DUNGENESS – People were ready, hungry and willing.
They breakfasted on farm-fresh eggs, ham and homemade bread, wrote checks and shelled out bills – all in hopes of preserving what’s left of Clallam County’s farms.
Friends of the Fields, a nonprofit whose mission is saving agricultural ventures, has collected nearly the amount it needs to purchase the development rights to the Dungeness Valley Creamery, where 60 Jersey cows graze on 38 acres.
Friends will not use those rights. Instead it will establish a conservation easement to keep the creamery in milk cows forever.
The money came from Friends’ annual fundraising breakfast on Feb. 25 at the Sequim Prairie Grange and from the nonprofit group’s post office box before and since that event.
“A $1,000 donation just came in out of nowhere,” Friends founder Bob Caldwell said Wednesday.
And on the day of the breakfast, about $9,000 came into the donation basket.
That stack of cash and checks was partly from meal-ticket sales.
But then there were straight donations, from $10 to $3,000.
And more flowed from the drawing for six months of desserts prepared by Eleanor McIntire of Sequim.
McIntire and Richard Schwartz, another local Friends supporter, went beyond dessert, with a challenge to other donors.
They put up $5,000 and promised to match others’ gifts to Friends of the Fields, dollar for dollar, up to $5,000.
All of the above came in, Caldwell said.
Now Friends can turn to the state Interagency Committee for Outdoor Recreation, which makes matching farmland-preservation grants of up to $350,000.
“We’re essentially there to match the grant,” said Jim Aldrich, Friends’ president.
The next steps, Aldrich said, are to have the Dungeness Valley Creamery appraised and resubmit the grant application to the Interagency Committee.
