Con­tributed photo

Fri­day Har­bor High School junior Audrey Allen shares insights about the com­mu­ni­ty project at Island Haven Ani­mal Sanc­tu­ary that she recent­ly com­plet­ed with fel­low junior Eleanor Rollins.

I start­ed my research on farm ani­mals when my com­mu­ni­ty project at Fri­day Har­bor High School start­ed. My col­league Eleanor and I want­ed to work with Island Haven Ani­mal Sanc­tu­ary here on the island.

Island Haven takes in farm ani­mals who need homes. This most often hap­pens when the peo­ple who had the ani­mal pre­vi­ous­ly could no longer take care of it, when the ani­mal is no longer want­ed due to ill­ness or age, or when the ani­mal’s envi­ron­ment is no longer safe. Island Haven takes in these ani­mals and takes care of them to fit their indi­vid­ual needs.

Like most ani­mals, goats need to be able to play and run around. For young minia­ture goats, it is espe­cial­ly impor­tant for them to have dif­fer­ent activ­i­ties. To help sat­is­fy this need, Eleanor and I decid­ed to build Island Haven’s minia­ture goats a minia­ture play­ground in order to give them a fun toy and new stim­uli. We end­ed up mak­ing a teeter-tot­ter, a bal­ance beam, and added some wood rounds for the goats to jump around on as part of our play­ground. We researched what types of non-harm­ful woods we should use and fig­ured out what goats most like to play with. We were for­tu­nate to find a few gen­er­ous peo­ple who donat­ed wood and sup­plies to us and helped us reach our goals.

But it’s impor­tant to con­sid­er the rea­sons why the goats end­ed up at Island Haven at all.
Con­tin­ue Reading

The San Juan Coun­ty Depart­ment of Emer­gency Man­age­ment reports 63 active COVID cas­es on San Juan Island as of this morn­ing, more that dou­ble what was report­ed a week ago. Orcas Island has 51 active cas­es, while Lopez Island has 22, the out­er islands four, and Shaw Island one.

“These num­bers do not include sus­pect cas­es (e.g., pos­i­tive over-the-counter tests),” the Coun­ty not­ed in their media release. “Because of this, the actu­al num­ber of cas­es in the com­mu­ni­ty is like­ly sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er. Case rates are con­tin­u­ing to increase local­ly, region­al­ly, and statewide.”

Last week’s media release from the Coun­ty esti­mat­ed that the offi­cial num­bers account for only about 20 per­cent of the cas­es actu­al­ly present in the com­mu­ni­ty. If that assess­ment remains accu­rate, it means that San Juan Island’s true active case count could exceed 300 cases.

Free COVID test­ing kits are still avail­able through the Wash­ing­ton State Depart­ment of Health’s Say Yes COVID test web­site. Islanders can order up to two test kits each month. Deliv­ery is cur­rent­ly esti­mat­ed to take one to two weeks.

San Juan Com­mu­ni­ty The­atre shares a reminder about their upcom­ing series of performances.

The mag­ic of Cin­derel­la comes to life on the Whit­ti­er stage at San Juan Com­mu­ni­ty The­atre start­ing Fri­day, May 13 at 7:30 p.m. This clas­sic tale has been re-writ­ten for a mod­ern audi­ence, focus­ing not on Cinderella’s beau­ty but her char­ac­ter, cre­at­ing a charm­ing yet relat­able prince, and even giv­ing one of the step-sis­ters a soft side.

There are eleven chances from May 13–29 to catch this pro­duc­tion. Shows on Thurs­day, Fri­day, and Sat­ur­day evenings are at 7:30 p.m. Sun­day mati­nees are at 2 p.m. Join us on open­ing night for a cel­e­bra­tion start­ing at 6:30 p.m., com­plete with $3 glass­es of cham­pagne, a pho­to booth, raf­fle bas­kets, and more. Atten­dees of open­ing night are encour­aged to dress as if they are ready to dance at Prince Topher’s ball.

Thurs­day night shows are pay-what-you-can upon entry and Sun­day shows are social­ly dis­tanced with mask­ing required. Tick­ets are $25 for adults, $15 for stu­dents, and $5 stu­dent rush. Learn more and pur­chase tick­ets by vis­it­ing our web­site or call­ing our box office at 360–378-3210.

The Town of Fri­day Har­bor shares an update about the sta­tus of the First Street over­lay project.

Asphalt paving on First Street was delayed this week due to weath­er con­cerns. The con­trac­tor and project engi­neers deter­mined that this week’s tem­per­a­tures and gen­er­al fore­cast for spot­ty show­ers were not ide­al paving conditions.

Paving has been resched­uled to Tues­day, May 17 with Wednes­day, May 18 and Thurs­day, May 19 sched­uled as alter­nate dates.

Ide­al­ly pave­ment is installed when both ground and air tem­per­a­tures are any­where between 50 and 90 degrees. In our case, any­thing below 50 can cause defec­tive qual­i­ty that will have issues down the road. It is just as impor­tant that there is no rain on the day of paving, or for a rea­son­able amount of time after­ward, to allow the oily mate­ri­als to cure properly.

SJIMA sends along an update about a new event tak­ing place lat­er this month.

The San Juan Islands Muse­um of Art presents our inau­gur­al appraisal event from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sat­ur­day, May 28. Take the jew­el­ry you inher­it­ed or a fine art piece and learn its worth and a bit of its history.

Spe­cial­ists in the jew­el­ry and fine art depart­ments from Bon­hams auc­tion house will pro­vide an infor­mal ver­bal appraisal that will include an esti­mat­ed val­ue based on what the object might sell for at auc­tion. The val­ue is based on the specialist’s exper­tise and knowl­edge of what sim­i­lar items are fetch­ing in the cur­rent auc­tion mar­ket. If an object meets the min­i­mum con­sign­ment require­ments, you will have the option to con­sign your item to Bon­hams for sale at auc­tion. Spe­cial­ists are vis­it­ing from the Seat­tle, San Fran­cis­co, and Los Ange­les offices of the esteemed Bon­hams auc­tion house and are fre­quent guests on the pop­u­lar PBS series Antique Road Show.

Appraisals are $50 for the first item and $25 for each addi­tion­al item, with a max­i­mum of three items. All pro­ceeds from this event sup­port the exhi­bi­tions and pro­grams of the SJIMA in Fri­day Har­bor. Con­tin­ue Reading

• The Coun­ty Depart­ment of Emer­gency Man­age­ment has this to say about the gale warn­ing post­ed for today: “Those with boats at anchor or moored or who are plan­ning on being out on the water tomor­row should know that the weath­er is going to be stormi­er than what we’d expect for May. We almost always end up with reports of boats aground or in dis­tress dur­ing weath­er like this out­side of the win­ter months, which can be dan­ger­ous, but can also lead to the risk of sig­nif­i­cant fuel spills.”
• San Juan Brew­ing Co. is host­ing a fire relief fundrais­er on Sat­ur­day. They’ll be donat­ing all the prof­its from beer sales for the entire day.
• In hon­or of their ten-year anniver­sary, Friends and Neigh­bors Sup­port Island Rec (FANS) is look­ing to raise $10,000. The first $6,200 will go toward fund­ing schol­ar­ships that allow all island fam­i­lies to take part in Island Rec pro­grams. The rest will be used to expand pro­gram­ming. You can donate here.
• Ken­more Air will fly to the San Juan Islands from Taco­ma start­ing next year.
• Long-time Fri­day Har­bor Labs researcher Dr. James Tru­man has been elect­ed to the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences.
• The Tran­si­tion Waste Reduc­tion Guild shares some island-spe­cif­ic ways you can min­i­mize plas­tic use and waste.
• Here are the week­ly gro­cery spe­cials from Kings and Mar­ket Place.

Have some­thing to share with the Island? Whether the news is big or small, let us know!