the bloom is done for the season,” said Tulip Town’s May 14 Instagram post. “Such a great year sharing color and creativity with all our guests and digitally connected friends!” Cindy Verge, executive director of the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival, estimates between 250,000 and 300,000 people visited the valley this year. In dollars, “my sense is we did really well,” she says. Verge says asking visitors to book visits to Tulip Town and Roozengaarde in advance was a very positive move. Reservations spre...
The Skagit Valley Farmers Market at Christianson’s Nursery makes its debut May 30 on a site once central to the pea harvest on the Skagit Flats. The market will be open 10 a.m.-2 p.m. most Sundays through the summer. The new kid-and-dog-friendly market will feature a nice mix of produce and crafts, says manager Kathryn Shiohira, who just happens to be food safety specialist and a driver for the Puget Sound Food Hub right next door. “The cool thing is these farmers are already set up and ready to go, because to be part of the Food Hub you must h...
Mavrik Marine’s new building on Pearle Jensen Way is complete. Already the aluminum boat manufacturer is making big progress on new, large-scale projects. The building itself is large scale. About 60 feet tall, the white metal building dominates its Port of Skagit site east of the La Conner Marina. Taller than the old Moore Clark building, it puts an exclamation point on the town’s decades-long shift from seafood processing to high-tech marine industries. A 12 p.m. May 27 ribbon-cutting cer...
Wind, rain, cold and hail made Sunday pretty miserable, but growers did not complain. “Some daffodils were bent, but they will straighten out after a couple days of sun,” said Brent Roozen of the Washington Bulb Company. At Tulip Town, early varieties on the outside of rows were damaged. Had the storm been two weeks later, said Andrew Miller, the damage could have been extensive. Roozen, Miller and just about every business in the valley have high hopes for this tulip season. “It’s gonna b...
No one in La Conner ever met Alice Yantos, but she is about to be missed in a big way. Alice’s granddaughter Jennifer Ferry has been cooking her grandma’s signature pierogis, cabbage rolls and other Polish delights on First Street since she and Matt Farrell opened their restaurant – honoring Alice, aka Anelia – in 2014. “It’s the best Polish food we’ve ever had,” said regular customer Larry Spaboni. “The pierogis are the best we’ve ever tasted, and we’ve had them in a lot of diffe...
A dozen La Conner shop windows are in flower as organizers prepare for a somewhat restrained Tulip Festival. “Last spring, our flower growers lived through multiple contingency plans that ended in ‘we can’t,’” said Cindy Verge, executive director of the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. This year is all about “we can,” she says, although beloved events like the Kiwanis Salmon Barbeque and La Conner Tulip Parade are on hold for one more year. In place of the usual lineup of town pets, farm animals, b...
“In 1960, all the people in Washington (state) could fit into King County today. That’s how much we’ve grown.” Director of Skagit County Planning and Development Services Hal Hart was addressing the 50 participants in the sixth annual – and first virtual – Skagit Ag Summit. The Jan. 29 event’s 16 presentations focused on water, opportunities and threats facing agriculture and economic viability and development. Threats first. While the pressure of growth and development on agricultu...
Daffodils will begin blooming in March. Tulips will arrive in April. Whether tourists will be allowed to follow is up in the air. “What we’re telling people is, we know we’ll be open, we just don’t know yet what the regulations will allow,” said Skagit Valley Tulip Festival Executive Director Cindy Verge. Some things are certain. There will be a Tulip Festival brochure that includes a map of daffodil and tulip fields. There will not be a Mount Vernon Kiwanis managed salmon barbecue. “There ar...
Davis will turn lights off for last time Mary Davis Vintage Lighting is the brick-and-mortar embodiment of a four decades-long passion. By day, in her younger years, Davis pursued a retail management career. By night she tracked down vintage lighting for herself and her friends from the basement of her home in Seattle. Moving to La Conner and opening her store sharpened her eye for lighting design. It is a gift she has shared with customers who want a single lamp and those who involve her in a...
Since 2009, half a million kilowatt hours of electricity have been produced on Beaver Marsh Road. The source of that power? Cows. While the plant just north of Summers Drive still produces up to 750 kilowatt hours a day – enough to power 550 homes – seismic shifts in energy policy and dairy farming are affecting its business plan. Co-founders Kevin and Daryl Maas of Mount Vernon started Farm Power Northwest with federal and state grants plus startup funds from local investors, including this reporter’s family. Once online, Farm P...
The Gilkey Square tree lighting. Fall and spring concerts. Regional music educator festivals. Christmas wreath sales. Pep band. Maybe Disneyland. COVID-19 wiped the 2020-21 school music calendar clean, leaving La Conner Director of Bands and Choirs McKenzie Clark and his students to make music on-line. That is a challenge for an essentially face-to-face endeavor. When meeting in person, music classes begin with call-and-response warm-up exercises. Clark sings or plays a line; students repeat...
The Feast of All Saints and other celebrations make November “the month for the dead,” says Father Paul Magnano, senior priest of Skagit Valley Catholic churches. Congregations pray for the deceased by name at the beginning of mass. Day of the Dead altars feature their photos, food and drink for their journey to paradise and marigolds, symbols of life after death. This year, the process of honoring the deceased has been complicated by changing rules and soaring infection rates from the coronavirus pandemic. For the family of Phyllis Webb, the...
But not as lengthy as the campaign to secure for women the right to vote, a decades-long fight whose leadership ranks in Washington state included the daughter of a pioneer La Conner family. Linda Deziah Jennings, 1869-1932, is being honored now for her many contributions to the women’s suffrage movement, which ranged from speaking engagements, authorship of persuasive magazine articles and the editing of a thematic cook book whose popular recipes shared pages with voting rights essays. In o...
Moonlight and pumpkins set the stage for the first-ever Locals Night at Gordon Skagit Farms last Thursday. A first-quarter moon loitered over the barn. Tea lights illuminated a display of green speckled swan gourds. Lighted pumpkins spelled “Gordon’s”. La Conner High School graduate Parker Rivas unloaded purchases from carts in the weigh station. Georgia Johnson whipped up complimentary chocolate Cointreau crepes. Owners Todd and Eddie Gordon mingled with after-hours guests. The small but appre...
La Conner-area farmers used Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and other measures to keep COVID-19 out of their workforce. Many also embraced the U.S. government’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) to stave off financial problems. Funds could be used to cover payroll, rent and utilities over a 24-week period. The Hedlins, on the town’s east edge, credit the PPP program with facilitating a quick pivot from field crops to row crops. “We had to go from some big grain contracts to ramping up produ...
Mother Nature was good to La Conner-area farmers this year. “It was a perfect summer,” said Dean Swanson of the Swanson Family Farm. A wetter spring and early summer warmth meant seeds could germinate and young plants could get established without irrigating. “The crops got a really good start,” said Ray de Vries of Ralph’s Greenhouse. Swanson grew “the best corn we’ve had all year” with no irrigation. Unless there is an early freeze, he will be picking through October 20. A “super long” be...
If you’re looking for poets next weekend, don’t come to Maple Hall. Or the Methodist Church. Or the Seafood and Prime Rib House. Or the Tavern. Or the La Conner Country Inn. Or any of the usual haunts that would ordinarily be teeming with poets and poetry lovers. With the Skagit River Poetry Festival postponed for at least a year, the only place you will find poets is in school. Online, of course. When schools closed unexpectedly last March, the Skagit River Poetry Foundation’s Poets in the S...
On Wednesday, August 19, I drove through hell. The day started well enough. I woke up in a lovely pine forest near Mount Shasta. The night before, I had watched the sun set on the mountain and the stars come out. By breakfast, the mountain was enveloped in smoke. As I left the Siskiyou mountains, the smoke thickened, darkened and filled the wide Sacramento Valley. After Redding, I can usually see the Sierras about 25 miles on the west, to my left and the Coast Range about 20 miles to my right,...
Thanks to new guidelines from Governor Jay Inslee, La Conner’s three museums will soon be back in business. Hours and visitors will be limited when the Museum of Northwest Art museum opens Friday, Sept. 4. “Since we can only operate at 25 percent of capacity, our docents will need to monitor the number of visitors in the galleries,” said MoNA Executive Director Joanna Sikes. “When one group leaves, another can enter.” While there is no need to make an appointment beforehand, Sikes said some patience may be required as MoNA staff work to make s...
Two businesses with deep roots on First Street are selling their buildings and all or part of their businesses. The multi-building Nasty Jack’s complex at First and Morris is listed for $1 million. The antique store is available separately for $200,000. The Hotel Planter’s storefronts at 713-719 First Street are on the market for $1.75 million. Earthenworks Gallery and other retail businesses are not included. Nasty Jack’s was founded in 1972 by the late “Nasty” Jack Wilkins with his partner “Diamond” Jim Reynolds. When Nasty Jack died in...
The Snow Goose Produce Stand has been named “Best Roadside Stands” by lifestyle guru Martha Stewart’s magazine. “It’s a nice honor for us and the valley,” said Snow Goose founder Mike Rust, “but it came completely out of the blue. We don’t know who inspected us, or when.” The owners heard the news from the grandmother of Jacqueline ‘Jacq’ Perry, who manages the stand’s Fir Island Road gardens. After seeing the July-August 2020 issue of Martha Stewart magazine, she called to ask Jacq, “isn’t this the outfit you work for?” “We were skeptical at...
Two Morris Street businesses are making big changes this summer. Lucy Kelly and her cat Six will be retiring soon. Tillinghast Postal and Business Center and its building are for sale. The beautiful, custom-built home of Pransky & Associates is also on the market, but George and Linda Pransky and staff are very much in business. Lucy has loved her years running La Conner’s only office-services store with Ginger Olson, who helped her open the business in 2013. She hopes that a new owner will c...
Conducting day-to-day affairs online is working well for local government and business leaders – with a few exceptions. The Town Council’s pledge of allegiance, for instance. When the Council meets at Maple Hall, everyone stands to salute a flag that all can see. On Zoom, there’s no central flag for the dozen or so participants to salute. And with computer cameras in a fixed position, “if I stand, everybody is looking at my belt buckle or my stomach,” says Town Administrator Scott Thomas. Town staff, along with staff of Fire Distric...
Local fiber artists used to work on their projects over coffee every Friday at the Pacific Northwest Quilt and Fiber Arts Museum. Now they check in from as far away as Hawaii and New Mexico. When the Museum closed on March 18, the group shifted to Zoom. “We still talk and show off what we’re making,” said Executive Director Amy Green. “It’s like a modern-day quilting bee.” Virtual Fiber Friday is just one example of how La Conner museums have engaged patrons in spite of being shuttered. Podcasts, virtual art classes, YouTube videos and social...
