American Craft Distillers Association also Awards Silver to Spy Hop Barreled Gin

Only three years after opening, San Juan Island Distillery has been honored with top awards by the American Craft Distillers Association at their annual craft spirits judging. This recognition for the Apple Brandy, for which the distillery was started, reflects the years of aging in fine French oak barrels necessary for apple brandy to take on the more complex characteristics it’s known for: caramel color, vanilla notes, and complexity.

“Making a Washington state apple brandy that is just as good as French Calvados was always our dream, and San Juan Island’s climate conditions are nearly identical to those found in Normandy, France, where fine ciders and Calvados are made,” said Suzy Pingree, head distiller and president of San Juan Island Distillery. “It has been a long three years of waiting and tasting and family debating about whether it’s ready. This award confirms for us that it is so, so ready.”

The American Craft Distillers Association convened a panel of sixteen expert judges to assess the hundreds of craft spirits submitted for judging from across the country. The Apple Brandy was the only brandy from the Northwest to take home a medal in the brandy category, and was also selected as best in class for all varieties of brandy. The distillery will do a limited release of three cases of the award-winning brandy in mid-June 2014. Continue Reading

Thanks to a new “FANS Fund,” more San Juan Island families may now be able to receive financial help when signing up for programs at Island Rec.

The new scholarship fund has been established by the nonprofit group, Families and Neighbors Support Island Rec (FANS), which was formed in 2012 to fill the gap between the community’s park and recreation needs and what Island Rec’s budget can afford to address.

Island Rec’s own scholarship program is limited to income eligibility set by US Poverty Guidelines, but the need has grown greater and more complex. “Every year we get requests from families seeking scholarships that make just a little too much money but have a genuine need,” said Island Rec director Sally Thomsen. “The FANS Fund will be helpful to many island families who have previously fallen through the cracks.” Families interested in the FANS Fund, should stop by Island Rec’s office at 580 Guard Street.

“The FANS Fund is exactly the type of support we hoped to provide when FANS was formed,” said FANS president Cathy Kromer. “We want to make sure recreational opportunities are accessible to all islanders.” Continue Reading

Tuesday Night Films at the Grange – Next week, April 1, Friday Harbor Film Festival presents a double feature:

Eastern Rises, (48 minutes) is an avant-garde style documentary that follows a courageous band of fly fishermen who risk life and limb in one of the last wild places on earth – the remote Kamchatka Peninsula of the Russian Far East.

These truly obsessed, halfway insane fishermen brave Cold War helicopters, grizzlies, massive mosquitoes, and even Bigfoot in search of rainbow trout, salmon and the ultimate fish story. The film’s cynical narration pulls viewers along on this humorous and intriguing tale, featuring superb cinematography, excellent storytelling, and inspirational angling.

Red Gold, (54 minutes) explores one of the biggest land use controversies Alaska has ever faced. Several mining companies have proposed the world’s largest open pit gold and copper mine in the state’s Bristol Bay region, at the headwaters of the two rivers providing the two most prolific sockeye salmon runs left in the world.

In documenting the battle between the area’s fishing communities and the mining companies, the film brings the accident-plagued history of hard rock mining in Alaska to the forefront of public consciousness, and gives all sides of the controversy an opportunity to present their points of view.

7:00 PM, April 1st at the Grange

Anna Maria from Coho sends this invitation to you…

We have a special wine dinner coming up at the end of the month that we are really excited about.

We all know Washington makes lots of wine – some, very good wines… and others, great wines. We will have the latter at our event on March 28th. We are featuring Rasa Vineyards, a relatively new winery that is turning heads at a special dinner at Coho Restaurant. The winery is in their 4th release but the two brothers, both Renaissance men are incredibly talented. I have included their bio here… degrees from MIT and Stanford and then a degree from UC Davis in viniculture.

We are so thrilled to showcase their wines and have them here on Island for the evening for what promises to be an amazing evening of food and drink.

Hailey Loucks (L) and Isabel Gabriel at their Bakesale earlier this month – Cyndi Brast photo

Hailey Loucks and Isabel Gabriel from the high school Community Projects class, are raising money to install beehives in the community garden out San Juan Valley Road. As part of their fundraising effort, they have organized a movie night for Friday, March 28th at the Grange, starting at 6:30pm and will be showing the moving “Queen of the Sun“, a movie that helps raise awareness about the plight of bees in our country and around the world.

“We hope that everyone attending our movie night will donate so that we can order supplies and bees for the community garden”  they said.

Their mentor for the project, Cyndi Brast, shares this timeline for what Hailey and Isabel have done and are doing for their project:

1. Presentation at the Grange (Earlier this month) This was so they could get backing from the Grange to use the building on March 28 to show their movie without having to pay a rental fee.
2. Bake sale at Marketplace (Earlier this month) to raise money to pay the licensing fee for a public screening of the movie Queen of the Sun (they had to raise $100).
3. Movie screening (March 28) at the Grange. They will be asking for donations to raise enough money to purchase the bee hive hardware and to buy a package of bees and a queen. They will also be collecting signatures for a petition to ban neonicotinoid pesticides in the county and making the signatures available to the county council.
4. Purchase beehive hardware (1st week of April) and order honey bees.
5. Assemble and paint bee hive parts.
6. Deliver – When honey bees arrive at post office (early May) they will take them to the Community Garden and put them in the hive.
7. They’re done! 🙂

See more about the upcoming movie night on their Facebook Page.

The cast of The Importance of Being Earnest – Click for larger version – Jan Bollwinkel-Smith photo

It’s next Friday, Saturday and Sunday…

Island teens take on witty dialogue, vintage costumes and farcical fun as they present Oscar Wilde’s classic play first performed in London in 1895.

The play takes a satirical look at Victorian ways, the nature of marriage, the constraints of morality, hypocrisy vs. inventiveness, and essentially, the importance of not being “earnest.”

“The writing is brilliant,” said director Jane Maxwell Campbell. “It’s a sweet, light comedy that exposes young people to good literature.”

Cast:

Brian Fleming – John/Jack Worthing/Ernest in London
Diego Anderson – Algernon Moncrief/Ernest in the Country
EmmaJean Carpentier – Lady Bracknell
Macalister Arendt – Gwendolen Fairfax
Lucy Urbach – Cecily Cardew
Katy Kulseth – Miss Prism
Zach Fincher – Rev. Chausuble
Jaclyn Domenech – Miss Merryman/Lane

Tickets are available at www.sjctheatre.org or 378-3210.
March 28-29 7:30 pm
March 30 2:00 pm

Proud mom Diana Stepita sends this note over about her son Matt who’s in the WAS aerospace program…

Matt Stepita in the pilot’s seat of a Cessna Caravan – Contributed photo

Friday Harbor High School junior, Matthew Stepita, has been selected as a Washington Aerospace Scholar for 2013-2014. Washington Aerospace Scholars (WAS), a member of NASA Johnson Space Center’s National High School Aerospace Scholars program, was founded in 2006 by five-time NASA shuttle astronaut Dr. Bonnie J. Dunbar. The WAS program’s primary goal is to prepare students to pursue career pathways in STEM fields. Matt’s goal is to become an Aerospace Engineer.

Matt is currently completing Phase I of the program – a distance-learning curriculum in Space and Space Travel designed in partnership with NASA for which he will earn college credit from the University of Washington. Each space related lesson has comprehension, mathematics and graphics components and requires 10-12 hours to complete. The curriculum gives students the opportunity to explore topics such as the history of human spaceflight and future exploration of the universe.

Phase II involves a summer residency in which students work with professional engineers to design a human mission to Mars. Students will also tour aerospace corporations, visit university research labs and take a behind-the-scenes tour of The Museum of Flight’s NASA shuttle simulator.

The WAS program is possible with support from The Museum of Flight, The Boeing Company, The Washington NASA Space Grant Consortium, The GenCorp Foundation, as well as many individual donors. More info is available at this link (PDF).

Just got a note that Island Inn at 123 West has been nominated for Evening Magazine’s contest. Here’s Scott with more…

Hello Tim,
Could you help spread the word by posting this on the Update?

Happy Spring!

The Island Inn at 123 West has been nominated in Evening Magazine’s annual *BEST Northwest Escapes* contest for *BEST Luxury Hotel* and we would sure love to win! You can help us INN three easy steps:

1. Click this link
2. Vote for us
3. Spread the word

As always, we appreciate your support!

All the best,
Scott

County crew removes tires from Deadman Bay area shoreling – SJ County staff photo

County workers had to use the Public Works boat like a landing craft and even rappel down a steep embankment to remove sixty tires dumped illegally on a remote San Juan Island beach. The tires were a challenge to retrieve because they lay on a remote, rocky shoreline at the base of a bluff in the Land Bank’s Deadman Bay Preserve on the west side of the Island.

The Public Works boat was brought in on Friday, March 21, because of its hauling capacity and ability to operate in shallow water. Its retractable launch-gate made it possible to load the tires directly on to its deck. Land Bank staff member Doug McCutchen put his rappelling skills to work, recovering tires hung up in trees and on rocky outcroppings.

Staff from four County Departments — the Sheriff’s Department, Public Works, Community Development, and the Land Bank — participated in the cleanup.

The dumping was first reported to the County’s Code Enforcement Officer on March 12. The Sheriff’s Department is trying to determine who dumped the tires on the beach.

This note just came in from Katie over at Friends of the San Juans…

Sample drift card – click for larger image

We just dropped 400 ‘drift cards’ – forest certified, biodegradable plywood cards, each with a unique serial number – along oil tanker routes in the Gulf and San Juan islands. We chose today because it is the 25th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Today’s launch, organized by FRIENDS in the US and Raincoast Conservation Foundation and Georgia Strait Alliance in Canada, is part of a larger study to map the path an oil spill might take, and inform our understanding of the impacts of a potential spill on the Salish Sea as a whole. The cards were dropped at Turn Point in Haro Strait and Bird Rocks in Rosario Strait, high-risk locations in the shipping lanes. The cards carry a simple message: this could be oil.

The project is in response to the fossil fuel export projects proposed in BC and Washington which would add an additional 2,620 vessel transits per year to the already crowded waters of the Salish Sea, making it one of North America’s busiest fossil fuel shipping corridors. A single spill from the larger tankers and cargo ships associated with the proposed projects could have a devastating environmental and economic impact on par with the Exxon Valdez.

On March 24th, 1989, the Exxon Valdez struck a reef in Prince William Sound, spilling more than 11 million gallons of crude oil. Despite containment efforts, the oil coated 1,300 miles of coastline. Twenty-five years later, an estimated 20,000 gallons of Valdez crude oil is still in Alaska’s sand and soil.

Please help us with this research project by staying on the lookout for the pink drift cards on local beaches and shores. To report a card that you find and view the results of the study to date, visit www.SalishSeaSpillMap.org. To report a card by phone contact our office at (360) 378-2319.

Thank you for your support!
Katie

P.S. And if you find a card, we’d love it if you could take a picture of you holding the card – share it with us, and we’ll share it on our Facebook page!

Park volunteers install a puncheon on the Bell Point-Westcott Bay trail. – NPS Photo

Editor’s Note: A link was not working when this was first posted – it has now been corrected.

Notes and comments are now available on the National Park Services Planning, Environment and Public Comment (PEPC) website for the January 22 Open House for the Mitchell Hill/Westcott Bay trail systems.

To access the website click on this link. On the first page that opens click on the title “Meeting Notes.” On the next page that pops up click on the link:
2-27-14_Combined_Trails_Public_Open_House_Summary.docx. That will bring up the entire document.

The open house began with a map and comment exercise that asked participants to identify where they accessed the English Camp trails, which trails they believed should remain mixed or restricted use, and some that should be abandoned. Participants next explored planning for the future, looking specifically at potential multiple and single-use trails, access to both trails and trailheads, protection of sensitive resources, and opportunities for interpretation and visitor support facilities.

The park’s vision is to establish a system of non-motorized trails at Mitchell Hill and Westcott Bay that honors the unique character of these secluded coastal wetland and forest areas, according to park Integrated Resources Manager Jerald Weaver.

The trails connect English Camp to adjoining properties, support a diversity of recreational experiences, and are an integral part of the island-wide community trail system.

Grange members pictured L-R: Frank Penwell, Marie Skuffeeda, Pat Penwell, Alex Gavora, Michelle Loftus, Minnie Knych, Kathleen Commins, Judy Ware, Dwight Ware, Al Commins. – Click for larger image – Contributed photo

At the March meeting of Friday Harbor Grange #225 the members collected 150 pounds of food and $200 of donations for the Food Bank. Way to go Grange!

Minnie Knych has this to share from the American Legion Auxilliary…

Minnie Knych presents Mamie Forbes with the Blue Star Banner – Contributed photo

Mamie Forbes, owner of Orcas Boardwalk Café and Irene Herring, owner of San Juan Coffee Roasting Company are the latest recipients of the Blue Star Banner in honor of their sons’ military service.

Mamie’s son Shawn Forbes is currently serving in Afghanistan. Shawn’s designation is EOD (Explosive Ordinance Demolition). Irene’s son, Alex Herring serves on the USS George Washington.

The American Legion Auxiliary Unit 163 of Friday Harbor honors San Juan County families of service men and women with the presentation of a Blue Star Banner. Established during WWI, Blue Star Service Banners are displayed by families who have a loved one serving in the armed forces, including the National Guard and Reserves of all military.

Irene Herring displays her Blue Star Banner – Contributed photo

The banner displayed in the front window of a home shows a family’s pride in their loved one serving in the military and reminds others that preserving America’s freedom demands much. More information about the purpose of the Blue Star Banner is at this link (PDF)

The Friday Harbor American Legion Auxiliary sends monthly comfort packages to any San Juan County serviceman stationed in danger zones. Relatives or friends with servicemen on active duty may contact Minnie Knych for further information.

Just got this note in from June Arnold about how we can support our scholars…

Dear Island Neighbors,

Spring is here and we are hoping for another great turnout this coming Thursday, March 27th for the annual Dining for Scholars day. I would like to encourage everyone to come out and support local scholarship by simply dining out sometime during the day or evening.

This year the following restaurants are graciously offering to donate a portion of their proceeds to our scholarship fund:

• Roy’s
• Café Demeter
• Hungry Clam
• Roche Harbor’s Lime Kiln Café
• Roche Harbor’s McMillan’s Room
• Blue Water
• China Pearl/Kung Fu Pizza
• Spring Street Deli
• Vic’s Drive In
• Rumor Mill
• Haley’s Bait Shop & Grill
• Cask & Schooner
• Mi Casita
• Coho
• Tops’l

The mission of San Juan Island Service Scholarship (formally Dollars for Scholars) is to support higher education and promote volunteerism among our community’s youth. Students who have completed a minimum of 80 hours of volunteer community service during their high school career are eligible for a scholarship through our program.

If helping to grow volunteerism in our community appeals to you, please join us by Dining for Scholars this coming Thursday!

Sincerely,
June Arnold
President

Kava is this week’s Pet of the Week

One look into Kava’s big brown eyes, and you’ll see her for the gentle old soul she is. At 12 years old, she is still very spry and loves to go for long walks, especially if a beach is involved. She gets along beautifully with dogs and cats alike and is just a mellow, good-natured girl. Her previous family “evicted” Kava when a third child was on the way and they no longer had time for her. We think she deserves so much better. Please stop by the shelter to meet Kava. We promise she will steal your heart.

LOOK FOR DRIFT CARDS
On Monday, March 24, a drift card drop will simulate what would happen if an oil spill occurred in Turn Point/Arachne Reef in Boundary Pass and Bird Rocks in Rosario Strait. People who find drift cards can report the location where they were found at: www.salishseaspillmap.org, e-mail [email protected], or call 360-378-2319.

Co-sponsored by FRIENDS of the San Juans, Georgia Straits Alliance and the Raincoast Conservation Foundation.

++++++++++++++

Where were you in 1989?
On March 24 of that year, the Exxon Valdez tanker ran aground in Prince William Sound. 11+ million gallons of crude oil were spilled, covering 1,300 miles of shoreline. 25 years later, the effects of this tragedy are still being felt.

Some islanders will remember the news accounts, some islanders felt it first hand. Not one of us wants it to happen again — anywhere.

The San Juans Alliance* is taking this “let’s learn from our mistakes” opportunity to share information about our islands’ capabilities for oil spill prevention and preparedness by hosting a free lecture with Q & A’s for islanders.

Please take this occasion to learn what would happen “if”, and what we islanders can do about it.