Walking Eastsound - on Orcas Island.

Eastsound is the heart of Orcas, where the east and west lobes of Orcas Island join in the middle.  Ken, my favorite cowboy and I were on our way to the Orcas Island Association of Realtors' monthly meeting. We were off to hear Richard Fralic, our County Commissioner talk about the proposed tax levy and give us an update on the Critical Area Ordinance.

Ah, so I am not always just having fun! It's true! I too, work for a living. Selling Real Estate on Orcas Island requires I stay current on all kinds of issues. The tax levy is needed because our Orcas real estate market has been slow, and construction is really down, and they have generated much of our county's income in the past. San Juan County is small but we have fantastic services: from EMT and exceptional medical services to an extensive library, services for seniors and children, parks and recreation. I'll tell you more about services on Orcas later.

On the way to the meeting,  I had a great time taking photos in downtown Eastsound. It is a walking village, perfect for meandering and visiting with neighbors.

This is Teezers, where locals meet for a great cup of coffee and warm chocolate cookies sold for just one dollar!?

Hey, there's that guy with the cowboy hat... he's out in front of Bilbo's, maybe he's looking for care asada? They serve Mexican food.

People always ask: "Do you have DSL on Orcas?" Let me tell you we are connected! With the most educated population in the northwest living on Orcas, we are on the Internet! We may live on an island, but that does not mean we're out of it! We are a well-traveled, politically active, liberal group, who believe in expressing our opinions and letting others do the same.

Here is one of my favorite buildings in town. It houses a trendy little dress shop called 'Tres Fabu'. Owned by Nicki who instead of becoming the therapist she had planned to be, began  making hats which grew into this boutique.  She, like a lot of Islanders turned her passion into a new way of life.

 

Remember the Farmer's Market in Eastsound? Well it's held in the village green, which has a beautiful pavillion built by local artists and craftsman for concerts in the park. Like the Island itself it is quiet here in the fall. The music has moved indoors for the time being.

Next to the village green is the Historical Museum. It has been selected by the Smithsonian as a site for  a project called 'Journey Stories', which will begin next summer.  A perfect venue for our  Orcas Island Characters.

Orcas Islanders are obsessed with Halloween, with all the shop owners dressing for the holiday, and kids and adults alike trick or treating and making merry. How about an adult Fairy costume.

Ah, here's Ginny Lu's Wood's Cove. I wonder if she is a long lost relative? I did sell her house a few years back, now it is lovingly know as 'Beachyhead' by our friends Jerry and Mary. They have an accounting business. When they relocated from the Carmel area, they just continued to work for their clients in California, here on Orcas. Well, they are accountants! Bet that they knew that with no state income tax and low property taxes, they would save lots of money by relocating to Orcas. Why not? There's no traffic, and not even any stoplights!

We are not even halfway down the street. For a small town, we have a lot to offer. Come back tomorrow and I'll show you more of Eastsound!

I love Sundays!

 Sundays are great.

We generally stay home, unless we we are out showing real estate to a client.  This time of year, or at least this year, things are pretty quiet, so yesterday we were at home. Yesterday's   sunrise over the marsh was beautiful in pastels;  pinks and lavenders.  In the Islands, often the first hour of the day is clear, with clouds moving in later. That's what happened on Sunday,  it clouded up  and a light rain began to fall.

We watched the buck visiting our apple tree. The deer have been hard on our fences this fall!

 

When the rains let up, I went out and tacked up Black Elk. Prior to working him, we shoveled the area, he followed me around with the lead rope over my shoulder. This would be his fifth ride, and he is doing great. I always lunge him first and check out his steering and does he remember that pressure on his nose means to stop?

He's looking pretty handsome! 

 Hey, check out the ears! This is supposed to be a sign of a dependable horse!

Black Elk has the longest stride, tracking up 3 hoof prints at an easy walk.  

 

                                Black Elk and kitty Theo have taken a liking to one another.

Well, he is kinda big!

Yum...

We have two little apple trees inside our fenced garden area. These tiny trees have produced about 100 apples. We are waiting for a frost before picking them, to bring up the sugars. Orcas is the perfect climate for growing fruit trees.

We went inside for a warm dinner of venison stew and mashed squash, a warm fire, and long talks about life, blogs and real estate. It was a typical Sunday for us.

Building Green on Orcas - Part 2

Just like with any new home there was lots of prep work prior to getting the houses to Orcas. We needed plans for the additions, approval from the county, excavation for the foundation, clearing of the land, putting in the foundations, building driveways. Throughout all of this, we made our best effort to save the biggest and best of the trees, using the existing clearings for the building sites. We stacked the logs from the trees we did cut down and later milled them for lumber, using some of it on the houses. We chipped rather than burnt in response to Al Gore's movie; An Inconvenient Truth.

Ah, remember the house on the barge in the previous post with Mount Rainier in the background? Well, for us in January, it was a tad different. For one thing it was pitch black and 4:30 in the morning. That was when the tide was high for unloading the barge.

In the dark, we waited for our new houses.

Soon they were here and being unloaded!

It was a gray day after about 10 days of rain. 

It seemed rather precarious while unloading!

Then there they were, at the end of North Beach Road on Orcas Island!

Now the fun began! We needed to get the houses down North Beach Road, under trees, while moving electrical lines, and in the process not destroy anyone's property. Then there was a 90 degree turn to go down Bartell Road. Slowly we proceeded! One house at a time!

 That's me in front of the blue twin house, which we named the English Cottage.

Want to know more about bringing a home to Orcas Island via barge?
Give us a ring! Wonder which piece of land would work best? I'd say we are the experts on this topic.
So, drop us a line at OrcasDreams-Island Properties
or email: kate@orcasdreams.com

to be continued in a later post....

Building Green on Orcas

It was a wild idea, born of the frustration of high building costs and a desire to recycle and reuse. We had been tossing it around for years. We kept looking for the right piece of land and the right house. The land had to be here on Orcas and the house would come by barge from Canada. You also had to be able to get the house down the road and our roads are narrow and winding, with many overhanging trees. So the house had to be narrow. NO, we did not want a prefab!  NO, we did not want a manufactured home! We wanted to save a quality, stick-built home that was "in the path of progress" and slated for destruction. We were going to recycle a whole house!

 Nickle Brothers in Victoria was our resource.  Over the years we had made friends of Jeremy Nickles and Jim Connley, looking at houses that were to be 'scrape-off's'. Jim and I shared a love of old homes that had good bones and charm, wood floors and framing made of fir that would only be used as trim today. Ken was looking for something a bit more practical, and would require less work.

Then we found the land! It was level, sunny and it was just one mile to a potential barge site and town. There were huge old Big Leaf Maples. There were Cedar trees that were three feet across, Black Willow, Red Alder, English Holly and many beautiful straight Douglas Firs. The land had the most beautiful well drained soil, black with fertility, perfect for gardens that so many Orcas Islanders want.  There were natural meadows, ready for a horse of your own.

We chartered a small plane and flew to Sidney were Jim picked us up. He had two homes there that he said would fit our needs, narrow enough to go down the road and just one story, as so many of our buyers wanted a home all on one level. They were twin houses, in good shape and Ken thought they would be perfect for our project. Then Jim took us over to a little stucco cottage. It was not hard to imagine it on the moors of Ireland, built in 1910.

It had glass door knobs. 

                                                 It had real plaster and lathe walls!

It had old oak floors-in great condtion!

It had old fashioned wood windows!

It had the right look for an Island Home.

I could see it already...

 on it's barge coming to it's new home on Orcas!  Well, if we were going to get two homes, why not three??

Ken thought it was a good plan!

Talk about saving the trees!

With a one thousand square foot home we would save one hundred trees!  With three homes we'd save three hundred trees! Wow, that felt like a good thing to do.

Down at the Deer Harbor Dock

Sunday morning brought the sun back. Everything was washed clean by Saturday's rains. We had grandson Caleb for the night, and he wanted to go to the dock looking for seals. Ken was busy scraping the corrals with the tractor and once I was done putting the 6 loads of soaking manure into the compost bins, Caleb and I went off to the beach and the dock.

It is hard for me to tell who loves the beach more, Caleb or Cassie! Caleb rolled in the sand, jumped from the dock to the beach, danced and pranced!  Cassie hunted things under water and watched Caleb and his antics.

Deer Harbor is the most maritime of the

hamlets and towns on Orcas Island. It has two marinas, both of which offer live-aboard slips. The easiest access from Orcas Island to San Juan Island and the Gulf Islands is from Deer Harbor. It is a south facing harbor and is very protected. In addition, Deer Harbor gets the most sunshine and the least rain of any location on Orcas. It's a great place to live but there are fewer homes for sale in Deer Harbor than in some other areas of the Island.

Here is the map, on it you can see how convenient it is to sail to so many places. It's a short run to the charming Canadian city of Victoria, which is more British than London!  You can tie up at the city marina and have high tea at the Empress Hotel!

If you are kayaking, take a day trip around Reef Island out to Yellow Island, owned by the Nature Conservancy and carpeted with flowers each spring.
Spend the night on Jones Island and look for cactus. I promise they are there!  I will tell you all about these Islands in a future post. I was a kayak guide for many years, and Deer Harbor was my favorite place to paddle.




 


On the dock, is a small grocery store.
It has all the necessities: eggs, milk, bread,
chips, chocolate and coffee. You can get a
bowl of chower or chili, a burger and fries.
Caleb and I got peanut M&M's.

There are all sorts of boat; this sailboat happened to be my favorite of the day! Our friend, Dave Lutz, has a charter business called Emerald Isle Charters. He takes small groups on his lovely sailboat around the San Juans and up the wild side of Vancouver Island. Dave worked in Bristol Bay, Alaska flying a small plane spotting for the herring fishery. He is a great story teller and knows the waters all the way from here to Alaska.

If you are thinking of living aboard, you may want to consider this tug. It's for sale! There are showers and laundry facilities, gas,  food, and even DSL at the Marina.

Can you tell what this is a picture of? My little grandson, has great eyes and he spotted these shrimp. Can you see them?

Reflections - living on an Island gives you time for reflections; time to see the changing leaves, time to admire the colors, time to write poetry and reflect on life.


Orcas is a Magic Island; people often come here to heal... the surrounding water making so many people feel safe and protected. Time passes more slowly here and your attention can at last be turned inward. The native Lummi Indians considered Orcas a Sacred Place.

There are wonderful homes in Deer Harbor, beautiful places to live. Here is an old Craftsman that in the 1970's was a boarding house, run by a friend of ours, Dave Page. It has been restored and is now a very fine B&B.

Our mission was complete when we found our seal! We were so lucky to have him get so close and to catch it on my camera!

You'd be happy here too!...

Bubbles in the Puddles - Rain on Orcas Island

Yesterday we had showers, today it poured.  Ken and I sat on the window seat overlooking my dressage arena and it was raining so hard it made bubbles in the puddles.  I had never seen such a thing. We checked the rain gauge. Yup, it had rained buckets overnight. Our rain gauge said over an inch of rain!  How could we complain, after such a beautiful Indian Summer? It was 59 degrees out, so it wasn't even cold!  We needed the rain to make our Island green again.

Now, many people believe it rains here all the time. The truth of the matter is that is rains about half as much as it does in Seattle, or Manhattan, or North Carolina.  We get about 24 inches of rain a year in Deer Harbor. At the east end of the island they get about 28 inches of rain. On the Olympic Penninsulia, it can rain up to 200 inches each year, and for every mile that you go east from Anacortes, it generally rains one more inch. There are many pilots who have moved to Orcas Island, and what they all say is that there is a blue hole over Orcas.  We get just enough rain to have a green island and never any flies or mosquitos. After growing up on the east coast, I think I have found heaven!

Our rain is usually more like mist. For years I never owned a raincoat, I just wore wool or polar fleece. Even while leading kayaking trips, I never owned a raincoat.  But, today you needed one!

I don't want you to think I only go into the office when it rains, but that was where I was today.

While in the office, our daughter, Jeni and granddaughter, Trinity stopped in to give us Trinity's school picture and treated to some ballet moves!  We got an offer on a parcel of land, we had listed. Yahoo!  All cash - that was the good news. Ken had a date with our grandson, Caleb, to work on his Pinewood Derby car for Cub Scouts.

After work, I went to the market and as usual had several in-depth conversations while shopping. I must have been in there over an hour to get one bag of groceries! That is something I find so special about Orcas Island, all the little interactions, the rich conversations over the produce, at the post office, or library. In fact, it is not uncommon to stop your car in the middle of the road to exchange a few words with someone you needed to talk with, who was walking by. It's the web of interconnection that is so richly satisfying here.

As I drove home that evening, the sun came out briefly lighting up the trees. This often happens at the end of the day, an hour or two of sunshine, even on the darkest of days. About a mile from home, I saw Ken and Caleb walking down the road saving newts. Living next to a marsh there are thousands of newts that cross the road spring and fall. Walking with Ken then is very slow, as he has to carefully pick up and move all the newts to safety.  Caleb seems to share this passion.

Rescuing Newts

Our walks, this time of year

are interrupted - by Rough Skinned Newts

fearlessly treading ancient trails
back to water

now crossing the county road
littered with the slow
and the unlucky

I want to save each one
regardless of merit
so,
our walks go slow.

 

K.A.Wood