THE SUPER VALENTINE BOWL. A great way to start your Sunday Feb. 13th with heart shaped pancakes and football flapjacks, gluten free on request, cooked on the gridiron and made with love. Add the Maple syrup or fruit topping, bacon, eggs, juice and coffee...and you got the best way to start your day. It's the second Sunday of the month and time for the Anderson Valley Grange pancake breakfast from 8:30 to 11:00.
Be mine just before Valentines and Superbowl, no penalties for facemasking, (in fact we all facemask), but watch out for illegal use of the hands. So c'mon down, bring your own plates and silverware or use the disposable gear at the Grange. Think of it as tailgating for Valentines Day. Adding to the culinary pleasures of pancakes at the Grange there will be some tasty ear candy provided by the Super Bowl Lickers featuring Franny Leopold and Leslie, (birthday girl), and Michael Hubbert. And remember there’s a chance to work off that breakfast and work up an appetite for Super Bowl or Valentines day at free Hendy woods Sunday
THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL water storage tank malfunctioned last week. Children had to return home while Dennis Johnson sought a contractor for the repair. School remains in session at the JR/SR high school. (We don’t hesitate to recommend local guy Charlie Paget-Seeking for pump and tank work.)
THAT DAY was a difficult one for all concerned, and another argument for passage of the pending bond measure to shore up AV Unified's aged facilities. The money will go where it's supposed to go because we're blessed in having an attentive, committed, energetic leader in Ms. Simson to carry out the necessary repairs to both our school sites.
THE WATER EMERGENCY was deftly handled by Superintendent Simson who soon announced the good news: “Results came in and all covid testing pools are negative within the whole district!”
THE Boonville-AV FFA are looking to borrow a bottle fed calf for a petting zoo at the elementary school. They would like to borrow it on Thursday, Feb 24th. They will take very good care of it. If you have one or know of someone in AV that has a calf please let me know.
RESIDENTS of Ornbaun Road have lately become aware that the old June Ranch will be logged. A THP is on file with Lee Susan listed as the forester. (I happen to know Mr. Susan. Good guy who does honest work.) Work will probably commence not later than May. It's been years since I hiked through there, having risked crack shot Janese June not spotting me, but that parcel has been selectively logged before. Lumber prices are quite high at this time, but I'm surprised the buyer, Mr. and Mrs. Burch of Healdsburg, paid nearly five million for the place on the apparent assumption there's that much timber left on it. It's beautiful back there and important to local history as the site of the pioneer Jeans family, Anderson Valley's first black settlers. The remains of the Jeans home are still there, as is a remnant apple orchard. Daniel Jeans cleared the land for Anderson Valley's first school house, now the site of the Anderson Valley Museum preserved as the landmark Little Red School House.
THE JUNE RANCH sold for $4,745,250 before sale expenses. The buyer is a Healdsburg couple, Roger and Michelle Burch, who are primarily in the timber business. The Burch’s own many properties on the Northcoast. One of Burch's spin off companies is Gualala Redwood Timber. There has been a court case going on for at least five years over the Dogwood THP near Gualala. The ICO reports that Dogwood will be logged this week. Friends of Gualala River oppose the project.
A VALLEY old timer put it this way: “Hopefully, the property will be respected and valued by the new owners for its beauty and extensive local history. Time will tell… I thought the Indians would save some of the place from total destruction because it has a huge historic reverence for the tribes that once lived in Boonville (Lemkolil) for thousands of years. The site is registered with the state — Confidential File Santa Rosa CDF and Native American Heritage Commission and local tribal governments all retain copy stating historic sensitivity.”
Buyer: represented by: Jason M Nadeau, Mendo Sotheby's International Realty
Seller: represented by Realtor.com
Size: 827.39 acres
Address: 12950 Ornbaun Road Boonville
Information from: Zillow and appraisal report dated September 26, 2002
Janese June (Jack June's wife), 1/3 partnership owner
Tamar June (Eric June's wife), 1/3 partnership owner
April June-Bento, (Delmar June's daughter)) 1/6 partnership owner
Victoria Ornbaun-Center, 1/6 partnership owner via deed from Delmar June
Description on Zillow: Property Overview - Steeped in history, the ownership of the June Ranch dates back to the late 1800's. Situated just outside of the town of Boonville, in the heart of the Anderson Valley and totals 827 acres. Multiple springs, creeks and river tributaries found on the ranch provide plentiful water throughout. June Ranch's oak-studded foothills run adjacent to some of California's most productive viticultural properties. The vast timber reserves further up in the hills, comprised mostly of Redwood, Douglas Fir, Madrone and Oak, are truly the ranch's most important asset with the large, towering groves of mature Redwoods its most visible and dramatic landmark. The well maintained road system will carry you through every part of the ranch. Current ownership is proud of its long history of well-managed and sensitive timber harvests. With the mixed zoning present on this ranch (forestland, agriculture and residential) the possibilities for a new owner are limitless.
A LOCAL ASKS, “If Boonville could have any 3 new businesses, what do you think would benefit the community, be able to sustain itself financially and be a service to the tourism that inevitably will continue to drive commerce in town?
LOTS OF RESPONSES included, Bring back Leslie’s marvelous ‘All That Good Stuff’ shop; dining with live music in a place open late at night; a taco truck; Pic ‘N Pay; mini golf; launderette; gift shop; arcade; community pool; the Fish Rock Farm Girls Antiques.
I DON’T have any business ideas, nothing financially self-sustaining, but downtown Boonville needs trees, flowers, conversion of the Fairgrounds to a public park, lights on the outdoor basketball court at the high school, benches in the downtown area, public bathrooms, dress code like San Francisco’s in 1947 when women never went downtown without hats and gloves, men in suits, ties, fedoras. (On the last one, I’d better say I’m funnin’ you.)
WE ALMOST had a community swimming pool back in the early 1970s. Instead we got the big water tank with the cowboy painted on it at the south end of the Fairgrounds. The state had ordered the Fairgrounds to install year-round water storage sufficient to preserve its buildings in case of a big blaze. A committee of hippie bashers circulated a petition against a community pool as water storage (like the community pool/water storage at the Cloverdale fairgrounds) because hippies would swim in it and all the hippies would die from std’s and/or a variety of other communicable diseases known to be circulated by the long hairs. And that was that for a community pool. Public benches? “Then we’d have bums all over the place,” as a guy argued last time I mentioned it. Since Boonville only has one bum, and he’s pretty much nocturnal…”
PERSONNEL. Sorry to see Cindy Wilder moving on from Boonville to Windsor. A community-minded person, Cindy did lots and lots around here. We’ll all miss her.
A READER ASKS, “Please do an article about Bruce McEwen’s life at present.” He’s another person we miss. For a long stretch Bruce produced weekly court reporting for the Boonville weekly of a high quality before he suddenly set sail on the Sea of Love with another high quality ava writer, Ms. Davin. The couple is happy at home in Walnut Creek.
COMING TOGETHER WITH CORDAGE: Exploring the ancient art of making rope with fabrics from those we love.
Saturday, February 26, 12:00 pm California based fibre artist Saoirse Byrne brings the art of cordage making to the farm. Cordage is essentially rope- two strands twisted individually in one direction and brought together in the opposite direction. Cordage making is accessible to folks who would not consider themselves crafty as well as to artists wanting to explore another way of engaging with materials.
Please bring some fabric that has significance to you. It could be anything that sparks a sense of connection. It could also be items that are no longer being used- an old t shirt, a shrunken sweater, a faded button up, a torn pillow case, a scarf or handkerchief, or a gift that needs to be repurposed. All but the bulkiest of fabrics are a good place to start. Various fabrics will also be available to try.
A completed necklace or hat band can be made during class depending on the length of fabric you would like to use. An understanding of how different fabrics and materials work as cordage will guide you if you choose to continue to make cordage after the workshop. The class will leave you with an embodied understanding of how to form the cord with your hands and a pamphlet that can jog the memory.
The workshop includes a lunch break of the farm’s signature pizza.
To register: https://whitegatefarm.net/?event=coming-together-with-cordage
BEFORE THE INTERNET kicked in to destroy the world by zapping the global brain with negative input, the Boonville weekly enjoyed, in the Anderson Valley, what the experts called “total market penetration.” TMP was calculated by toting up papers sold to the number of Valley mailboxes. The ratio was one reader per box on the assumption each box represented three persons. We also sold more than a hundred papers a week at both the Anderson Valley Market in Boonville and Lemons Market in Philo. The Navarro Store, at its newspaper peak, sold about fifty a week. Twenty years ago, I caught a Boonville kid in the act of reading his community newspaper! These days we sell, on a good week, 30 papers at AV Market, 60 at Lemons, 20 at Navarro. Overall, we still have outlets in SF north to Arcata and all over vast Mendocino County, but many of the outlets we had pre-internet in that same stretch of Northcoast no longer exist, and we've been out of Cloverdale ever since the town's liquor store went out of business. These days we pick up more readers on our website in any one week than we do subscribers to our paper-paper.
ASIDE. Our daily on-line edition has apparently become a county-wide must-read given our booming on-line subscriptions. One daily reader laughed when she said, “Name Withheld told me she reads the free parts of the ava on-line but is afraid to subscribe because she doesn't want you to know that she's reading it.” That hurts. Believe me, I pay zero attention to the on-line ava subscription roster; it's entirely in the capable hands of our web guy, Mike Kalantarian, its creator. I'm sorry we have to charge $25 a year for it, but we think it's not only worth it, we can't afford to work for free and the website itself has its costs.
FOUND DOG: My husband had to go to Philo Friday morning, on his way back down the Flynn Creek Road he saw a lady trying to catch a dog who was wondering down the road, my husband stopped, helped her catch the dog, not hers, she was on her way back to San Francisco. So he brought him home. Dog tag says “Dorie” phone number no longer active. Please let me know if you have any idea who he may belong to. Super cute and fluffy, black and white, small, kind of like a Shih Tzu.
JESSE GERMAINE (ON-LINE COMMENT)
Re: Doggy Dorie
I think the people who try to help “lost dogs” on their way back to SF or wherever are the same types who bag up their dog shit religiously and leave it bagged on the ground at various points along the coast. I see them (the laden bags) in weird places all the time; the road down to Greenwood Beach, never at Navarro Beach except on the ground right next to the garbage can. There’s always, repeat always, AT LEAST one by the guardrail on highway 1 at the trailhead to Buckhorn Cove. Mendocino headlands has more of these than benches, and considerably more than there are garbage cans. People leave them everywhere. They’re most commonly translucent green, second most common is black. (The bags).
It must have been 5 or 6 years ago that a post showed up on msp (rip paul), a family in Santa Cruz wanted to find the home of a dog they had found “lost” walking on Cameron Road. I vaguely remember that it was a German Shepherd. Turns out the Floodgate was closed and the robot rerouted them to Greenwood-Philo. So they stop “in the middle of nowhere” to “rescue” this “lost” dog. Dog is nice and jumped in. Dog didn’t get to her preferred destination, or back home that night. They took that dog to Santa Cruz from Elk, with the best (if misguided) intentions.
Only a few months before, I had a knock on the door from a distressed couple from Caspar. They had lost their dog Luna something like 3 weeks prior. When they advertised “lost dog” with pictures and everything they had no response. When I saw them they had somehow come up with $1000 reward, and the response was immediate. The responding party chose to hang up a (you can’t make this up) bedsheet draped on huckleberries saying “ you’re dog here” on Cameron Road. When the interested party drove by my place they thought the silvery tour bus (you know it if you ever drive 3 miles up Cameron) was the sign.
It wasn’t, but those poor people found their dog and went home in tears with her.
Driving through Little River on 1 everyday, I had to squeeze my brakes! Here’s this old woman blocking the highway, trying to fit dogs into her car that don’t fit. Whatever, I’m mad at her. “Dyeneedhelp?
I pull over and start to help with the roundup. I learn that these dogs are not hers. She wants to help by driving them 300 miles away. She can’t see the goats eating poison oak in the cemetery. She doesn’t care about the goats or the poison oak. She doesn’t want help anymore. She is going to the airport now.
BRENDON SHAW-GRIFFIN:
Is your vehicle dirty from winter? Did you spill coffee? That's no problem for me, im super convenient right here in Philo and I wear masks too. Give me a call and I can wash vacuum and detail your car right here in the valley. A package is just a wash. B package is a wash and vacuum and C package is a wash, vacuum and detail. 707-558-5301. Let's get those vehicles detailed for spring. Message me or call me.
RENTAL WANTED: Locally employed, mature writer seeking quiet, private parking place in Anderson Valley for 30-foot 2018 self-contained trailer to work on artistic projects. Please consider renting me a little slice of your “North 40.” I can pay a little cash, or am willing to negotiate trade for legitimate services. Call Katherine at 707 272-3301. Please leave a message.
NADINE BOER. On Sunday Mendocino County youth lost the wonderful Nadine Boer. She worked hard for members of the Mendocino County 4H and FFA. She never looked for recognition. Nadine wanted the youth to shine. She lead 4H groups, organized awards for the Redwood Empire Fair and the Mendocino County Fair, and much more.
You may not have known her, but she knew you Boonville-Anderson Valley FFA. You never failed to impress her with your kindness and work ethic. You do know her pumpkins from Pirate Pete's Pumpkin Patch.
We honor you Nadine! Thank you for everything you have done for the youth of Mendocino County.
THE “Boonville High-Roller” was the pen name for The Mendocino Dispatch Democrat's correspondent in Anderson Valley. On Friday, February 4, 1898, the High-Roller’s letter gave an overview of the notable event throughout the previous week.
The smell of men curing squirrel bacon was in the air, the High-Roller reported, as multiple Boonville residents prepared for their sojourn into the Klondike with visions of gold. High-Roller said, "if all the people go that are now thinking of it we will not have many towns, not enough to hold an election next fall."
John L. Carlin had already departed for the "gold fields of Alaska", and Geo Lambert and Don McGimsey were planning to leave by mid-February, and the High Roller wished the "the very best luck, hoping they may make a speedy return with cords of their precious metal."
J.R. Wallach made his wife particularly happy after killing a panther on Hiatt's Ranch. He skinned it, presented it to her as a gift, and the word around town High-Roller said was "she seems very proud of it and intends to have it dressed and made into a buggy robe.”
Boonville beauties Miss Minnie Burger and Miss May Hutsell, represented the town at a San Francisco jubilee last week.
William Lambert has returned to town after taking his drove of pigs to Yolo to feed on acorns. High Roller said Lambert "returned home looking fine after his outing."
Reggie Burger got an ax stuck in his head by Mede Windom when the pair were out chopping brush. The ax ended up "cutting a gash about 1 ½ inches in length above the ear." Dr. Thompson used a needle to close the cut and as of publication, "the boy is doing nicely at present,” High-Roller assured.
The "Owl Club" elected officers for the next six months and rounded off the night with an oyster dinner.
High-Roller wished a bundle of Boonville Boys luck as they are heading out to the coast to hustle and make some money in the split lumber business.
Reverend Page is holding his quarterly meetings and J.O. McSpadden's wife is still ill despite being relocated back to Virginia.
William St. John went to Ukiah again for legal business, but High Roller suspects "there must be some other attraction."
Boonville's football team is improving, High-Roller opined. "They will soon be trim to exhibit their manly strenght with any team in the county." The team is determined and High-Roller reports "it will take a pretty good team to walk over them."
(Matt LaFever, Mendofever.com)
VALLEY OLD TIMERS may recognize the talented Sarah Morrisette's name on a series of cartoons we’re running lately. Sarah spent her young years at the Rainbow Commune on deep Greenwood Ridge west of Philo, magically emerging a fully functioning, talented adult, demonstrating again the resiliency of children. I only visited a couple of times when the “collective” was going strong and that was only to drop someone off and, as an extremely uptight white hetero male fully committed to order and self-discipline, the chaotic lives led at Rainbow held minus-zero appeal.
ANDERSON VALLEY still being a community at the time — late 1960s through the 1970s — we tended to know everyone else through the great melting pot of the Anderson Valley schools where our children were classmates and fast friends, and where the feral offspring of distracted parents would meet and later intermarry with the sons and daughters of “rednecks” to produce that whole new beast, the Hipneck.
I GOT TO KNOW the late Jack Hayward, a principal at Rainbow and a man widely regarded as impossible. I enjoyed listening to him when he stopped by, and listening to him is what you did with Jack — he talked, you listened which, in lesser raconteurs, can be excruciating but his monologues were always interesting, often in ways that seemed unintended. When Jack was literally the last person at Rainbow when the property had been sold to a vineyard, Susan Faludi, researching a book, and I went up for a visit. She wanted to meet a ground floor counter-culturist, and who better than Jack Hayward who'd also been a stalwart at one of the first hippie communes in all of NorCal, Morningstar in West Sonoma County.
IT WAS A LATE SUMMER afternoon when we arrived. Jack, who never did rise from the prone position on his bed in a shack-like structure, looking at the ceiling most of the time, delivered a capsule history of “the movement,” as he called it, often repeating the phrase “We walked lightly on the land.” Ms. F and I looked at each other. “Lightly on the land?” Outside Jack's door the land consisted of foot-deep blowing dust for several hundred yards in all directions, site-prep for an industrial vineyard. The land had been stomped on so thoroughly we could have been at Chernobyl.
JACK'S LAST DAYS in the Anderson Valley were unhappy ones. He was apparently estranged from friends and family to the extent that he said Jimmy Humble and I were “the only people I can depend on,” in which case Jack was as bereft as it's possible for a man to be.
RUMORS of Jack's frenetic end times in the Anderson Valley suddenly ended. The last time I heard of him he was somewhere in the Northwest, and then I learned that he was dead.
THE NERVE. The farewell tribute to Dr. Mark Apfel is certainly well deserved if majorly hypocritical coming from the AV Health Center's treacherous board of directors who knifed the doctor a few years ago in the usual "liberal" sneak attack when they tried to forcibly retire him. We're all going to miss the last doctor who not only turned out in the middle of the night to make house calls, as he did to my home several times to care for my disabled sister, but his hundreds of private mercy missions in the Anderson Valley went mostly unheralded, not that Apfel seemed to expect or need them.
REPORTS of shots fired at Rancho Navarro Saturday about 7pm saw several Sheriff's cars, lights blazing and sirens blaring, hurtled through Boonville soon after. These shots fires must have been particularly menacing because the less menacing are not responded to so urgently, if at all.
KEVIN BURKE is one of several locals whose latest PG&E bill nearly brought on cardiac arrest. Mr. Burke's bill for a month's worth of power is $980.00! He's appealing.
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