I begin with hopeful lies

(This post was actually written back in July... stay tuned for actual current posts)

Okay, so despite the blog title, we don't actually have any goats... yet. There are, however, a few for sale on Wenatchee Craigslist. Official Wenatchee code says no livestock within city limits if you have less than 1/2 an acre (like us). On the other hand, some houses have been grandfathered in to allow livestock because they used to be county land rather than city land. On the phone, the city said they said they didn't know if dwarf (miniature) goats would be allowed. They suggested I call the Humane Society, who said no to all livestock. But the Human Society also said that if your neighbors complain, you'd (just) have to move the animals elsewhere.

Meanwhile, mowing the lawn is part of our house rental agreement, lawn mower not provided -- so goats would be the perfect solution (with a mechanical push mower found at a yard sale as a supplement). Our landlord is okay with goats as long as they are legal. He works at the jail. So, how to proceed? Our tack has been to ask the neighbors if they're okay with the idea, get the landlord's go ahead, and give it a try. One neighbor already gave us squash from her garden. Another commented on our push mower. They seem to be amenable.

But let's back up a bit first. Where's Wenatchee? Who's we? What house are we talking about? Why goats?

Wenatchee is in central Washington State. It's just east of the Cascade Mountains, 3 hours east of Seattle, in a dry sunny valley, and is known as the apple capital of the world. Major employer here is the tree fruit industry -- apples, pears, and cherries. So it makes the Wenatchee area both a yummy and a beautiful place to live (first picture is from our mailbox, second is 15 minutes towards the desert near Malaga, third is 20 minutes toward the mountains near Dryden).

Working at a tree fruit center, I keep getting free cherries, and am struggling to keep up. But no complaints there. Mike, the nice and bearded and tall Minnesotan boyfriend, for those of you who don't know him, has moved out here too. And we're renting a house in the part of town called Canyon #1. It's up near the hills, there are tons of birds, lots of quail, apparently rattlesnakes (although I haven't seen any yet), and nice partial views of the valley. The neighborhood, like much of Wenatchee, is in a development boom, but our piece is a little quieter, higher in the hills. The house was an old motel cottage in the 1960s -- tiny and still a little bit dirty and smelly right now, but super cute.

It's a work in progress, and the second house I've lived in in Wenatchee in four months. The first house got sold. It had been a month-to-month lease, which was great for flexibility, but meant searching for a new rental sooner than anticipated.

I came to Wenatchee for a job working with the tree fruit sustainability, through Washington State University's Department of Community & Rural Sociology and the Tree Fruit Research & Extension Center. Basically, Washington's apple industry (the biggest in the nation) is phasing out the use of its most-used pesticide (as mandated by new Environmental Protection Agency regulation), and is trying to educate growers on alternative forms of pest control. Pheremone mating disruption, where lots of insect pheremones are emitted into the air in an orchard to confuse male codling moths and prevent them from finding the females. All sorts of alternative "reduced risk" insecticides. Basically the idea is to take mainstream fruit production one big step towards greater environmental protection and health/safety for workers.

AZM (the pesticide to be lost) was designated for phase-out because it's a neurotoxin. And so this pest control transition is really relevant for farmworkers in the area -- most of whom are Latino, some of whom are migrant and pick fruit from Texas to California to Washington and back again, but many of whom live in the area permanently. Which makes Wenatchee an interesting place culturally -- small old Western orcharding town at the foothills of the mountains, where the local bluegrass festival bands play on a stage made of apple bins, plus really big influx of Mexican immigrants. And a new big influx of Seattle retirees looking for sun. Lots of tostada trucks and cowboy hats plus an older but reinvigorated downtown strip sprawling out into what has become quite a big city, with a small town feel.

Small town feel in that the person you meet as the wife of your colleague turns out to be the same person you blindly contact by email as a migrant health clinic outreach coordinator. And the other woman from the migrant health clinic shows up in front of you in the port-o-potty line at the outdoor community production of the Sound of Music 20 minutes up the mountains in Leavenworth. The same person you meet in a local food group meeting also comes to the camp where migrant cherry pickers live to do a presentation on diabetes in the Hispanic community. Same guy who's your landlord turns out to solicit free post-experimental apples from your work place to feed to inmates at the jail. And yet it's getting to be a big town, with its share of Walmart, Home Depot, Safeway... ah, and espresso booths.

Here's the Seattle influence. Little stand-alone huts all over the place on the side of the road to get drive-through espresso and lattes and capucchinos. And yet, the east side of the Cascade Mountains has typically been more politically conservative than the west side. Which plays into a lot of things, including my job, where west side environmental groups from Seattle the eco-capital of the U.S. come into conflict with pesticide use in agriculture on the east side. My job, basically, is to try to get industry and enviros to get along better, work on some of the language/culture barriers that keep Latino farmworkers from being fully informed of changes and developments in the industry where they work, and see how effective this pesticide transition program has/is/might be. So it keeps me on my toes. Sometimes I think it's fascinating, and I have the coolest job ever. Sometimes I think it's too hard to be the go-between among all these apple-interested groups and get anywhere with it. Sometimes it's too much of a desk job. But for the moment it works alright.

My hoped-for job, before I found this one, was to pair raising sheep with writing broad-public-lay-audience articles about agriculture. But given the current apple job, a flock of sheep seemed to be too much. And sheep really like to be in a flock. So this idea has been deflected into goats, who do alright in pairs. Meanwhile, we'll clean the new house, think about fencing potential, get the neighbors on board with goats, and walk my pretty mountain valley orchard walk to and from work.

One other high point of living in Wenatchee is the close proximity of hiking and walking and river and general outdoor sportiness. Weekend afternoons can be good for driving 20 minutes up into the mountains for a short hike with great views. Pretty neat. (These pics were early summer -- now it's a lot drier).

So the plan is to be here for two years, and then see what happens. Having emerged from the cocoon of graduate school, and therefore having a little more time and energy and mental/emotional space on my hands than I've had for several years, I thought I'd try to enter the 21st century and see what this blogging business is all about. Stay tuned. Maybe there will be some goat pictures in our future. Maybe we'll get Mike posting too and you can get a second opinion, for greater credibility and reliability on this "new to Wenatchee, WA" blog. Or just come visit. We'd love to see you. There are lots of apples waiting to be eaten, lots of hills asking to be explored, and lots of views to soak in. Airport code is EAT, or fly to Seattle or Spokane and we can get you here from there.

Best wishes, glad to be online, and hope to be doing this more.