Country Life
History • A6 Gardening • A7 Fair photos • A8
A5 • lyndentribune.com • Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Cloud Mountain sets Harvest Day Event will give visitors a look inside farm’s various projects By Brent Lindquist reporter@lyndentribune.com
EVERSON — Curious to see a model fruit and vegetable growing operation? Cloud Mountain Farm Center, 6906 Goodwin Rd., hosts its Summer Harvest Day from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 18, as late summer brings the pinnacle of harvesting. “We’re doing an open house kind of thing, and we’re going to have some of our staff and some of our interns at different places on the farm talking about different projects,” Cloud Mountain coowner Cheryl Thornton said. “We’re going to have samples of some of the vegetable varieties that we’re growing and maybe some fruit depending on what’s still ripe. The plan is to give people an idea of the different projects we’re doing.”
The day will feature a number of different stations to give visitors an idea of what’s happening at the nonprofit community farm. “One (station) is certainly going to be talking about our intern program,” Thornton said, “just really giving everybody an idea of why they’re here and what the program’s about.” Another station will touch on crop development activities at Cloud Mountain, including variety testing on grapes, peaches, strawberries, cherries and leafy greens. “Then we’ll have another one on just our vegetable production and what that looks like,” Thornton said. Visitors will have the opportunity to taste Cloud Mountain’s tomato, pepper and melon varieties. Someone will also be on hand to talk about the farm’s fruit production, including orchards and tree fruits. A final station will inform visitors about the farm’s nursery production. “I think that it’ll give a pretty wide view of what we’re doing here,” Thornton said.
Animals take the fair stage this week
Ava Crabtree, 5, of Lynden, gets acquainted with a 3-day-old calf in the Dairy Maternity Area of the 2013 Northwest Washington Fair on Monday. No baby calves had yet been born at the fair, so this Holstein-Jersey cross was brought in from Eaglemill Farm as “the cutest one with special markings for the fair,” said owner Rod DeJong. On a board nearby, people could suggest names for the baby girl. (Calvin Bratt/Lynden Tribune)
Oscar Sheets, father of county berry industry, came 100 years ago Many interrelated Missourians followed and grew strawberries By Calvin Bratt editor@lyndentribune.com
Editor’s Note: This story ran originally in the July 24 “Pioneering Families” section of the Ferndale Record preceding Old Settlers Days. LYNDEN — In January 1913 Oscar Sheets, age 26, traveled to Lynden by train and boat from Van Buren, Missouri, to check out 10 acres that he had been offered in a trade. He saw the property covered in snow, but decided
it was good anyway. He sent for his wife Maud and 3-yearold son Manuel to come too. The place was Bedlington’s Corner, today the corner of Berthusen and Loomis Trail roads. Oscar at first worked in the Peters’ sawmill on Bertrand Creek, clearing land to be suitable for agriculture. In that first summer the Sheets family tasted of the blackberries that grew wild in their new Whatcom County home — Oscar and Maud picked and canned 101 quarts of the berries, according to son Bert and Peggy Sheets as told in their family story in the “Treasures From the Past” book. In 1915 Oscar bought 40 acres west of Bertrand and in 1920 built the Loomis Trail Road house that was to be in the family for the next 60 years. They kept milk cows and 2,000 chickens, as did nearly everyone on rural acreage at the
Leonard, Winfred and Jake Maberry pause from their strawberry hoeing in an early photo. time. But early on Oscar also began to grow gooseberries, rhubarb and strawberries that he peddled to Lynden and Bellingham merchants and to the Kale Cannery in Everson. Consider it the birth of
the Whatcom County berry industry. Oscar Sheets was the first of what was to be a migration of Carter County, Missouri residents, many of them related to each other, to the Lyn-
den area to became involved in berry growing. Jake Maberry, who arrived with his family as a 13-year-old in 1943, has a ready answer as to what motivated that movement from hot and humid Missouri. “It was like anything else, I think. They were trying to better themselves,” said Maberry, who is now known for decades of producing the “berry best” in his fields as well as championship basketball teams at Lynden High School. Jake, after whom the LHS gymnasium is named, is now in Lynden Manor assisted-living at age 83. His father, Leonard, had operated an automotive service station in Van Buren. His mother, Blanche, was a halfsister to Oscar Sheets. Coming to the better climate of Whatcom County, which they had once visited before moving,
the Maberrys did dairy and poultry farming for a while, but it did not suit them. They followed the lead of Sheets — who by now had many acres in strawberries — in a big way, planting 80 acres of their own on new acreage with oldest son Winfred. Other interrelated families came from Missouri too: Wakefield, Bales, Chilton, Cowen and Cowin, Coleman, Holt, Rhea and Clark. “One way or another, we were all related,” states Dwight Chilton, 79, who came with his family when he was a teen. His acreage on Birch Bay-Lynden Road is now operated by the Enfield family. “Everybody planted strawberries,” Jake Maberry said. “There was no raspberry industry at all,” added his wife, Money Maberry. This is how the Sheets See Oscar on A7
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