ON MONDAY July 7, local social media briefly lit up when some traffic was held up on Highway 128 east of Yorkville because, according to an initial report, “a train had fallen on a truck.” It turned out that the “train” was actual a “crane” which had been misheard on some garbled scanners. A local first responder later told us that a rented crane operated by a Caltrans contractor doing road work on or near Highway 128 had somehow tipped over and landed on one of the contractor’s unoccupied pickup trucks. No one was injured and there was no emergency response. Apparently some traffic was held up while the contractor righted the crane and dealt with the whatever damage was done to the pickup. (Mark Scaramella)
THE FLOODGATE STORE
Our store inventory continues to grow! We have an assortment of grab and go meals and snacks, paninis, good coffee available hot or cold brewed, iced tea and lemonade, camping and picnic supplies, and more! A lot of our food is made or can be made gluten free, including our paninis!
Coming soon we will have espresso drinks, ice cream, milkshakes, and smoothies!
Stop by and check us out!
VELMA’S FARM STAND AT FILIGREEN FARM
Now open 3 days a week!
Friday 2-5 pm
Open Saturday & Sunday 11-4pm
This week’s offerings include: blueberries, peaches, plums, tomatoes (limited!), eggplant, carrots, sprouting broccoli, lettuce mix, arugula, scallions, torpedo onions, summer squash, kale, chard, beets, cabbage, garlic, basil, parsley, olive oil, and dried fruit!
Notes from the field: We have a bounty of blueberries this week, so now is the perfect time to stock up if you have been waiting! The first round of stone fruit is coming out of the fields including Santa Rosa plums and peaches. Tomatoes are also starting to ripen, with cherry tomatoes and the first New Girls available. We expect more to ripen in the coming weeks with the warmer weather!
Follow us on Instagram for updates @filigreenfarm or email [email protected] with any questions. All produce is certified biodynamic and organic.
BLUE MEADOW FARM IS OPEN!
Walla Walla Onions, Lisbon Lemons
Padron & Jalapeno Peppers, First Bell & Corno Peppers
Garlic Scapes, Dill, Lavender, Peppermint, Olive Oil
Open 10-7 Tuesday - Sunday
Closed Monday
3301 Holmes Ranch Road, Philo (707) 895-2071
BROCK FARMS NOW OPEN!
Brock Farms is open Wed.-Sun., 10-6, closed Mon. and Tues.
AN EQUIPMENT OPERATOR for the Oregon company doing the Lambert Lane Bridge replacement project told us on Thursday that in 1968 he and his parents drove up to Boonville from the Bay Area with a realtor because they were interested in buying the Boonville Hotel which was for sale at that time. The operator was six and doesn’t remember much. He said he remembered a friendly, bosomy woman with a frilly frock dress poking her head out of an upstairs window and waving at the prospective buyers. “Oh, this is a brothel,” his father quickly announced to his wife and six year old son. They soon decided they were no longer interested in buying the Hotel. Given how rough a town Boonville was in the 60s and 70s, it’s certainly possible that prostitution was underway at the Boonville Hotel at the time. Some old-timers remember that in the 60s and 70s some of the Boonville Hotel’s upstairs rooms were occupied by permanent residents who had long-term rental agreements. As we understand the sketchy history, the Boonville Hotel was owned by Eddie Carsey when Vernon and Charlene Rollins bought it in the late 1970s and turned it into “The New Boonville Hotel.” The Rollins famously stole away and ran away from their creditors in the late 1980s. Soon after that current owner Johnnie Schmitt’s parents (former operators of famous French Laundry in Yountville) bought it and turned it into the landmark hotel it is today. And the rest is local history, as they say.
BILL KIMBERLIN
This is Mosswood Cafe in downtown Boonville. Stop by for any kind of Coffee drinks or home made pastries. Customers are almost in tears if their special empanadas stop flowing from the kitchen. Mosswood hours are from about dawn to 3pm, every day. Did you hear me? I said, everyday.
PHOTOGRAPHERS: START PREPARING FOR THE COUNTY FAIR.
One of the many wonderful aspects of our County Fair is that there’s plenty of room for everyone to submit their animals, arts, crafts, and food to competitive judging. In more populous urban counties, entrants are limited to just a few submissions.
We are lucky, we can submit plenty of items and our Fair Board listens to us and occasionally creates new categories.
I’m particularly excited about a new category for photography, which allows us photo bugs to submit images that more closely match what we see in our cameras.
This might sound like a minor tweak to some people, but if you care about the photos you take, it’s big. The “big” comes from what photographers call the “aspect ratio,” or the ratio of height to width. The cameras in most phones, for example, have an aspect ratio of about 4 inches high to 5 inches wide (also known as 8x10). But any good digital camera shoots an aspect ratio of 4 to 6. In other words, digital cameras take wider images. And that’s what many of us see when we compose a shot. If we then have to trim that shot back down to a 4 to 5 ratio we’re often forced to cropping away essential background and context.
The Fair Board recognized this and has created a two new categories in addition to the 4 to 5 that allow us to print our photos very close to the aspect ratio we shot them in or just a little cropped. They are 4 to 6 and 5 to 7.
Here’s an example of a photo that I took at the rodeo a few years ago.
Along with the horse, rider and bull, you get the fences and billboards behind them, which we recognize as our own fairgrounds arena. In prior years, I would have had to trim that image down to this second version of the photo.
You can see that this version loses part of the rider, part of the bull, and most of the indicators that this is a local photo. Not what we want for a picture submitted to our own County Fair!
Of course, many photos look great in the 4 by 5 aspect ratio, and those categories are all still available to amateurs and professionals alike. The new category just adds room for more creativity and more context, which any photographer will tell you are a big part of the fun of taking pictures.
Now for the caveats. The new aspect ratio comes in under the “professional” category, which means the submission fee to the fair is three dollars per image instead of two. There’s also a potential increase in cost for slightly different openings in the “mats” – the neutral framing material that surrounds the image.
I personally am getting around this latter issue by buying mats with custom openings in volume, which reduces the unit cost a lot, and makes it easy for me to submit in the new category for several years, not just one. As for paying an extra dollar for the new aspect ratio? It feels like validation of the extra creativity, careful composition and context I get when I submit my photos, so I’m taking it as a positive.
And don’t forget, the fair awards prize money for photographs, so if you enter in the new category, you might come out ahead in the end!
If you want more information about these new categories, and how we can do group purchasing of the right mats, I have posted detailed info on myFacebook page. You can also find the fair’s photo submission information at https://mendocountyfair.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/13.-FINE-ARTS-2025.pdf.
Scroll down to Section 30.
Antoinette von Grone, Philo
MENDOCINO COUNTY FAIR ENTRY DEADLINE REMINDER
Paper entry forms are due by August 15; online entries are due by August 28.
(Terry Sites)
ERNIE PARDINI
I could tell there was quite a crowd that night
As I drove by the Boonville Lodge
I was on my way home from work
In my old beat up half ton Dodge
Well I drove on home and parked my truck
Took care of a couple of chores
Put away a bag of groceries
I’d picked up at the local store
Then I took a shower, put on some clean clothes
And headed straight back to town
I’d swallowed a lot of dust that day
And I needed to wash it down
Well I walked in the Lodge, stepped up to the bar
And ordered a shot and a beer
I threw down the shot and started looking around
To see who all was here
There were always cowboys and loggers
Tonight there were quite a few
There were hillbillies and tourists
A couple of hippies and a dog or two
Well, I strolled to the end of the bar
Found me an empty stool
I threw a handful of quarters up on the table
For a game of eight ball pool
You could have heard a pin drop
When he walked through the door
I turned around to look
It was like nothing I’d seen before
All the skin he had showing
Was a bright crimson red
He had a funny looking pair of little red horns
Poking up out of his head
This had to be the devil
It seemed plain as it could be
He was standing in the doorway smiling
And staring right over at me
Standing right behind him
Was a little old ugly troll
He was carrying a pad and pencil
To keep track of the devil’s souls
Well the devil walked up to the table
Just as I was chalking my cue
He said, “You’re the one I’ve been looking for,
I’ve heard a lot about you.”
He said, “ I’ve heard you’re a sinner,
And I’ve come here to take your soul.”
I said, “ If that’s your plan you should have brought more help
Than that little old ugly ass troll
He said, “But I am the devil
And I reign over the night.”
“If you plan on taking my soul
You’d better know how to fight.”
Then I hit him with a left to the temple
That knocked him back on the floor
But he bounced up blowing smoke from his ears
And let out a mighty roar.
Flames shot out of his fingertips
But I ducked and they bounced off the bar
They burnt the hair off some woman
As she ran screaming out to her car.
Well he was madder than a Mexican fighting bull
His eyes turned a fiery red
I feigned a big right hook
Then hit him with a left instead
He fell to his knees and held himself
His suit was bloody and torn
I picked up an empty Budweiser bottle
And knocked off both of his horns
When he saw those little red horns hit the floor
He threw his head back and began to wail
I got out my old Case pocket knife
Then leaned over and cut off his tail
I said, “Devil, it’s time you were leaving.
You’re not welcome here in our town.
I think you’re washed up as the devil
But I hear the circus is hiring clowns.
What you tried to pull here tonight
Was surely the act of a fool
Everyone knows you don’t come in the Lodge
And interrupt a game of eight ball pool.”
Well the last time I saw the devil
Was in an ad for bar-b-que ribs
His troll was blowing up those long balloons
And making animals for all the kids
Now the rest of this story I haven’t witnessed first hand
So I can’t swear that it’s true
Whether or not you believe it
Will have to be up to you
But if you go to the Lodge these days
You’ll hear a story that they still tell
They say the night that I whipped the devil
The fire burned out in hell.
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