In case you didn't see this info.  I would doubt that we have many instances that fall into these categories, but I haven't seen any info about the number of bankruptcy properties or federally confiscated properties.Ellen

Ellen Bynum, Executive DirectorGene Derig, PresidentFriends of Skagit County110 N. First St. #CP.O. Box 2632 (mailing)Mount Vernon, WA 98273-2632360-419-0988friends@fidalgo.netwww.friendsofskagitcounty.org"A valley needs FRIENDS"20th Anniversary lCommon Goals lCommon Ground lCommon GoodlDONATE NOW atNetwork for GoodPlease consider the environment beforeprinting this email
Begin forwarded message:

From: Chrys Ostrander <farmrchrys@gmail.com>
Date: February 16, 2014 10:04:42 AM PST
To: WSFFNet <wsffnet@npogroups.org>
Subject: [wsffnet] Identify Arable Land Owned by the Gov't or Corporations and Donate it to Farmers!
Reply-To: Chrys Ostrander <farmrchrys@gmail.com>

In Italy there's a law that land the government has confiscated from criminals can be donated to farmer cooperatives! And, the project is succeeding. We need to take a look at this in the U.S.A. This could be a step we could take towards rebuilding "the Commons." Also, an idea that has been floated by the fledgling organization the Food Commons (www.thefoodcommons.org), is that land currently owned by banks resulting from non-performing loans, could also be donated to land trusts for farming. A common barrier that is mentioned, especially in regards to young, upcoming farmers, is the lack of access to affordable farmland. These ideas begin to point at solutions. All we need is to come together and press for these things to be implemented.

Article in Modern Farmer:

Taking Land From the Mafia, Giving It to Farmers - Modern Farmer



--
Chrys Ostrander
Chrysalis Farm at Tolstoy
33495 Mill Canyon Rd.
Davenport, WA 99122
(509) 725-0712
Text: (914) 246-0309
farmrchrys@gmail.com
http://chrysfarm.wordpress.com/

SVFMC “Double-Up Bucks” EBT Incentive Program
By Sarai Stevens

Newly formed in 2013, the Skagit Valley Farmers Market Coalition is a coordinated effort between the Bow Little Market, and the Sedro Woolley, Anacortes, Mount Vernon Farmers Markets.  Our community representative on the board, Rita Ordonez of Community Action, provides essential feedback and focus. 


The Coalition is excited to announce our first county-wide collaboration called the “Double-Up Bucks” EBT Incentive Program.  This incentive program will encourage people on food assistance to buy fresh, locally grown and processed food, vegetable and herb starts, and food baring trees and shrubs at farmers markets in Skagit Valley.  When EBT card (food stamp) users spend their money at one of the four Coalition markets, the markets, drawing from a communal fund, will match money spent up to $10.  These matching funds will be given out as a county-wide market currency that can then be taken and spent at any of the four Coalition Markets (while funds last).

Mouse Bird, manager of the Mount Vernon Farmers Market, and Keri Knapp, manager of the Anacortes Farmers Market, applied for a grant in 2013 and received $18,500.  We will be raising additional funds through the Skagit Valley Food Co-op’s 4% Friday, coming up February 28th, and through other community solicited donations.  Please consider supporting this program by shopping on the 28th of February!

Included in the “Double-Up Bucks” fund is money allocated for outreach and education.  The farmers market managers plan to periodically have representatives at affiliated local area food banks to make direct connections with those we wish to reach.  We hope to further coordinate these efforts with the WSU Extension nutrition and cooking education program called Food $ense.  Food $ense gives cooking demos and recipes at the food banks to help people learn how to prepare seasonal fruits and vegetables.

There will also be cooking demos at the individual markets themselves.  We are currently discussing other possible educational opportunities promoted through each market, but held at centralized locations, like the Skagit Valley Food Co-op.  

Since we do not wish to be grant dependent, the Coalition is not sure how long we can sustain the “Double-Up Bucks” program, but we feel it is an essential first step towards our long range goals of creating more inclusive, resilient markets and communities in Skagit Valley.  

Typically, people of lower incomes have been largely absent from our farmers markets.  However, local food is about food security, and it is up to us to figure out how to make our whole community food secure, not just those who can currently afford it.  We see this program and others like Community Action’s Field to Family program as being important first steps towards the ideal of community feeding community.  

The incentive program is a great way to introduce all the resources provided at a farmers market to a population who could most benefit.  Fruit and vegetables bought directly from the farmer are often cheaper than what is available at the grocery store, and the cost of local food is less susceptible to sudden price increases.  In addition, the markets offer free musical entertainment, kid’s activities, and classes.  The markets are also good for mental health because they are places for casual, neighborly interactions that create a sense of identity and belonging largely absent from modern life.  Lastly, farmers markets are places where networks grow.  Forming buying groups, trading surplus food, recipes, ideas, tips, and seed are a part of an informal food economy that operates outside our monetary system.  It would be excellent if these informal networks grew to include those who could use some help making their dollars stretch further.  

In summary, the “Double-Up Bucks” EBT Incentive Program is not only a way of drawing in a more inclusive and diverse customer base creating more income for our farmers, but also as a way to introduce the markets as a community resource and encourage active participation in both our Valley’s farmers market’s formal and informal food systems.  During this time of grave economic instability and shrinking government safety nets, the Coalition is mobilizing our collective creativity to achieve our ideal of community feeding community.  Consider the proverb, “Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you have fed him for a lifetime.” 

When I need a little perspective, I have two favorite viewpoints I can always depend on.
The first is the logging road up to Alger Alps (Little Baldy).  It is a short 1.5 mile hike up with about 1025’ elevation gain.  The view is priceless.  As you wrap around the little mountain, you can see Mount Baker, Lake Whatcom, the Olympics, the Islands, and Skagit Valley.  To get to the south access point (you can also access from Squires Lake) travel east through downtown Alger.  About 600' pass Old Highway 99 you will see the trail head marked by a bright yellow gate.  Parking is just ahead on both sides of the shoulder before a bridge.

My second favorite viewpoint is the paraglider jump-off point on top of Blanchard Mountain.  To get there head west from the Alger exit off of I-5.  Take first left on Barrell Springs Road.  Less than a mile down on the right is the access road to Blanchard.  Drive up gravel road and take left at yellow gate.  Follow road up to top.  Because of logging access is more difficult than usual.  At the top are benches where you can sit and ponder the world and your place in it.  If your feeling more energetic you continue the journey and hike up to Oyster Dome for another breathtaking view of the Chuckanut Mountain Range and the Puget Sound.

Sarai Stevens

In honor of Valentine's Day, local foods entrepreneur and owner of Charmed Chocolates, Crystal Sheer, has ingeniously intertwined food, place, and exploration into one product.

In January, Crystal went around to area artisan businesses and proposed that she spotlight their products by incorporating them into special truffle recipes for Valentine's Day.  She then made six different truffle recipes flavored with Samish Strawberry Wine, Sea-salted Golden Whiskey, Blue Heron Espresso, Dynasty Red Wine, Inyo Tuscan Wine, and Chuckanut Bay Vodka with Truffle Salt.  The six varieties are packaged together in a box with a beautiful map printed on top.  She commissioned the map from Bow Hill Blueberry's talented intern, Mandy Turner.  The boxes of truffles will be sold at all participating businesses.  You can also order online at www.charmedwares.com.

Crystal Sheer, a vendor at the Bow Little Market, uses the commercial kitchen at Bow Hill Blueberries to make her truffles.  Besides selling locally in Skagit and Whatcom County, Crystal belongs to the North Sound Food Hub, a food producers cooperative, located at Bow Hill Blueberry Farm.  The North Sound Food Hub shares a truck that delivers farmer or producer-direct wholesale orders to urban markets around the greater Puget Sound Area.

~Sarai Stevens

By Mike Stevens

Our word choice tells the story of our lives.  The root of the word “place” stems back to the Greek form plateia.  Platia retains its meaning today in modern Greek language as "town square."  In early use, the full Grecian term was plateia hodos, interpreted now as "broad way."  The point emerging is that hodos can mean a variety of interpretations, including both a "journey" and "a manner of thinking or feeling."  Connecting to place, in the very roots of our language, carries an inherent and joyful meaning.  In an ancient echo from the civilizations we’ve grown from, the roots of “place” evoke imagery of a communal journey, and our attitude that weaves us together.  From our communities’ halls to the pockets of stove-warmth in our own homes, “place” means what we make of it, like our lives that are made by the words that we use.

Loving My Place and Keeping My Trees
By Chuck Nafziger

This is my tenth year here on Peace Lane.  I came to the northwest in '67 and watched Seattle turn from green to Gothem.  My compass pointed north, but I did not quite have the assets to get a residency in Canada.  I loved the Olympic Peninsula, but the heartbreaking obsessive clear cut logging and the festering redneck culture rejected me with my appreciation of peace and my love of the natural world.  I had some idea that the area along Hwy 9 might have what I needed so about once a week, I drove up I-5, across the Mt Baker Hywy to 9, and then down 9 to Sedro Woolley looking at real estate signs.  When I saw anything remotely interesting, I called the agent listed on the sign and got on her/his email list.

Even though I tried to confine their searches to listings with acreage, what showed up on my email seemed to be mostly suburban homes or decrepit places under powerlines.  The plethora of listings around powerlines implies that those places turn over rapidly, probably because they sicken or kill the people living there.  I could not filter them from the email posts and made many trips to nice sounding listings only to see the tall monsters buzzing nearby.  A friend in my art community suggested I check out the Edison Eye on one of my forays.  I was not totally comfortable in the open space in Skagit Valley, but I contacted a real estate agent to find out the going price per acre of land, and got on his email list.  Two things in my dreams of a perfect place were cedar trees and water.

One Wednesday morning an odd listing came in.  The description started, "Unique very private alternate lifestyle property.  Small cabin...."  I was up looking at the place by noon.  When I got out of my car I saw a nice sized pond and I was awed by the big trees.  I looked closer, and many of them were cedars, lots of them!  That evening I got an email from the real estate agent saying that I might want to look at this place.  I shot back a reply that I already had and asked "when do we sign the papers."  It was a long wait until Saturday when we put ink to paper.  I had found my perfect place.  

I soon realized that my purpose in life is to protect the big cedars around me:  I told them I would try to keep them safe for 20 years.  If I make it that far, I will be 80 and possibly not able to keep up this place.  Some of the trees here are about four feet in diameter and probably about 100 years old.  Enormous stumps out back are 15 feet in diameter and show the magnificence of what was once here and what should be here in the future.  The fellow from whom I bought this place was glad to see that I was not going after the quick buck by hacking down big trees to pay for the title.  I think it is crazy to move into the woods and then cut them down.  I understand some cutting for safety, light, and firewood, but not full scale clearing.  I believe that if people want cleared land, they should buy cleared land.  Old trees like the ones around my cabin are only teenagers in tree years, but they are older than me and they are sacred.

It was mean and stupid of the loggers to cut all the big trees and not even leave one or a few of the elders.  They cut into their own hearts by clearcutting.  @$#%! the money for the last big tree.  One neighbor who lives in a manufactured home on a clearcut property once asked me if I had any idea of the value of the "timber" out back.  I told him it was not “timber,” these were trees.

If it is an "alternate lifestyle" to love the Earth and respect it as my home, consider me as alternate.  I thrive with the "very private" part of this home.  I think humans who trash the Earth around them are crazy.  Many of them think I am crazy.  The 0.4 miles of gravel lane from the main road to "my place" make it easier on all of us.

By Chris Soler

Transition is about how to meet the challenges of a changing climate and resources in the future. It is very valuable to see how people have adapted to such challenges in the past.  By looking at the archaeology, geology and historic record of our area we can see how much has changed over the last 15,000 years and how humans responded to those changes.

 During the last Ice Age, Western Washington was covered with ice two miles thick as far south as Olympia. As it melted and retreated northward, the water pooled in the Puget basin and flowed over a low pass near Shelton and flowed down the present Chehalis drainage to the ocean.  Further warming of the climate had the glaciers retreat north of the strait of Juan de Fuca. As the oceans rose with the melted ice water the ocean penetrated the strait and flooded the land below the present 400 foot land level.  About 9000 years ago all the lower elevation land of Skagit and Whatcom county was under salt water. The Chuckanut and Blanchard hills were islands surrounded by ocean.  The calving icebergs from the glacier were melting and depositing a hundred feet of marine clays over the present Alger valley. The Samish river drained the entire west flank of Mount Baker. The enlarged river carved and filled a large valley and deposited the hundred foot tall hills of gravel near Butler Hill where the river met the edge of the ocean.

 The climate was cold and dry near the retreating face of the glaciers. Dry grassland supported Mammoths, mastodons and other mega-fauna. Archeological digs from 9000 years ago point to human activity over a wide range of Western Washington. Near Sequim a dig uncovered a mammoth skeleton with a stone spear point logged in it's spine. Beautiful Clovis spear points were found in an orchard near Wenatchee. Charcoal from campfire rings near Cascade Pass between Lake Chelan and the Skagit drainage show travel between the regions.  It shows that humans were hunting large game and surviving under these conditions.

 Digs near Granite Falls 7000 years ago show evidence of charred remains of acorns in a campfire. The forest had returned from further south but was adapted to a drier climate than present. Hunter gatherers had lost the mega-fauna and dry steppes but adapted to dry forests and prairies to forage.

 4500 years ago the ocean was still 30 feet higher than present. The entire present delta was a shallow saltwater bay. Large shell middens of that age show that humans were starting to take advantage of the shellfish now available. It is uncertain if a new group moved into the area or if  new ideas of harvesting spread to the people already there. In the same era the climate was getting wetter and the red cedar that is associated with northwest native culture was just starting to be found over much of Western Washington. Prairies that had formed during a dryer time that was used for harvesting game and root crops had to be periodically burned to keep the trees and shrubs from taking over.

 By 4000 years ago much of the present coastline and river deltas were formed. The forests and vegetation were similar to what the earliest white settlers encountered. The natives utilized the cedar trees for housing, canoes and storage containers. A village buried by a landslide near Ozette shows the wide range of artifacts used in a more sedimentary subsistence life.

 Over 200 years ago Europeans brought a wide swath of changes to the area. Traders from the Hudson Bay company brought trade goods of iron and different domestic plants like potatoes that were acquired by the natives. But the biggest changes were the introduced diseases. Smallpox and measles killed all but one child from two villages on the Samish River prairies in the 1830. Further epidemics in 1847 reduced the Samish population to 150 people. They moved from Samish Island to a homestead on the west shore of Guemes Island in the 1870's.  The earliest white homesteaders encountered a depopulated landscape. Blanket Bill Jarmin homesteaded with his Klallam wife in the 1850s on what is now Jarmin or German Prairie on Prairie Rd. This was the site of the former Samish Indian village.

Most of the land was covered by large cedar and fir trees. In the 1890's much of this land was acquired by large lumber companies. A sawmill was built in Blanchard to start turning these big trees into lumber. The Bloedel Donavan timber company bought 10,000 acres that extended from Lake Whatcom to the Samish river. Lumber camps were set up at Alger and Belfast and tied together by rail to bring the logs to the sawmill in Bellingham. As the trees were cleared the land was sold for Chicken and dairy farms in the flatter areas of Alger and Belfast. The barns and older houses in the area date to the early 1900s as the land was converted to pasture. The lumber camp of Alger changed into a village for the area farmers. The school, grange, church and businesses served the area while the local towns of  Burlington and Sedro-Woolley were a long trip away.

As old 99, and I-5 roads were built much of the economic activity shifted to outside the area. New residents could commute to jobs and shop further away. Farming of some land was abandoned on the wet clay soils. Limited haying was continued in Alger and larger farms still work the more fertile land of the Samish River delta lands. Logging of second growth forests provide a few jobs as the logs are taken longer distances to be milled. Small businesses and larger ones like the casino and Skagit Speedway are dependent on people traveling from outside the area.

 Presently there is a population of several thousand who are mostly supported from income outside this area and fed from farms far afield. As the climate changes to a dryer summer and wetter winter and the cost of transportation increasing we will have to look to the resources of our local area to support ourselves. The geologic and historic land use determine what resources are available.  People have adjusted to extreme climate and resource changes before and we and our descendants will in the future. 

Monday, Feb. 17: Last day to submit online public comments re/ Shell Refinery's request for permits to construct a rail facility for shale oil from No. Dakota's Bakken formation. (Bakken crude oil is especially hazardous because of fracking chemicals.  The DOT-111 general service tank cars that are commonly used for transport have design flaws that make them more susceptible to rupture when transporting Bakken crude. The Natl. Transportation Safety Board states that 69% of rail tank cars are DOT-111 which have a "high incidence of tank failure during accidents.") Per the Jan. 28 SV Herald, Shell needs 17 development, wetlands and environmental permits from various agencies in order to build an offloading facility to handle one, 100-car train carrying about 60,000 barrels of crude oil per day (to make up for less oil coming from Alaska and Canada). Shell has submitted an application with Skagit County for a land-use approval permit. The County is accepting public comment until 4:30 pm Feb. 17. Submit comments online at www.skagitcounty.net/pdscomments for permit no. PL13-0468.  (There have been some technical glitches with the site - if you encounter a problem, contact Leah Forbes at 336-9410)

Suggested talking points:
*Introduce yourself.  Why you care about this issue.
*Ask that Skagit County, under SEPA (State Environmental Policy Act) law make a determination of significance on the Shell oil by rail application and ask that the County involve the state Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council (EFSEC) and the Department of Ecology to do a thorough permit review and Environmental Impact Statement that considers the significant adverse impacts this proposal represents for the region and our state.  Bakken shale oil trains would follow the similar routes as coal trains. The EFSEC is required to review all projects that transport more than 50,000 barrels per day of crude oil over marine waters. Because the Shell expansion would route roughly 73,000 barrels per day of oil by rail into their refinery, and because these oil trains must cross over the Swinomish Channel to get to the facility, there is little question that this project is subject to EFSEC review.
*The Shell proposal is one of several crude-by-rail proposals that pose potentially huge risks to all communities along the rail corridor including Skagit County communities, farmlands, Fidalgo Bay, and the marine environments in and around Padilla Bay National Estuarine Reserve.
*Bakken crude oil is especially hazardous because of fracking chemicals.  The DOT-111 general service tank cars that are commonly used for transport have design flaws that make them more susceptible to rupture when transporting Bakken crude oil.  (source: 2012 letter from Deborah Hersman, Chairman of the Natl. Transportation Safety Board in which she states that 69% of rail tank cars are DOT-111 which have a "high incidence of tank failure during accidents.")
*Therefore Skagit County should request a complete EIS that would study all the potential impacts and safety concerns of Shell's oil by rail proposal.

Position: The Facilities/Sustainability Coordinator oversees the administration, coordination and implementation of sustainability & facility projects and objectives. Duties, projects, and initiatives are provided at the direction of the Facilities Director.
The Facilities/Sustainability Coordinator will independently perform a wide variety of complex tasks to design, implement,and monitor existing and future sustainability initiatives, including sustainability planning, energy conservation, renewable energy, and materials conservation (including waste reduction and water conservation); and Facilities programs and projects, including repairs/maintenance, facility/equipment upgrades, capital projects, and other duties as needed.

See a full description here:
http://www.skagitcounty.net/HumanResources/Documents/JobPostings/Facilities-Sustainability%20Coordinator-%20open%20until%20filled.pdf