Category: Farm History

SIGNS! On Monday the Island County Commissioners voted to approve a signage program much needed in our area. In Washington we have a state Highway Motorists Information Signage Program wherein businesses and recreation/tourist places can apply for signs to be placed on those signboard that have “Gas” or “Food” or “Tourist” kinds of things. It’s not easy to qualify, but once a business does a sign gets put up. Well, it does IF the business is right on the road that is off the highway. Any more turns and “follow through signage” is needed.

In Island County we now have a provision to apply for that follow through signage. Yahoo! That means that Agritourism oriented farms can now be found. That means that other small home-based businesses that qualify for the state sign system can be found. In a rural area, where even knowing an address doesn’t mean that a place can be found because the roads wind around and are sometimes not well marked.

Over the last two years we’ve been putting up sandwich board signs at the intersections and they do make a difference – the only trouble is that they are illegal. So, we don’t do that anymore. If counties want to help small farms survive and if we realize that part of small farms (that are near urban areas) need to rely on agritourism signage is a key component.

Building a pond and terraced gardens is taking up most of our time and energy these days. Owen’s Raco Construction here on Whidbey Island is doing the work – it’s amazing to watch good masons create these beautiful walls. But, the mud has been awful. Sometimes I wonder if the place will ever recover!

The pond has to have a liner because the glacial till that underlies our fabulous sandy loam topsoil is porous. The pond is being built to collect rain from the building roofs and the driveway. It is very deep to reduce loss from evaporation. But, we’re not completely sensible because we also are creating a stream bed that will circulate water from the main pond to a small holding pond above and back down. It’s going to be fabulous – once the pond fills up. I figure it will take all winter and spring to fill the pond. The snow we had just after Thanksgiving weekend put a stop to the project for a week.