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Fish or farms. Why not both? That’s the approach taken by the Skagit River System Cooperative and its project partners, who for more than a decade have launched measures designed to restore estuarine habitat within the Tribal-owned Smokehouse tidelands area at the north end of Swinomish Channel, a scenic location that abuts productive farmland. A tractor worked a nearby field as SRSC Director of Habitat Restoration Steve Hinton led a tour Monday afternoon show earlier efforts coordinated with t...
Walking up Valentine Road past Pleasant Ridge cemetery in the evening last week offered a great view of Venus to the northwest. Always the brightest planet, it is particularly distinct in the clear, blue black May sky. Heading south around the curve, it is Jupiter, a bit yellower but almost as bright, hanging proudly in the southeastern sky. These wonderfully clear spring nights, what a gift they are for stargazing. Is that what our farm neighbors are thinking as they slowly head west across their fields? Their tractors power the brightest...
Thursday, the 17th, you can make your mouth happy, your spouse or partner happy, the owners of one of five of your favorite La Conner restaurants and chefs happy and in the process do a fleeting good deed for poor people. See the ad on this issue’s back page. Find a restaurant participating, eat out and take a BITE for Skagit. It is a small way to do a little bit of good. So go. Eat out. Take a BITE for Skagit is an annual May Foodie Fundraiser benefiting Community Action of Skagit County’s Skagit Food Bank Distribution Center. It is org...
April, weather wise, left the western Skagit Valley as it sometimes does: overcast, cool, rain overnight Sunday and dripping into Monday morning. Monday, was in fact perfectly average: the morning temperature started at 50 degrees F at WSU’s Mount Vernon weather station. My phone app says temperatures hit 60 degrees F around 5 p.m. This April it rained 20 days, including the last three. In 2017 it also rained about 20 days, though total rainfall was about three inches against the nearly five inches this year. This April was cooler, though h...
Zerma Louise Pierson was born April 15, 1928 in Fayette County, Kentucky to Mark Mynear and Ella Mae Ivy (Mynear). She passed away on April 16, 2018 at Skagit Valley Hospital. Zerma had a busy childhood, helping care for six other siblings and other extended family members. She met Chester (Chet) R. Pierson in 1944 while he was in the US Army stationed at Fort Knox, Kentucky. They married on October 2, 1944 in Ohio. Their first son, Chester Andrew joined them six months before they moved back to Chet’s hometown of La Conner, Washington in e...
Earth Day might be the most informal of our nation’s holidays. This weekend Future Fest is on in Anacortes. Special days are times to reflect on the work of our fore-parents, those that have gone before, taking chances and making stands for our own good, today. The success of the environmental movement rests in the hard work of people insisting on the primacy and permanence of place – their homes, their communities, their hills, their shores, their fishing grounds – in going toe-to-toe against the established order and saying NO, ov...
Heather Carter, La Conner Chamber of Commerce executive director, hit a grand slam home run in January in bringing a world-renowned expert on owls to speak. Paul Bannick filled Maple Hall for his hour-long show, sharing the wonder and importance of owls in our world, and stressing that in saving habitat for owls, we will save ourselves. Restaurants and rooms in La Conner were also full, a boon to merchants in mid-winter. Carter took the prize for turning plans for the first ever “Birds of Winter: a Skagit Valley Experience,” into an economic su...
Account by Joan Cross In 1981 Community Homewell, a home visiting nursing agency, wanted to start a Hospice service. They hired Paul Murray, a resident of La Conner, to fundraise for this new service. Paul had to come up with some serious money because his own salary would be dependent on his success. For this project, Paul noticed that the bulb farmers produced beautiful stretches of color with their tulips and thought it would be a good idea to share this beauty with others. He came up with the idea of hosting the ‘Tulip Pedal’, a casual bike...
A planned victory lap to herald the completion of the first “Birds of Winter: A Skagit Valley Experience” among the county’s economic development, tourism promotion and environmental and birding advocates got sidetracked and hijacked last week. Instead, a meeting comprised primarily of farmers and conservationists was held at the Skagit County Washington State University Extension office at the Port of Skagit March 28. Andrew Miller, who has coordinated the loose knit Birds of Winter planning for EDASC, the Economic Development Alliance of Sk...
It’s no joke: the 35th annual Skagit Valley Tulip Festival runs the month of April. Expect to see folks on greater La Conner roads this weekend. They will be fooled: only daffodils are now in bloom. Started as a three-day festival in 1984, it has grown to 10, then 17 days and, for more than five years, into a 30-day event. The activities are many and assorted: art shows, gala celebrations, concerts, tours of local shellfish and cheese operations and an open house at PACCAR. The Downtown Mount Vernon Street Fair and the Kiwanis Salmon B...
The smelt weren’t running in La Conner Saturday, February 24, but 81 people were, as the took part in the annual smelt run. Six of the runners were under 14 years old. Run coordinator Peter Voorhees was satisfied, emailing “Considering the weather it went really well. Lots of happy people; we had over 160 people sign-up.” There weren’t a lot of folks fishing for smelt. One couple came from Idaho, four guys came from Seattle, and several hailed from Alger, Bow and Bellingham. Maybe 30 people,...
The headline for this week’s column could be “Winter weather migrated through the Skagit last week.” Thankfully it has passed through, for this Monday’s temperatures were much milder than last week. And if the forecast holds, it might be 50 degrees when you are reading next week’s paper. Way back on the night of the 17th, the change came as snow mixed with rain north of Seattle. Snow flurries came down Sunday morning. Until last week, that was not typical, but it was the first wintery taste, this new year, of what has been a mild winter in the...
The future economic vitality of Skagit County farms will come from wining and dining strangers invited on to their properties some 100 farmers and allies of agriculture were told at the Skagit Summit February 16. Mount Vernon Mayor Jill Boudreau extolled her City’s welcome strategy connecting restaurants with local farms, putting local food on local tables. “We celebrate all of that together to control how we grow in our Valley. It is right for our heritage and future,” she said in explaining the City’s Innovation Partnership Zone. Growing...
Chamber of Commerce Director Heather Carter had the right bait to bring droves of birders to the first La Conner Birding Showcase: world renowned owl expert Paul Bannick. It worked: Over 350 people overflowed the balcony and main floor of the town’s Maple Hall Sat., Jan. 27. Bannick did not disappoint, swooping across the room, speaking directly to people in the front row, by turns dramatically raising and lowering his voice as he went through an hour’s worth of photos and videos, cap...
Local color – You have probably heard the repetitive booming cannons and the recorded distress calls emanating from fields in the Skagit Valley during growing season. Those artificial warnings are designed to keep birds away from berries. Unfortunately, most birds get accustomed to the sounds after a few days and quickly realize there’s no real danger preventing them from gorging on the current crop. That’s where Brad Felger comes in. His business, Airstrike Bird Control, Inc., is a natura...
The Anacortes Food Co-op, open since July 2016, is probably the state’s newest. And they have already moved to a bigger space, occupying 1,500 square feet – retail is 1,000 square feet, including Rachel’s Cool Beans Cafe – at 2308 Commercial Avenue since February. Coming from La Conner, you can’t miss it on the west side of the street: the “Enjoy Skagit Maid Ice Cream” covering the wall is larger than the store’s sign. The co-op’s vision: “a member-owned grocery store bringing food, goods, and services that are local, organic...
The greatest co-op ever seems to be the La Conner Co-op Preschool. Lori Buher’s sentiment was shared by every person asked to comment. “One of the most important parts for me and a lot of the moms was the friendships we developed among ourselves and the support we gave each other. It was nice to have other people to talk to about raising your kids. We made lifelong friendships and it’s the same with the kids: a lot of lifelong friendships.” Buher’s three children attend-ed between 1987 and 1994,...
This lush, alluvial plain we call home, the Skagit Valley, is the site of the 19th Festival of Family Farms this weekend. A dozen farms are participating. Cows, blueberries, shellfish, pumpkins, apples, alpacas, cheese, gardening demonstrations, and flowers – it couldn’t be more diverse. But they have one thing in common: they are farms; farms run by families. Each year, rain or shine, more and more people line up for hayrides, harvesting, music, food, animal exhibits, and more. They a...
La Conner High government students tuned out reality TV for an hour-long segment of real politics Friday morning. U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Arlington, came to campus to address voting rights, adding a lawmaker’s perspective to a unit taught by social studies teacher Erin Lisser. “He’s here,” Lisser quipped, “to tell us if it’s really like House of Cards,” citing the popular political drama television series. Larsen indeed did some shuffling during his La Conner appearance to cover a broad range...
Tuesday marked the longest number of consecutive days on record that Seattle has been without rain since 1951. While La Conner encountered a light shower July 20, it was not considered measurable precipitation. Extreme dry heat is affecting most of Western Washington, but the smoky haze from the wildfires in British Columbia and the Chuckanut Mountains, has saved La Conner from the high temperatures seen in other communities. That haze comes at a price: Last week the Skagit County Public Health...
The world’s wheat and barley enthusiasts, professionals and hobbyists alike, flocked to the 2017 Grain Gathering at Washington State University’s Bread Lab food campus last week. Over 300 people from 23 states and seven countries spent three days at the Port of Skagit to hear, see and taste the progress researchers and scientists are making turning Skagit Valley grains into feedstock for artisanal producers. They also sampled freshly made breads, beers, bagels and more. The significance of the 7th annual Grain Gathering, held this year in the...
Last week over 300 people from seven countries and 23 states came to the seventh annual Great Grains Gathering. Bakers, brewers, millers, researchers, scientists, home and backyard varieties of the above, and at least one La Conner organic farmer came, to learn, admire, copy and take home techniques, tips, samples and business cards. Washington State University’s bread lab team is breeding and harvesting its vision of turning the Skagit Valley’s barley and wheat crops into high demand flours, malts and whiskey feedstocks sought for their fla...
Special to La Conner Weekly News The United States Department of the Interior on Friday approved the constitutional amendments voted on and passed in May by members of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community. While the changes in the tribe’s constitution are mostly aimed to reduce the paternalistic federal oversight of the tribe’s day-to-day operations, the wording in one of the amendments – dealing with territory and jurisdiction – sparked an outcry from landowners and farmers as well as Anacortes and Skagit County government officia...
Swinomish Indian Tribal Community members approved the 29 proposed amendments to the tribal constitution, last week. While tribal elections are private and generally do not stir controversy outside the reservation community, provisions pertaining to territory and jurisdiction in the amended constitution have inspired a flood of letters to the U.S. Department of Interior, which has until July to approve the document. County officials, landowners, the agricultural community and taxpayers worried about what appears to be a move to extend the...
Controversial author and orator Elaine Willman held a workshop at Tequila Azteca Restaurant in Sedro-Woolley on Saturday, drawing about 80 people, mostly senior citizens, and a throng of protesters Willman, whose mother was an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation, led a four-hour discussion on how she feels the political power and wealth of Native American tribes has grown to a point that is infringing on the rights of non-tribal members. The workshop was sponsored by the Skagit County...
