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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...
Five local residents who came down with covid-19 agree: Keep wearing those masks! When Jo Wolfe started feeling bad in March, she attributed it to her allergies. Ten days later, the director of the Skagit County Historical Museum found herself at Providence Everett Hospital, on oxygen, participating in a clinical trial of the anti-viral drug remdesivir. “I never felt super sick,” she says. “I was just out of it brain-wise.” In the hospital she learned that an observer at the Northwest Regional History Day Contest at Anacortes Middle School had...
A new grant from the US Department of Agriculture will equip the Puget Sound Food Hub on Best Road to increase food security for families in northwest Washington. The Food Hub’s 80 member-producers will also benefit. Using funds from the USDA Coronavirus Food Assistance Program, they will supply 3,000 boxes of fresh food a week for the Bellingham Food Bank and other organizations in the northwest Washington food relief system. For 90 days, Viva Farms and Ralph’s Greenhouse will supply 2,000 boxes of their produce, and the Food Hub will prepare...
“Thank you for wearing a mask.” That’s how Nicole Garcia-Swanson greeted La Connerite Sandi Davidson when she purchased berries at the Swanson Family Farm on Monday. Affirming positive behavior is just one new habit adopted by La Conner-area farm stands as they conform to Department of Health rules. Add in masks, gloves, sanitizing, social distancing and plastic barriers, and family-owned stands look a lot different this year. Since Schuh Farms opened in mid-March, “our monthly safety training has been all about the virus and how to keep yo...
Will restaurants and breweries open again? What about schools? The export market? While farmers are still grappling with big questions triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown, “we have to get farming,” says Eddie Gordon of Gordon Skagit Farms. “The growing season is here.” That means moving ahead on plans made last winter – or coming up with a creative workaround. Also important to consider: soil health and crop rotation. Here is what some La Conner-area farmers are getting...
You can work from home, shop from home, and call friends from home. But you can’t farm from home. That’s why La Conner area farmers and farmworkers are adopting new habits as they comply with new rules from the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries. To protect workers from the COVID-19 virus, agricultural employers must implement an effective social distancing plan, ensure frequent and adequate handwashing by employees, and increase cleaning and sanitation of commonly touched surfaces. Sick workers must stay home or be iso...
Results from an engineering feasibility study has halted plans to restore the historic Pleasant Ridge School. The study was commissioned by Cemetery District 1, which acquired the school and its surrounding acreage in 2017 from owners who had held it for about 50 years. The District wanted more acreage and hoped to turn the much-beloved schoolhouse into a meeting place for memorial services and other community events. After decades of neglect, including long years of service as a storage shed...
“Expected Returns on Most Northwest Ag Commodities Leveling Up” was the optimistic headline of Northwest Farm Credit’s quarterly Market Snapshot in January. The April 2 Snapshot says that in sector after sector, forecasts now range from “variable profitability” to “unprofitable returns”. “It’s all so new and changing so fast, it’s hard to get a clear picture,” said Don McMoran, director of the Washington State University Skagit County Extension. “It’s super clear that people are not buying flo...
Just two weeks ago, Brent Roozen was anticipating a great season for daffodils and tulips. Growing conditions were perfect and orders for field-cut flowers were strong. Social distancing and the national obsession with toilet paper and thermometers have changed the picture – not to mention the Governor’s March 23 order closing non-essential businesses and keeping Washingtonians at home for two weeks, to slow the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Ninety percent of the Washington Bulb Company’s wholesale and retail flower orders have been can...
As this issue goes to press, the outlook for daffodils and tulips is brighter than the outlook for visitors to admire them. “This year is far better than last year, when all our early daffodils were burnt by the extended deep freeze,” said Brent Roozen of the Washington Bulb Company. Roozen says daffodils and tulips have flourished thanks to the wet winter and ongoing cool nights. When picked before blooming, cut daffodils can “last forever” if they are not in the sun and temperatures are in...
Add another “People’s Choice” award to honors that Christianson’s Nursery earned at this year’s Northwest Flower and Garden Festival. “Hill Top Farm” earned the Display Garden Professionals Choice for demonstrating “excellence in design concepts, horticulture and quality of execution to create a memorable show garden reflecting the highest level of workmanship.” The Fine Gardening Magazine Inspiration Award Garden said the display “inspires gardeners to reach for new levels of design excellence and creativity while keeping those goals achieva...
A new farm “growing” on Best Road moved to Seattle last Friday. Hill Top Farm was delivered in five 24-foot trucks to the Washington State Convention Center, where it was reconstructed for this week’s Northwest Flower and Garden Festival. The idea for the 2020 Christianson’s Nursery garden display – its first since 2011 – began germinating 15 years ago. On a visit to the Lake District of England, John and Toni Christianson visited Hill Top, the home of author and illustrator Beatrix...
In spite of tremendous support by members, the Rotary Club of La Conner is retiring the annual Smelt Derby. For the handful of smelt in the Channel, the Derby’s demise is good news. Not so for the humans who gathered each February to fish and frolic during the beloved late-winter community event. Longtime Derby committee member and judge Patsy Good has been doling out prizes for the largest smelt, the smallest smelt and the strangest catch since 1996. For the last several years, Smelt Derby f...
A full-size roundabout will be constructed this summer at the hazardous intersection of Josh Wilson Road and Farm to Market Road. Skagit County Public Works director Dan Berentson and his team revealed the plans during a Jan. 29 meeting at the County Administration building in Mount Vernon. About 60 residents of Bayview and Bow were present to watch an animation of the roundabout in use as county engineers explained the particulars. Commissioners Lisa Janicki, Ron Wesen and Ken Dahlstedt listened from the sidelines. Safety concerns increased...
Patsy Love sailed boats, taught special needs students, mended library books, repaired clocks and wrote books – but she was best known for making jam. “We met while she was picking up plums in my yard,” said neighbor and good friend Jo Ann Mulanax. “She made all kinds of jam for people, preferably from fruit picked up for free.” The La Conner resident died in her home on Fifth Street on November 26. Patsy and her late husband Hal Love moved to La Conner from Bellevue in the 1990s. Ten years of part-time life aboard the Echo Summit...
An overflow crowd was on hand last Friday to celebrate the relaunch of the Rexville Grocery as “The Rex.” The Pleasant Ridge institution at the intersection of Best Road and Summers Drive is now owned by Wes and Rona Whiteaker and Chanan Spadaccini. The Whiteakers live just down the road. They are longtime patrons. The Whiteakers look forward to maintaining favorite traditions while adding new elements to the mix. They will rely on Spadaccini, who has managed the Rexville for the last four years...
If you’re moved by the story James H. Keefe III shares next Tuesday at the La Conner High School Auditorium, you can thank Patty McCormick. The retired LaConner Schools bus driver was browsing the Mount Vernon Goodwill store with her daughter Emily when she found a framed photograph of a man in uniform, inscribed ‘great flying with you – the Tigers’. “I always wonder how family pictures end up in secondhand stores,” she told the Weekly News. Curious, she took her purchase out of its frame and found the name James H. Keeffe, Junior. Google...
Too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry – to hear farmers tell it, farming is a lot like Goldilocks and the three bears. Let’s start with too cold. For Dean Swanson, Feb. 8 is where this year’s berry crop began. In January, temperatures were mild and the buds on Swanson’s berry bushes on La Conner Whitney Road were plump and healthy. “I thought winter was over,” he said. “I was wrong.” On Jan. 8 the temperature plummeted to 12 degrees. Tayberries, marionberries and boysenberries “got hammered.” Yields for these damaged plants were down...
When Patsy Love runs into people she knows, they don’t ask about her. They ask about her car. Patsy drives a 1987 Chevrolet Caprice Estate Wagon. Almost 18 feet long and over 6 feet wide, it’s about half the size of Echo Summit, the wooden boat that brought Patsy and her late husband Hal to La Conner in the 1990s. For a decade, they lived part-time on their boat in the north marina. “The marina was its own neighborhood,” remembers Patsy. “Families lived aboard with kids and one baby came stra...
A 36-year tradition concluded in late June when Tulip Town on Bradshaw Road in Greater LaConner was purchased by Spinach Bus Ventures. Since founders Tom and Jeannette DeGoede opened Tulip Town 1983, its colorful plantings, Peace Garden, murals of tulips in the Skagit Valley and Holland, and gracious owners have attracted hundreds of thousands of fans. Tulip Town has been on the market for two years and Tom DeGoede died June 2. The new buyers “are all local, they know farming and I think they a...
