Another Month in the Valley: The Big Thaw and the Return of Winter

Winter flowers at the Creamery Arts Center in Hotchkiss were made by Gini McNair

Another Month in the Valley

By Thomas Wills – Herald Editor and Co-Publisher

January 27 – The big thaw of the winter of 2015 continued with temperatures in the central Valley up into the 60’s.  People have reported seeing bees venturing out, along with mosquitoes inside homes. I have squashed several of those during the last couple of days.

The Paonia Town Council met and had a long off topic talk about law enforcement. There appears to be some confusion on the part of two of the council people. Interesting data point: the Paonia Municipal Court convened only 6 times during 2014.

January 28 – The Hotchkiss Chamber of Commerce met in the morning and heard a presentation from Jim Ramen and John VanDenBerg of Citizens for a Healthy Community, the natural gas development watchdog group.  I was there to represent Hotchkiss Downtown Improvement and pitch our wooden flower project, which I’ve been promoting.  The idea is to brighten up the downtown planters during the non-growing months.

January 30 – Rain in the lower Valley and snow in the high country. Nathan delivered the February Herald today

Condolences go out to the Kirby Clock family on Lamborn Mesa. A morning fire about 8:30 a.m. killed several of their pigs and damaged a farm structure. The smoke was very visible from downtown Paonia.

February 1 – Sunny for most of the day. Thanks to neighbor Chuck Shelton for the donated wooden art flower for the Downtown Improvement wooden flower project. It went in the prime spot at the post office. Very charming.

February 2 – Mr. Burch, the shop teacher at the Hotchkiss K-8 School, called to discuss the wooden flower project. He will work with the kids in producing flowers.

February 3 – Warm but overcast. The unusually lengthy winter thaw has now gone on for nearly a month, broken in the lower valley only by some rains, the mud mitigated only by nightly freezing.

I attended the afternoon special meeting of the Paonia Town Council where they grimly went through a procedure mandated by State law when a Town Clerk (or other appointed officer) is dismissed at a time other than the expiration of their term. The procedure should have been done in November/December when the decision was made to dismiss Town Clerk, Barbara Peterson, due to budgetary constraints. A hearing to allow Peterson to answer “charges” was set for March 3 at 9 a.m.

February 4 – The Crawford Town Council met at the Crawford Montessori School to discuss planned renovations to the sidewalk and historic stone retaining wall in front of Town Hall. Apparently the problem of CDOT inflexibility and comedic levels of regulation versus reality has cropped up, something Hotchkiss knows quite a bit about. CDOT claims that their right of way includes the stone wall!

Temperature note: As we drove by the Hotchkiss bank thermometer at 9 p.m. the temperature was 41 degrees. It was a little cooler in Crawford, but not bad.

February 6 – The extraordinarily warm mid-winter temperatures continued with a reading of 65 degrees plus reported from both Hotchkiss and Paonia.  Balmy. Very nice, but worrisome for area farmers and orchardists. Crocuses are blooming here and there and sunny garden plots in Hotchkiss are dry and thawed enough to turn the soil at mid-day.

Jane and I journeyed up-valley in the evening to the Blue Sage in Paonia where I read some bits of Hotchkiss/Valley crime history as part of the This is Where We Live event. After I told the story of the 1962 dynamiting of the Hotchkiss H by two Paonia high school seniors, a woman in the audience related that she had heard that Hotchkiss students had at least attempted a retaliatory blowing up of the Paonia P. I would love to get the newspaper report of that or the story from former students of the time. What about other, less explosive, Hotchkiss/ Paonia school rivalry pranks pulled off over the years?

February 7 – Another gorgeous early April day…wait, isn’t it February?

February 8 – Spring in winter continues. With temperatures in the 60’s. The Hotchkiss Neighborhood Watch Soup Dinner fundraiser went off well even though the crowd was modest. Lots of soup was eaten. Everyone enjoyed the folk/Americana band Nomad Mountain Outlaws, three very talented young men who played a musical range from Townes VanZant to 400 year old English folk songs in true gypsy troubadour style.

February 10 –  Two meetings in one evening. First an hour of the BLM Bull Mountain EIS meeting at Paonia High School. A full house and lot of passion. Then the regular Paonia Town Council meeting. Fairly quick with no drama despite all of the (legal) things happening behind the scenes with the former Town Clerk, and the former Town Financial Officer.

February 11 – I attended a very quick Hotchkiss Municipal Court session followed by a very interesting joint meeting of what is left of the County’s Area Planning Committees.  The County is once again planning to update the County Master Plan after 20 years, but is also doing a cart before the horse move in proposing to strip references to the Master Plan, including a list of MP goals out of the Specific Development regulations. The latter may prove to be pretty controversial since it appears to be a specific response to the Chicken Wars issue.

February 12 – The Hotchkiss Town Council, of which I am a member, met and discussed among other things, a proposed ordinance that would allow domestic water users to hook up their garages and shops to the city water at no additional cost. I made some suggestions about wording that would hopefully prevent future unintended consequences. No everyone agreed. I then realized that we hadn’t considered the sewer aspects of the proposal.

February 16 – The temperatures dropped today somewhat and it was colder overnight. But green (Egyptian) onions are coming up and the overwinter bed of arugula is beginning to grow a little.  I have heard quite a few worries about the fruit crop due to early budding.

February 17 – Colder. I attended the Hotchkiss Downtown Improvement meeting in the morning follow by a lunch meeting with longtime community booster, Julie Littlefield and friends interested in Hotchkiss improvement.

February 18 – Ash Wednesday.  Another beautiful unseasonably warm day. The Crawford Town Council work session in the evening was moderately uneventful but cheerfully pleasant.

February 19-20 – Cold nights and warm days.  Jane had some medical issues on the 19^th so work on the paper was shoehorned in between checking on her and then spending the 20^th in waiting rooms with my laptop.

February 22 – The snow started in the evening.

February 23 – About six inches of snow by early morning in Hotchkiss.  What a day for a medical emergency.  Jane got worse and had to be transported by North Fork Ambulance to the Delta Hospital. Thanks to Debbie and Marvin of NFAA who responded quickly despite the slick roads and falling snow.