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VASHON-MAURY ISLAND
WEDNESDAY, JULY 15, 2015
Vol. 60, No. 28
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Return of the red berry on Vashon
Local growers work for a strawberry comeback By SUSAN McCABE For The Beachcomber
Natalie Martin/Staff Photo
Joe Yarkin, sitting in his strawberry picker, shows berries that his family has grown at Sun Island Farm on Maury Island.
As the annual Strawberry Festival begins, it appears strawberries, once a staple on Vashon, are making a comeback on the island. Decades ago, Vashon Island was covered with strawberry farms, and that sprouted the Strawberry Festival in 1909. In fact, Vashon was named “the greatest strawberry growing section of the State of Washington” in the Seattle Republican newspaper in 1911. But the strawberry growing industry on Vashon started declining after World War II, when cheap refrigerated transport spread over the nation’s new highway system, corporate farms grew, child labor was outlawed and many of the Island’s Japanese-American strawberry farmers failed to return from wartime internment camps. A few stragglers, mainly JapaneseAmerican farmers, persisted in growing the luscious red berries in Vashon’s welcoming and sandy soil as late as the mid 1980s. But after that, strawberries virtually disappeared from island fields as residential property expanded and pine trees
filled the gaps. Strawberry Festival treat purveyors were forced to import fruit for the annual summer celebration. Fast forward and we find those gorgeous red berries are making a slow, steady comeback on the Strawberry Festival scene, oddly spawned out of controversy. A few years ago, members of Vashon’s chamber of commerce, which puts on the annual festival, considered removing Strawberry from the name and calling it simply Vashon Festival in an attempt at truth in advertising. The opposition was so vigorous that then newly minted Chamber Director Jim Marsh stepped in, asking vendors and merchants to bring strawberries back to the festival. “People have stepped up,” said Marsh recently, noting that several groups featured island-grown strawberries at the 2013 festival and the Vashon Island Growers Association (VIGA) added to that mix a booth featuring Vashon-grown berries in 2014. And at this weekend’s festival, Sun Island Farm will offer up strawberries grown at its large patch on Maury Island. SEE STRAWBERRIES, 15
Nelson announces millions more for environmental conservation Previous funding was used to purchase land at nine island preserves By NATALIE MARTIN Staff Writer
As a group gathered last week to celebrate a flurry of recent conservation purchases on Vashon, State Sen. Sharon Nelson (D-Maury Island) announced that she has secured another $2 million for environmental preservation on the island. The state funding will allow King County and Vashon’s land trust to continue purchasing ecologically important forestland and shoreline on Vashon at a quick rate, a project that began two years ago with Nelson’s first allocation of $4 million in state funding. Using that money, as well as an additional $1 million from King County, the Vashon-Maury Island Land Trust and the county have worked together to
purchase 142 acres on Vashon over the past two years, expanding eight of the island’s nature preserves and creating one new one. Land trust Executive Director Tom Dean said he is glad to be able to continue the momentum. “It’s really exciting to be able to pay this forward, especially with the good work King County is doing leveraging those funds,” he said. “We’ve got a really nice rolling program going here.” At the press conference overlooking Raab’s Lagoon on Friday, Nelson, the Senate minority leader who has been in Olympia wrapping up budget negotiations, noted that the additional $2 million was formally approved just the day before. The event was attended by state and county officials and current and former land trust board members, as well as other islanders. “Knowing our local land trust, he (Dean) has already got properties lined up,” Nelson said. “It’s not going to take him long to spend the money, and Juli Goetz Morser/Staff Photo
SEE CONSERVATION, 13
Sen. Sharon Nelson talks to land trust Director Tom Dean before the press conference.