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Notes from Class on "How to Grow Your Own Medicine Chest" with Celt Schira

3/6/2017

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Saving Blanchard Mountain: How to Get Involved

2/20/2017

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Want some of these great postcards to send out? There is a stack on the table just outside the front door of the Alger Community Hall for any who wish to come by and pick up.
To all friends of Blanchard Mountain,
 
Chainsaws will be buzzing in the Blanchard Core this summer unless we secure the full 7.7M due under the 2007 agreement to protect the Core (1,600 acres).
 
Statewide, constituents need to make it clear to their own elected legislators that the remaining funding must be allocated.
We need to put on a constant pressure of public demand from now until the end of March.
 
-  Visit your legislators: be polite, but firm. ( to find your legislators: app.leg.wa.gov/districtfinder )
-  Write them personal letters *.
-  Submit a letter to the editor in your local newspaper.
-  Distribute the attached poster.
 
Two web sites will make these tasks easy...they include the history of Blanchard Mt and how to write effective letters:
          www.skagitlandtrust.org     and       www.conservationnw.org/blanchard
 
Spread the word.  Make an effort to reach out to all of your family, friends, community groups and organizations, etc., etc.
Talk to others you meet when you hike, bike or ride.
 
It will take all of us to protect our beautiful Blanchard Mt from a 2017 logging plan.
 
Thank you,
Friends of Blanchard Mountain Board
member - Blanchard Advisory Committee
 
*please send copies of your letters to:
(To encourage them to continue their support)
 
Skagit Co. Commissioners
1800 Continental Pl.  suite 100
Mt Vernon, WA   98273
commissioners@co.skagit.wa.us
360-336-9300
 
Hilary Franz
DNR
1111 Washington St. SE
Olympia, WA   98504-7001
hilary.franz@dnr.wa.gov
360-902-1001
 
Jay Inslee, Gov.
PO Box 40002
Olympia, WA   98504
360-902-4111
www.gov.wa.gov 
website has email link
 
Below:
-  Press Release from Skagit County about Blanchard
-  Blanchard Flyer from Conservation Northwest.
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Movie Review Corner: Art inspires life.  The Man Who Planted Trees is an inspirational message of quiet, personal action and hope.

2/15/2017

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​The Man Who Planted Trees (French title L'homme qui plantait des arbres), also known as The Story of Elzéard Bouffier, The Most Extraordinary Character I Ever Met, and The Man Who Planted Hope and Reaped Happiness, is an allegorical tale by French author Jean Giono, published in 1953.
It was adapted to this animated short by Frédéric Back and released in 1987. It earned a number of awards including an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film
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Winter 2017: Living with Wildlife and Our Part in It, by Chuck Nafziger

2/15/2017

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The Woolley Food Forest project, in partnership with the Helping Hands Food Bank in Sedro-Woolley, is helping to create community resilience and empowerment.

2/5/2017

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Simultaneously meeting the needs of Skagit people and ecosystem, the Helping Hands Food Bank (HHFB) is creating the Woolley Food Forest (WFF), a two acre tree-based garden.  It is being located next to their new Sedro-Woolley facility, with the goal of creating  a more resilient, healthy, and self-reliant community.  The WFF, an educational community food forest garden, demonstrates how to work with nature to grow an abundant, resilient, self-sustaining mini-ecosystem, requiring little input of labor and resources, supporting fruit and nut trees, shrubs and vines, edible and medicinal herbaceous perennials, and self-seeding annuals.  Additionally, the design includes a labyrinth, stage, and open learning space to host classes and events to help maintain and celebrate the energy, education and enthusiasm necessary for a thriving community garden. 
Enabling individuals to connect with place and one another, the Woolley Food Forest will nourish both mind and body, address isolation, and empower our community to share skills and food.  The WFF volunteer management program will train volunteers to properly maintain and harvest for the food bank, while keeping a portion for themselves.  Additionally, our program will improve livelihoods through job and self-reliance training in volunteer management, permaculture, agro-forestry, perennial gardening, food processing/preserving, and data collection.  Data collection volunteers will track inputs, yields, successes, and failures to prove the feasibility of perennial, tree-based agriculture.
The WFF project’s work and research in urban food production and environmental understanding will trigger systemic changes, empowering individuals and community to evolve from surviving to thriving. 

~Sarai Stevens
Woolley Food Forest Association Executive Director

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A Certain Uncertainty - Chuckanut Transition's Fall 2016 Newsletter

10/24/2016

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Chuckanut Transition's Fall 2016 Newsletter:
A Certain Uncertainty

The more dependent we become on money,
the more dependent we become on the money masters.

~ David Korten
​

The money masters of our globalized, exploitive, industrial economy have highjacked our political system, deteriorated the health of our families and communities, destabilized our climate and exhausted our natural resources. Transition is a localized response to this global uncertainty.  It is about mass mobilization of creation, not opposition. Like warriors, we focus on efficiency of motion, and ask for no permission.  By creating and participating in what we do want, we are building area resiliency while simultaneously moving towards ultimate non-participation in a system we no longer condone.  We are the hands and feet of global finance.  What if we stopped being so cooperative?  What if we gave up the myth of our own powerlessness?
By creating homes of production, rather than consumption, nestled within neighborly economic networks, we not only have a chance of navigating uncertain times, but also helping to end them. 

We repattern the world when we repattern our communities, 
~Sarai Stevens, Newsletter Editor

Chuckanut Transition's Fall 2016 Newsletter

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Slideshow of Chuckanut Transition's 2016 Food Swap and Potlluck at the Alger Sunday Market

10/20/2016

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Skagit River Level Hotline will provide updates during flood events

10/20/2016

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Press Release
Skagit County Public Works
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
 
Oct. 18, 2016
 
Contact: Kara Symonds, ka...@co.skagit.wa.us, 360-416-1447
 
Skagit River Level Hotline will provide updates during flood events
 
The Skagit River Level Hotline is a great resource for anyone who’s ever wondered about the status of the Skagit River during flood season.
 
The Skagit County Public Works Natural Resources Division maintains the River Level Hotline to keep the public informed in the event of a flood. Information includes current river gauge readings and summaries of National Weather Service forecasts.  County residents can call 360-416-1404 to hear updated river level information.
 
The hotline is updated daily, unless river conditions warrant more frequent updates. River gauge readings are provided in feet, and are compared to the standard flood stage of 28 feet in both Mount Vernon and Concrete.
 
Hotline information includes forecasts and weather updates from a variety of sources, including the USGS and National Weather Service River Forecast Center. Current information from the two agencies can also be found online:
·         NWS River Forecast Center
·         USGS real-time streamflow data
 
More information on flood awareness, including preparedness tips, flood history and more, can be found online.
For questions or more details, please contact Kara Symonds at ka...@co.skagit.wa.us or 360-416-1447.
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Uncertainty, by Chuck Nafziger - Fall 2016

10/11/2016

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Uncertainty 2016
By Chuck Nafziger

This year has been unusual in many ways.  It is year two of an insane presidential mud wrestling match that cannot bring anything good.  It used to be that death and taxes were the only real certainties, but now perpetual war has been added.  Retirement, jobs with benefits, and healthcare have become much more uncertain.  The carbon dioxide level is increasing without meaningful restraint, so habitable weather is uncertain.

The world's and especially this country's food supply are going further downhill with more GMOs, more industrial foods with the life refined out and more toxins added.  We are incredibly fortunate to have local organic growers.  Through a great deal of work, we have a farmer's market and good food co-ops from which to get the healthy foods we do not grow ourselves. Not many people in the world are so blessed.​

There is uncertainty as to the direction this neighborhood is going: more trees are being dropped, more traffic on our rural roads. more McMansions are sprouting, much more noise from trains planes and the freeway.  It is uncertain if the county will ever restrict the sprawl or even enforce the anti sprawl laws that already are on the books.

Even my bug buddies took a big hit this year.  I found lots of bugs early spring, but then they disappeared.  During the summer my place was a bug desert.  The bees, spiders, dragonflies, shield bugs and lots of others were missing.  That was not the case for biting flies.  Mosquitoes, deer flies, and snipe flies were at their usual nasty numbers.  There has been a slight bounce back this fall, but the tree frogs I see are less than half the size of what I have seen during this season in the past.

What happened to the bugs?  The weather was not that much different.  Are there more poisons being applied?  I saw a helicopter with a spray bar flying over.  It could have been spraying along with the nearby logging; it could have been working with the pipeline.  Had the grasses that were planted last fall over the refilled excavation when the aging pipeline got patched treated with neonics?  I will probably never know.  I do know it is scary to see such a decline in local life.

The future may be uncertain  but I think it is important to stay in the present and not to do too much "future tripping."  For now, I want to at least better understand what is here around me.  That may help me better understand how the pieces may work in a changing environment, and by itself, it is fun today.  

I recently found two new to me wasps.  One is a Bee Wolf.  As an adult, it is a nectar eater and good pollinator, but it stocks each of its eggs with a paralyzed bee.  I saw several of them at the Alger Hall Pollinator garden.  That is a good indication that the garden is attracting enough bees to keep a predator happy.  I found the other wasp exploring empty holes in my mason bee box.  There are some wasps that dig into the bee larva pockets and lay their eggs on the bees, so I was a little worried.  But this one was a Potter (Mason) Wasp.  This kind of Potter Wasp uses holes in wood like Mason Bees for rearing its young.  It lays an egg, provisions it with a caterpillar, and then seals the case with mud as a Mason Bee would do. I hope it finds and uses all the Cabbage Butterfly caterpillars.

Life is so very interesting, even during these changing times.
Ancistrocerus, Mason Wasp
Bee Wolf Wasp
Tiny Tree Frog
Helicopter
Tabanidae Deer Fly
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Chuckanut Transition's 2016 Skill Share Survey

7/10/2016

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Please take our
Chuckanut Transition's 2016 Skill Share Survey
This winter we will begin organizing a free skill share series.  Classes will be taught on site or at the Alger Community Hall.  Take our survey and tell us what skills you would like to learn or teach.  Here is a link to the survey:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/RM79F73
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