Northwest Living | Bellingham Real Estate Market

Seven of the largest Canadian media companies including CanWest have come together as a consortium to share news and resources for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.

These media giants represent 49 daily newspapers across Canada, including the Vancouver Sun and Toronto Star, will band together for the purposes of advertising and news sharing to give 3.5 million daily subscribers (35% of all daily readers in Canada) the same exact viewpoints, because everyone knows people’s information needs are best informed by a single, omnipresent voice!

Seven publishing companies, representing 49 daily newspapers in Canada, have taken the unprecedented step of forming a coalition to package and present Olympic news and advertising, beginning with the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

The group includes CanWest Media Works, Torstar Corp., Gesca, Metro International SA, FP Canadian Newspapers LP, Transcontinental Media and Brunswick News Inc.

“This consortium is a first for the Canadian daily newspaper business in Canada,” Dennis Skulsky, president of CanWest Media Works, said in a statement. “We’re excited by the concept and by the opportunity to develop some strong and enduring partnerships with national advertisers and agencies with this unique endeavour.”

CanWest publishes dailies across Canada - including the National Post, Montreal Gazette, Vancouver Sun and Vancouver Province.

“This enriched coverage of Olympic news and information leading up to Vancouver 2010 and beyond will be welcomed by Canadians from coast to coast,” said Jagoda Pike, publisher of the Toronto Star, property of Torstar. “Daily newspapers are the perfect medium to provide the in-depth and ongoing coverage of the people, places and events involved in the many facets of the Games.”

Advertising sales for the newspaper group will be handled by the Sport Media Marketing Group. Principals in this firm have “extensive experience in Olympic television sales and production,”the newspaper consortium said.

“This innovative initiative by 49 of Canada’s leading daily newspapers will deliver a circulation of 3.5 million and an estimated reach of 35 per cent of Canada’s adult population, while their online sites add an additional 17-per-cent reach,” said Jim Byrd, chair of SMMG. “This combination provides greater reach than any television network and offers advertisers a superb tie-in to ongoing interest in the Olympics between now and London 2012.”

The consortium will produce two special publications this summer. “A Celebration of Canada’s Olympic Athletes” will be published on July 1, Canada Day. On Aug. 8, it will publish “One Year to Beijing,” in reference to the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Music, food, wine tasting, arts and crafts fair and fun are all part of the annual Loganberry Festival July 29 and 30 at the Whidbey Island Greenbank Farm.  Located in the middle of Whidbey Island, the free summer celebration is held every year towards the end of July on both Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Conductor of Fun Jim Freeman has lined up a schedule of fabulous music co-sponsored by Whidbey Island Bank and Whidbey Telecom. There will be a break every two hours for a children’s pie-eating contest: loganberry pie, of course. The contest is open to children age 12 and under.

There is always some form of musical entertainment that begins on Saturday morning with some local vocalists and instrument artists as well. This year there will be the piano and harmonica rhythms of Natalie Schmidt.

The Washington Poets Association present poetry performances and an open mic on the stage by the Jim Davis House both Saturday and Sunday at the festival beginning at noon. The association presented the popular Burning Word Poetry Festival at the Greenbank Farm last April.

There will also be an opportunity for others to read some of their own poetry. The stage is co-sponsored by Porter Whidbey Insurance and Wallgren’s Les Schwab Tires. The stage is by the Jim Davis House.

The Whidbey Evangelical Free Church of Greenbank will again provide lots of special activities for children on the farm grounds both days. Tickets are a few cents to each carnival-like activity.

Winemakers from Whidbey and the greater Puget Sound area will be assembled under tent to talk about their wines. Wines will be available to taste and to purchase by the bottle or by the glass to enjoy with lunch. The Greenbank Farm’s favorite loganberry wine and its sister loganberry dessert wine will be poured by local volunteers. All proceeds from the wine tasting go to support Greenbank Farm.

Lunch fare is provided by local vendors including Jan Gunn’s Whidbey Pies and ice cream, Karin Coleman’s sausage dogs with her Scandinavian mustards, the Central Whidbey Lions Club’s traditional American hot dogs, Craig and Debbie Vrungos’s kettle corn, Island Chef Tim Groken’s chowder, crab cakes and seafood sauté, Nadya’s Greek cuisine by the wine tents, the Lariat Ladies from Lilliwaup barbecue and more. Mike Diamanti will be serving espresso delights from his Island Coffee booth and we will again have shaved ice concoctions.

Beautiful and useful arts and crafts will be available for sale from booths on site. There will be over 60 booths of great arts and crafts and a new area featuring home-based and commercial businesses. Shopkeepers at the farm will be open both days, including Artworks Art Gallery, I Remember When Antiques, Two Tacky Ladies, Greenbank Farms Cheese Shop, the Wine Shop and Whidbey Pies Cafe.

What are Loganberries? The loganberry is a cross between the blackberry and a raspberry. It was developed by James Harvey Logan in the 1980s. The Greenbank Farm was once the largest loganberry vineyard in the world, the farm was purchased by private and public entities in 1998 to serve as a tourist destination and a community resource. The loganberry fields were in disrepair by then. A newer smaller vineyard has been established and the farm is organically certified. The berries are available for harvest by early July. By the time of the festival there may still be loganberries for purchase from the U-pick patch both Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. There will certainly be loganberry pie to purchase.

The farm grounds are a wonderful place to spend a day, offering room for the bustle of festival activities as well as trails to roam with pets on leash and grand sea and mountain vistas. The Greenbank Farm is just off Highway 525 and the Wonn Road in Greenbank. Island Transit is a free bus service Monday through Saturday; find schedules at www.islandtransit.org.

Utilize Whidbey Island Real Estate for all your Island County real estate needs.

 Lynden, WA - The annual Raspberry Festival was held this past weekend in Lynden, Washington. The raspberry festival is held every year on the third weekend in July. Much of Front Street was closed for the annual event, which featured a popular three-on-three basketball tournament, vintage vehicles, local vendors and plenty of Whatcom County’s tasty raspberries.

Local raspberry farmers in the Lynden area produce approximately 65 percent of all the raspberries grown in the United States — According to the Washington Red Raspberry Commission, also headquarters in Lynden, WA.

It’s truly amazing to travel the country sides of north Whatcom County and see hundreds of acres, row after row of fresh raspberries growing on neatly formed rows.  Driving thru any of the back roads of Lynden, during the month of July when raspberries are in season, with your window down, and you can literally smell the fresh berries.

Washington is surely known for its apple crops in Wenatchee, but slowly the word is getting out about Whatcom County’s Berry production as well. 

The festival attracts hundreds of people each year including folks that drive up from Seattle and from over the border in British Columbia as well.  While over at the busy McPhail Berry Farm, west of Lynden, I saw at least 10-15 vehicles that were from out of the area.

McPhails Berry Farm is a good place to enjoy the festival and get a feel for raspberry country. Every year the festival organizers provide a free shuttle from downtown Lynden to McPhails Berry farm, where there is live music and plenty of raspberry-related desserts. McPhails Farm also has plenty of varieties of raspberries, black raspberries, currants, and at least 10 other berries to pick fresh from their family farm.  Bring the kids as well to enjoy the goats, chickens, ducks and play areas in a fun atmosphere.  They also have a wonderful farm kitchen to buy full pies, slices of pie with ice cream, and jams with an eating area inside and out.

A sign advertising those desserts is what attracted Blaine resident Linda Fox, who was enjoying the music with her husband, Walt Fox, a lifelong county resident who worked picking berries and other agricultural products as a young man. Linda Fox said she’s glad parts of the county still have the charm of an agricultural atmosphere.

“If you lose the agriculture, you lose the quaintness and all the local products,” Fox said. “You can only do so much developing on agricultural land.”

Chris Limbach, a Bellingham resident, said he and his family often pick raspberries themselves and freeze them for future use.

“Raspberries are one of those things that you have to have fresh,” Limbach said. “It changes the taste when they’re not fresh. Plus they’re so expensive when you buy them from the store.”

Next years three-on-three basketball tournament will honor legendary raspberry grower Curt Maberry by naming the tournament the Curt Maberry Memorial Classic. The Maberry family is one of the largest raspberry growers in the world.  Jake Maberry, another legend in Lynden for his Lynden High School Basketball, teams that won four state titles, makes up the other half of Maberry & Maberry Berry Associates or MMBA.

I’ve been picking raspberries, black-raspberries, blueberries, black currants, and many others for over twenty years now. In Whatcom County the first berry crop of the season are the strawberries and are usually ready to be picked during the first week of June and can run to the end of July. Raspberries are usually ready during the last week of June and all of July. All the black-raspberries which include loganberry, marionberry, boysenberry, TayBerry, and others vary, but most are ready during the whole month of July. Blueberries are available to pick from about mid July to mid August…it just depends on the plant and the amount of sunshine they receive. Finally…there are the wild blackberries, which seem to be everywhere, and are available from July through September even. I hope this helps all the readers wanting to know when berry’s ripen in Whatcom County WA. 

Goto the local Lynden real estate site for Lynden WA area real estate and information.

Jerry Campbell - Muljat Group - Lynden WA Real Estate

BELLINGHAM — Within the next few weeks, residents in the Bellingham School District will start to see construction on at least one of the projects funded by the $67 million bond passed last year.Tiger Construction will begin building the new elementary school in the 2100 block of Yew Street Road by the end of the month, said Ron Cowan, assistant superintendent of business and operations. The school board awarded the Everson-based company the $11.4 million contract last month.

But the 14th elementary school, scheduled to open for the 2008-09 school year, is only the first of many bond-funded projects planned in the next few years.

Aldrich Road Elementary: Planning for the new elementary school is on schedule, but no construction will start for about a year. The school board viewed design plans over the past school year and the district will begin accepting construction bids in the spring, Cowan said.

The school is scheduled to open for the 2009-10 school year.

Shuksan Middle School: The middle school is scheduled to be rebuilt at the same time as the Aldrich Road school construction, Cowan said. Plans call for the new school to be built on existing sports fields while students are still in the old building, which turned 50 years old this year.

Students are expected to move to the new building for the 2009-10 school year.

Seismic upgrades: The district will be upgrading the earthquake safety of five historic buildings, starting this summer. In 2005, engineers examined and found problems at five district buildings: Columbia, Larrabee and Lowell elementary schools, Whatcom Middle School and the Roeder Administration Building.

The first upgrade involves Columbia Elementary, where crews will stabilize the play shed in the back of the school, Cowan said.

Upgrades to Lowell are scheduled for the 2008-09 school year and will require the school to close for the year.

Roeder is slated for the 2009-10 school year, during which time staff likely will be moved to the old Shuksan building.

But this schedule could change as construction moves forward, Cowan said.

“Yew Street needs to be finished before we can do Lowell, and Shuksan needs to be finished and students moved to the new school before we do Roeder, and the other schools — Whatcom and Larrabee — will probably be done before Roeder,” Cowan said. “We’re working with engineers to really look at the schedule in a little more detail.”  Via Bellingham Herald.