Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
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This week was somewhat sad reading about the spread of COVID-19. It will make the holidays a very different experience this year, and not in a good way. But then I remembered a plaque a former boss had in his office. It read: “Not all the bad things happen.” In the past, when something annoying, problematic, or unexpected happened to me or someone close to me, my usual knee jerk reaction was to panic. Maybe it is maturity or maybe just exhaustion, but now I’m not going crazy about the little thi...
My recent visit with Starbuck's new Mayor, Zonia Dedloff, was a revelation for me. First thing I learned: she has lived there for 50 years. She and her late husband, Jerry, parked a trailer here in the late 1960s, along with many others, to work on building the Little Goose Dam. Jerry, a diamond driller, was one of many who traveled the U.S., following jobs like this. "It really was one long vacation," she said of those years. The dam work temporarily swelled the little hamlet's population....
Several people have asked me about how I prepare my collection of 160 varieties of tall bearded iris for winter. Here is what I do: NOTHING! Iris are quite frost-hardy, so they do not need to be mulched. In fact, mulch is hard to remove, will retain too much moisture in the spring, and you will risk the new growth and root rotting. I wait until early spring to remove the previous season's leaves, for several reasons. This has been my procedure for about 15 years, and it really seems to work in...
Just a week ago, I was on the tennis court in a short skirt and tank top; now, I’m making an appointment to have my tires changed to my snow tires. I blinked and the weather changed, and I mean dramatically! Not a simple 5-6 degrees, but below freezing and even a prediction of snow this Saturday. I think mother nature is out for revenge. I once mentioned that I was a little disappointed in my first autumn here because I just expected more of an explosion of color, so now she’s just decided out...
Blue Mountain Pheasants Forever (Pheasants Forever) recently teamed with Mike and Steve Erwin to relocate two wildlife watering guzzlers on their 1,000-acre lease with an expiring Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) contract near Prescott. Signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in 1985, the CRP is one of the largest private-lands conservation programs in the United States. In exchange for a yearly rental payment, farmers enrolled in the program remove acreage from active crop production and...
Last Friday, I think at least half of Waitsburg probably heard my deep, tortured sigh as I parked my car and put the top up for what will likely be its permanent status until next spring. No more racing down the highways at 65-70 mph with the sun in my face, hair blowing in my eyes. Mugsy, tethered in securely, will certainly miss the smell of goats, sheep, roosters, and growing wheat. I won’t miss his whining while he tries to break free of his restraints to sit in my lap while I’m dri...
It’s a minor miracle, but the kitchen is done, finally! The correct glass panels were installed on Monday, the silicone holding the glass in place has dried. Our new sod has taken, so we have ceased the twice-daily watering, and the muddy footprints have subsided. Now that the major remodeling is complete, I knew it was time to clean the house from the construction mess. I mean really cleaned, including windows, baseboards, the works! I hired a cleaning crew, especially to clean the windows i...
I find I am now pleasantly surprised by a kind gesture from anybody, including family, friends or people outside of my immediate small circle. It feels rare. And I include any kind gestures coming from business people, either owners or their employees, who directly encounter customers. Yes, the changing status of kind gestures is a condition of modern life due in part to the pandemic’s current circumstances. Regardless, a gracious gesture or word transforms the moment. My life as a senior c...
I hate to be cliché, but, Wow! Time does fly. And, sticking with clichés, it seems like yesterday that I wrote my first article for The Waitsburg Times. It’s been a very full year, and I can now say I’ve experienced all four seasons here. My first winter was brutal. Everyone was apologetic because we were experiencing the most snow and the coldest winter in 15 years. Lucky me, what an introduction to my new home. Good heaters, gloves, great new friends, and a little scotch, I survived. That firs...
I am not, nor have I ever been accused of being a “romantic.” Even as a young girl, I didn’t fantasize about wearing a big white poufy wedding dress, or a white knight charming and romancing me. It had nothing to do with being levelheaded; I was just more enthralled with action, adventure, and getting dirty. My sister, brother, and I have all been married twice, and none of us opted for big parties or over-the-top events. We had small weddings at home, except my last one to Daniel; we elope...
Jeromy Phinney, Chief of Columbia County Fire District 3, is a good man to have a conversation with right now. He's cool as a cucumber, with a large framed photo of John Wayne on the wall beside his desk. He has the confidence you want in a fire chief while wildfires rage around the Pacific Northwest. "Everything's dry, and dry conditions happen every year. It's nothing new," he said. "But yeah, this summer has been tough." Twenty-one years ago, Jeromy Phinney was a kid fresh out of college. He'...
As you all probably know, I’m a city girl. Born In New York (Brooklyn), we then moved to Queens, and eventually to the suburbs of Long Island. We grew nothing in New York, except for one crab apple tree and a pear tree, that never bore fruit. Our vegetables didn’t come from the ground; they lived in little white boxes in the freezer. My mother would boil salted water, drop in the frozen vegetables, then cook the life out of them. We eventually moved to Tucson, Arizona, because my father’s arthr...
When I’m not in the mood to watch one of the binge-worthy shows on Netflix or Prime, I turn to TCM and watch old movies, some of which are art to me. Recently, I watched a movie that I hadn’t seen in years, called The Egg and I with Fred MacMurray and Claudette Colbert. The movie is very old, in fact, it was released before I was born. It’s the story of newlyweds; Fred MacMurray (the groom), has just announced that he has purchased a ramshackle old farm, and they are going into the busin...
I don't know when Dad purchased the gun or from whom or where, but one of its few outings captured on film was in 1977. My brother was a toddler and dad had hunted a gray squirrel on his parent's farm in what used to be the middle-of-nowhere Appalachia. The Herrington and Richardson Topper Model 158 (H&R) was the shotgun built for everyone. An ordinary, functional firearm built for the budget-minded. Overly simplistic yet wholly reliable described the H&R firearms line from 1871 to 1986 under th...
A conversation with Julia Mead When Julia Mead graduated from high school at the age of 17 and started college, she decided her motto would be, "I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way." She finished nurse's training in Walla Walla in 1982. A year later, she met her first and only blind date, Charles "Skip" Mead IV. When asked, "Who is Julia Mead?" her answer is, "A transplant to Columbia County who sank her roots down." Two sons, six grandchildren, and 37 harvests later, she hasn't...
A slug could slime its way across the country faster than it will take to complete our kitchen remodel. The cabinets need different trim than they anticipated. Evidently, the walls and ceiling were even more crooked than initially thought. The wrong doors have to be replaced with the right doors and glass panels, three drawers still do not have facing or knobs, need I go on? Like dominos, Daniel can’t finish his part (moldings, trim, painting, pantry door paint, and doorknob), or install the dis...
"Home", 2020. That's Waitsburg this morning from Cell Tower Hill. My house is behind the big tree circled in blue and labelled "HOME." "Downtown" is right there in the center of the photo, and Ten Ton Coffee is right in the middle of it (another story). The dark hills in the distance are the Blue Mountains. The sky in the image is rather dull because of the smoke from the Oregon wildfires. It got worse as the day and the atmosphere evolved. Of all the small wheat towns in Eastern Washington that...
There are so many ways to appreciate the beauty of the wheat harvest. Each is a function of who you are-maybe a member of a farming family, perhaps a local person who respects what goes into the hard work of growing wheat, maybe an artist attempting to capture the beautiful landscape. Or maybe just a visitor stunned by the incredible views of fields and hills of our region at different times of the day. Maybe a bit of all those things. Although it may never quite get the kind of admiration the...
DAYTON–When Levi David Sowerby was 17 years old, a physician told him that a spinal injury he suffered during a gymnastics competition, was so severe it would result in paralysis. He would never walk again. Despite having been raised in a profoundly religious family where authority was not questioned, Sowerby knew at that moment that he could not accept that diagnosis. Though he continued to experience pain related to the injury, he was still walking. From that day to this, Sowerby's journey h...
I understand that half a loaf of bread is better than none, and half-baked ideas may be better than no idea, but half a kitchen is just frustrating. As scheduled, the cabinet installers showed up Tuesday morning, and I was ecstatic, to say the least. The installer was the dourest man I have ever encountered, and obviously, he did not appreciate my excitement. I was like the entire town in The Music Man, singing and dancing enthusiastically at the arrival of the Wells Fargo Wagon. He just...
Smoke from the Seaman Road and Lewis Peak Fire, which was approximately 1.0 mile west of Lewis Peak Road between Seaman Rd to the south and Mud Creek Rd to the north. A Level 1 Evacuation Order (be ready to evacuate) was put in place Saturday, August 15th, and lifted Sunday morning. The fire was contained Saturday evening; however, residents were warned that there would still be smoke as the fire is still burning in places. Firefighters remained on the scene through Sunday to monitor conditions...
DAYTON-Regina Weldert, of Dayton, has been many things in her life, including a goat farmer, sheepherder, and factory worker. She went back to school later in life and became a fish biologist. I've known her as a coffee roaster and coffee shop owner. To her fans, she is the finest roaster in Southeast Washington. For four years, she has owned and operated her coffee shop, Rey's Roast, on Main Street in Dayton. The COVID-19 pandemic has now altered her course, but it hasn't stopped her from...
It’s almost scary to write about our kitchen remodel because it is moving along at breakneck speed and with fewer snags than anticipated. I don’t want to jinx the amazing progress we’ve made and still need to make. To date, we have a level floor, and we have light. Daniel has been busy; he demolished the kitchen. He worked with our contractor, Gary, to level the floor, lay down the new floor, complete drywall repair, add sockets, fix broken sockets, change the refrigerator socket to the new sub-...
Since discovering tenkara fly-fishing a few years ago, I don't travel much without a tenkara rod. Tenkara rods are telescopic, collapsing down to about eighteen inches and only require a fly line, leader, and a handful of your favorite flies. Minimal gear and super simple. Absolutely unfettering after years of lugging a minimum of four fly boxes, two reels to accommodate floating and sinking fly line, fly line sink tips, split-shot and strike indicators for nymphs, a variety of leaders and...
At some point, I imagine most of us say, "never again." I have had to "eat my words" one too many times, so I try not to say, "never will I..." When the last of my dogs had to be put down about six months before I moved here, I vowed, no more dogs! No more coaxing and dragging prissy dogs out in the rain waiting for them to "do their business" while I got drenched in the process. No more trying to retrain my lab, who couldn't wait to go out in the rain, because what lab doesn't love water....
