‘Blessed to be in this community’: Neighbors help each other dig out of snow

CHIMACUM — Recent snowstorms seemed to bring out the best of people in Jefferson County, who offered helping hands to their neighbors and colleagues.

This was evident in Chimacum where a snow plow was an essential tool the past few days.

Rob Story, co-manager of the Chimacum Corner Farmstand, said he was looking at a parking lot and driveway Sunday that was completely unusable for his customers and employees. There was a lot of snow and no way to get it moved.

“We are blessed to be in this community,” Story said. “Roger Short of Short’s Family Farm and Keith Kistler from Finnriver Farm stepped up to help us.

“When we were snowed in, I called Doyle Yancey of Egg & I Fuschia and Egg & I Pork and he said to call Roger because he usually does the gas station parking lot. I called Roger and he said he’d come by.

“And then Keith showed up with him. They were out in the parking lot having a blast and they cleared us all out. We took them sandwiches and cookies.”

Story said this community “coming together effort” is one of the things that makes Chimacum so special for him.

“When there are these unique events that happen, people just rally. They don’t even think about it anymore. This is how it happens. We were closed for two days Saturday and Sunday. We opened Monday and we’ve been cleaning up the slop in the parking lot. We couldn’t get produce deliveries. We had 16 inches of snow in the lot.

“Roger had 30 inches of snow down at their farm, and they had calves being born. They were belly-deep in snow. They are fine and resilient.”

Story said the Chimacum Corner Farmstand will be open regular hours today — from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. — unless some major event shuts it down.

“We’ll go a day at a time,” he said.

At the Jefferson County Library in Port Hadlock, the parking lot was lost in snow and Director Tamara Meridith said that Short came by to plow the lot for them gratis, too.

“The challenge for us and the main reason we’ve been closed is that the parking lot had about 10 inches of snow so we had to wait for it to be plowed and be made safe,” Meridith said.

“Another concern was making sure people could get to the ballot box. We noticed people tried to get in to cast their ballots by the tire tracks and foot prints.”

“He came through on Sunday and then with the weather Monday, we decided to stay closed. We have staff from Kitsap County, Sequim and Quilcene and we have roads that were a bit challenging. Today is the first day we could get all staff here and get safely into the building.”

“We noticed people were signing up for a lot of e-books and e-audio books on line during the storm and placing books on hold,” she said. “Today we pulled all the books for pick-ups later this week.”

Even the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office experienced a bit of weather-related trouble. Sheriff Joe Nole said there was a problem with their radios during the storm.

“Our radios went down on Saturday,” Nole said. “We lost power to the Maynard Peak repeater.

Detective Derek Allen and Double D Electric’s Jason Woods got on our quad with tracks and went in about six miles to look at the generator.

“It took a whole day to get there, get it repaired and get back before nighttime. They walked the last half mile in waist-deep snow.

“We worked with our community partners to transmit on their frequencies during the outage,” Nole said. “We were never out of communication with our deputies in the field, using everything from computers to cell phones.”

At the Port of Port Townsend, ice was the problem.

“We had a boat owner who wanted to get his 50-foot boat in the water Monday,” Pivarnik said. “They were done with their project and were ready to leave.

“We couldn’t get him in because of safety concerns with the travel lift sliding sideways right in front of the haulout pier. It was a solid sheet of ice.

“Our new maintenance manager, Chris Sparks, has developed a relationship with Brian Reid, operations manager for streets and stormwater/sewer for the city of Port Townsend. He called Brian and he was here in 15 minutes with a gravel truck to gravel the area in front of the travel lift. That allowed us to launch the boat. Otherwise we would not have been able to accommodate our customer.

“Everybody was out of salt,” Pivarnik said. “You couldn’t get salt at Arrow. You couldn’t get salt at Henery’s. We were out. We had gone through a whole pallet.

“This was a perfect solution.”

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Jefferson County Editor/Reporter Jeannie McMacken can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at jmcmacken@peninsuladailynews.com.