storms, ponds, and tractors

Needless to say we began enjoying the pond right from the start. In the summer . . .

And the winter.

With the purchase of land comes the purchase of equipment. Roger and Eric were lucky enough to have parents who owned two rental stores in Federal Way and Bonney Lake. They were able to acquire a lot of machinery this way.



And when you have equipment, you must have a place to store the equipment. So Roger and Eric set about building a "tractor shed". Here is a picture of the prototype for said shed.

And here is a pix of the shed as they were building it.

In the winter of 1990-1991 the Northwest saw a series of storms that had long-term effects on the direction of Thornbush operations.

Here is a quote from Cliff Mass' book, The Weather of the Pacific Northwest:

"When Arctic high pressure moves into British Columbia and relatively low pressure builds over Washington, air accelerates southwestward down the Fraser Valley. . .

An example of such a strong Fraser outflow wind occurred on December 28, 1990. A frigid highpressure center had moved into British Columbia, while a trough of low pressure associated with an Arctic Front stretched from Wyoming, through Washington , and offshore of Vancouver Island. The result was a zone of intense pressure difference over southern British Columbia and norther Washington. This pressure difference accelerated cold air southwestward down the Fraser River gap and then across Bellingham, the San Juan Islands, and vicinity. . ., a swath of extremely strong winds, reaching 80-90 miles per hour, struck a large area of northwest Washington . . .On northern Lummi Island, two observers reported winds exceeding 100 miles per hour, and massive tree falls, damage to homes, and extensive power outages occurred. Af few miles to the south, Guemes Island was hit hard: there was a widespread loss of trees over the northern portion of the island, with swaths roughly 500 feet long and 150 feet wide where nearly all trees were downed . . ."

This wind swept through San Juan Valley and our property. We counted 42 trees down.

And so we bought a sawmill. (Learn more of what the sawmill made for us in the next edition of "thornbush retrospective".