I won’t say I told you so….but you can read all my posts about this in the past 24 months….. duh!
By Sherry Youngquist
JOURNAL REPORTER
>> a d v e r t i s e m e n t > w e b t o o l s > r e l a t e d m a t e r i a l
So sitting up here in Michigan reading about the predictions ofr 7-12″ of rain in the foothills from the remains of Hurricane Ernesto? That will no tbe good for the harvest..maybe it’s a little early for the reds, but the whites should be hit pretty good. Thankfully my weather station is still working so I should get an accurate read on the amount of rain that we get in State Road.
Post your comments with how much rain you think we’ll get. I think the storm might be a bit east of us, perhaps only dumping 5″ of rain or so. That’s my guess. Any more than that, and the Elkin Rec Center will be under water again….10″ or more and the whole town will be swimming.
Yah, growing grapes in North Carolina is a big cash crop. Right.
Lead story in the Winston Salem Journal…not sure how the local paper doesn’t even mention this… this sort of thing just pisses me off!!!! Not the paper missing the story, but the raping of the earth by loggers….Lake Laurel is just a few miles from our house.
MOUNTAIN PARK- A family’s retreat of more than 200 acres in the Mountain Park community of northwest Surry County has been scarred after loggers clear-cut nearly a quarter of the trees on it in the absence of its dying owner, who lived near Winston-Salem.
“When I first saw the damage, I was devastated,” said Sallie Mackie, whose aunt, Pearl Phillips, had nurtured the property since the 1960s and had transformed a low spot in the land into a 40-acre lake that the family cherished. “I was truly, truly devastated. We’re trying to find out about the laws.”
Mackie, a photographer who lives in Los Angeles, had spent the past year in the region taking care of Phillips, who died of heart problems in February. Mackie inherited the retreat, fondly called Lake Laurel, and she drove up to the property in April. That is when she discovered that about 45 acres had been logged.
The family doesn’t know who took the lumber, but whoever did it built a road into the back of the lot, avoiding a gated entry on another road. The family is unaware of any other logging being done near the property.
If the missing lumber is a case of theft, state officials say that would not be uncommon, but so many acres being taken at once is rare.
“Are these types of things that happen unwittingly? Somebody cutting the trees, and they go beyond the property line or purposely go beyond the line? Probably a mix of both,” said Jamie Kritzer, a spokesman for the N.C. Division of Forest Resources in Raleigh.
State foresters estimate – based on the new growth of seedlings at Mackie’s property – that the logging occurred in January and February. The family has filed a report with state foresters, who recently completed a survey of the damage. But local law enforcement has not been called.
Timber theft could be limited to a misdemeanor, foresters say.
“The bottom line is if Ms. Mackie were to call, the only way I could help her is to put her in touch with a list of private forestry consultants,” said Richard Cockerham, a forester for the N.C. Division of Forest Resources in Lenoir. A consultant would be able to come up with an estimate of how much lumber was cut and what it would be worth, he said.
Bill Overby, a private forester in Surry County, said he would estimate that the family lost $2,000 to $1,000 an acre, if the timber was mature.
Overby said that it would take at least a couple of months to cut as many as 45 acres.
“Once in a while we get called in where somebody inadvertently cut over the property line, and everybody wants to get it settled,” he said.
“This is a very unusual circumstance. I had another, off of Haystack Road. It was an absentee landowner,”Overby said. ” About 7 or 8 acres were cut in that case, he said.
Mackie said she is concerned now about erosion and other environmental problems that may occur as a result of the logging. She has contacted the Piedmont Land Conservancy and is discussing ways to prevent more damage. She also has an attorney, and they are trying to determine the best course of action for the family, which may involve a civil lawsuit, should they be able to find out who cut the timber.
“I’m so glad that my aunt didn’t have to see this. It would have broken her heart,” Mackie said. “My aunt had a rule: If you cut down one tree, it was just the one tree at a time…. (This) is just a hack job.”
(and here’s a big surprise…)
North Carolina’s first winegrowers’ cooperative has run out of money and will close.
Winston-Salem, NC — North Carolina’s first winegrowers’ cooperative has run out of money and will close. The Old North State Winegrowers Cooperative began less than three years ago in Mount Airy.
The 1.2 million dollar co-op was envisioned as a way to create a market for small vineyards and a tourist attraction for the town. But members and state officials say the group’s money was drained by competition and a drop in grape prices.
The co-op’s collapse means about 50 growers involved will lose their individual investments in the project. Some say that amounts to as much as 70-thousand dollars.
Associated Press
Greg McLeese , Web Producer
created: 7/12/2006 7:27:48 AM
Last updated: 7/12/2006 7:33:19 AM
Sorry this blog is becoming a little difficult to read. I’ve been experimenting with automated posting software which tens to fill up the blog real fast. The two sources of feeds that my software scans each day for new information are the weather service for weather warnings in surry county and the NC Cooperative Extension. I’ll keep fiddling with it.
Anyways, I stumbled across a new wine website!
I almost bought land across from his place…but then Barbara Hunter bought it and now she’s planting 10 acres on it…I bet that will be pretty. She’s got a great location.
BlueZephyr has a nice spot too…I’d go there and drink some wine..it’s off the beaten path, but it’s such a pretty area.
I am going to email him to find out what software he used to lay out his rows!
North Carolina ranks 10th nationally in production of grapes, and 12th in wine production. In 2004, 1100 acres of grapes were harvested in North Carolina. In 2004, 3,500 tons of grapes were produced in North Carolina, valued at $3.4 million. Wine was valued at $34 million.
Since I am now fielding 1-3 calls per day from those looking for information on the Yadkin Valley, I’m thinking maybe I’ll just market myself as the Yadkin Valley Visitors Guide or something like that? Why not? Last week I had a call from a congressman, several families looking for accommodations in the Yadkin Valley, two schools, and several individuals looking to grow grapes. All I need is a guide to all the local business and build out an for profit information pack on the region and maybe throw some sort of wine festival and I’m in business. They always say that private initiatives do much better than public ones. I think it’s time for the first “for profit” Chamber of Commerce. I faciliate the commerce therefore I profit. Carpe Diem. Who is John Galt? Maybe it’s time for a new wine publication as well?
15:52 2004-10-28
Spanish scientists find that drinking red wine could protect against lung cancer, but white wine may increase the risk. Researchers from the University of Santiago de Compostela found that the tannins and resveratrol in red wine have anti-cancer properties. The increased risk from drinking white wine was because of the alcohol it contains.
They say all wine contains alcohol, which is a gene mutator, but in red wine the anti-lung cancer benefits outweigh possible gene damage from the alcohol, informs Xinhua.
According to Food Ingredients First, but rosИ wine makes no difference and white wine even seems to have the opposite effect, the study finds. Neither beer nor spirits seem to affect the development of cancer.
The researchers, put the beneficial effects of red wine down to the presence of tannins, which have antioxidant properties. Resveratrol found in red wine has also been shown to stifle tumour development and growth in experimental research, they say.
Beer and spirits appeared to have no effect, the researchers, from the University of Santiago de Compostela, told the medical journal Thorax.
But Prof Andrew Peacock, of the British Thoracic Society, said “Smoking is the No.1 cause of lung cancer so the best way to reduce your risk of developing the disease is to throw away the cigarettes,” reports This is London.
A couple months ago, I built out a site for the Yadkin Valley Chamber of Commerce. You can visit their site at www.yadkinvalley.org. It’s a ridiculous site, something that looks like it was built by 3 year olds. A very very poor representation of the area. It makes us look like a bunch of backward hicks.
Anyways, I did a test to see how long it would take me to build out a site for them. It took me less than 24 hours and cost me $400. I emailed them, knowing full well they would ignore me, and offered to donate the site and my time to the Chamber to get them up to speed. It’s such a simple thing, it kills me. How can such a little town be so mired in beauracracy and ineptness?
Weeks passed and I nver heard from them. Which was good for me, because my site at www.yadkin-valley.com need a facelift. So I took down their info and replaced it with mine! Check it out, and tell me which site you like better.
More importantly, the current chamber site is hardcoded in html, where as my site has css, a dynamic event script and yellow pages script for the business directory. All stupid simple stuff to keep the site running and up-to-date. They have to manually enter their events, and when a change is made to the business directory, how is that done? I’ll tell you how. Someone from the chamber calls their podunk webmaster and then the webmaster, 3 days later, makes the change and probably charges them $50.00. This all because they don’t have an in-house webmaster, they outsource it to the the third graders at the local elementary school!
Anyways, the whole point of this post is for me to post a URL to the yellowpages directory because I am taking down their sample site I built (as I have already converted it to my site). But I need to remember this link:
http://www.greatncwines.com/yadkinchamber/phpyellow/index.php
Because I am going to publish my own service directory, much like angiestlist.com.
Perhaps from my last post you can see I am bit agitated today. Maybe it’s my poison ivy or maybe it’s because I didn’t get in the gym today, but more than likely it’s because I am sick and tired of all the exceptionally, biased editorials published in the Elkin Tribune.
Sure, I am Bush supporter. Not a huge Bush fan, but when I look at the alternative, I am ok with Bush. However, I am not for this polarizing form of liberalism that the paper spews out EVERY DAY! I will laugh and laugh when GW wins the election by a comfortable margin. Face it people, we aren’t going to negate our efforts in Iraq by voting in Kerry. When push comes to shove, the people will give the nod to Bush, for better or for worse, to finish what we started in Iraq.
Sometimes, I think the paper reads my like my blog, it’s almost impossible to discern fact from opinion. Everything is so muddled in this everyday rhetoric of “I hate Bush. I am a liberal. I must hate Bush.” Ridiculous. Do we need all this polarization? I at least give Kerry some credit. He’s an intellectual. He’s well spoken and well dressed. He’s fit, he’s a family man. We could do worse for a President.
I just think the paper needs to be more responsible. Educate the people, not flame them. Most around here couldn’t even tell you the major diferences in party platforms…they just know their friends hate Bush, so they do too. Creepy. I think I will start up an Elkin Republican Party HQ, if one is not already in existence. Time to educate the people on the party that will lead us for the next four years.