September 29, 2021

 The month is nearly gone.  Remember the rhyme, "30 days hath September, April, June....." So here we are tomorrow wraps up the month.

Summer is family time in our village. Lin and Sharla McKay have seen River and Hunter Morgan of Centerville, UT, on several weekends. Josh and Sarah Newby with Gage, Nash and Kace, came up from Spanish Fork, UT. Payton and Judith Newby and their four, Xander, Declan, Adalind and Ryland of Springville, UT, matched visits on a weekend or two so the cousins could get together and enjoy family camping, and rides on motorcycle and 4-wheelers.

Davis Collins, son of Jay and Kristin Collins of Lakeview, OR, is staying at his grandparents’ home in Mink Creek, Bob and Claudia Erickson. He graduated from BYU/Idaho in Rexburg, loved the Idaho lifestyle, and is now hoping to send down some roots of his own in this area.

JoAnn and Drew Ford celebrated their 50th Wedding Anniversary this summer in July, having missed the celebration last year due to the COVID restrictions. Nearly all of their five children, with spouses and grandchildren were able to come to Mink Creek for this occasion. The states of Iowa, Utah, and Iowa were well represented. Such fun and reconnecting on all levels took place, particularly with the cousins.

With the recent passing of Kent Egley, all of the Egley family have been home, gathering for the funeral and support of Kent and ReNae’s family. Kent has three brothers: Carl and Carol Egley now from Ulysses, KS, still farming but with huge fields on flat ground after being raised on the Mink Creek mountain slopes. Larry and Bunny Egley from West Glacier, MT, where they have a travelers’ resort near Glacier Park, Lynn and Shelley Egley from Benson, UT, just across the Idaho border. These, plus children and grandchildren in each family, coming from many directions, gave support in this trying time.

News of the death of Sandra Wylie was reported this week by her daughter, Mona. Sandy is the daughter of Marie Aupperlee and came from Texas to visit her mother here in Mink Creek. After Marie’s passing Sandy lived here for several years. A few years ago she moved to Rock Springs, WY, to be closer Mona and her family. Sandy suffered from health issues over this time and recently was dealing with an infection, then COVID-19 and pneumonia developed. She passed away on Sept. 22, 2021, after 10 days of hospitalization.

It is time to be homesick if you have Mink Creek in your family tree somewhere. This is a beautiful fall and each day it seems to get a bit better. The colors, oh my, the colors—the dark of our evergreens on the mountainsides just accents the reds of the maples as the trees have turned. Just turn on your memories of a vibrant fall season and imagine being home. The water sources however are at a small trickle as they make their way down to the main stream, our namesake.

Sept 22, 2021, First day of Autumn

 

Sherrie Corbett and Candy Longhurst are enjoying the fall weather while hiking various trails. Not all of them are nearby. Recently they were hiking on mountains in Colorado. This one was near Manitou Springs, with beautiful scenery that goes along with many of our nation’s National Forests.

The Christensen girls, Cassidy, Greenlee and Jyllian, have been exhibiting their equestrian skills at the Eastern Idaho State Fair. Cassidy and Greenlee came home with 1^st place ribbons for Walking and Trotting, and Western Pleasure in their age divisions. Jyllian placed 4^th in her age division of Western Pleasure. These young horsewomen are the daughters of Lacey and Kerry Christensen

George Garr, turned 90 years old on the 27^th of August. He and his wife, Bobbi had a nice birthday party at their son John’s home. About 40 friends and relatives celebrated with them. George reported there was great food and lots of dancing. The Garrs live in Lakewood, CA, and have had a home in Mink Creek for many years.

Eldon and Danita Wilcox have a new grandchild. MaKenzie and Tyson Gunter of Arimo, ID, brought a new little girl, Jillian Rae Gunter, into the world on September 9, 2021 in Pocatello. This little one has a fan club already with her ‘big’ brother and sister.

We have had some cloudbursts of rain lately, short in length but furious while it lasted. The winds lashing, trees whipping about like Harry Potter’s Whomping Willow. Occasionally there are tree limbs ripped off in the process, along with scattered pine cones and evacuated bird nests.

When the LoToJa bike riders made their annual way through our community last weekend some of the bike riders got a thorough dousing during a heavy rain storm. Rain jackets covered up their tag numbers, they had water streaming down themselves and the bikes, but the sogginess didn’t seem to deter these determined individuals much. A person couldn’t help but wonder what weather might they find, north up the canyon, when they got to Copenhagen at the top, or to Emigration.

It is harvest time for the potato growers around here. Gem Valley is a busy place right now, full of trucks and equipment in their fields. We took a beautiful drive over Maple Grove Road with the leaves changing colors. The scenery was great, but the road was lots of bumps and jiggles.

With a couple of freezing night temperatures we have to agree with the calendar that Fall is officially here.

September 15, 2021

 

The End of Summer event for the Mink Creek community was a night themed around cowboys and the agricultural way of life. It took place at the Mink Creek Ballpark, there were plenty of western hats, cowboy boots and shirts with a western cut in evidence. Corrine Larsen had decorated the stage area with Cowboy posters, hay bales and saddles. Items on the menu were Tri-tip beef and chicken, Dutch-oven potatoes and BBQ beans, rolls, with a bit of rice pilaf if desired. Choice of beverages were lemonade, chokecherry lemonade and Mink Creek water. Traditional ice cream sandwiches were dessert. The reported fixing committee was Clare Christensen, Stuart Ostler, Jody Rasmussen and Terrie McKay, with the rolls from an outside source, Gerry Crookston of Preston.

After the feast the program commenced featuring Johnny Iverson with some cowboy poetry, then Billy Wall of Morgan, UT, with guitar and western songs and the main event being Kristine Lloyd, a multi-talented young lady—guitar, songs, gun spinning, roping exhibition and some bullwhip cracking. Her background was a mix of Bear Lake country and Heber Valley, UT, and she related well to her audience of about a hundred people.

The Young Women enjoyed an old-fashioned tea-party at the home of Claudia and Bob Erickson. The objective was to become acquainted with Claudia’s vintage hat collection as part of the ‘way things were, back when,’ and after trying on a few chapeaus, each chose one to wear while partaking of a plate of cucumber sandwiches, English scones and a fresh fruit salad, sipping from dainty crystal cups filled with a fruit punch. Emma Rasmussen had chosen this occasion and her mother, April Rasmussen, and leaders Jody Rasmussen and Amy Baldwin provided the refreshments.

Robert and Elizabeth Hawkes are announcing the birth of a grandson. He made his entry into this world on August 28. He is the first son of Lauryn and Zach Robb, of Gooding, ID, and is named Owen Levi Robb.

Members of the Jimmie and Anna Beth Olson family gathered in Meridian, ID, to enjoy remarks by their grandson, Charles James Peterson, the son of Charles and Dana Olson Peterson. C.J. will shortly be leaving Idaho to serve a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in North Carolina.

It has been a somber week with another funeral, this time for Kent Egley, a gentleman much esteemed throughout this corner of our state. The enemy was pancreatic cancer. More will be said in a column to come, but his passing is so on all of our minds that I could not postpone mentioning it is this post. It was a beautiful service, tears and all.

The community survived another LoToJa bike race. As the riders rode through this year it was cold, with some cross winds and rain. I am always amazed at their dedication to complete this challenge, most of them riding simply to beat their own time record from a previous performance.

September 7, 2021

 

 Hope you had a good Labor Day weekend. This is another of those holiday weekends when the publisher of The Preston Citizen (and other small town papers in our corner of the world) decides not to have a weekly edition. So, those of you who are blog readers won’t get the usual recounting of people’s activities by names, places.

It is the time for the last picking of  late green beans, for making pickles, including pickled beets, some even trying pickled eggs. Raccoons are invading the corn patches in our gardens so residents are trying to beat the critters to the ears. If one has strawberries or raspberries that pick up again in the fall, that is one more thing to add to the list of harvest activities. Not quite time for winter apples, but the late summer ones are falling from the branches.  Just made a tasty apple cake tonight with some of my Wealthy apples, an old tree that has been on our farm longer than I have, and that is a long time.  

Rain showers are unpredictable and seem likely to descend when the last crop of alfalfa has been mowed and is waiting to dry in the windrow. This third crop has been looking promising in irrigated fields, but to get it all the way from growth into the bale and barn is always a challenge. The fall monsoon weather moves in just at the peak of readiness with the hay.  The beautiful heads of fall grains are being swept off the straw with the blades of the combines, loaded  to trucks from the full bins and hauled to storage, either a farm silo or the mill down in town.  It is a good time of year.  Unless the machinery breads down and frustration rears its ugly head. 

For the readers who live some distance away, yes, our skies are still filled with the smoke from the California fires. Some days it is more dense than others and we are grateful for shifts in weather that clear the smoke out even for just a day. Eyes and lungs are all feeling the effects of the smoky air.