Ester Community Market!

Or maybe it's the Ester Farmers' Market, or the Ester Village Farmers' & Craft Market, or just the Ester Market. Whatever it is, it's coming to a community park near you, very soon!

The Ester Market rides again

Yep, we're bringing it back. Monique Musick is once again the chief organizer, but we are without a market manager (Nannette can't do it this time around). We've got a survey for market vendors (what day of the week, start dates, how many times a month, that sort of thing). I updated the website.

I plan to take my humongous numbers of tomato sprouts and offer them for sale at the opening day. I've gone rather overboard in this area, given the limited area in the house that is sunny, cat-free (relatively), warm at night, and okay to get muddy and composty and all that. I also have plans for some flower seeds.

Photographic proof to follow in future posts.

Eat local week

Cracked up when I saw Alaska Grown's farmer "ad": "Local farmer seeks tasty relationship."



The farmer in their ad looks a heck of a lot like a miner to me, but the idea is pretty dang cool. There is a concerted effort across the state to get people to eat locally. It's great. Alaska Grown doesn't list the Ester market on their farmers market page, though.

Planting day, gazeboed, and sunny sunny summer

WHEEEEEE! Oh, man, it is sunny and warm and feels GREAT! I just LOVE this time of year: not too many bugs, the butterflies are out (saw my first one, an Alaska blue, down by the post office a few days ago--here's another nice photo), no smoke, hardly any rain, very few tourists, and it's not too hot! Well, the frost the other night was a bit chilly, but still!

A whole bunch of people turned up (late, of course, most of them--no need to hurry) for planting flowers around the village on Sunday. (This was the first EMCE event.) Mayor Hannah and Monique went off to Plant Kingdom to buy a bunch of flowers for the Eagle and the village, so at first it was just me and my nasturtiums and sunflowers and Scott Allen. Then Kate showed up, and then Maggie, and then the ball got rolling. Richard Gumm brought a bunch of vegetable-rated municipal compost. George Gianakopoulos showed up in straw hat and with a humongous amount of nasturtiums, marigolds, lettuces, sunflowers, and mysterious mixed whatnots from Calypso Farm, donated to the village! Dwight Deely brought petunias. Then Hannah and Monique came back with a whole flat of lobelias and some other goodies. (I took a bunch of photos, but now of course I can't find my camera so you'll all have to wait until later to see the festivities.)

So we were mixing dirt and sand and compost and peat and putting it in buckets and pots and old oil drums and boxes and who knows whatall and then planting a dizzying selection of flowering greeneries. Hannah and I planted stuff in the buckets around the old post office/library annex (that's officially the Old Post Office Espresso Library Annex, or OPOELA for those of you who like acronyms). Scott drove Kate and I down Village Road, stopping every twenty feet or so so that we could unload yet another basket or bucket and place it by the roadside. It was a blast, and I forgot clean about going over to Molly's at 3 to review the paperwork for our ECA nonprofit status. I was planting until after 6 pm!

Kate and I went down to the park and planted a couple of the planters. One of them we stuffed full of sunflowers. Somebody, Ruth, I think, had prepared the soil (but there was no sign of the perennials we'd planted last year, so they may have gotten dug up by accident, alas). She'd planted a park planter before the big frost, but everything looked pretty good, actually.

We brought eight hanging baskets down to the gazebo to hang up once we get hooks (and the rafters have been varnished). The old partially collapsed 55-gallon oil drum that was there and filling up with leaves we cleaned up a bit and filled up with dirt, and planted with a selection of mystery plants. Plus a nasturtium. Or two.

Hans has been working like mad on the gazebo, and now all the copper is on the cupola and the edge of roof, and a lot of the siding has been given its first coat of stain (I did a bunch of it yesterday afternoon and will finish it up tonight). He finished up the bracing yesterday (it looks so COOL!) and is going to work on the rough sanding tonight. Kate gave him some iced tea from the planting day; we drank some that day and then took the rest home. I took home the leftover pots and flats and a few flowers that didn't get planted, and then yesterday planted the remainder. Hannah and I brought the last few pots over to the OPOELA.

And I finally planted my garden, such as it is, with some of the leftover lettuce starts. My sunflowers and nasturtiums are finally coming up--I've got flats and flats of them. I'm going to be in real trouble once they start needing permanent homes. The squash seeds I saved from last year, French ronde de Nice that I got originally from Seeds of Change, FINALLY started to sprout. I was afraid that they'd maybe not ripened enough and were infertile, but nope, it looks like I'm going to be zucchiniing the neighborhood later this summer...

Gazebo work continues

Hans has been working hard on the gazebo. Part of the sticking point now is copper flashing for the cupola (he got part of it covered last night but ran out--looks pretty cool! more pictures to come) and sanding the posts. It's a slow slog. Here's where the gazebo construction was as of May 22, with the tar paper laid on:



and the view of the ceiling from underneath (still not prettied up):



Here's a view of the Ester Post Office from the side of the gazebo:



At the moment, Hans isn't sure that he wants to enclose the gazebo; it may be nicer to keep it open and airy. People have been talking about the gazebo as an Ester Visitor's Center, which sort of gives me the heebie-jeebies. Its main function is as, well, a gazebo, affiliated with the Ester library. So it's going to have a bulletin board, bookshelves, brochure racks, benches, flower pots, and--who knows--the occasional wedding or reading group or music practice in it. It'll probably serve as a waiting spot for people catching buses or rides with friends. Big gazebos can handle bands and receptions, little gazebos can handle a few people or quiet events.

It's pretty exciting to see the progress. I called up Larry and Gail Flodin, who own the property it sits on, to let them know that actual progress on the construction was indeed progressing.

Gazebo supplies

Hans has been getting a LOT of people stopping and commenting on the gazebo construction. The day before yesterday he started running out of materials. Eric Glos and Don Cameron saved the day with 2 x 4s and plywood, and yesterday Matt Reckard pitched in with some tar paper. Bill Akiss threw in some cash for the cause, and Joe Geiss donated the money for the roofing material.

If you want to help, we still need logs peeled and sanded, and varnish or stain for the final finishing. We'll also be creating a cork board for it, and that will take a lot of gluing (we've got the corks!).

Lots of projects are starting up around the village today. The park cleanup party is today (always a big task), too!

Gazebo builder

One of the EMCE projects coincides with the Ester library's workplan: publicizing Ester biz requires a place to come for info. The gazebo was planned as a sort of info center where we could have racks for local artists and businesspeople to put their flyers and cards, and a bulletin board to announce events (including political ones, since those can't be put up in the post office). But before that, the gazebo has to be built. Hans took off a week in between jobs to finish it up. (He could have gone to work right away, but wanted to get this done first.)

Here he is, making goofy faces for the camera (you should have seen him before I pointed out this was for the website and so could he please play it straight (or somewhat straight, anyway).

Ester Ministry of Community Enterprise

or EMCE. This is a group of business owners that have been getting together this last week in response to the worrying question, "What'll we do to attract business now that the Ester Gold Camp has closed?" Well, after several of the People's Republic's biz owners mulled it over for a bit, Monique Musick of Photosynthesis took the initiative to call a meeting at Hartung Hall last Sunday. We hung out on the porch and brainstormed on several fronts for a while, with a few items being discussed (details in the upcoming May Ester Republic). Among these were:

• the library and the gazebo (more on that in the next post) as points of information for the tourons or others interested in visiting Ester businesses

• a website for Ester businesses (domain reserved by yours truly, site already in preparation, just needs the host to ready the nameserver for it and me to upload the pages)

• forming a sort of Ester "Chamber of Commerce"

• a craft/farmer's market (we settled on the Third Thursday of the month, starting June 19, 4 to 8 pm in the village square)

• a walking map of Ester points of interest and/or commerce

So then we met again last night (I'd forgotten about it until Nancy Burnham reminded me) at the Eagle, and did another bit of brainstorming, coming up with the name above (lots of other names were tried, some completely boring, some completely silly) and a mission statement. Maggie Billington brought a list of points of interest throughout Ester (historical, business, recreational, etc.) Monique will be making a little presentation to the ECA about the EMCE this Sunday (4 o'clock at the hall, folks), and brought some info on forming a nonprofit.

David Stone suggested having an old/antique car day, perhaps at the first Third Thursday market. This is done every year on opening day at the Ester Gold Camp, so the tradition is already established. It'll just be a bit delayed this year, and in the Golden Eagle parking lot instead of the Gold Camp parking lot.