IINTERCOMMUNITY MASS TRANSIT WESTERN WASHINGTON

A QUICK REVIEW OF CURRENT INTER-COMMUNITY PUBLIC MASS TRANSIT IN WESTERN WASHINGTON TABLE OF CONTENTS A) LINKS TO INTER-COMMUNITY MASS TRANSIT WESTERN WASHINGTON B) INTRODUCTION C) INEFFICIENCY OF CURRENT WESTWASH INTER-COMMUNITY MASS TRANSIT D)THE CARMA OF CAR CULTURE E) OBJECTIONS TO MORE MASS TRANSIT ARE NOT WELL FOUNDED F) EXAMPLES OF CURRENT MASS TRANSIT POSSIBILITIES WESTERN WASH G) SAN JUAN ISLANDS-ANACORTES-MT.VERNON-BELLINGHAM-SEATTLE H) BAINBRIDGE ISLAND TO THE NORTH OLYMPIC PENINSULA I) MISC.WESTERN WASH INTER-COMMUNITY MASS TRANSIT CONNECTIONS J) INEXPENSIVE SEA-TAC AIRPORT EXPRESS BUS TO DOWNTOWN SEATTLE K) THE POSSIBILITIES OF FUTURE WESTERN WASHINGTON MASS TRANSIT A) LINKS TO INTER-COMMUNITY MASS TRANSIT WESTERN WASHINGTON In trying to make this blog post as effective as possible, I am first embedding links to relevant mass transit links in Western Washington. This is not a complete list, but users can move through these links to discover specific routes that suit themselves. It's helpful to go to the various websites linked here and plan out routes all at once, matching up connections for adjacent county routes and times, especially if one has a trip of 50 miles or more. Travelers may take various busses linking many rural routes in western Washington, with the added bonuses of generally being inexpensive, and many of these bus lines have racks for bicycles. The greatest number of connecting routes occur during commuter times, which are either early morning or late afternoon. Saturday routes are sketchy at best and Sunday or holiday through-connections are rare at best. These tips are especially important to consider before planning airline connections in either way. It is important for travelers to study current schedules and plan their routes themselves. The first links here in Section A are to clearinghouses of mass transit info. After that, links are arranged in section B with carriers going from north to south in the I-5 corridor from Canada to the Oregon Border. In section C, carriers are listed from North or south on the Olympic peninsula from the North Olympic peninsula down to the Oregon border. A traveler can take public mass transit all the way from Blaine at the Canadian border all the way down to Portland. Occasionally I have listed numbers in parentheses in some locations. These numbers refer to bus route numbers that service the specific locations mentioned. If I have had experience with the carrier, I am also leaving occasional short comments on their service. I realize that I have left out some private carriers in this area, and perhaps some other public transit carriers. Mass transit options are frequently in flux, and diligent research could turn up resources not listed here. If one of these links doesn't work, please contact me and I will try and correct it if possible. SECTION A: MASS TRANSIT CLEARINGHOUSES *transportation for different counties in Washington: http://www.publictransportation.org/systems/state.asp?state=WA * Washington State Dept of transportation: www.wsdot.wa.gov/choices/bus.htm * Washington State Ferry system : www.wsdot.wa.gov/ferries/ Washington State ferries offer vehicle and passenger service throughout Puget Sound. The ferry fleet is becoming aged and losing various boats at the same time it is meeting funding challenges to maintain historical service. At the time of writing this, 2009 will be the last year of the ferry connecting Anacortes with Victoria BC, a popular, inexpensive and scenic ferry run to connect mainland western Washington with Vancouver Island. Some ferries have ben decommissioned within the San Juan Islands, the Port Townsend-Keystone (vehicles are advised to inquire about reservations) run, and other places in South Sound. The ferries generally carry vehicles, and the San Juan Island ferry runs allow foot passengers with kayaks (extra cost, check in advance). On some runs, fares increase in the tourist season from May to September, and even more so during specific periods (Wed-Sat+-) during tourist season. Inexpensive to moderate costs. *Amtrak. Our Local version of Amtrak serves the Area from Vancouver Canada down to Eugene Oregon. After leaving Vancouver it makes stops in Richmond and Surrey BC and Bellingham Mt Vernon, Everett, Edmonds, Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia, Centralia, Longview, and Vancouver Washington then heads into Oregon. Check carefully about ticket purchasing as tickets are not always available. Rail would be the most environmentally sound way to link Western Washington communities but at this time Amtrak service is too infrequent and/or expensive to be used by most inter-community foot passengers. Locally, Amtrak is usually better suited for interstate travel than intercommunity travel. Amtrak Cascades: www.amtrakcascades.com SECTION B: MASS TRANSIT CARRIERS NORTH TO SOUTH, I-5 CORRIDOR * Whatcom county (at Canadian border): Whatcom Transportation Authority: www.ridewta..com/ Although centered in Bellingham, WTA has busses throughout the county and very inexpensive commuter transit busses down to Mount Vernon in Skagit County. Inexpensive. *BELLAIR AIRPORTER SHUTTLE: www.airporter.com Bellair is a private shuttle service primarily running the I-5 corridor from Blaine near the Canadian border through Bellingham to Sea-Tac airport. It has a branch line connecting with the San Juan Islands ferry terminal west of Anacortes. Bellair's busses are short busses, fast, comfortable, making few stops, and offering some late night service after some public transit have ceased. Bellair caters to Credit card passengers who make reservations, the busses reach passenger limits at times and the drivers often have very limited cash on hand to make change. Moderately expensive. * Skagit county, borders Whatcom county. SKAGIT TRANSIT: http://skat.org The SKAT system serves the mainland of Eastern Puget Sound primarily within the heart of Skagit County but also has busses to Bellingham (80X), Everett (90X), LaConner, Anacortes (513), ferry landing at San Juan Islands (410) and Concrete. Skagit Station (with indoor lobby near downtown Mt. Vernon) also services busses to Camano Island (411C)and Oak Harbor (411W) in Island County. Inexpensive. *San Juan County public transit within the San Juan Islands consists mostly of Washington State ferries. Foot passengers, (not cars) have been allowed to ride the ferries for free once within the islands (foot passengers pay to take ferries TO the islands). Of the limited land transportation within the Islands, Orcas Island has ORCAS ISLAND SHUTTLE: www.orcasislandshuttle.com Orcas Island Shuttle, which serves Orcas Island in the San Juans, has both a 'public bus' with schedule service and vehicles for charter . The public bus runs end of May until mid September. For more info please see San Juan Island heading later in this article. Moderate cost. San Juan Island has bus service that runs may to September, moderate cost, www.sanjuantransit.com *Island County borders Skagit County on the Southwest. ISLAND TRANSIT: www.islandtransit.org serves Whidbey and Camano Islands, connecting with busses or ferries to Anacortes, Mount Vernon, Everett and Pot Townsend. Island Transit has one of the more admirable transit missions in Western Washington. It is free to ride, as voters within the county have chosen to fund it by 60 cents on every hundred dollars of sales tax collected within the County. Besides regular and special service routes throughout Whidbey Island, some routes also serve the Keystone ferry to Port Townsend (#6), the Clinton ferry to Mulkiteo(near Everett) (#7), between Whidbey and Mount Vernon (#411W), connecting with busses to Anacortes (411W), and between Camano Island and Mount Vernon (411C). Free. *Snohomish County borders Skagit County on the South and Island County on the East. www.communitytransit.org Community Transit has busses from Stanwood in the Northwest to Granite Falls and Monroe on the east, to Bellevue and Seattle on the South, to Mulkiteo and Edmonds ferries on the west. The main terminal in Everett has many bus and train connections, with a large indoor lobby. Frequent service to Seattle runs most hours of the day. Frequent sand *The city of Everett is also served by Everett Transit: www.everetttransit.org * A multi county transit carrier extending from Snohomish County to Pierce County is SOUND TRANSIT: www.soundtransit.org Sound Transit is most well known for the SOUNDER TRAIN , a commuter/light rail service that presently extends from Everett through Seattle down to Tacoma. Sound Transit links many eastside Puget Sound communities in the central region of Snohomish, King and Pierce Counties. It offers express busses between Everett and Seattle (510,513) Tacoma and the U District in Seattle (586), between Seattle and Woodinville (522), Everett/Lynwood and Bellevue (532,535) and others. In combination with Amtrak, trains run about 1 to 3 times northbound or southbound in early morning or 1-3 times in late afternoon early evening. See also Amtrak. Also, hold on to your ticket (usually offered by vending machine) as it may be good on connecting busses. Moderately inexpensive. *King County is South of Snohomish County, with Seattle being its center. The main public transit carrier, King County Metro, http://transit.metrokc.gov is colloquially known as Metro. Metro covers the metro area of King County and has numerous bus connections with other counties. It not only has bus and van lines but also light rail (covered separately in the rail section). Of special note for intercommunity travelers are the express bus (194) and Milk Run Bus (174) to Seat-Tac airport, the plentiful busses that service ferries from downtown Seattle to Bremerton, Bainbridge Island, and Vashon Island. Intercommunity travelers with more than one piece of luggage are advised to travel on non-rush hour busses if possible. Free (except between zones) transfers (upon request) permit bus journey to continue on other busses within the County. Bus schedules can often vary wildly during peak transit times. No main station, with most busses going through downtown Seattle on 1st to 4th avenues or the Bus tunnel accessed from street level every few downtown blocks from third avenue. Also see Sound Transit. *Pierce County is the county south of King County, with its main town being Tacoma, and the main transit agency being PIERCE TRANSIT: www.piercetransit.org Has express busses to Seattle and Olympia. Inexpensive. *Thurston County is South of Pierce County with Olympia being its biggest town. Th main carrier is Intercity Transit: www.intercity.com/ It has bus connections to Tacoma, Olympia, Tumwater, Shelton and towards Centralia and Chehalis. *Lewis County is south of Thurston County and has two main towns, Centralia and Chehalis, that give the County's transit its name, Twin transit : www4.localaccess.com/twintransit/index.htm It connects with Olympia on the north and communities south towards Portland *Lower Columbia transit has connections to Vancouver WA and Longview in the south and has a line as far north as Tumwater near Olympia. The Agency is called the Lower Columbia Action Council: www.lowercolumbiacap.org/Transportation%20Schedule.htm *Clark County borders the Oregon Border and is heavily linked with Portland through C-Tran: www.c-tran.com/ SECTION C: MASS TRANSIT WEST SIDE OF PUGET SOUND FROM NORTH OLYMPIC PENINSULA SOUTH TOWARDS OREGON *Private ferries from Vancouver Island to Olympic Peninsula: Black Ball Transport (passengers and vehicles) runs the 'Coho' ferry between Victoria BC and Port Angeles as does the Victoria Express (passengers only): www.northolympic.com/ferry/ CLALLAM TRANSIT: www.clallamtransit.com This system serves the North End of the Olympic Peninsula. Clallam transit on the east side connects with Jefferson County busses at Sequim (40) and another to Diamond Point (52). On the west end it has busses that go to Joyce (10), Neah Bay(16), Forks (14) and La Push (15). Clallam's main terminal (shelter and parking lot) in downtown Port Angeles is next to ferries going to Victoria, Canada. Inexpensive JEFFERSON TRANSIT: www.jeffersontransit.com Jefferson County primarily serves the Northeast end of the Olympic Peninsula, but also is affiliated with West Jefferson Transit. Jefferson Transit, primarily based within Port Townsend, goes west to Sequim (Sequim Shuttle #40) to link with Clallam transit, serves a bus stop at the Washington State Ferry from Port Townsend to Keystone on Whidbey Island, has south bound connections to Quilcene which connect with lines to Shelton and Olympia, goes (bus #7) across the Hood Canal Bridge to connect at Pouslbo with Bainbridge Island links. Inexpensive. *KITSAP TRANSIT: www.kitsaptransit.org Kitsap Transit primarily serves the Kitsap peninsula which is south of Jefferson transit and West/Northwest of Bainbridge Island. It has a bus #90 that links Bainbridge Island ferry dock with busses to Port Townsend and Sequim at Poulsbo. Kitsap also runs transit lines down through Poulsbo to Bremerton. *Mason County is south of Jefferson County on the west side of Hood Canal. Its transit system, www.masontransit.org/ connects with Jefferson Transit (on the north) at Brinnon, and also connects with Shelton, Olympia, Bremerton and Belfair. *Grays Harbor County which is on the south/ southwest end of the Olympic Peninsula has Grays Harbor Transit: www.ghtransit.com/ which serves Aberdeen, Hoquiam and Quinault For those who either provide or use existing mass transit locally, thanks much. Whenever I need to get over my frustration of getting from place to place locally, I remember how long it would have taken in the days of Lewis and Clark to complete the same travels. B) INTRODUCTION Even though we have a basic inter-community mass transportation infrastructure in Western Washington, we could greatly improve it if we shifted more public investments away from the car culture and towards more frequent and better linked public mass transit. The public funding problems of maintaining our transportation systems, including our state ferry lines, become more challenging each spring when the state legislature decides how to distribute transportation dollars for upcoming funding cycles. Maintaining our highways and ferry fleet is increasingly more expensive in fuel costs, construction costs, labor costs, carbon footprint costs, pollution costs and the out-of-pocket costs to the riding public. And yet with all of these costs, we have yet to make inter-community transportation significantly more efficient during these times when we need to be more careful with managing these costs. C) INEFFICIENCY OF CURRENT WESTWASH INTER-COMMUNITY MASS TRANSIT To illustrate this inefficiency of inter-community transportation in Puget Sound, take the typical example of a simple trip I took last summer in Western Washington. I needed to travel between Friday Harbor in the San Juans and Port Angeles on the Olympic Peninsula. As the crow flies, this distance is about 70 miles. Some may wonder why I didn't fly, take the private cruise boat from Friday Harbor to Port Townsend, take private mass transit down through Seattle connecting with more private transit to Port Angeles or drive my own vehicle. I considered all of these. Except for driving my own vehicle, I discovered that the costs of using these other transport means averaged 10 times the expense of using the sketchy public mass transit available, that in some cases I would be too limited in the baggage I could take or that some of these connections wouldn't get me through in time anyway. As for driving, yes I do have my own vehicle, and I have driven this route before. But this time, for several reasons, I didn't drive. My first reason for selecting public mass transit was that after performing thorough research I thought I might be able to complete travel in one day between these two points. Theoretically my plan of consecutive public mass transit connections would have linked up properly, if all of the busses had nearly on time. Right. These linkage possibilities (between different forms of public transit) in this travel corridor were apparently not intentionally created by any bureaucracy, as there were very long waits between many connections. But I thought I would give it a try. My second reason for choosing mass transit is that as anyone knows who travels either on the San Juan/Anacortes ferry run or the Keystone/Port Townsend ferry run , car travel itself can be delayed by many hours at these departure terminals because of long vehicle lines. Third, as someone who wants to act on their principles, I try and take mass transit whenever possible. I want to lessen my personal dependence on oil (foreign or domestic) and also lessen my carbon footprint. Although this was the height of the summer tourist season in these towns whose economies are heavily dependent on tourism, I was unable to complete this journey in a single day using mass transit. In fact, it took me 10 hours to travel solely between Friday Harbor and Port Townsend, a distance of only about 30 miles as the crow flies. I was unable to complete the last leg of my destination, as I arrived too late in Port Townsend to catch the last public transit bus of the day to Port Angeles. All of these communities are served by mass transit, but are too much of a hodgepodge of connections, too often making reasonable inter-community mass transit links untenable. This particular sunny calm summer morning I boarded the 8am Washington State ferry leaving Friday Harbor bound for Anacortes. I arrived at Anacortes ferry landing a little after 10 a.m. At the Anacortes ferry landing bus stop, I soon encountered an arriving driver on the single private mass transit carrier that connects this ferry with local communities. I asked her if her private transit company connects with the Keystone Ferry dock. She responded that her company used to have a run from this Anacortes ferry landing to the Whidbey Island Keystone ferry landing (ferry here goes to Port Townsend), but that run had been canceled a few years earlier. After picking up a few passengers bound elsewhere, her fifteen- passenger bus drove away without me. If I wanted to use multi passenger transit to continue my trip I would either need to wait for public mass transit or hitchhike. I decided to wait for the public mass transit to continue my journey. By mid-afternoon I had taken a SKAT (Skagit County) (410 ) bus to March Point (several miles east of Anacortes) and then I linked with a succession (#411W, #6) of Island County busses through Oak Harbor and arrived at the Keystone Ferry landing about 5 p.m. I caught the next ferry to Port Townsend, only to find that my 6 p.m. arrival in P.T. was too late for the last bus connecting to Port Angeles for the day. I was a little more fortunate than tourists (or many local travelers like me), as I had friends in the area. One such friend drove from Port Angeles and we drove back together to Port Angeles. (I should point out that I was able to make my return trip from Port Angeles to the San Juans in one day using public mass transit (including ferries). I left Port Angeles at about 6 am and arrived on Orcas Island after 6 pm.) This San Juan Islands/North Olympic Peninsula transit story is not the only example of poor inter-community transit connections in North Sound. For example, if I want to go from San Juan Island to Seattle, an 8 am Friday Harbor departure would finally get me to Seattle about 6pm. If I were to leave Anacortes Ferry dock after 4:15 pm, I wouldn't be able to get to Seattle that day, using public mass transit. I wouldn't be able to complete the trip anytime on the weekend or holiday using public mass transit. Sometimes in Western Washington we pride ourselves on being economically resilient, politically admirable, and environmentally conscious. But often we have local infrastructure issues that do not demonstrate such conscientiousness. Today, many of us are concerned about the recent climbs in fuel costs, global warming, pollution, repercussions of dependence on foreign oil, the inefficiencies of domestic vehicle manufacturers, and the controversy over saving these manufacturing jobs and related industries. But do we actually believe that we will arrive at adequate transportation solutions to these problems by simply making changes in the way our cars or built or powered? Steps in changing our car culture changes are worthy, but shouldn't we also make significant strides with mass transit to get us where we want to go? D) THE CARMA OF CAR CULTURE In the last 100 years of American society, car culture has been at odds with mass transit as a form of transportation. According to the book "Twentieth Century Sprawl, Highways and the Reshaping of the American Landscape" the author Owen D. Gutfreund documents how an alliance of automobile interests turned the American transportation system away from mass transit and towards automobile culture. He explains how as early as the 1920s that there was much higher mass transit use than we have today. This alliance of automobile interests has been led by the AAA (Automobile Association of America) and composed also of car manufacturers, developers, main street businesses, oil companies, and highway construction companies who have poured money into the banks of politicians who practically dismantled existing mass transit systems and replaced them with our transportation infrastructure dependent on the auto. Even when mass transit does exist, lobbyists and politicians have often oriented it towards private interests and not towards the public's benefit. Our own Washington State Constitution forbids public transit companies from enacting inter-community mass transit unless the affected communities specifically vote on enacting it. The reason this law was passed was so that private transit carriers would face less or no competition. But this law does not always benefit the public. For example, because of this law, Skagit County did not have any mass transit links between Mt Vernon and either Bellingham or Everett until 2006, and foot travelers had very limited options with private carriers. Even today SKAT cannot serve some outlying communities in Skagit County that have won elections in favor of mass transit service. Voters in these specific communities cannot have mass transit because intermediary Skagit communities (between them and voter- approved bus lines) have not voted to permit mass transit through them. Two results of this law are very high out-of-pocket costs to the user, the subsequent poor service in both times and areas covered, and the other adverse impacts mentioned earlier. In Gutfreund's book he shows time and again that the people who would most benefit by more public transit are also the ones who have been paying much more than their share for the car culture orientation of highways and transportation infrastructure. These taxpayers are paying for those who most benefit by a sprawl and a car-dependent culture. The result is that it costs much more for all of us to move from place to place. In Western Washington, our Public Mass transit is rarely adequate for commuters to get back and forth to work. Private carrier transit becomes too expensive for many people to afford, especially on a regular basis. The result is that many of us are impelled to buy and maintain our own vehicles, with the consequent much higher economic, ecological and political footprints such a need engenders. Those who do drive spend significant income not only on vehicles and their maintenance but also insurance, fuel costs, much wasted time in traffic congestion of single drive vehicles and the alienation from fellow travelers occasionally radically exposed in the form of road rage. Even the biggest metropolis in Puget Sound, Seattle, is woefully under served. One newcomer to Seattle recently wrote (on an internet blog about mass transit) of how back in Chicago he could use Chicago's extensive convenient public transit system and cabs to get easily from place to place and spend $150/ month to do so. The person now lives in Seattle with its poor mass transit system, cannot get around enough without a car and now needs to spends $500 a month on auto costs, and they don't drive much. E) OBJECTIONS TO MORE PUBLIC MASS TRANSIT ARE NOT WELL FOUNDED Some may object to public mass transit as they claim that this is a financial burden on all, even those who don't use it but use their own vehicles. Obviously, such positions ignore that the excessive pollution and excessive global warming caused by private vehicles with few or single passengers is an externalized cost that the general public must bear. Instead, we need to ask ourselves, do we as a society really want to cater to travel means that contribute more to pollution and global warming? Some may object to mass transit making more affordable opportunities for people to access attractive travel destinations, like the San Juans, or regional beaches or parks; they believe there to be more economic benefits by catering to people who fly or drive instead of those who use mass transit. But again, is public access to attractive destinations to be limited to those whose activities are not as environmentally friendly as we need them to be? Finally, the people who object to funding mass transit are ignoring that the highways that they drive their private vehicles on were disproportionately funded by people who don't have private vehicles. F) EXAMPLES OF CURRENT INTER-COMMUNITY MASS TRANSIT POSSIBILITIES IN WESTERN WASHINGTON Many people wish that they could use more public transit but such transit simply isn't available in North Sound to induce more people to abandon their person vehicles. I have talked with many people in the San Juans, the Olympic Peninsula, in the Skagit Valley, in King and Snohomish County and other places who would use public mass transit much more if it were more efficient. Yes, there are private carriers who go in between these communities but their expensive and convoluted payment systems, limited stopping places, and occasionally limited passenger space do not make them attractive to many travelers, who then decide its easier to drive themselves or forego the travel altogether. For those who do want to use mass transit, especially public, to travel in between communities in North Sound, here are some experiences I can speak of circa the mid to late 2000 decade. Due to seasons and economic pressures the information presented here is subject to change at most any time. G) SAN JUAN ISLANDS-ANACORTES-MT.VERNON-BELLINGHAM-SEATTLE Since I have frequently mentioned the San Juan and connections out of Anacortes, I will start there. Within the San Juans, it has been a policy for some time that foot passengers once within the islands can ride the ferries for free (Passengers need to pay ferry fares to arrive in the San Juans). Terrestrial mass transit within the islands occurs more often in the summer than in the winter, but sometimes is worth considering. For example, the last few summers (about Memorial day to mid September) a small bus (Orcas Island Shuttle) leaves the Orcas Island ferry dock numerous times (about every 3 hours) daily and circles the island in a trip that takes a couple hours. For a reasonable fare ($5, 2007), passengers can both see much of the island or stop at various places and continue their trip later in the day ($10 all day fare, 2007) . The company also has taxis and their fleet of vehicles can also be chartered. Both drivers and foot travelers wanting to connect with the San Juan Islands via ferries often find the connections daunting to complete in reasonable time unless they plan their travels carefully. Apparently the Washington State ferries are the biggest tourist attraction in the state, and the vast majority of travelers between the Islands and the Mainland use the ferries instead of flying or using private boats. Vehicle traffic is often extremely congested on these ferries, especially in the summer, one significant cause being the very poor mass transit service to and from the ferry terminals, especially out of the Anacortes ferry dock. Obviously, neither San Juan County or the state has invested much in improving mass transit service out of the Anacortes ferry landing. Instead, the ferries, the ferry parking areas, the and even the San Juan Islands themselves are often congested, especially during the tourist season and shoulder season weekends. This is not simply an inconvenience, the resultant excessive vehicle pollution is not always a dormant hazard danger to the Island's fragile marine ecosystem. Skagit County has gamely provides some connections to this ferry link with the San Juans, but cannot afford regular service throughout the day or on weekends. Unfortunately, driving ones own vehicle is too often the option travelers use to access the San Juan Islands. Foot travelers find very limited inexpensive opportunities to travel between the Islands and mainland communities. For those who arrive at the Anacortes ferry landing and want to continue travel on public inter-community transit to either Mt Vernon or Seattle, they can do it but need to plan carefully. For example, even if a person arrives at Anacortes ferry landing on the earliest ferry, they will not be able to arrive in Seattle before 6 pm. If they want to get to Bellingham instead, there is a single theoretical chance they can arrive their before late afternoon. The single chance is if the 6 am ferry out of Ferry Harbor arrives on time so that they can disembark and walk the 5 minutes up to the bus stop at Anacortes ferry landing. There is less than a 15 minute window here, so if the ferry is late in disembarking passengers at scheduled times the foot passenger will not arrive in Bellingham before late afternoon. Realistically, at present, circa April 2009, foot passengers from the San Juan Islands who do want to make either Seattle or Bellingham connections are presently best advised to use ferries to arrive at Anacortes ferry by 1 pm, weekdays only. (There is a broken transit link in the bus connections on weekends, as March Point to Mt Vernon has no bus service on weekends).. If weekday foot travelers arrive, later than 1:10 pm, there will be a significant chance that they will not be able to catch the second connecting busses (to Bellingham or Seattle) at Skagit Station on that day. If a person does make the weekday 1pm ferry landing bus, they can continue on to Bellingham arriving at about 5pm and the total cost for this trip is about $2 total. If the person wants to make Seattle connections the same 1 pm ferry arrival will get them to Seattle by 6-6:30pm (at the earliest) and cost about $7. Once travelers arrive at Skagit Station near downtown Mount Vernon, they can complete their mass transit connections departing up to about 6pm, if a person wants to spend a little extra time in Mount Vernon. To begin public transit connections to either Seattle or Bellingham, catch SKAT bus #410 at the Anacortes Ferry Dock at about 1pm. It goes to March Point, near the refinery, where there are public bathrooms and a Park and Ride. From there the rider can catch whichever arrives first, either one of the free Whidbey Island Busses (ask driver) or pay 75 cents for the SKAT bus 513 leaving March Point about 2:15p.m. Both go to Skagit Station in Mt.. Vernon, both arriving about 3pm. SKAT Station, near downtown, has covered outdoor bus stops and an attractive indoor terminal lobby with seating, an info shop, Greyhound and Amtrak counters, and public bathrooms. There are more frequent busses North (80X) to Bellingham than there are south (90X) to Everett but both are very inexpensive. Going south to Everett, the 90X bus leaves Mt Vernon about 3:30, 4:45 and 6pm, all arriving about an hour later at the Everett Station. Everett Station is huge, with lots of busses in all directions and a rail terminal for both Amtrak and the Seattle Sounder. If the rider wants to continue south on the I-5 corridor, one option is to catch either bus 510 or 513. These busses continue about every half hour until midnight and stop (on demand) in Seattle at 145th and I-5 and also at 45th and I-5. This bus has a final stop in downtown Seattle. If a person wants to travel north to Bellingham they can ride from Skagit Station to Bellingham for 75 cents, the 80X busses departing 4:10, 5:10, and 6:10 .m. an arriving in Bellingham about 45 minutes later. Although the San Juan ferry landing connections are hard, the I-5 corridor connections are a little better. The 80X bus to Bellingham has some Saturday service. Weekdays a person can catch a southbound 80X out of Bellingham station at 6:45 am and if on schedule they can make the 90X and Everett connections to arrive in Seattle before 10 am. Designed primarily as commuter services, the 80X and 90x busses also provide fairly good connections out of Mount Vernon's Skagit Station. One time I caught a 5:35 a.m. 90X southbound out of Mount Vernon in time to catch the Seattle Sounder train at Everett Station and arrive at the South end of Downtown Seattle by about 7:a.m. The train was more expensive than the bus, being $3.50, but on the Sounder I was able to plug in my computer, see shoreline scenery, and also use this fare ticket to transfer to a Seattle Metro bus to complete my journey to a Seattle neighborhood. One of the reasons I write this is in hopes that other travelers will be inspired to use these inter-community connections and generate more demand and route linkages on these runs. Let us hope that we can have better morning, midday, evening and weekend connections on public mass transit service radiating out of the Anacortes ferry landing. The existing sets of these particular mass transit connection linkages are relatively new in service and need rider support. Only since 2006 have these public mass transit linkages been available from out of Mt Vernon north to Bellingham and south to Everett. This new service has been augmented by start-up grants and when these grants vanish the continuation of theses services may depend on increasing ridership. H) BAINBRIDGE ISLAND TO THE NORTH OLYMPIC PENINSULA A better model for public transit inter-community connections is the one connecting the Bainbridge Island Ferry landing with the North Olympic Peninsula. I have ridden this both ways numerous times in the last 20 years and am surprised that more travelers don't use this set of mass transit links. An early morning weekday arrival at Bainbridge ferry landing can get the foot passenger to Port Angeles before 11 a.m. and an arrival in Forks before 3pm, with the entire cost less than $8 or $10. I have also used these connections to plan flights out of Sea-Tac airport for early weekday evening departures and for arriving back at Sea-Tac by early weekday afternoons. If bus connections were behind schedule, most bus drivers would call ahead upon request and my connecting bus's driver would usually wait (for a short time). A traveler between these destinations can look at relevant websites for the timing of connecting links and have 3 or 4 travel options weekdays. Again, like most Western Washington inter-community transit connections, there has been a linking bus that does not run on Sundays or holidays, and only twice on Saturdays. To get from Bainbridge ferry landing to Port Townsend, Port Angeles, or other communities, the first link is to catch the Kitsap County transit number 90 bus at Bainbridge ferry landing. Ride this to Poulsbo and transfer there to the Jefferson County number 7 transit bus. This bus line will end in Port Townsend. To go to Sequim or Port Angeles instead, ride this number 7 bus to the 4-corners bus stop south of Port Townsend. Transfer there to the Jefferson County bus number 8 (Sequim). This bus ends in Sequim and connects with the Clallam County Sequim bus called the 40 Sequim shuttle. It ends at the Port Angeles transit center where other bus routes radiate from there. I) MISC. WESTERN WASH MASS TRANSIT INTER-COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS Many of these various county sponsored runs have more extensive connections, which are worth checking out. For instance in Clallam or Jefferson County service, one can go out to Forks, La Push or Neah Bay, all for very reasonable costs and often the busses detour into some unusual neighborhoods.. Skagit County has busses that go far up the Skagit valley , and Island transit makes many connections on Whidbey island in all directions, and the bus travel has been free. At some stations, like Skagit station, Bellingham Station, Everett Station and others the foot traveler can find shelter and facilities and connect with private bus lines, trains and light rail. J) INEXPENSIVE SEA-TAC AIRPORT EXPRESS BUS TO DOWNTOWN SEATTLE One link that anyone who flies out of Sea-Tac airport should know about is the Seattle Metro transit bus 194, which is an express bus which links downtown Seattle with Sea-Tac airport in about the same time it takes to drive, and during rush hours it can be faster, as it will travel on the transit lane which congested lanes of single vehicle drivers (except motorcycles) cannot use. This bus costs about $2 to $3, depending on time of day. Bus 194 runs most of the day, and in off hours a traveler can instead take the (milk run bus) number 174 which takes about twice as long as it makes many more stops .194, 174, and numerous other busses stop at the far south end of Sea-Tac airport terminal on the same level as baggage claim. K) THE POSSIBILITIES OF FUTURE WESTERN WASHINGTON MASS TRANSIT Mass transit between communities is often different than urban transit travel, as the longer, often rural travels seems to provide a better setting for more interaction between passengers and drivers, often making for a more enjoyable and educational ride. Riding these longer mass transit connections is a better way to enjoy the scenery than driving. The passenger can possibly read or do limited paperwork, so such travel means might be a more productive way to travel than driving in a passenger car. Finally, mass transit can offer excellent inexpensive ways to avoid parking at destinations along the way. Those who do not have mass transit to their outlying community, and want it, will need to look into having a voter initiative to acquire it. Another course of action that hopefully our transportation leaders will take is to repeal the law which says that no mass transit is permitted between communities unless the citizens vote for it. Perhaps someday leadership and Western Washington communities will also realize the value in switching over to electric-powered transport vehicles, both terrestrial and marine. One of the things we need for our local ecosystem to recover is to implement less polluting and environmentally disruptive transportation systems. One idea is that our transit centers and ferry terminals may also be used as alternative energy collection centers, power storage and power disbursement centers to fleets of appropriate technology vehicles. Today's crossroads in environmental, social and economic fields afford ample opportunity to explore and build on both new and old ideas. Instead of continuing battles between different ideologies, our time has come to implement ideas that work, wherever their source, and discard those that don't. Yes, it is time for amplifying more public inter-community mass transit and yes, future society can also benefit by tiered forms of private transportation, including mass transit. We can have express trains and busses for those who want to travel quickly and other levels of service for those that need either more stops or to carry different types or amounts of baggage. One already sees these travel options frequently in the developing world. In countries like Columbia, Brazil or Ecuador, a foot traveler can use either a bus (that travels quickly) that is much more luxurious than Greyhound buses or a person can use the chicken busses, those that stop frequently and where travelers can often haul bulky or rural items. Western Washington would also be better served by using existing vehicle fleets and rearranging schedules so that outlying communities can be better serviced. For example, counties and communities can link up in master plans for completing inter-community links in reasonable fashion where no such plans now exist. One option to achieve this is to use the same vehicle to go to different communities (terrestrial or marine) on separate days of the week, or fill in certain time periods on certain days. Thus, the bus driver would be driving different routes on different days. This way, foot passengers throughout the area served can target these planned connecting route for the days and times to utilize much more efficient through transportation. For example, in my first example of getting from Friday Harbor to Port Angeles in one day, we could have 1 to 3 days a week when various busses and ferries link up their schedules so that instead of taking 2 days transportation a person could complete travel in half a day. Another idea which would be great if the state were to coordinate would be to set up an intercommunity trip planner website. A person could enter in their starting point, destination and arrival time needed at the destination and the trip planner could show which are the best intercommunity bus linkages to put together to make this possible. Such a website could facilitate much greater usage of mass transit, less highway congestion, and less pollution. Implementing an improved regional mass transit plan would not only have environmental but also social and economic benefits. Besides the obvious lessening of environmental pollution, increasing public inter-community mass transit will facilitate more social interaction between passengers than occurs in the isolation of individual vehicles. In this global information age, prosperity will follow those cultures that facilitate neteworking amonng their memberships. Economically, we could not only create jobs by building appropriate technology mass transit fleets and transit centers (including ferry terminals) but we could also keep much of the money local instead of losing our money unnecessarily to oil interests. Such endeavors would also have positive ripple effects throughout the manufacturing sectors of our economy. Hopefully our leadership will seize today's opportunity to move all of us ahead in a bold initiative realizing a deepening commitment to intercommunity mass transit.

WEEDER GEESE AND VOLE CONTROL IN THE ORCHARD

VOLE CONTROL AND THE WILD GOOSE CHASE TOWARDS WEEDER GEESE IN ORCHARDS AND PARKS Once hand managing gardeners begin tackling food producing land sizes larger than about a quarter acre (11,000 square feet), they meet the Western Washington challenges of continual weed and grass controls. Before the non-mechanized era, animals were deployed in various capacities to manage grass in food-bearing gardens and orchards. Although remnants of this non-mechanized grass control are yet practiced in some foreign gardening traditions, this activity is rarely found in Western Washington today. The primary problems are that most of the animals are too demanding on the landscape, and mechanization costs appear to be less than managing animals are (actually, externalized costs of mechanization are infrequently calculated). Cows, horses and sheep not only need large areas to graze but they tend to eat or physically damage fruit producing trees and other crops. Pigs tear the ground up and goats prefer fruit trees to eating grass. Chickens do eat grass but they usually prefer eating insects, seeds, your veggies and fruit. Turkeys are not too fond of grass.. The one animal that seemed suitable for this situation appeared to be weeder geese. VOLE DAMAGE TO THE ORCHARD I was considering all of these animals for possible grass control solutions when I became acutely aware of a need for a non-mechanized mowing method in an orchard that I had initiated. This need for mowing became urgently apparent in the second September of this young orchard of about 100 trees, soon after I noticed that many of the trees were displaying redder leaves than usual. Upon strolling out to examine the trees more carefully, I found that about 30 of the trees had their life-sustaining bark totally girdled around their lower trunks and many other trees had partial girdling. Apprehension that these trees would die to the ground later proved true. The culprit was one of our local species of voles, apparently Townsend's Voles. Voles are rodents larger than mice, and these ones made shallow tunnels in the ground or through the high grass. Usually they preferred eating green grass, but at summer's end when their preferred food had turned brown, they had turned their attention to knawing on fruit tree bark. Upon realizing this, I immediately embarked on damage control. I wrapped the trunks of all trees with ½ inch hardware cloth and cleaned out the high dry grass encircling the trees to help manage the trees better.. By the next spring, the severely damaged trees died to the ground. About half were to send up new growth from their rootstocks in subsequent years, and I was able to graft new scion wood onto them. The only consolation was that this regrowth was less work than starting all over with both new rootstocks and new grafts. New rootstock establishment would also need scion grafts of the eclectic fruit varieties I was experimenting with (which I would once again have to hunt down,) and the trees would also need the planting and the extra care that 1st year young trees require. With the voles apparent shift in diet, the young orchard had become under siege from both high and low knawers. My available orchard maintenance time was already devoted to establishing a perimenter deer fence higher than 6 feet. Early in the summer, deer had been jumping the 6 foot fence and quickly began whittling the young orchard down to stubs. I immediately covered the trees in bird netting and then added 6 foot diameter corrals of field fencing around each tree. This combination of strategies together cut down deer damage about 75%, but through the summer the trees were assuming unwanted shapes due to both the deer pruning and the bird netting wrapping. The holes in the bird netting also allowed tree twigs to grow through the netting, which if left unchecked became a tangled nightmare. So I embarked on building a higher stronger fence, but that perimeter solution had to be temporarily put on hold. Now I needed to shift to vole attention. VARIOUS VOLE CONTROL STRATEGIES My first life of defense for voles became immediate bark knawing prevention with physical barriers. The hardware cloth stopped the voles, but was not a fun task. Cutting and bending the wire mesh and closing the ends with tie wires tore up hands, as I was not able to wear leather gloves for all of the wire manipulation tasks. In subsequent years, the tree trunk diameters outgrew the hardware cloth bands and I needed to replace them with other barriers to gnawing. Store-bought cardboard type wraps were inexpensive and did protect the trunks for a couple years, until the weather wore them out. These bands in turn were replaced by more pricey expandable white plastic spiral wraps, which became sufficient protection until the trunks had reached 4 inches in diameter, and lees vulnerable to the voles gnawing. It soon became apparent that the trees needed more than a first line of defense from the voles, as the trees yet suffered. In numerous cases, the voles simply turned their attention from the trunks to the roots of the young orchard, where the damage was less visible. This unseen gnawing weakened the trees furtively that winter and caused perhaps a dozen more trees a slow death over by spring. Simply protecting the tree trunks was not enough, the vole population needed control. Voles are one of the most difficult pest problems to control in many landscapes in Western Washington. Most 4-legged pests can be kept out by simply building better fences, but not voles. Due to their high reproduction rate, constant vigilance is required. I considered my options. A common response, toxic rodenticides, only creates more problems. Poisoned rodents are eaten by natural predators which then die and the consequent rodent population explodes. As a sidebar, I have heard positive reports from market organic gardener friends that one particular rodent bait does have less drastic food web impacts. A mice and rat bait control called Quintox is made from one B vitamin which when eaten coagulates the affected animals blood and supposedly does not kill predator birds that eat the rodents. Some visitors to the orchard people advocated using the alternative folklore control called 'Mole Plant' (Euphorbia sp. ). In an earlier garden I had already discovered that Mole Plant was not alternative enough. The voles simply ignored Mole Plant and ate most everything else. Besides, the real underground pest is most frequently voles and not moles. Moles are primarily carnivores and usually don't eat plants, although their tunnels can expose the trees roots to air and hence injure the plant. Moles might occasionally tunnel into some starchy tubers but generally they are after earthworms and other small invertebrates. Voles are the ones with big gnawing teeth, moles have a long snout. VOLE TRAPPING Another targeted control method is trapping, a solution that I have mixed feelings about. Having once trapped snowshoe rabbits for overwintering sustenance in my youth, I am painfully aware of both sides of the cruelty debate about animal trapping. Although trapping doesn't use toxic bait, it is not a casual endeavor. Sometimes, untargetted quarry is trapped and sometimes the trapped animal doesn't die immediately. On the other hand, if trapping becomes the only viable alternative to keeping the food producing garden happening, then it may be the difficult choice by necessity. I posit that it is better to take personal responsibility for one's habitat impacts in the immediate environs than becoming dependent on long distance food transport where natural habitats are much more compromised. At least in one's own backyard one can more readily see one's personal impacts on the natural world. Vole trapping is more effective if numerous traps are deployed. Stake and lines go to the traps in their underground placement inside breather holes in tunnel complexes. The opening is then blocked above the trap. The voles detect lack of ventilation in their tunnels, come to investigate their breather holes, and encounter the traps. The blocking should not impede the traps function, so be careful if sod chunks are used. Perhaps easiest for marking trap locations for regular checking is to cover the breather hole with chunks of flat boards, flat metal, tarp pieces, black plastic etc. With any kind of trapping endeavors the quarry is less suspicious when human smell is absent. Trapping lore encourages practitioners to smoke or keep outdoors both the trapping clothes (especially gloves) and gear. Overwintering vole colonies can be attracted to an area by using big sheets of plywood, tarps, metal or the like atop the ground (garter snakes also like some of these covers as wintering grounds, and garter snakes are allies because of their slug control). This drier, predator protected ground attracts the voles and some months later in the winter the voles are more easily confronted in this consolidated area. With voles, like most overwintering pests, control is more effective if populations are knocked down before spring reproduction commences. Vole trapping does have many local adherents, as demonstrated by the outcry in Washington State about a decade ago when most trapping was made illegal by voter initiative. With any such injurious activity as trapping is, conscientiousness is the primary caution. About the only traps I occasionally use anymore are not for voles but for building rats, greenhouse mice, or landscape catch-alive troublemakers. PREDATION OF VOLES AS CONTROL METHOD Another vole control is dogs. Dogs seem to be programmed to discourage unwanted guests from their pack territory, so praising them when they are hunting voles encourages this instinct. The vole hunting value of dogs is enhanced if they are in pack mode and if the orchard grass is kept at least somewhat low. The pack company can be composed of other interested dogs or people, and the dog's vole control effectiveness is greatly increased when they are encouraged by other members of this pack. Dogs are much more effective if they are able to hunt voles when the grass is not too high. Dogs, and likewise the persnickety predator cats, have their vole-hunting limitations. Natural predators are helpful in controlling voles, but orchards often have too many human appearances that scare these predators off. Besides, most four-footed natural wild predators like coyotes, foxes and striped skunks are usually not readily able to enter orchards because of the high deer fence needed on the orchard perimeters. Airborne predators like owls, red-tailed hawks and northern harriers also generally don't like hunting near houses, and are also less successful hunting where high grass provides protection for voles. HIGH GRASS PROBLEMS IN THE ORCHARD Besides being a problem in vole control, high grass orchards are difficult to keep productive, period. High grass impedes human movement, ladders, monitoring, maintaining and harvesting the trees. Realizing that the grass needs to be controlled is one thing, deciding on a long-term solution another. The high grass in this particular orchard was particularly difficult to control and I had already worn out on keeping the orchard mowed. Using mechanical means for grass control had proven difficult because the field was very bumpy, full of clumpy bunch grasses and mole tunnel ridges. Besides the excessive time needed to mow these 2 acres on a regular basis, mowing the rough field cost excessive money. First year field maintenance had been destructive of rototillers, walk-behind mowers and riding lawnmowers, all of which required repair, replacement and fuel costs. As another liability, this mechanized control was also dependent on fossil fuels. The repetitive polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbon pollution these inefficient 2 cycle engines produced off-gassed into the field, which over time would add significant toxins to this prospective food producing area. Although I had been diligent about grass control the first year I established the orchard, I decided to take a break from such tediousness the next year. My boredom allowed the grass to grow unchecked that second summer of the orchard and the consequent high cover allowed the vole population to explode unchecked. Hand control of the grass through scything or mulching the entire 2 acres was more ambitious than I was willing to practice regularly over the entire orchard. Scything is usually more practical as an initial grass knockdown or as an occasional control for pernicious spots. Mulching was done in circles around the trees, as grass itself is a fierce competitor of orchard trees. In this case the benefits of mulching for grass control slightly outweighed the mulching liability that mulch provided cover for the voles. GEESE IN THE HUMAN LANDSCAPE In the spring after the first major vole attack, the orchard finally received the extra help it needed, domestic geese. Over the next few years until the trees got some size, the geese kept the grass mowed down enough to discourage vole settlement, and finally also allowed predators to better control the voles. After the geese had been established a few years, the vole population was much smaller in this orchard than it was in neighboring high grass fields. Perhaps this solution of weeder geese is not for everyone, but they are one of my favorite domestic animals. I can communicate better with geese than I can with many domestic animals. Weeder geese are fairly easy to control, smart, and their grass and weed control contributes to a gardening lifestyle. I also like our wild Canadian geese in local landscapes, although I am outnumbered in this attitude by those who despise them. In public parks, consider the two main complaints against these birds, goose aggression and goose poop. Goose aggression is only a defensive behavior, and although geese may rush at someone they rarely attack unless provoked or are defending others of their flock. As for the goose poop, I figure lots of us gardeners use animal fertilizers in our gardens, and geese manure itself is mostly just organic undigested grass with some microbes and enzymes thrown in. The goose poop got there because the geese were hungry. If geese aren't around to mow and fertilize the lawns in city parks, then lawn maintenance is usually done with non-organic fertilizers, weed killers and gas-powered mowers. The non-organic fertilizer and weed killers not only wipe out the landscape fauna put also work their way into the water and too often mess up aquatic populations and drinking supplies. The gas mowing not only mows the lawn but also spews gas exhaust into the landscape (most 2 cycle engines only combust about ½ the fuel they consume). Which is worse, goose poop or gasoline? Although people at home might put a cupful of manure around each tomato plant, I don't know of anyone who fertilizes their tomato plants with a cupful each of gasoline. And yet, our 2-cycle lawn equipment of mowers weed whackers, leaf blowers, rototillers, chainsaws are all coughing gasoline fumes into our landscape. Since wild geese can fly into home landscapes, they are slow to appreciate why fences were put in to keep animals from clobbering the landscape. In figuring out how to keep wild geese out of my large gardens, I have learned that they respond to relentless discouragement at every single infraction. Since my preferred pest prevention method of fencing doesn't work with them, I have experimented with other techniques. I have found that flying frisbees at them is a more effective threat than rocks or yelling alone. As I do like geese to be around in other areas, I don't want to scare them away entirely. If the geese moved to a place where they can help keep the grass down, like a nearby orchard or field, I praise them. Over time local wild geese can learn that fencing around specific areas renders such areas off-limits, and violators are prosecuted. As spring returns each year we renew old feathered acquaintances. The first day that wild Canadian geese showed up in early spring after the previous fall' major vole attack, I realized once again how much I like watching and hearing them. I have noticed the annual geese migrations marking the seasons of my life since childhood days. Their huge V flocks in migration flyways are like compass arrows in orange juice sunrises and burning ember sunsets, I was especially attentive towards any geese this particular spring because my winter's research on vole control had pointed me towards acquiring domestic weeder geese. During long days huddled around wood stove heat I had learned that lots of other people for many generations had already reached similar conclusions about the place for domestic geese in home food-production lifestyles. Although none of our Canadian Geese are fully domesticated, geese have been fully domesticated in Asia and in Europe. In these cases, domestication probably occurred by encouraging year-round residence by feeding them and by breeding geese towards body bulk that was larger than flight capacity. Now, as this wild pair of Canadian geese honked to their graceful splash-down in the farm pond, I felt intrigued at the idea of getting to know geese even better. These moments pushed me over the top, and that morning I went down to our local Farm Supply store to see who was chirping under the heat lamps in the brooders. DAY OLD GEESE ADVENTURES BEGIN During my research of the various species and varieties, I looked for varieties that were generally less noisy, less aggressive and bigger than others. I picked 2 domesticated varieties of the European wild species, the Greylag Goose. I went home with a pair of day-old grey and white Toulouse geese and a pair of day-old white Embden geese. The young geese bonded with me immediately. As I read about the greylag geese I learned why. In the book " The Greylag Goose" by Conrad Lorenz, the author demonstrated why his work in animal behavior catapulted him to become a co-winner of the Nobel prize in Medicine. His opening story in his goose book could be aptly applied to my situation, so I roughly paraphrase it here, as I remember it. "When I was 5 years old, my parents let me keep a goose in my upstairs bedroom in our countryside home in northern Europe. My later-to-be wife, well, she couldn't keep a goose in her bedroom until she was 7. Now that was over 60 years ago, and in the intervening years I have always been around geese, either with the home flock or studying them in the wild. I just can't get away from them. Now, my wife, she has never been quite as enamored of them as I have. This just goes to show how important age is on imprinting." For those of us not imprinted on geese, but are not enamored of geese, perhaps reading his book will ease the dissatisfaction. After all, these are the largest birds most encountered fairly closely when we are outside of zoos. In Conrad Lorenz's book, the reader learns much about the intricate social behaviors and intelligence of Greylags. Surprises abound. UNDERSTANDING VARIOUS GEESE BEHAVIORS Even though animal specific animal behavior can be right there in front of someone, sometimes the person doesn't recognize it. For instance, I hadn't noticed what was going on sometimes with the geese racket until some visitors to the farm observed that my geese would only honk from a hundred yards away when the conversation turned to my talking turn. Having read Conrad's book I suddenly realized that they hear me and were making the "long distance call' that Conrad Lorenz describe in his book. Another time, again thanks again to Conrad Lorenz's insights and the geese's trueness to form, I was able to understand other important behavior which links the flock together, the "Triumph Ceremony'. The first lesson began one afternoon when I was upset that the adult goose flock wouldn't clear out of my path fast enough for me as I walked by the pond. I was too uppity fast and aggressive and one defender goose attacked me. My Aussie dog companion grabbed the goose, named Doorbell, and in the melee that followed Doorbell's bill drew a little finger blood. After feathers, fur and rear ends had settled, then came subsequent reflection. I realized that if my self-worth depended on me proving that I was a more alpha animal than a goose, then I was really in trouble. So, from then on, I instead prided myself on my self-security by changing my course and allowing the goose flock plenty of room and time to also move if I was passing through and didn't have time for a visit. I never had another problem like that melee. Actually, I learned to appreciate that Doorbell's controlled aggressiveness was a virtue and not a liability, as he was only protecting the flock. As there were numerous predators around, instead of challenging him for his defensive actions I began to praise him for this sacrificing behavior. Good old Doorbell. Doorbell always patrolled the space between the flock and possible threats, and wouldn't attack unless pushed too much. Once the flock or threat, possibly me, had moved to allow for one another, then Doorbell would proclaim victory in the Triumph Ceremony. He would stand up and shake his wings and ruffle his feathers while honking and nudging other flock members. Geese also have a greeting ceremony that most people misinterpret as aggression. They lower their head while approaching. If they are not hissing, then this is basically a greeting behavior. Aggressive behavior is when the goose is both hissing and flapping its wings spread out, as their powerful wings are their strongest defense. If that ever happened on the farm, it usually occurred because some bored kid was harassing the geese. To prevent bad publicity and if the situation got out of hand, I sometimes intervened by grabbing a goose by the neck and pinning its head to the ground until we all could separate. Usually only dominant older male geese show this much aggression. Even when I was performing the generally scary behavior of picking a goose up, most females and young males wouldn't become aggressive at all. Geese have strong social bonds that last for the possible decades of their lives. Unlike promiscuous ducks, geese mostly mate for life or until a partner dies. Geese are especially protective of young, even if not their own. This isn't like turkeys or chickens, which may kill chicks not their own. For instance, one time I was too late in stopping the turkey named Auntie Frantic from gobbling up one of 'Mom' turkey's week-old chicks. THE POWER OF IMPRINTING IN GEESE BEHAVIOR Sometimes the social bonds between geese become quite complex, as illustrated in their imprinting behavior. When I first bought home the two pairs each of day-old geese and ducks, I quickly built them all a small insulated brooder house. They immediately became imprinted on myself and a friend as their surrogate parents. Every afternoon we would go on an adventure. The first adventures were out to the pond, and early on they were apprehensive of the water. After feeding on chickweed and grass, the goslings would then climb up on my chest and nap while I read or enjoyed the sunny spring sky. About a week later we all were ready for more ambitious adventures, and the group of eight birds would follow us daily in a single file on strolls down the path to the wooded creek, where the birds quickly learned to scamper out of flowing rivulets. But one day their social interaction and imprinting behavior became much more interesting. The childless pair of day- camping Canadian geese discovered the young Greylag goslings. This pair of Canadian geese had been around for some weeks now but spent the night elsewhere. They usually touched down at first light of those April morns into the pond. One such morning they finally heard the loudening chirping of the young goslings in the brooder house. The Canadian pair flew out of the pond and onto the grassy lawn near the brooder house. They quizzically turned their heads trying to figure out what was going on in that little building. When I came outside to tend to the young birds the Canadians flew off a short distance. Soon the fuzzballs were all out in the morning sun pecking at the lawn and exploring nearby. I watched the Canadian Geese pair nervously as they approached the goslings and ducklings. I didn't know what the interspecies co-operation or rivalries would do. I soon discovered that the Canadians were not interested in the ducklings at all, but within a few moments were nosing up to the four 10-day old Greylag goslings. The goslings were tentatively curious about the Canadians for a moment, but them would scamper back to me chirping loudly. Some moments later they would approach the Canadian Geese pair again and the Canadians tried to push them around and away from me. The Canadians approached and hissed at me as they tried to rescue the greylag goslings from me. After several mornings of similar interaction, one day our whole little morning soap opera went over to the pond, only the Canadians flying the distance. I had been trying to introduce the goslings into the water with little success. Although some would follow a paddled boat, they weren't in the water unless I was. The Canadian pair was able to separate the greylag goslings and herd them into the water and wouldn't let the escape. The goslings tried. At first the goslings attempted to scamper across the water surface as if on land. Eventually they forgot their fear and scampered underwater as well. They chased their reflections. They climbed up on one another's backs in the water. The Canadian Geese watched this approvingly. The only activity they would not permit was when the goslings strayed too far from them. By now it was apparent that the Canadians were not a threat to the young greylag goslings. Within a week of introductions, a routine was established. Like an alarm clock, the Canadian geese pair would arrive honking at first light and wait for me to let the goslings out of the brooder house. I would lead the goslings through the gate to the pond area. The Canadians would take over from there. They would parent the greylag goslings all day long in the pond area, leading them in swimming and in foraging. Relieved of my immediate parenting duties, I admired the new family grouping from nearby. I built a permanent waterfowl complex near the pond with numerous fenced or covered rooms, nesting cubbyholes, windbreaks, automatic waterers and automatic feeders.. The goslings moved into the complex at 2 weeks old while I continued working on it intermittently. By the time the complex was all done in early June, the greylag geese were larger than their surrogate Canadian geese parents. But the greylags were yet imprinted on me, and this was beginning to cause a bigger rift between them and the Canadians. When I approached the greylags to lead them into the pen at night, the Canadian geese, in protection attempts, would try and position themselves between the Greylags and myself. The male greylags would perceive that the Canadians were acting as a threat to me, and insert themselves between me and the Canadians, attacking the Canadians. The Canadians would try and insert themselves back in the middle again, which of course the Greylags didn't like. Finally the positioning had arrived at my knees and suddenly the Canadians would look up and be right next to me. They would rush off in surprise. Eventually, by the end of June, the Canadian geese gave up on this untenable arrangement. They vanished from the pond until the following spring. THE GREYLAG GOSLINGS BECOME WEEDER GEESE The Greylag goose flock prospered. As they grew larger in size and numbers, the un-mowed orchard grass got shorter and shorter. Within 2 springs the goose flock swelled to 30 birds, and the field was headed toward a poopy golf course look. The un-mowed field became easy to walk in, and while I maintained the trees my Aussie companion dog hunted voles. Northern Harrier Hawks began picking off the voles more often as well. The vole population plummeted, as did their damage to the orchard. By then, most of my goose management chores consisted of letting them in and out of the pen in morning and night, or encouraging them to feed in the field throughout the day. They needed this extra encouragement as they really liked the pond, and choice human delivered food became the carrot to move them from place to place. I would be surrounded by them while leading them around the field with feed or to the pen at night with feed, and they never attacked me. Oh, in a crowd one or two might nip at my pants leg, but heck, they do that with one another. Actually, Doorbell became the goose most ready to eat corncobs from my hand, and one of the first to later die in defending the flock from the annual migrating spring eagle. As I began to understand the geese I also began to appreciate their intelligence in understanding me also. When I was first trying to get them into the pen at night, I used my standard animal herding technique, 2 long sticks or PVC pipes in each hand extending my reach in both directions. Then I trained the Australian Shepherd dog standard commands to help herd the birds. Then I evolved to using food treats to attract them into the pen at night. If I was consistent enough in my praise and admonishment that they began to understand my body language and what was unacceptable behavior.. Geese are vocal animals, and calm quiet reassuring talk and movements make them comfortable enough to allow someone to hang out with them in close quarters. I also learned that adult geese are very protective of goslings and that I could usually allay occasional suspicions of me by both presenting a low silhouette and imitating the chirping of young goslings. They also learned to respond to firm reprimands without freaking out.. Sometimes I would notice the geese cautiously about to enter through the accidentally left-open garden/pond gate and sneak into the veggie and berry garden. From a couple hundred feet away I would question "What do you guys think you're doing?" The flock would gaggle amongst themselves for a few moments, then turn around and go back through the gate into their fenced yard and pond area. Heck, that won't happen with chickens, turkeys, cows, cats, rabbits, goats, most dogs or even some kids. Geese are smart. The geese and I began to trust each other so much that I it soon became ok for them to venture into the mixed berry and veggie garden when the spring grass was growing quick. While I weeded nearby, they knocked down the grass before I transplanted out the spring veggie garden into row covered beds. After a while the geese began taking subtle cues from me about when they could go into the garden. Eventually they wouldn't go into the garden even if the gate was left open, unless I encouraged them with beckoning spoken and body language. The gardening effort was part of the geese management program. Like with the ducks and poultry around I frequently gave the geese various weeds and over-productions of greens. I tried to keep a year round supply of the easy-to-grow nutritious green they liked, kale, around for daily greens backup for them and the poultry. Oh, and one spring weed deserves special mention, I hunted down patches of it every spring. Chickweed is nutritious and gobbled up by young goslings or other domestic 'chicks'. All the birds on this farm also ate from a rotation program of grains on the farm. Pre-eminent was an early field corn variety bred to either feed animals or use as a flour corn. Various Oats, wheat, barley, and rye varieties matured earlier than the corn so that animals could eventually eat fresh grains from mid-summer until the dried grains ran out in late winter. Besides creating conditions for vole damage to diminish, the shorter grass made the orchard much easier to maintain for pruning, new planting care, insect control, and harvesting. To encourage the geese to use the orchard more extensively, I catered to their needs. One spring I put in a smaller pond in the middle of the orchard. A high winter water table on the clay soil provided an opportunity for this seasonal small winter seepage pond which helped attract the geese, (and winter visitor wild mallards) into the orchard. I also learned to close off pond access occasionally and put feed and summer drinking water at opposite ends of the orchard so geese would move through the orchard to drink or eat grains. A big animal corn crop would translate into about 15 ears a day for a couple months in the fall tossed around the orchard as this also encouraged them to disburse and feed throughout the orchard. Geese, unlike ducks, are total herbivores and grass can be their main diet. The only times they ever damaged the young trees was in late summer and occasionally in winter when they would occasionally gnaw on bark because the grass was brown. They did do minor branch damage, but never killed a tree. Geese in the orchard are totally benign compared to other pasture foragers like deer, goats (sort of domesticated deer), sheep, cows, horses or pigs. INFRASTRUCTURE NEEDED FOR DOMESTIC GEESE Like any plant or animal which we interact with in our landscape, our eventual memories are more pleasing the more positive the experience was. By enculturating domestic geese to abandon their migrating activity we have compromised their ability to fly from predators, bathe in waters of their choice, mix with large groups of their own kind and limited their access to various natural food opportunities. In exchange for these sacrifices of freedom they have made for us, a keeper of geese has not only authority over them but also responsibility for their well being. First, geese are named waterfowl for a reason. Every effort to provide regular access to water is much appreciated by them. They like to bathe a few times a day, like to sleep on the water, and drink more water than most other farm animals. Unlike ducks, they do not muddy up the water with dabbling or eat frogs or fish. They also prefer both their pond and field areas to be open to the sky, as shrub or tree cover provides hiding places for predators to sneak up on them. The survivability of geese is greatly enhanced if they are locked up every night in a pen with poultry netting above and on the sides. If the poultry netting extends into the ground with double-fist rocks lining weight on the fence along the outside pen edge, then digging canines or racoons can't get to the inhabitants inside. Windbreaks, shed roofs, separate rooms with a door in between them, and small covered solitary nestboxes hidden on old board walls can provide protection from rain, disturbance from others and a safe place to nest. Automatic feeders and waterers in the pen save a lot of daily maintenance time, but have liabilities of attracting mice or rats. The automatic waterer valves need a few replacements yearly, especially in winter. The watering and goose pooping tends to make certain pen areas soggy messes which are best addressed by wearing rubber boots when entering. . To help make the pens floor conditions more habitable for the geese, add litter regularly in the form of dry litter like hay, straw, cornstalks or wood chips. Geese do not need supplemental heat in the winter time, but they do need unfrozen drinking water in the colder winter days. Although weeder geese can get by on just what the landscape affords, this landscape rarely affords the food variety that wild geese attain in their daily wanderings. Thus, I advocate not only giving them store-bought feed but also garden produce and special crops specifically grown for them. To manage them in an orchard, feed them a light ration in mid-day, and lure them into the pen at night with a regular evening feed. A standard feed program is to use an all-purpose feed for the first 10 weeks of life. After this, about a handful of corn per goose per day is enough, although I usually add more variety. If overfed, the geese don't forage as well. Well fed domestic geese can weigh up to 15 pounds, while sparsely fed ones in late winter might weigh 5 pounds or less. The less they weigh the easier it is for them to fly. The orchard flock would sometimes wander over to the top of the neighbors hill, and when startled fly a hundred yards at 30 feet high back into the pond. Although they can fly under special circumstances, domestic geese can generally be controlled by fences only 3 feet high. With metal T bars and electric fence clips, a non-electrified field fence or poultry netting fence can be quickly installed looping onto the fence clip prongs. This low fencing method allows the geese to be moved between various yards of the landscape. Goose mowing can be concentrated in certain areas, or the geese can be excluded for other areas at specific times such as interplant crops, brand new trees needing protection, harvest of the crop within that yard, or if the geese begin gnawing on low branches in the grass-destitute days of mid-winter. PREDATORS OF DOMESTIC GEESE Predators are much more of a concern for geese health than are diseases. Geese don't have many diseases, especially if provided with ample clean water, protection from precipitation, fresh greens daily, and a well balanced supplement of grains or feed. Since domestic geese are basically flightless but of a prey size that numerous species of predators find attractive, then their appearance in open landscapes attracts predator attention. No matter how diligent the management is, there will be more than one predator who can figure out how to attack the geese. The first line of protection from predators is strong fencing. On the outside of an orchard or pasture a deer fence will help keep most predators off the geese, but it is not enough by itself. In the 13 year history of geese at this orchard, it was finally predators that killed the last ones off. It was mostly because they were not penned at night anymore. Because of time limitations the geese management became more lax. The orchard fence was failing, the geese were not being locked in the pen every night, and predator cover near the pond grew dramatically. Adult geese here were killed by racoons while nesting outside the pen, by eagle attacks in the pond area, and by unknown predators in other cases. Other predators seen in the immediate area included various dogs, bobcats, coyote packs, skunks, cougars, mountain lions, bears, golden eagles, great horned owls and ravens (predator of goslings). Surprisingly, the tiny predator that eventually appeared after 10 years became the most devastating and finally killed the last remaining eight geese and goslings left. Even stout fencing would have little effect on these diminutive, fearless marauders weasels.. These animals were so brazen that on more than one occasion a weasel came under the closed door into my bedroom and sat staring up at me from a few feet away for a few minutes. It was hard to accept that such a small animal could kill adult gees but the evidence was overwhelming. Weasels would appear soon before we found a killed gosling or goose. The adult geese would be killed even if in the water. A common symptom was that the head of the goose would either be severed or there would be fatal wounds at the back of the gooses neck. A little bit of eating would be done behind the shoulder blade but usually the rest of the body would be undamaged. Owls were also suspected as they also frequently remove the head from their prey, but sometimes the geese would be killed like this in the day. Although the majority of relevant literature and biologists consider geese to be too large a prey for weasels, I have been around weasels enough to know that they like to make their own rules. Of course, people are the major predator of domestic geese. Our predation sometimes begins even before the eggs are hatched. Raided eggs are large and rich with strong flavors, probably better suited for baking than for stand-alone cooked meals. Since geese lay a limited number of eggs for only a few weeks in early spring, hatching rates during these few weeks determines the size of the years flock. If overly disturbed in any incident during this time, they will abandon their nesting for the year. A single Aggressive unfamiliar dog appearing at the edge of the pen for only one afternoon might set the bird off from hatching out any young that year. On the other hand, sometimes the birds will lay clutches in a couple of places before deciding to raise one of the clutches or not. POPULATION MANAGEMENT OF THE DOMESTIC GOOSE FLOCK Predator impacts and geese reproduction rates are a pendulum-swinging balancing act with the goal being to keep the size of the goose flock suitable for the size of the land needing mowing. A single family of 6 to 10 geese will work for an acre of mixed perennial crops but it may be 4 or 5 an acre during a dry summer, and 6 to 12 during a wet one. Sometimes the goose management has worked so well that the population climbs to an unsustainable level. Since a single goose can have 6 to 10 young each year, then a flock might grow ten times in size in a few years. This happened to me, and even though the waterfowl complex I built had 3 fenced rooms and a few hundred square feet of space, it was too small within 3 years. During this time the waterfowl population grew from 4 goslings and 4 ducklings to over thirty geese and almost a hundred ducks. It became too crowded and the ducklings couldn't get food or were accidentally trampled. Competition for feed turned vicious and many birds, especially timid ducks needed special feeding attention. The prospect of the flock growing even larger was not practical, so, a larger yearly culling of the flocks became necessary. Among many people who manage farmyard animals, the least liked aspect is not the expense or maintenance time but the killing of the animals in one's care. I justified to myself the periodic killing of geese because it was the only way I could figure out how to handle this artificial population explosion I empowered to occur. Although I grew up hunting and fishing, I will never get used to killing animals. Even if the geese were not so difficult to prepare for cooking, I would have preferred to let them live.. Geese are much more tedious to process for consumption than are chickens or turkeys. Unless one invests in a bit pricey machinery which knocks the feathers off, the difficult plucking of all of the feathers off of a butchered goose will take an hour or more. A large chicken can be dressed out in 10 minutes, a turkey in 20. Skinning waterfowl is quicker than plucking but cooking choices are more limited with skinned birds. If the down feathers are saved for future use, protect them from insect damage. THE WILD GOOSE CHASE ENDS I only occasionally visit the orchard now where the domestic geese once were. The fruit trees are now established. If they simply receive continual protection from deer then they may outgrow all furred predators. I yet encounter Greylags occasionally, but usually they are kept more as pets than as members of a tandem hand-and-bill landscape management lifestyle. On the other hand, as the populations of resident wild geese in Western Washington has grown almost a hundredfold in the last 30 years, I can more easily satisfy my imprinting needs on the goose species which originally inspired my fascination, these Canadian Geese. I have lately been working on a farm with a full grown orchard, and this past winter various Canadian Geese flocks frequently grazed in the orchard openings and adjacent fields. As I watch them I am yet learning new idiosyncrasies, This winter I saw a male Canadian goose that had paired up with a goose of a different species, a White-Fronted Goose female. Frequently this pair would wander off by themselves while the rest of the flock was somewhere else. Other times this winter a solitary goose would come by and hang out for a few hours, an unusual occurrence for such a social animal, and I wondered what had happened to its usual flock. This idiosynchric behavior makes me appreciate the adaptability exhibited by the wonderful goose family of species. In this troubling time of mass extinctions, I am glad that sometimes animals can co-exist with us, and I hope we can co-exits with more species of them. I am glad that people have discovered that some geese have been social enough to adjust to occasionally fitting into the gardening lifestyle I aspire to maintain. Living primarily on grass, geese travel in worlds of sky water and land, visiting both high and low latitudes, carrying their supplies in their bodies, needing no heat in the winter or tractors in the summer. In many ways, these dynamic animals have much I can yet learn about living a simpler life. Perhaps I am the one who needs to be domesticated by geese.

Re: home food cooling alternatives

Alternatives to grid powered refrigeration As the last days of winter wind down and the summer gardening season begins, I think of the decades when I have been relatively independent of longer distance power needs for refrigeration. On the few times when I have set up powered refrigeration at home, I am reminded of both my monetary costs to myself and the externalized costs beyond home. Actually, living off the grid, where one needs to generate their own power has educated me on how much energy various powered goods consume. Refrigerators and coolers really gobble up the power. These appliances are not alone, and I try and discover alternatives for each. Watching meters, wallets and visits to fuel centers I have learned that the real big needs which most of us have are heating air, heating water, washing and drying clothes, cooking and refrigeration. Even the common alternative to grid powered refrigeration, propane tanks or solar panels can consume some thousand or few dollars worth of specialize refrigerators, or power systems to accommodate solar energy in the summertime and generators in the wintertime. For those multitudes who are on the grid, these total community costs of grid powered refrigeration are a substantial fraction of the power needs put on Western Washington dams and other power sources. As a natural history buff, I note that in Western Washington the biggest loser of dams are the damages to our river basin ecologies, a damage which has usually hidden costs which most of us don't realize. More on this later. But we have two simple alternatives to using grid-based home refrigeration which work if we change our lifestyles. The first method is to use non-powered or alternative powered ways to cool our food and the second method is to store food and the second is to let the environment maintain fresh food for eating as we need it. The first alternative is more practical for wintertime refrigeration, from about November through March. The second alternative is for year round application. The cheapest and simplest home cooling alternative is to use picnic coolers to keep refrigerated food in picnic coolers on shaded porches outside.. At this moment I have 3 picnic coolers outside, with various amounts of food in them. On a nearby post is a thermometer, which I note everyday. Coolers work fantastic when the avenge temperature is between about 20 and 50, and modestly ok up to about 60 degrees. 50 degrees is about the temperature that our common local male tree frogs begin croaking. The outside temperature for the last 4 months (since Nov 1) has been between about 15 and 45 degrees, and is usually in the high 30s and low 40s. Most foods that need cooling keep for comparable amounts of time in my porch cooler as they would in a powered indoor refrigerator. Cabbages and carrots keep 6 weeks, celery and Brussel sprouts 4 weeks, eggs 3 weeks or more, lettuce one weeks and beer indefinitely. Meats, juices and cooked food vary from a few days to longer. Some people may object that the picnic cooler idea is a health risk. A lot of our ideas about refrigeration are born out of vague health alarms and are borne more from a cultural template than based on objective testing. Humanity never had powered refrigeration until few generations ago, and it has survived alarmingly well without it. Somehow food cooling ideas also vary from culture to culture. For instance, us Americans learn to keep our cheeses in the refrigerator. But when I stayed with a friend in Paris, my friend was always removing the cheeses from the refrigerator which I had put in there. And if you don't think the French know something about cheese, well, go there and find out for yourself. The same cultural variations exists with cooling meat products. I have done a fair amount of hunting and raising domestic animals for food, and in both cases are strong traditions of seasoning meat in cool outdoors for a couple days, usually with salt and pepper and occasionally other herbs on the meat exterior. In fact, a huge amount of our culinary spicing heritage came from using antibiotic herbs to help preserve meat from spoiling. Thyme, sage, rosemary and marjoram are all common ingredients in both poultry seasoning and sausages. Whatever cooling setup I have, I try and cook or deal with uncooked meat within 3 days of when I get it. In my opinion, refrigeration is not a guarantee but only a helpful redundant backup way to keep from getting sick on bad food. I theorize that the two most important ways to avoid bad food are to use your senses to detect spoilage and secondarily to know your sources. Just like when cooking chicken you look for red meat close to the bone to know when the chicken is done, you can also look for discoloration, slimy food, or mold. I rely more on my nose to detect bad food instead of expiration dates, as I also rely more heavily on my nose to tell when food is done in the oven than on the cooking times and oven temperature dials. These sensory skills are the same ones needed even if one has powered refrigeration, as food can spoil just as easily there. In fact, I would imagine most of us have regretted eating store-bought food that looked off in the display case but the price was right and we ate it anyway because we trusted that the store had been diligent. Then we became sick. I have had bad food much more often from restaurants, even 5 star restaurants, and other vendors than I have ever had from my porch coolers. Knowing sources of our food is imperative, even beyond the purchase point. As someone who worked in commercial orchards for 5 years, I learned personally about the usually total lack of adequate sanitation and hand washing facilities of fruits that eventually ended up on consumers tables. In dining out I have noticed that I get stomach discomforts much more frequently by eating at commercial buffets or potlucks than I ever have from handling and cooking food at home. Generally, I personally consume highly perishable foods very quickly no matter the characteristics of home storage. I also keep these food, especially meat, double or triple wrapped, and in separate coolers of their own, coolers that I wash diligently as needed. I usually only eat fresh meat once every couple weeks or less, so its not a big deal for this food group which needs extra attention. As someone who worked as a commercial cook for some years in my youth, I recognize the sanitary importance of keeping raw meat surfaces cleaned immediately and not permit cross contamination with other foods or surfaces. In the summertime, a person can also have other backup refrigeration techniques. One is to cycle water filled jugs, like quarts or gallon juice bottles through a friends freezer and use them to keep a cooler full of food cool. In fact, a neighborhood group could share the costs of freezing these water bottles. What also helps, as in any cooler or freezer, keeping it full of things uses much less power than if the cooling means has to continually keep empty air cool. A second summertime food cooling alternative one is to use a small refrigerator/ freezer of one's own. If one has some do-it-yourself skills, one can make such a combo off-grid fridge/freezer for about 600 to 800 dollars, with the capacity of the average grid-tie fridge/freezer design. The best design is a chest type unit, with a smaller freezer section that has a regulatory set of baffles at the top on the side bordering the larger refrigeration section. A chest style is best because cold air settles, so that when the door is opened all of the cold air doesn't spill out like it does in a front opening unit. One can set up thermometers (connected to digital meters if desired) in each unit and hand operate the baffles at the top of the dividing wall to let the cold air move from the freezer section into the refrigerator section. An efficient cooling unit is the style sold for use on sailboats, and can be bought for about $400. A framed and insulated plywood box with a weighted pulley lid (it can get heavy with the insulation on it in an unheated or dry shaded outside area are suitable construction parameters. 6 to 8 inch foam insulation on all sides and bottom and top are what really help keep the heat from drifting out of the unit. A few dedicated 80 watt solar panels system combined with cooler winter temps are proven sufficient for our region. If solar isn't always available, there might be alternatives like wind or micro-hydro to power this unit. On friend assembled a powering alterative of a car alternator and a micro-hydro pelton wheel and 1 inch pipe with 60 psi pressure from a summer uphill garden irrigation pond to occasionally power their refrigeration unit on sunless winter days. We also have other ways to cool food that have been in use for centuries that don't involve power. One is to use built-in cupboards in our kitchen or pantry insulated on the inside and with screens outside to cool the cupboard contents with cooler outside air, sometimes with water towel, water trays or cool ground based plumbing variations to cool food. A second method is the good ol' root-cellar method, which most often uses the average year round ground temperature of about 50 degrees to help cool food, augmented with regulated vents for allowing cooler air or excluding warmer air. The second main part of a strategy to cut down on grid dependent refrigeration needs is to link with our natural environment to feed us directly. There are 2 ways to do this, our immediate landscape and the natural land or marine scapes around us. In our immediate landscape, gardening in our region has the realistic capacity to feed a person every day of the year with fresh food. Let the garden keep the food fresh instead of the cooler. In Western Washington a 5000 square foot garden can be maintained without a rototiller and feed you. The list is extensive, and I have been gotten about 80 percent of the food I have eaten in the last 30 years from my gardens in western Washington, the vast majority of it being fresh. As a few examples, such a garden can produce annually produce enough food for 4 people, the major food groups are filled with hundreds of pounds of protein foods like dry beans, fresh peas and cole crops, starches in the form of sweet corn from July until Thanksgiving or potatoes from July until April, and greens every day of the year especially via season extension gardening. Fresh fruit can be eaten every day of the year via apples that keep until June 1 and strawberries that begin ripening June 1. Dried foods like peppers, parsley, and basil don't need power to dry and last for years. On a slightly more involved diet setting, if one has domestic animals they can feed chickens garden scraps and get eggs, meat and manure fro the garden. Geese can supplant mowing efforts. Other domestic animals can fit into this home based food producing regime but are a little more involved needing more time and available land. Earlier I mentioned how dependence on centralized systems of power have an adverse ripple effect on controlling our power needs. For example, we have dams supplying grid power to refrigeration needs, the same dams that are so destructive to self-contained salmon runs. But think, if we could readily go out into the natural world to go catch a salmon with dinner, we wouldn't need to have a cooler to keep them in, or need grid power to power the display cases in store seafood sections, or the antecedent power costs of trucking, trucking, flying, shipping, faraway fishing boat power consumption. These are some of the hidden costs of depending on dams to have the convenience of grid power refrigeration. Further downstream from dams the situation is similar. We have extensive marine industries and shipping terminals whose activities have frequently clobbered the productivity of marine food producing systems to the point where rarely can anyone in this region get much food from the marine scape. Instead, many people need to work in these fields so that they can pay for things like their electric bills for running their refrigerators and freezers. Now, when jobs are scarce, we discover that such behaviors have decimated our local marine environment's innate productivity, and besides not having the money to go buy some fish for dinner, our local economies have eliminated the local fish where we could once go catch them for ourselves. Sometimes we as humanity become so dependent on technology that we forget why we acquire it in the first place, and if we don't stop to think about it more, we become victims of our own lack of thought. The picnic cooler and food garden are so ubiquitous, its really not a big step to make them even a more integral part of our own lives, even on a small scale. We use coolers at sporting, camping and entertainment events, and we also already use summer food gardens for exercise, relaxing, entertaining and other needs. In both cases of picnic coolers and gardening, we could change our behaviors to use them more year round and more intensively. Sure, these options (to grid tie refrigeration) like coolers, solar panels and even gardening also involve technology, but each of us can make informed decisions on the relative costs of our choices on the world around us and eventually, to ourselves. All of this talk about food has made me hungry. I think I'll go out on the porch and get some leftovers from last night's dinner, and add some leeks and parsley from the garden.

NW history capsule of the link between salmon and people

A CONTINUING NW HISTORY OF THE LINK BETWEEN SALMON AND PEOPLE Pacific First Peoples have the singular distinction of having had a long history of a healthy integrated relationship with NW salmon. Although these peoples often had technology to take huge salmon harvests, and sometimes did, they also frequently developed cultural touchstones which helped guide them in educated, respectful and balanced relationships not only with salmon but also with co-operating tribes and other members of local northwest biomes. Certainly there were and occasionally still are excesses in these relationships, but none of these peoples nurtured enduring attitudes believing that humans are superior to nature and can always successfully manage nature better than nature can manage itself. That attitude did not emerge until a modern wave of immigrants appeared on the Pacific Coast. Most modern studies acknowledge that the continued decline of regional salmon populations began with the arrival of immigrants who had few if any generations of history in North America before they arrived in the Pacific region. Accommodating fortune hunters throughout the natural world has been a policy theme throughout the history of these modern immigrants. The first exploitation of Pacific salmon runs by these relative newcomers to the continent occurred no later than 1818, when the English-based Hudson's Bay company ordered its trappers to extirpate beavers from the Columbia River System in order to discourage American trappers from the region. Ownership and boundaries in this relatively unmapped region were yet under dispute between the US and England. The massive removal of beavers from both the Columbia watershed and throughout the Pacific west caused salmon runs to plummet, and illustrated that a single significant stress could wreak havoc on salmon populations. The history book of Pacific salmon, Salmon without Rivers, chronicles how subsequent decades of immigrant activities often led to serious declines in Pacific salmon throughout the northwest from California to Alaska. Following the Fur Trapper period, a second wave of exploitation began with various gold rushes, the first of these striking Sacramento Valley watersheds in the mid 1800s. By 1870 many salmon runs in the neighborhood watersheds were decimated both by over harvesting and by habitat destruction, beginning with canneries, mining toxins and mining in riparian areas. Other salmon-adverse activities then and since have included logging, clearing, railroad track and road building, overgrazing, development, waterway industries, dams, over harvesting by various fishing techniques, source and non-point source pollution, reorganizing natural watercourses, dependence on hatcheries as a cure-all, intentional mixing of genetics, inability to understand and effectively avoid introducing exotic fish diseases, predators and parasites and, of course, climate change. The new world had beckoned these immigrants with jobs and prospects of becoming rich in adventuring through this untamed land's natural resources. The most competitive were to be rewarded, admired, and supported in times of peace by being an employee and in times of war by being a soldier. Such allegiances did not enhance either First Peoples' communities or the natural world in which these immigrants appeared and wrestled dominion over. The concepts of 'dominion', 'territory', and 'ownership' are each fractured into different definitions and believer communities by various segments of society as a whole. Anyone who wants success in working to protect and restore salmon needs to navigate sociological issues between these segments. The orthodox segments of 'dominion' adherence, to be referred to here as 'Orthodox Dominionists', refers to the mentality of those that are accumulating mileage and hoarding quantities of resources. In its pure form it is unvanquished greed. Orthodox dominionists believe that if they work hard, acquire property and stay out of trouble, then they have the rights to do with their property as they see fit, whether it is detrimental to the world around them or not. The stewardship segments of 'dominion' adherence, to be referred to here as 'Stewardship Dominionists', believes that we as humanity are in this mix of life and that our happiness depends on the extent to which we are beneficially linked with this mix. This philosophy is need based, not greed based. Stewardship dominionists believe that having the authority of dominion comes with it the responsibility of accountability; that we need to recognize the effects of our activities and leave things in at least as good of shape as we found them. Until this concept of dominion is more achieved and practiced, the 'Orthodox Dominionists' non-accountability perspective will continue to corral Pacific salmon declines. The concepts of 'territory', 'ownership', 'dominion' (and their various adherents or non-adherents) merit further discussion, but that discussion is for another time and place. Besides, many advocates for a specific belief system do not always practice the concepts that they advocate. In this technologically complex world it is difficult for an individual to sufficiently assess the costs of all the specialized behaviors of everybody else which contribute to this individual's own personal lifestyle costs to the natural world. With the litany of various salmon-adverse activities performed by a wide range of endeavors, it is more easy for an individual to blame someone else for our local salmon woes than to take responsibility for distant ripple effects of one's own behavior. Those who do want to act responsibly learn that everyone who lives here locally lives in a salmon watershed, a watershed once permeated by salmon to almost every creek and rivulet. Everyone who lives here also uses goods shipped here via a salmon inhabited saltwater habitat, a historical home including most every estuary and nearshore. The lives of all human inhabitants in the Pacific NW affect salmon. The more resources a local consumes or landscapes a local alters, the more one affects salmon. It may be uncomfortable to contemplate such effects. With more and more people struggling to make ends meet, accountability may become perceived as more of a luxury than a responsibility. Who should pay and how much? Any volunteers? Fortunately for salmon, there are a growing number of volunteers who struggle to have accountable (including to salmon) lifestyles, but unfortunately. We volunteers are not yet in enough numbers to overcome the rising tide of natural resource (including salmon) exhaustion, but we continue because we have found a path that makes sense to us. Complete individual accountability (of an individual's lifestyle costs to the natural world) is rarely achieved, but with growing numbers of individuals actively engaged in this process more means are created and it becomes easier for each individual to be more accountable. The higher the percentage of people who share our path, the larger our path will become and the less need for travelers to stray from this path. We who believe in stewardship see that Orthodox Dominionists constituencies are exclusive and self-serving, and view nonmembers (including human nonsubscribers and the rest of the natural world) as existing for their benefit, disposable and replaceable. Orthodox Dominionists constituencies entrench hierarchal structures within themselves where base membership opportunities for advancement are primarily restricted to how well the base members exploit both themselves and those 'below' them, i.e., nonmembers. 'ODom' philosophy is akin to 'King Dom' philosophy, the similarity is that most 'Orthodox Dominionists develop smaller boundaries between their empires. At the very least they want to become kings in their own home, sometimes deferring to larger Dominions until retirement age or until the next generation or subsequently. . . This desire for personal power has permeated humanity throughout history, a desire rising and falling, generally regardless of political or religious system. It is only that the Northwest has been a recent, relatively new arena of natural resources to plunder, that this belief system of greed is able to be accommodated locally. Even before that could occur, this Northwest orthodox dominion foothold has only been possible by decimating and excluding local First Peoples societies. Orthodox dominionists have prevailed in most immigrant communities as they have arrived in the Pacific West. Most of us are tied into this system if not by choice than by circumstance, regardless of our affects on species like salmon. Our specialized, individual lifestyle impacts to salmon come from electricity and heating generated by fossil fuels or large hydroelectric dams, from diverting streams into our faucets, from buying produce from Mexico and electronics from China, and manure from Skagit County. Our impacts come from our septic systems and outhouses, from abandoned vehicles and ridden ones, from decay resistant building products and using pesticides (whether organic or not), from flame retardants in household goods and antibiotics and hormone alterers in our medicine cabinets. Most of our impacts come from a lack of understanding about what our impacts actually are. As local populations realize that we are reaching the end of the larder of natural resources in our local marine and terrestrial environments, many of us are advocating and practicing change in our daily lives to adjust to this. In order to cut down on impacts, we are becoming more community based and less isolated. We are becoming more self-reliant and home-sourced in almost all product and power consumption; growing perennial oriented food with available rainwater, using less than 100 watt-hours electricity a day and heating with home based resources. We are consuming less energy for transportation by working jobs as close to home as possible. We are beginning to wean ourselves from our dependence on other specialized interests that have economic priorities. We who will make a diffepositive difference are choosing need over greed, choosing community over isolation and choosing a retrievable future over a throwaway future.

remebering a value added craftsman Tony Vita

VISITS WITH TONY VITA

craftsman, 1938-2008

This is one of many reflections of the legacy of our departed friend, Tony Vita. The kernel for this particular story germinated in May of 2007, about a year and a half before Tony left us. For most of the previous ten years, I had been visiting Tony 2 to 4 times a month, and learned much about his life from both story and observation. In early 2007 I had begun compiling an online journal that included many stories and articles in hopes that this journal might inspire a more sustainable culture in western Washington. There were numerous aspects of Tony's life that I considered might contribute to this journal. Thus, beginning in May 2007 visits with Tony, I took casual notes about his life to augment my general knowledge of our unforgettable friend.

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My intentions were to assemble a rough draft of Tony's story and then he and I could later collaborate on filling in the details. There seemed to be no rush on completing the story, as at the time I did not anticipate that he would be passing so soon. But I was wrong, and Tony never was able to proofread this document. Thus, it is only my responsibility for variances in this story from the way Tony would have presented it. At the time I had begun, I was not thinking of this story as a tribute. But now that Tony has gone, I am compelled to integrate both my original inspiration of sustainability and also today's tribute, in hopes that this story will sustain aspects of both sustainability and tribute. As the years turn for me, I have come to honor such cultural craftspeople as Tony more than the cultural products that they create. Without these people we would have neither their work nor the continuity of how to maintain their skills in our culture.

If at times I appear to drift into tangential philosophical subjects, I ask the readers's indulgence. It is because with these explorations I am attempting to encourage both myself and others to take some lessons from interactions with Tony where we can help continue some of his influence in our lives. For me at least, I find some solace that in some small ways, Tony lives on.

That said, this particular story glimpses at Tony's daily lifestyle in retirement, touches on insights he had gained from living in both the Old World and the New, and concludes with notes on his previous career of quality craftsmanship as an upholsterer. Tony's retirement reflected on sustainability concepts because Tony's backyard flock supplied chicken manure for local gardeners, Tony brought lively lessons I valued on education and globalization to our discussions, and Tony excelled in his value added career as a master of his trade.

TONY'S CHICKENS

One of the most available sustainability practices available to many of us is to raise much of our own food, and having a nearby source of chicken compost is one of the most practical ways to fertilize a more sustainable garden. I was lucky to have been part of a such a cycle with Tony and his large backyard flock of chickens. Manure from Tony's chickens often helped me grow broccoli, garlic, and onions. In return the garden supplied him with these and other veggies, and the chickens with garden scraps. Once Tony had cancer, I considered this an increasingly beneficial arrangement because it helped keep him stocked with fresh produce in his diet. By the way, I am one of many who believe fresh produce to be one of the most important preventions for disease, including the growth of cancer. Frequently, as in Tony's and mine own cases, lower income people tend to have diets low in fresh produce if we need to buy it, as produce is more expensive than processed foods. Whenever Tony admonished me for bringing him more produce than he thought he deserved, I replied that actually I was the one being selfish. It is actually in my own interest to help keep my friends healthy.

Beyond such kitchen values and friendship connections, a neighborhood chicken manure/gardening connection has larger benefits to local communities. This neighborhood arrangement is a more benign arrangement than most organic gardeners achieve who only have access to commercial fertilizer sources, even those who want to acquire manure from organic free-range commercial chicken farms. Neighborhood chicken/garden circles help provide a closer sources of chicken manure, thus foot printing less carbon transport costs and bagging costs on the environment.

In some such idiosynchric neighborhood chicken arrangements as the one that Tony created, the chickens have richer lives than the heralded 'free range' admired in the average commercial coop. 'Free range' labeling frequently signifies little more than that the birds are not caged 24/7 in 4 birds to a 2 square foot cage. Tony's chickens far exceeded this. Many of them lived years beyond their economic profitability, they established intricate social structures amongst themselves, their environment, and people. Tony's chickens lived better lives than any commercial free range operation of which I am aware.

Tony's birds were more his friends than his prisoners. Occasionally I would be visiting Tony in his living room and I would hear chirping from the loft above or see chicks scampering out from behind a stack of papers by his work table. I was more nervous about this than Tony. As chickens and roosters go, they went often, and I was alert for this. They were not yard or house trained. I was one of those who attempted to persuade Tony that his chickens' excesses justified keeping them locked up continuously in his expansive coop, both for their protection and mine. I tried to explain that 'free range' didn't need to signify that friends had to guard their peas and corn on the plates whenever Tony's gourmet dinners arrived.. But Tony only smiled as he shooed the birds away for the visitor. He loved his birds and their extensive freedoms, even though he incurred the significant costs of both cleaning up and paying for this flock of 50-100 birds. His birds followed him everywhere, they were some of the friendliest chickens I have ever known.

Tony's lifestyle became so entwined with his chickens that their eggs became part of an alternate 'gift' currency that Tony had with friends. Although he occasionally sold excess eggs for some years, he preferred the eggs go to 'gift' commitments he believed he had with others. His eggs became even more prized because of the extra measures he took to provide them. Every day Tony embarked on an arduous (Tony had chronic feet and leg injuries) egg hunt around his cabin, as the chickens frequently changed their nest hideouts. Invariably some nests were undiscovered, until a new clutch of 8 or 10 chicks pipped out of the bushes. Invariably, Tony would throw up his hands at such announcements, exclaiming.. "I have too many chickens! I could imagine the chickens eyeing Tony's friends, replying, "We don't have enough Tonys!"

For the eggs that Tony did discover, he rationed them carefully, almost all of them going to his friends, who he prized also. Tony frequently wanted assurances that the egg quality was OK, and the recipient would peck around for some superlative that had not been recently used. Such superlatives were appropriate and needed, as the friends' appreciation needed to provide Tony with abstract sustenance also. Tony often went months without eating any eggs himself, while frequently passing around dozens of eggs daily. Such sacrifices of Tony were difficult to curtail. When one attempted to decline a gift of eggs, Tony threatened the risk of losing the friendship. Such threats were suspect, because Tony was too considerate and too tolerant. His practiced 'anger' could not mask his true nature.

Tony loved animals, and his chicken flock management reflects on this. Consider his roosters. Although most roosters are usually culled at an early age from most chicken flocks, Tony's birds were never featured in the wonderful Hungarian dish, chicken paprikash. No, even though his flock constantly overpopulated, Tony never ate any of his own chickens or roosters. He vigorously attempted to likewise train his numerous well-fed cats or the occasional dogs he watched for friends. Consider the effects his chicken management had on local wildlife. Flocks of neighborhood seed and bug eating birds foraged regularly because of the ambling chicken food 'Scatterer' and the bugs that appeared in the resultant chicken litter. Crows and ravens snacked on the hidden eggs and fuzzier mouthfuls. Hawks, owls and falcons hunted adult chickens and roosters. These birds of prey were so frightened of Tony that they wouldn't let him approach closer than 6 feet while they plucked away on the warm chicken stump. Tony loved animals.

Now that Tony's chicken arrangement has vanished, the neighborhood wildlife has had to adjust. For instance, in the recent snowy weeks I saw many more seed eating songbirds around my cabin than I have in winters past, and I speculate that the disappearance of the local chicken yard has something to do with them migrating here. With Tony's recent passing, I'm convinced that the neighborhood's wildlife diversity will decline, as I certainly don't set the table like Tony did.

TONY'S CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE ON EDUCATIONAL VALUES

. I suspect that local people diversity will decline in the neighborhood as well, as Tony had people customs that unfortunately are too peculiar in self-obsessed societies such as ours. Tony was a giver, and he also gave everyone a chance. He always carried something in his hands when he came to visit and his hands always reached to offer some food or treat when visitors arrived at his place. Peculiar people believe that everyone else is peculiar also and Tony decided on an initial approach with all these peculiar people of practicing friendship instead of suspicion. These others learned that Tony himself had the peculiarities of a Hungarian accent and an Old World perception on lifestyle and career. He came from a culture that often valued a person's contributions to their community whether they made a lot of money or not. Tony welcomed those of all classes and persuasions to his cabin, and countered this with a strong disdain for behaviors which were greedy and exploitive.

One's level of academic education wasn't as important to Tony as was what the person actually learned and practiced. Tony had been educated in a culture that valued such tradespeople as himself not only for what they could contribute to society but also because of the productive niches that such trades provided for those so suited.. In the Hungary of Tony's youth, after completing 8^th grade, a student could choose to continue with a higher academic education or to enter a trade. Training for a trade involved 3 or more years of apprenticeship schooling in a group setting, followed by 2 to three years of internship with a master of the trade, all depending on individual circumstances. Upon successfully completing this program, an apprentice became a master of the trade. In Hungary, an individual needed to be a certified master of their trade before they could practice it.

After Tony's academic education ended at 8^th grade, he took the trades' path. He studied upholstery both in class and then under a master upholsterer, until he graduated as a master upholsterer himself. Our conversations about different educational systems became lengthy, and I do hope the reader will tolerate me digressing on this for a moment. I think it is important to recognize the importance of educational paths such as the trades' path that Tony took after 8^th grade.

Tony and I were dismayed that similar educational path choices are not readily available in the western world, nor in today's Hungary. Will mastery of upholstery will join other lost arts and skills? The costs of limited educational opportunities to society are apparent. As a society we lose reference people who can show us how to make quality hand crafts, needs which resurface in times of economic depression. Also, here in North America we have so many young students who do not perform well within the narrow range of educational goalposts required of them, the two main ones being more complex Math and English. In many instances these students have affinities to excel at other skills, but they don't have a chance to learn them in childhood, and consequently often flounder later in life. Many such students will never use Math skills beyond multiplication and division or English skills beyond reading newspapers and writing notes or letters. But they might create brilliant masterpieces in other fields of endeavor if given the appropriate chance.

While many educators aspire to level the playing field for all, do we really want uniformity of even such basic skills as English and Math? If so, then how come Mark Twain's writings are so enduring, those stories embedded with curious dialect and slang that challenge today 's traditional grammar teachings? In learning math skills, why should all be forced to learn subjects like algebra or calculus that only a few of us will ever use? A carpenter can build an incredible house with only rudimentary knowledge of gravity and little facility with geometry and none for algebra. Tony and I were nonplused by such a blind education. We agreed that many of us are more suited for communicating in music, arts, crafts, trades, in vanishing tongues or with chickens than we are in the 'big 3' of reading, writing and math. The cost of neglecting these other paths is that our human history has and will continue to become shrouded with mysteries in all these fields. Are we to continually look back at vast ancient libraries of unique world views and wonder how we lost them?

In recapturing conversations with Tony I remember much talking about paths of learning. I was distressed that he had a skill that was vanishing and such skills as his are often difficult to rediscover. In our conversations I wanted to understand how our culture could allow such skills to vanish. Tony and I found ourselves questioning the core concepts of education. Is not the primary goal of education to first guide a person on how to think for themselves? Of what use is hammering in particular knowledge presently useless to an individual, especially if such individual has little interest in this particular knowledge? If they ever had an idea of where they were going in the first place, should the goal of education be to make the student forget where they were originally going?

Chagrined, Tony and I agreed that the educational system in North America has become so obtuse that we have millions of recent college graduates who don't know what they want to do with their lives. We also have millions of older adults who lack portable job skills when their town factory closes. Even for those who keep their jobs, most of them have so little affinity for them that they can hardly wait to retire so that they can then do what they really want to do, something which was often foreclosed by economics earlier in their lives. Apparently, the price of over-specialization is the loss of such self-reliant connections and resiliency.

Tony and I agreed that our educational system needs re-education. It grades out graduates into interlocking boxes of religion, politics, weekly routines and treadmill competitions with the dubious rewards of being able to maintain one's places in the boxes. Where is the well-rounded education that teaches students a little about everything, a lot about a few things and the ability to effectively learn on their own in the world beyond classrooms? How else can a student find the shining innate creativity of enterprise that occurs when each can follow the path truest to them? How can we expect our economies to adapt to the changing fortunes of the marketplace if we do not encourage the skill sets of innate innovation in all the playing fields? In the trickle down theory of economics it is not always water that dribbles down on the people at the base of the economy. These people are scrambling for food water and warmth. Neither Tony or I could figure the point in trying to heat up economic fires by lighting big wood at the top of the fire pile. A fire is started with little tiny pieces of kindling at the bottom of the pile.

The dysfunction of our educational systems contributes to this dysfunction of our economy by inferring degrees of knowledge that supposedly endow graduates with 'special' understandings in specific fields that are superior to the average person. When non-specialized members of society defer thinking about education to those graduates with education degrees, these members might not question the ideas that fires are started by lighting the big wood at the top of the pile. If they do question this, these independent thinkers are usually dismissed as being unqualified. No, such educational systems proclaim, the average person should follow the rules and stick with the big three and then get their own degrees or skills in some exclusive specialize field.

Actually, these circles of exclusivity are like machine gears that only fit certain machines for limited time periods. Mass production of too specific of educational skill sets leads to over competition and obsolescence. We end up not learning the innovation and quality workmanship that occurs when one loves their endeavors. Although most people change career paths 2 or more times, our educational system is rarely adept at providing our people with various skill portfolios. This educational system dysfunction leads to widespread job dissatisfaction, fast-buck crime and con games among all social classes, exploitation of others and the environment, escapism towards substance abuse, planned obsolescence and throwaway societies.

Additional costs to our society arrive when a person unwillingly falls into the less or non-productive membership segment of society that needs help. 'Successful' people often begrudge these solicitations from the fallen because the yet 'successful' people believe they believed that they have worked hard themselves, made sacrifices and compromises and everyone else needs to get their own trips together. But is it really a desirable goal of our society that the only way you can succeed is by doing something you don't truly believe in? If you disagree with this statement then why is it that so many 'successful' society members themselves usually aspire more towards retirement instead of loving to perform their work until they are incapable of doing so?

For those of us who admired craftsmanship such as Tony's, let us advocate that our society take lessons from Tony's educational background. Let us support trades training path alternatives after 8^th grade completion. Such paths could better prepare young people to be both living-wage earners at an earlier time , and possibly make more money when they leave their parents' homes. Let us economically support quality and diversity of local skill sets instead of the cheapest products of distant mass production.

Beyond primary job skills, such trade(s) backgrounds provide one with backup skills for possible fall-back jobs later in life. It is rare to discover adults who do not want to work, but common that they do not have skill sets that are currently sought in their local economy. Many become unable to find work niches, or once retired they are not as valued as they could be perceived to be. Let us also include their voices at the top echelons of society' policy directions.

Tony and I both were saddened by the disappearance of high quality craftsmanship in the western world and its replacement with throwaway mass production goods. Tony shook his head at how hardly any upholsterer these days knows how to properly tie a cushion spring so that it causes the material to lie flat on the cushion. He spoke of how there was a brain drain of higher quality craftsmen out of eastern Europe who knew how to do high quality crafts, all because these skills are in short or non-existent supply in western Europe and North America. There was no competition for these people in the US. Today these skills are also vanishing in Eastern Europe's educational systems as they 'adapt' to global 'free' trade. Tony had seen the outcomes of both worlds, and shook his head again.

How does Tony's craftsmanship training as an upholsterer specifically apply to our own local Northwest sustainability? One inherent caveat of sustainability is to do and make things that last using renewable resources. Tony's high quality craftsmanship gave truth to the phrase 'durable goods', as applied to forestry products. Woodworking disciplines are especially appropriate in our local communities. We have tremendous forests and forestry potential in our region, but these forest opportunities are barely appreciated. Here in western Washington communities, much of our forestry rich environment is shipped out of state as raw material. Where are our vibrant woodworking industries such as high quality furniture making? Where is the youth training and apprenticeships in our educational system to furnish local industries with workers for such industries? Why are we shipping overseas both so much raw material and the job opportunities that use our local raw forestry resources?

Establishing more local companies which make high quality furniture could have numerous benefits. This could create many more jobs than presently exist locally, while encouraging our current forestry practices to be more resilient and environmentally improved.. Environmentally, making longer lasting goods uses up natural resources more slowly, in this case our forests. The diversity in species and age compositions of our forests can also be improved, as longer lasting furniture needs older trees which have fewer knots, and higher quality furniture needs more diverse species than are commonly found in our currently mono culture managed forests. Shifting to such value added forestry industries also discouraging the long distance shipment of raw materials, which has a much higher carbon footprint than making finished goods locally. Excess energy is consumed in transporting the bulk raw goods and in the waste from processing these raw goods.

TONY'S GLOBALIZATION EXPERIENCES

Tony also gained rather more unique perspectives on globalization than most of us acquire. In his lifetime he lived under various political and social structures that have been at odds with each other. Born in 1938 Hungary, he lived under German occupation until 1945, when Russian tanks and troops rumbled into Budapest, displacing the Nazis. The bosses changed but life remained difficult. Tony grew up under Communist occupation until he escaped Hungary in the late 50s. After escaping, he lived under Capitalism in the US for the rest of his life. Tony was well familiar with both the aspirations and excesses of each of the various political structures. He learned that for reasons of national security issues each system vilified specific groups of people. He learned that in each system a leadership cadre enjoys extraordinary and frequently exclusive rights to the accumulation of wealth and power.

The lessons of exploitation accumulated throughout Tony's life. Since his birth in 1938 until his early twenties, Tony had only known occupation, first by the Nazis, then by the Russians, and like many of his young compatriots he yearned for freedom. I always wondered if Tony's chicken flock enjoyed exceptional liberties because Tony himself had been a prisoner of an occupying country. Tony answered that he liked animals, then added that animals didn't try to get over on you the way that some people try to do.

As the Cold War gained traction in the 1950s, so did the chess game between its major players in order to keep their spheres intact. Tony was a victim of these competing global interests. In the Mideast, the Western World, particularly the U.S., was concerned about keeping global trade routes open, especially the one they feared that the USSR might usurp, the Suez Canal. Control of the Suez was being hotly contested by Egypt and Israel, and the USSR was making overtures towards Egypt. During the same time period, Russia was struggling to hold onto satellite countries acquired as spoils of WWII. Poland, a Russian-occupied country, had revolted against the Russians, and although Poland didn't win freedom, Russian did concede to Poland increased rights of its people. This partial success of Poland inspired Hungary to challenge Russia.

In Budapest, by now Tony Vita was in his late teens, just finishing up his apprenticeship to become a master upholsterer. He watched as elementary children taunted Russian soldiers patrolling the streets, and watched high-schoolers escalate the harassment, playing games of chicken with the soldiers and throwing objects at them. Hungarian mothers and older people berated young men to show some spine and also challenge the Russians. At the same time, radio broadcasts from Voice of America began encouraging the Hungarian people to rise up against the occupation, promising that the US would support them.

On the streets of Budapest, Tony was one of the many young men listening to the Voice of America. Hungarians loved America and could hardly wait for the American troops to arrive. . Tony joined his friends as they picked up shovels and picks to challenge the tanks rumbling into Budapest. But where was the help promised by the Voice of America? The ill-equipped Hungarians fought desperately, expecting the promised American troops to arrive at any moment. Russia was incensed at this challenge from those wielding such inferior weapons and pushed huge tank columns into Hungary. Tony lost many friends in the ensuing fighting. He was captured and imprisoned by the Russians. He was sent first to the Ukraine and then back to prisons in Budapest. During this time he tried a futile escape under a train. At some point in the fighting and imprisonment Tony was shot in the feet. He didn't want to talk about that.

Only later did Tony and his friends learn that they had been pawns in the chess game of globalization interests. They discovered that the Voice of America was encouraging Hungarians to rise up because America wanted to distract Russia from becoming more involved in the Suez Canal crisis. America had no intentions of helping throw the Russians out of Hungary. America sent no military help to the Hungarian rebels, one of which was Tony. Eventually, the US brokered a truce between Israel and Egypt, greased by huge financial rewards. Israel and Egypt became the number one and number 2 beneficiaries of US foreign aid, a policy which has continued to this day. Hungary continued to receive the Voice of America.

Back in Hungary, Tony's continued escape attempts were futile. He finally gained parole but his security was never certain. At Christmastime one year a policeman friend of his Tony's brother warned Tony that he was about to be imprisoned again. Fortunately, Tony had worked in the train yards and found a hidden cubbyhole behind the locomotives. Tony escaped to Vienna underneath the Orient Express in the bitter cold of early January. He was the first escapee of that year and made international headlines. Tony's escape was bittersweet. Although he was away from the Communist occupation of his people, he was now living under the American administration which had betrayed the Hungarian people.

Like many around the world he began to differentiate between the ideals of America and the administration of these ideals. The ideals of America sustained him for the rest of his life, and he would not relinquish those beliefs. These ideals have no boundaries nor exclusive ownership by one nation, they dwell only in the hearts of people such as Tony. Even though he lived the rest of his life outside Hungary, he would never betray the Hungarian people, even though officially Hungary was a communist satellite of Russia. In fact, Tony never became an American citizen; he would not agree to the Citizenship requirement that he be ready to bear arms against all foreign enemies, as this agreement might include enmity towards his home country of Hungary. He would not return to Hungary for 40 years, and when he did, it was riding the Orient Express aboveground this time, in the passenger compartment from Vienna to Budapest.

By the early 1960s, after transiting a refugee camp in Germany and staging in London temporarily, Tony landed in New York, where he found his first job here, as a dishwasher. He soon found employment in his trade of upholstery. His workmanship became quickly admired. When he moved to Los Angeles a couple years later, many New York clients would ship their furniture cross country so that Tony could do the upholstery. During Tony's long career he also lived in Vancouver, Las Vegas, and western Washington state.

Tony's career was mixed between some jobs he needed to do to survive and the jobs of quality work that he loved to do. Altogether Tony did over 100,000 pieces of furniture during his lifetime. He worked on upholstery on planes and in mass production factories, sometimes upholstering hundreds of chairs per day. For one company he was so quick doing thousands of restaurant chairs that his co-workers ostracized him; their slower paces made them look bad and affected their wages. I do not exaggerate when I posit that millions of us have come in contact with some of Tony's work.

In 1980 Tony went back to the Hungarian way of doing upholstery. His dream of opening his own shop was finally successfully realized in Las Vegas. He had a successful business, bought a home and began raising a family. Tony was a quality workman but some people took advantage of him. Again his integrity arose. He always lived by the motto, "If you are not satisfied, he wouldn't get paid." Some shady clients would take advantage of this philosophy. These people would build and furnish their houses by threatening to sue people they claimed did inferior work, and such people learned that Tony was an easy mark. Besides, Tony was often perceived as a foreigner who didn't deserve respect. In one instance a Jewish woman in Los Angeles refused to pay Tony for completed work, calling him a Nazi, apparently a reference to his accent, because Tony had been born in Hungary in 1938.

Tony's business survived all of these setbacks but not the last. His first wife destroyed the business, in a cascade of betrayals. After this Tony thought he was too easy a mark, for people wanting to take advantage of him. He went back to working for others, and never reopened a storefront all his own again.

Tony moved to Washington State and worked in the Seattle area and in North Puget Sound. Although he eventually attempted to retire, demand for his work continually arose. He would do special favors for friends and was a mentor for various other upholsterers in the region. Tony only halted upholstery projects when his hands had finally become too tightened to work with upholstery needles. At the end of his days he struggled with the realization that he might not be able to finish furniture projects that friends wanted help on.

Tony always was willing to help others, and various people besides occasional business contacts took advantage of him. Because of various people like this he lost a house, a boat, some animals, tools, food, medicine, vehicles. But he was always ready to give new acquaintances a chance, and even older ones with which he had long lost contact. Tony was elated at the liberation of Hungary at the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s, and dreamed of returning their for many years. He finally had the means and documentation to do so after retirement.

Eventually, at about the millennium, Tony was able to contact his family that he had not communicated with seen since he had fled as a refugee in the late 50s. His Hungarian passport finally arrived and he took the Orient Express from Vienna to Budapest. Tony's return was a story mixed with both joy and sadness. He embraced his long-last family and friends. He Once he settled in he looked around, hoping to see a Budapest flourishing under the banners of democracy. But he was to discover differently. He learned that in the 1990s the Robber Baron vanguard of unregulated capitalism had moved into Hungary and filled the vacuum created by the dissolution of the occupied Communist regime. In the short time since then various trans national corporations have stripped Hungary of its quality industries and moved the jobs out of country into third world economies. Once the capital of the factories that made the premier articulated transit busses in the world, now Hungary became one of the capitals of the pornography industry. Even though Tony had fought on the streets against Communist occupation in the 50s, in 2007 he ruefully noted that in many ways today's Hungary is worse off under this type of Capitalism than it had ever been under the Communism he had once fought against.

Tony and I commiserated about these lessons. We agreed that any political or economic system was only as good as the people who use it. Tony was one such person, who would give credence to any political system. He was somebody who has left the world a better place by his having been here.

The globalization of commerce never trumped the culture of Tony Vita. He had finally found where he wanted to be, in a rural cabin off the beaten path where he could have some animals. Tony had acquired a fondness for the countryside early in life because as a young boy he would visit his grandparents where they worked draft horses at their remote Hungarian farm. Although he spent most of his life in urban areas he finally returned to the countryside in his retirement years. Even though it wasn't Hungary, Tony was finally at home, with his chickens, cats and friends.

TONY'S UPHOLSTERY SKILLS

Learning something about upholstery from Tony was important to me, as at various times I have made furniture. Up until the last year I anticipated that Tony would get a small furniture shop set up again and I could then video him and learn how he did his work. But that opportunity never arose. Unfortunately I didn't get detailed lessons with how he handled his prized tools and materials. I did get to see them though. He would show me remarkable, rare sewing machines. He showed me upholstery needles that cost 100 to 200 dollars each. But I never was able to see Tony use any of them. All I learned were some of the stories and observations.

When Tony learned upholstery, his class learned all aspects of furniture making. They started by venturing out into the Hungarian woods and cutting down particular Hungarian Pine trees to begin the furniture making process. Each student then would make a chair, table, sofa, loveseat or whatever. They did all of the measuring, cutting, fastening and finishing. Then they did the upholstery. As the classes matured, different students discovered different affinities and for Tony, he liked upholstery. It was indoor work, and without the dust of woodworking.

Upholstery does have its intricacies of accomplishment. Tony told one story of how he learned a lesson on the correct sewing knots and sewing process. The master came around to where Tony was finishing up sewing the upholstery cover on a particularly difficult piece of furniture. The master noted that Tony had ignored a mistakenly tied knot, far back in the continuous thread of knots that Tony was making. Rather than let the knot remain, be cut out or have Tony begin anew, the master had Tony go backwards with the needle through all of the holes and knots of his previous work, maintaining the integrity of the thread. Laborious hours later, Tony finally arrived at the improperly tied knot. He retied the knot correctly and proceeded to finish the piece correctly. Never again in his life did he allow an improper knot in his work.

Tony often commented that there is little or no chance in the US for a person to learn a trade well, from the ground up, and said that we have no masters to teach the traditional upholstery ways . Tony was one of the last of such masters. Not only did he learn the skills of upholstery from a master but he learned the history.

Like most who enter into a field of work, no matter their schooling, most of us start out doing mundane work. Newcomers to the workforce may believe that they are not recognized for their true skills, and sometimes that is true. At other times the employers are assessing the person's character beyond their newcomer job skills, before they are willing to give the newcomer more challenging tasks. During his early career Tony also went through these early proving grounds. Tony upholstered throwaway $200 factory furniture where he made 20 sofas a day with staples 8 inches. But that was not what he was truly about, and he had the job skills and the character which allowed him to eventually advance.

Tony's true line of work was on high end furniture and for 75% of his career he worked on antiques and custom upholstery. Most of his work was done on furniture from the 1800's and early 1900s. Although in retirement he might work on a friend's chair for 10% of what it would cost in a regular shop, he was qualified to work on the best. He worked on a Louis the XIV chair from the 1700s that used palm fiber. He worked on some Biedermaer chairs for Bill Gates where the gold threaded fabric cost $1,000 a yard. These chairs came into the shop worth 5,000 apiece and left the shop worth $25,000 apiece.

According to Tony, the foundation of excellent upholstery is hand-tied springs that are tied so the cushioning is flat, smooth, and straight. He said that most upholsterers don't know how to get the springs down to the right level. Tony added that the best upholstery is hand-stitched, and will last a lifetime. A preferred stitch for him was called a 'Fox Edge". Some of his preferred materials are often unavailable today or quite expensive. He preferred a specific spring twine. Some of his other preferred materials included horsehair, sea moss, and palm fiber (in the trade called "Afric" and made from miniature palm trees that are cut up and steamed). He would break up the palm fiber by hand before using it for the stuffing. Because alder is more bendable than oak, Tony greatly preferred using alder his materials' frames.

He preferred staples over nails for holding down the upholstery cover. He also preferred dowels and screws over nails or staples for holding together furniture frames. He abhorred nails. He showed me treasured tools of his trade, long needles and sewing machines I didn't know even existed, and some that are rarer and rarer. Tony was a master of his trade, and such mentors are perhaps the surest course to rapid learning by others.

When Tony and I were in peoples houses, I would ask him about the furniture. He would look at it, sometimes turn it upside down, look for details, then expand upon when and where it was made, its style and materials, and if when and how it had been repaired or re-upholstered. He knew its current and potential value and how difficult it would be to find the quality materials needed to restore it.

IN MEMORY

I want to conclude with what Tony would have wished for us, a salutation to our health. Tony was always considerate of others, and the only Hungarian phrase I ever attempted to learn from him could be translated as "To your health!" Whenever Tony and I sat down to eat, we would click our glasses together and I would attempt to say the phrase, garnering either a smile or admonishment . About half the time I was successful. Not knowing how to write it in Hungarian, here it is phonetically the way I remember it, "Ah gawd shay gad draucht". Even though I tried learning it over 10 years, I am still unsure if I get it right. Sometimes Tony would shake his head, "No! That's not the way you say it! You don't say 'Up your rear end!" Here's the way you say it: . . ."

Unfortunately, I don't know how to finish the last quote from Tony. I no longer have Tony around to correct me.

I guess now if I am to learn it correctly then maybe I should try and find another Hungarian friend, . . Or maybe I should go ask some chickens.

p.s.

after I sent this on to a few folks, Tony's daughter kindly sent me back the way to say this salutation. Please note that some of the accents in Hungarian do not show up in this keyboard transcription of mine

egeszsegedre

(egais-shai-gai-dre) She added that sz= s sound and s=sh sound.

INTRODUCTION TO A BLOG ON WESTERN WASHINGTON RESTORATION

Hi all,
Welcome to a forum for discussing various natural history related restoration activities in Western Washington.

This blog's mission is to provide a forum for discussing and initiating some sustainable and responsible activities and policies for western Washington. Concerns about specific current events, such as global warming, catastrophic species decline, and existing environmental policy failures are primary incentives for the initiation of this forum.

This blog's effectiveness will depend on the degree to which information and perspectives that are presented here are used to protect and restore our natural world in Western Washington. I especially invite participation here for those who believe their ideas and experiences are insufficiently represented both in current management policy and mainstream media, regarding western Washington ecological restoration. You do not have to be the best speller or the most articulate writer in the world, as I could never make those claims myself. Instead, I do hope this blog can become a touchstone for new voices and leadership in various topics presented here.

I expect some will disagree with information and perspectives I present here. Please realize that though I may advocate policy changes and behavior changes, I am not interested in ruining anyone's life in any way. By the same token, I prefer to support those whom I believe are unnecessarily exploited by certain behaviors and policies. I believe that we all need to learn about our own impacts on the world and attempt to be as accountable for them as we can. I personally don't claim to have yet arrived to have eliminated all of my own adverse behaviors, but I do struggle to make the world a better place. This is the most important behavior that I value in myself and others. Such struggles may require any one of us to abandon previous behaviors, jobs, or lifestyles. In the face of today's worldwide imminent exhaustion of many resources, we all will face struggles to adapt. The success of each of our own futures will often depend on how well we are equipped with knowledge and behaviors that facilitate protection and restoration of the natural world.


Some of the relevant topics I envision here include the following:

. . .initiating ideas on Neighborhood Natural History groups so that people can meet, educate, work, and develop natural history activities born of the members' interests.

. . . initiating discussion on establishing a citizen-based database website for Western Washington species, allowing for both input and viewing on such a website.

. . . initiating discussion on establishing an annual biological inventory review of Western Washington flora and fauna species incidence, population dynamics, threats, and recoveries.

. . . initiating discussion on how local scientists can assemble and integrate all existing scientific research into an entire picture showing the dynamics and interrelationship of various local species.

. . . initiating discussion on an "Adopt-a Species" program. This program is to encourage individuals to thoroughly investigate or share knowledge of a species that the individuals have an intrinsic interest in, especially those species seen as significant ecological disturbers (e.g., invasive exotics) or those who are significantly disturbed (e.g., threatened or endangered species) threatened species.

. . . links to relevant resources to Western Washington restoration

. . . local individuals' anecdotal stories of plants and animals, presenting a biological dynamics counterpoint to the scientific reductionism upon which most local ecological policies have been based.

. . . profiles of people (especially local ) who have noteworthy careers, hobbies, or behaviors which are sustainable, impressive self-directed crafts, or that I believe are deserving of recognition for some natural history relevance.

. . . garden tips. The reason these will be included is because I, as the author, have my greatest skills as a gardener, and believe it is valuable to advocate participant ecology (gardening) as a counterpoint to spectator ecology.

. . . initiating discussion on the value and practicability of advocating the idea that all fishing, sports and commercial, in western Washington, by 2020, will be done without using fossil fuels.

. . . specific species subjects on which I think have relevance to improving an individual's effects on our behaviors with this species toward benefitting the natural world around us somehow.


. . . initiating discussion on impacts and existing policies dealing with population growth in Western Washington.

. . . initiating discussion on policies of current property taxation, and if the taxes are presently accurately being assessed for habitat and energy impacts. I will advocate that individual property owners be rewarded for habitat enhancement, and properties adversely affecting a habitat will pay more according to the severity of such impacts.

. . . initiating discussion on policies of industrial impacts on the local ecology, including but not limited to pollution, energy consumption, accountability for their impacts, and their specific involvement in restoration efforts.

Ok, that's about it for now. Thank you for the time you have taken in reading this.

Comments are appreciated.


Enjoy,

Glen

OH THEM COHO ARE SLIPPERY OH THEM COHO ARE SLIPPERY

COHO AS A NORTH SOUND SPORT FISHER SEES THEM

As most any successful sport salmon fishermen can tell you, hooking an adult Chinook (King) or Coho, ( Silver) salmon on rod and line is pound for pound one of the most challenging North American game fish to actually land. Within moments, experienced northwest marine sports fishers can often tell exactly what they have hooked. If the quarry is either of these two most sought after marine salmon catchable by fishing line (not nets), the experienced fisher knows the clues.

The large adult Chinook does one of two things. It might act lethargically unconcerned about this hook and line nuisance until it actually sees the boat or fishermen, and then the Chinook bulls away like a freight train on steroids, in long line depleting runs, and all that the fisher can hope is that it changes its mind before the line is gone. The second thing the adult Chinook might do is the same freight train routine from the moment it is hooked, skipping the lethargy arrogance. Some minutes may pass before the Chinook actually rolls on the surface, allowing the fisher to confirm their suspicions with a smiling tension on their face. A good salmon fisher can usually land one out of every two or three Chinook that they hook, the percentages getting smaller as the larger that the Chinook is.

Catching Coho salmon is a different story. Usually within moments of hooking a Coho the fisherman sees the fish jumping at the surface. If any salmon ever were to evolve wings, it would be this one. If the fisher does not keep a tight line at the jump the Coho can throw the hook and be gone. If the reel drag is set too tight and the fisher has too much tension on the line, the jumping Coho might snap its head away from the fisher and break the line, even if the pound test of line is twice the salmon's weight. If the fisher frantically tries to loosen the line, the Coho might rapidly spin the spool of line into a bird's nest or too much slack, creating other opportunities to throw hooks and the fisher's hopes to the winds.

Besides frequently jumping, the Coho scribbles the water palette, creating slack line and frantic reeling. The experience fisher tries to keep a tight line and steady tension but the Coho stutters course changes again and again as the fisher feels the rod tip snap down repeatedly like a grass blade in a gale. If the reel's drag is set a tiny bit too tight at any moment, the sudden tension will break the line. If the Coho dashes under the boat the fisher plunges the rod tip deep into the water. The fisher hopes that when the Coho jumps on the other side that either the line doesn't fray and break on the bottom hull of the boat. The fisher hopes that the bend in the line's course doesn't create either too much tension or too much slack once the line is free of the keel, motor or some line that didn't get reeled up in time. A good salmon fisher is pleased to land about one out of every three or five Coho hooked, with the percentages going down the bigger the fish is. Catching a 30-pound Chinook is much easier than catching a nine-pound coho. Oh them coho are slippery.

Unfortunately the Coho salmon are not only slippery to catch, but they are also getting much slippery to find in western Washington waters, especially in North Puget Sound. Soon after general salmon seasons have been opening here in recent years, more and more fishermen here are joining in that old refrain, "It ain't what it used to be." Our local North Sound Coho, the source of so many fishing tales, this long time-staple of us marine sports fishermen, is slip, slip, slipping away. Will our once (occasionally nonfiction) fishing stories all be gone, to be entirely replaced by fishing tale fantasies?

A SPORT FISHER'S SNAPSHOT OF CURRENT NORTH SOUND COHO

Coho used to be the reason that most local sport fishing trips were considered successful or not, and lately in the North Sound it has been mostly 'not'. It wasn't always like this. Local fishers used to catch Cohos much more often than they caught any other salmon, but now fishers hardly catch either. In fact, until recently, those who spoke of Coho disappearing were usually greeted by fellow fisher folk as alarmist, lacking skill or plumb darn unlucky. There was some truth to this. If fishers didn't catch the coho themselves, they could usually point to somebody they knew who had recently done ok. Although most of us North Sound fishers might not catch a salmon every time, we could usually mark S (for Silver) in our salmon catch cards a few times every half dozen trips or so. Coho were the regular folk's saltwater salmon because local adult Coho tended to be in many more places than Chinook, in greater numbers, and for longer seasons of time. But lately, the rare times us regular North Sound fisher folk get out our pen at all, it is only to mark C for Chinook in our salmon catch cards. Nowadays, the once less common (and more protected) Chinook are recorded more often on North Sound Catch record cards than Coho are.

Us North Sound sport fishermen, especially saltwater ones, don't have many alternatives. We can rarely mark salmon catch cards for Chum or Pink or Sockeye salmon either because we rarely ever catch these species in the saltwater. Chinook and Coho are the only salmon that most of us sport fishers catch in local saltwater fishing holes. These two species may be found here much of the year, and also are piscatorial (fish-eating) feeders. Adult Pinks, Chums, and Sockeyes are not found in Puget Sound except when passing through to spawn, and they also are mostly planktivorous or crustacean feeders, so they are much less likely to bite on sport fish bait or lures.

Somehow the decline of local Coho has slipped off the marine radar, and only a few of us sport fishers seem to have noticed. Certainly the magnificent Orcas and Chinook deserve all the help that they can get, but hopefully the general public might fish out enough time to consider the coho's plight also. Besides listening to anecdotal dismay among North Sound sport fishermen circles about the scarcity of North Sound Coho in recent years, perhaps this public can go to some of the local managing bureaucracies that track these sorts of things about our local Coho salmon. Then the public can join us in the dismay and wonder what is going on.

On the state level, computer users can go to WDFW, Washington department of Fish and Wildlife, web pages and peruse sport fishers' saltwater fishing success records by looking at Creel Census reports. These Creel Census reports consist of on-site interviews with us sports anglers at local boat ramps and docks. These census reports are divided into four marine regions in western Washington. WDFW employees visit docks and boat ramps throughout the year, recording fishermen's catches. The North Sound region encompasses docks from Blaine down through Bellingham, Anacortes, Whidbey, Camano and the San Juan Islands.

In the period from 11-1-05 to 5-1-07, after interviewing some thousands of returning marine anglers, the total number of Coho that were reported caught in the entire North Sound region were 38 fish. 38. Even though this information was collected by WDFW and available for WDFW perusal within weeks of data entry, it seems that these Coho scarcities were hardly noticed in the subsequent year'sd regualtions. In the April 2007 to April 2008 sportfishing regulations published for this same north sound region, wild Coho were still being allowed to be caught for much of the year. Go figure that one.

For those who want another perspective on how the North Sound Coho are doing lately, go to the federal level. An NMFS, (National Marine Fisheries Service), document presents even more evidence of recent North Sound Coho declines. In NOAA NMFS Tech Memo 28 Appendix E, the status of various Salmonid species in north Sound streams are listed. According to this appendix, the status of most of our North Sound Coho runs are either depressed or unknown, with only a few runs listed as healthy. Apparently the NMFS does continue to occasionally study local Coho populations. These survey endeavors may become easier to perform in the future, as fewer and fewer wild Coho runs persist in North Sound.

SNAPSHOT OF COMMERCIAL FISHING STRATEGIES ON NORTH SOUND COHO

At the moment, it seems hard to believe that the Coho are doing Ok around here. Perhaps current Coho policy local fishery data collectors are also perplexed about what's going on with North Sound Coho. For starters, they do they have difficulty collecting and analyzing data on Coho to form strategies to protect Coho from overfishing by North sound sport and commercial fishermen. Sport fishers sometimes forget to turn in their salmon catch record cards at the end of the fishing year. Commercial fishermen often avoid fisheries observers that might report on excessive bycatch numbers of Coho (and other relevant Species of Concern). Because they don't want to lose their income that occurs once their openings are shut down, commercial fishermen generally dislike to exceed official quotas and rail against restrictions on their fishing methods.

During commercial openings for Sockeye or Chum, local commercial fishermen often do not report the bycatch of species of concern like Coho. Consequently, bycatch information is often not reflected at official documentation centers or in policy decisions. Policymakers often restrict that official commercial fishing data come only from canneries (who might offer such a low price for the coho bycatch that the fishers never take the cohos there). Through this mechanism, the allowable coho bycatch totals are kept low, keeping the fisheries open for the commercially targeted sockeye runs, while scarce Coho continue to be caught.

Coho are not the only commercial bycatch species adversely affected by current management strategies on collecting bycatch info. Endangered Chinook and seabird species of current high concern, like Marbled Murrelets and Western Grebes, are also frequently not mentioned in bycatch reports. Because of this, many advocates for protection of relevant Species of Concern believe that commercial saltwater fishing methods should be limited to techniques (like trolling) that do not have as adverse bycatch impacts as do techniques like gill nets, long lines, or trawls.

Coho advocates might also prefer that sport and commercial salmon fishing endeavors occur only in the neighborhoods of estuaries where healthy salmon runs are actually present. Such a policy lessens impacts on endangered populations that at present are easily decimated in open waters (where fishers do not know the origins or status of the salmon that they catch). Such an estuarian policy would also impel sport and commercial fishers to become more involved in maintaining the health of salmon runs which they wish to harvest from.

THE CANADIAN CONNECTION WITH NORTH SOUND COHO DECLINES

North Puget Sound Coho are also adversely impacted by insufficient protection in waters to the north, in British Columbia, where wild salmon protection organizations square off against the curious spectrum of various government bodies, commercial fishermen, and the fish farming industry. Salmon don't usually deal with passports or visas, so various species swarm out both south and north of the border from Canadian rivers and streams, with little monitoring. Some of the biggest North Sound salmon runs that are fished by Washington State commercial fishermen are Sockeye runs originating in the Fraser River Watershed of Canada. Likewise, various salmon runs bound for US water return down either side of Vancouver Island bound for US spawning grounds.

According to Richard Strickland in his book, The Fertile Fjord, the Fraser River outflow fan empties three to five times the amount of fresh water into the Straits of Juan de Fuca as all Puget Sound Streams combined. Many environmental groups in the Fraser River freshwater watershed and the islands of the Fraser saltwater outflow fan system are concerned about the critical status of various Fraser River Coho runs. Many of those runs go though US waters, especially the San Juan Islands, but few co-ordinated efforts occur to make sure that wild Coho bound for the Fraser are protected in U.S. waters.

Although in 2003 the Canadian government proclaimed the Species at Risk Act, numerous petitions to list various endangered Fraser River Coho runs have failed. The primary opposition to such Coho listings primarily includes those who fear a listing will impact their financial or entitlement interests: commercial fishermen, fishing guide boats, and even some First Nation peoples. Although the Coho has primarily been the bread and butter of the sport fisher's and any ethnicity self-reliant fisher's larder, and although these groups have often made significant economic benefits to the local Canadian economy, few if any Fraser river restoration efforts have been directed toward Coho recovery. Instead, Canadian fishery policy makers note that the real money and lobbying influences come from fish farming and net fisheries of Sockeye and Chinook. Consequently, when wild salmon protection and recovery efforts do occur in the Fraser River's watershed, they do so because of commercial interests in Chinook and Sockeye, while Coho often gets forgotten on the back burner.

COHO ARE NOT WELL SUITED TO THE ECONOMIES OF CAPITAL STREET

The biology of Coho also affects the reason why coho are not as popular a species for enhancement or recovery as some other salmon species are. Coho are the neighborhood's fish, and where money and property rights dominate, they are as wrong as self-reliance and organic gardening.

Besides being more of a glamour fish with a large market price, Chinook spawn in all sorts of rivers, but especially in big rivers, where riparian management is more publicly visible and vulnerable to public concern. Many runs of Chinook leave their hatching waters immediately for the marine environs, so watershed protection for them is easier than it is for Coho.

Besides being an esteemed culinary salmon with a larger market price and whose concentrated schools are more easily netted than other salmon species. Sockeyes spend the first year of their lives in lakes. Lakes generally receive better protection than do rivers or backyard creeks. Lakes offer some premium real estate waterfronts, do not flush out as often and are often used for drinking water storage, bathing, and marine sports activities. Salmon adverse activities in lakes are more easily discerned and more often discouraged, so Sockeye habitats are generally better protected than salmonid species which spend life cycle times in streams and creeks.

Chums and Pink Salmon, although not as rewarding per pound economically as are Chinook and Sockeye, quickly depart after hatching into the saltwater, so do not demand as much watershed protection as do salmon species which spend significant time in freshwater.

Coho are a different story. Their marine populations are generally more dispersed, they are not as valuable of a commercial catch as chinook or sockeye are and they spend the first year of their lives in streams and rivers of all sizes. Like Steelhead, Cutthroat and Bull trout, Coho is the backyard Salmon, the forest brook salmon, the cow pasture creek salmon, the logger's lunchtime entertainment salmon. To protect Coho and these others in riparian areas generally demands much more cooperation and possibly concessions from riparian zone property owners than most of the other salmon species demand.

COHO JUMPING AND JUMPING FOR COHO?

With all this evidence of this long time decline of regional coho populations, one wonders if previous coho management strategies have been and continue to be inadequate. Does coho recovery have the necessary public support to outweigh other economic interests? The consequence of stricter fisheries harvesting methods and of changing curent Coho stream riparian practices engenders considerable opposition from commercial fishermen, loggers, developers, municipalities, and fish and wildlife management polices.

Coho do have an uphill battle to rebound from fishing lore to the excitement of seeing their silver acrobatics near our fishing boats or their thrashing in knee-deep pools gorged with gravel spawning redds. It remains for us all to decide which stories are to be told.

At one time, Coho were not the only ones doing all of the jumping. Have you ever jumped?

Oh them Coho are slippery, oh them coho are slippery.