Good Steward Awards

The envelope, please! Yes, the time has come to hand out the much-anticipated Finnies, and what better time than Earth Day to award those who have been Good Stewards to our Islands community?

There were so many good nominations it was hard to choose, but the 2017 Finnie Award recipients are Sharon Massey, Midnight’s Farm, Orcas Food Co-op, Winnie Adams, Thor Hanson and Keith Wentworth, and Max Kessler and Per Black.

Winner Sharon Massey was nominated by her students at Spring Street International School for “making science really interesting,” and as an inspiration to learn and love the natural world. As one of her nominators phrased it, “her class changed me and I would forever like to thank her for being a great teacher, advisor and friend.”

Winner Midnight’s Farm on Lopez Island is a hub of rural environmentally sound operations for work and recreation. The farm has the only Department of Ecology approved on-farm composting facility in the County, and owners David Bill and Faith Van De Putte are committed to “living solutions to climate change” as well as sharing their farm with the local Lopez community and visitors to the island for people to learn about the importance of healthy food production and farm conservation practices.

Winner Orcas Food Co-op sets sustainable standards by buying from local producers whenever possible, giving left over food to employees or the Food Bank rather than throwing it away and providing food scraps to local farmers for compost or pig feed. OFC also purchases compostable cutlery, to-go cups and containers for use in the deli.

Winner Winnie Adams is considered a champion of local, sustainable power sources among other accomplishments. A retired environmental educator from the Yosemite Institute, she continues to serve the Orcas community as a board member for the OPALCO Cooperative and the affordable housing group, OPAL.

Winners Thor Hanson and Keith Wentworth co-chaired the Steering Committee that brought the Campaign for Mt. Grant to its successful conclusion this past January. From Craig Canine, who nominated them, “without Thor and Keith’s tireless, resourceful, and persistent leadership, the 141-acre Mount Grant/Lawson Ridge property might have had to revert to the seller. Instead, it’s now a permanently protected as a public nature preserve.”

Winners Max Kessler and Per Black, both from San Juan Island, produced Minimal Impact, a short documentary film highlighting San Juan County’s 2014 decision to incorporate the “Leave No Trace” set of environmental ethics into our community. The film was completed in 2015 and premiered at the 2016 Friday Harbor Film Festival. These two young men wrote, produced, filmed, and interviewed everyone who appeared in the film.

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