A6
THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, JUNE 8, 2021
New Washington apple gains
momentum, faces challenges
By SIERRA DAWN
McCLAIN
Capital Press
Homeless: ‘It’s a
soul-killing feeling’
Continued from Page A1
WENATCHEE, Wash.
— Cosmic Crisp apple
growers hope the third
time’s the charm.
Cosmic Crisp, Wash-
ington’s new state apple,
achieved celebrity status its
fi rst year on the market, in
2019. Its sophomore year,
2020, was bumpy — and
for many growers, disap-
pointing. Now, as the indus-
try looks toward the third
year, optimism is on the
rise, but challenges remain.
From the start, Cosmic
Crisp was a big gamble: 22
years of breeding and devel-
opment by Washington
State University, $500 mil-
lion spent by growers plant-
ing 13 million trees.
So, when freight-on-
board prices plunged from
$71.86 per 40-pound box
in December to $43.83 per
box in February, the 39%
drop led many growers to
panic.
“I’ve been super disap-
pointed with where pricing
was this year,” said Andy
Handley, a grower in east
Wenatchee.
Industry leaders say the
2020-21 season was rough
for several reasons.
Historically, the indus-
try’s No. 1 promotional tool
for new varieties has been
in-store sampling.
“With COVID, sampling
fell apart,” said Rebecca
Lyons, Washington Apple
Commission’s international
marketing director.
Growers say the presi-
dential election, racial ten-
sions, supply chain disrup-
tions, canceled trade shows
and overwhelmed retail-
ers trying to keep staples
in stock also hurt sales last
year.
But experts say Cosmic
Crisp appears to be turning
the corner this spring.
In March, the indus-
Sierra Dawn McClain/Capital Press
Cosmic Crisp boxes at McDougall & Sons Inc.
try was shipping about
40,000 boxes weekly. Now,
Tim Kovis, spokesman for
Washington State Tree Fruit
Association, estimates the
industry ships 48,000 boxes
weekly. That’s good prog-
ress, though still short of
the ideal 80,000-boxes-per-
week mark.
“Movement has been
steady for the past several
weeks,” said Jill Burbery,
project manager for Pro-
prietary Variety Manage-
ment, a Yakima company
on contract with Wash-
ington State to manage
commercialization.
Burbery said she expects
the remaining 174,000
boxes in storage will run out
by mid-June. March 1, there
had been 892,000 boxes in
storage.
Some growers have
already sold out.
“We had great interest,”
said West Mathison, pres-
ident and CEO of Stemilt
Growers. “We ran out. I
wish we had more.”
But prices have remained
about static.
Freight-on-board prices
are about the same as in
February, said Brian Focht,
manager of the Washington
Apple Growers Marketing
Association. And the aver-
age national retail price for
Cosmic Crisp, according to
Nielsen data, was $2.47 in
April and $2.46 in May.
Growers are looking to
this coming season with
both boosted optimism and
concerned realism.
They’re
optimistic
because retailers are less
distracted, some stores
plan to resume taste tests,
the industry will expand
in in Canada, and as trees
mature, fruit quality will
become consistent.
Expected
challenges
include continued COVID
protocols, choosing ideal
harvest and market release
dates and dealing with wax
problems in the warehouse
because the variety’s skin is
naturally waxy.
“There’s no way around
the learning curve,” said
Kate Evans, Washington
State apple breeder.
Perhaps the biggest
challenge — or opportu-
nity, depending on who
you ask — will be getting
demand to match the big-
gest-ever crop. 2019’s crop
was 360,000 boxes. That
jumped to 1.6 million boxes
in 2020. 2021’s crop will
likely be 4.99 million boxes.
“Next year will be the
real interesting year with the
volume that’s coming on,”
Focht said. “We’ll need to
generate some momentum
from the start.”
Pierce: ‘Once you’ve sung
together, you’re family’
Continued from Page A1
delighting in being a student
again.
Now, with students back
in school buildings for lim-
ited hours, he is leading far
fewer students than normal
through songs in the gym, a
place where they can spread
out and safely sing together.
Astoria High School is
under renovation , but Pierce
will never teach students in
the brand new choir room
being built.
These have been among
the strangest months of
Pierce’s teaching career, and
he’s not leaving on the note
he’d prefer.
“I really think the closure
I want is to be able to stand
on that stage with my kids
behind me, raise my hands
and say, ‘Thank you very
much,’” Pierce said. “And I
won’t get that.”
His students haven’t per-
formed on any stage since
December 2019. They had
a spring concert planned in
2020, but schools — and
everything else, it seemed
— shut down abruptly right
before the event. With stu-
dents back in school build-
ings for a limited amount of
time this spring, no one is
singing at their full strength
anymore. T hey’re out of
that kind of practice.
Schools are expected to
return to more normal oper-
ations in September. One
of the challenges for Pierce
will be to work with his
Bend students to sing fully
without fear and hesitation.
To remind them: Remember
how much we loved doing
this?
Pierce was introduced to
choirs and music in the sixth
grade. His father had died
before he’d entered the fi fth
grade and music and musi-
cal performance became
a way to process diffi cult,
heavy emotions — or to
escape them for a while.
For Pierce, the voice
is intensely personal. Any
mistakes or mishaps can’t
be blamed on an instru-
ment’s mechanical failure
or poor tuning. It’s just you.
And this personal experi-
ence translates beyond the
singer. It weaves through a
choir. It stretches out until
an audience gets a hint of it,
too.
“You can meet and have
a meal and part as friends,”
Pierce said, trying to explain
it. “But once you’ve sung
together, you’re family.”
At a City Council goal-set-
ting session in January, home-
lessness, addiction and men-
tal health issues were listed
among the city’s top priorities.
In the months since, the topic
has intensifi ed in urgency.
Homelessness “will never,
ever go away completely,”
said City Councilor Tita
Montero, an organizer of the
forum. “But there’s a way we
can make things better for
everybody.”
Fears of Seaside turn-
ing into Portland — with its
infl ux of homeless and pub-
lic safety concerns — moti-
vated Tom Schwenzer, a res-
ident, to look to the courts for
greater enforcement. “I can’t
say I walked up here with
an absolute solution, but I’m
telling you if I look the other
way, if you’ve decided that
you can’t do something about
it it’s going to bring us to the
point that Portland is — and
it’s scary, ” he said.
Martin
LeTourneau,
the founder of Love on the
Streets, a volunteer group
to help the homeless, called
for permanent housing, shel-
ters and camp areas . “Keep-
ing them moving isn’t going
to make them go away unless
they have someplace to go
to,” he said. “What we do
need is for the city of Seaside
to have a vision that we can
build on and that we can work
toward supporting.”
R.J. Marx/The Astorian
Seaside City Councilor Tita Montero and Mayor Jay Barber co-
hosted a homeless forum on Thursday at the Seaside Civic and
Convention Center.
Being shooed around
doesn’t change things. Rather,
it makes it more diffi cult for
people to get off the streets,
Seamus McVey said. “Having
somewhere to go would defi -
nitely make things a lot eas-
ier, ” he said.
Pamela Cromwell, a resi-
dent, described a period in her
own life when she was living
in her car.
“The depression is unbe-
lievable, the sense of displace-
ment is debilitating,” Crom-
well , now a business owner,
said. “If I didn’t have the lim-
ited support that I did have, I
could easily have seen giving
up. You’ll never be part of that
beautifulness: the people who
own the beautiful homes in
Seaside. The people who have
the magnifi cent businesses in
Seaside. You’ll never be part
of that. You’ll never be wel-
comed into that. Because you
don’t have an address,” she
said.
“And you don’t have a
place to make food for your-
self and you don’t have a
place to simply be, you have
no right to just be anywhere,
everywhere that you go. You
have no right to be there. And
it’s a soul-killing feeling.”
Detective William Barnes
said he sought a focus on the
local population. “I would
like to see some resources to
help these people before they
become homeless,” he said. “I
don’t know how many times
you see someone in the spi-
ral. We have to wait until we
hit that rock bottom before the
resources kick in. And to me,
that doesn’t make any sense.”
Montero called for a
regional approach. “We need
to be working with the other
towns,” she said. “We need to
shine more light on the South
County and on Seaside. We
need to be working toward
the county commission, pay-
ing more attention to home-
lessness. We want to keep the
communication and the con-
versation going. If you don’t
keep it going, it just dies.”
Birth center: ‘Continuity of care’
Continued from Page A1
For the birth center, it is
important to be able to off er
“continuity of care.”
“That means being able
to take care of the families
who come to us, even after
their babies are born,” stated
an email sent to people in the
community last week.
Nygaard believes the
merger and addition of Ste-
phenson will provide much-
needed options for parents
seeking medical care for their
children. In Astoria, Colum-
bia Memorial Hospital pro-
vides a lot of the options for
pediatric care, she said.
“Which is great,” she said,
“but I think we’re getting to
a point in our community
where we have more peo-
ple who need physicians than
doctor slots available.”
Nygaard is one of a hand-
ful of naturopathic doctors
practicing in the area — a
small number compared to
the many available in Port-
land, she noted.
For Nygaard, the merger
with the birth center will mean
a chance to spend more time
with patients and the ability to
take on new patients.
Nygaard, who has had
a practice in Astoria for six
years and another in Portland
for 10 years , said she was
beginning to have to choose
between providing patient
care and running the business
Hailey Hoff man/The Astorian
The Astoria Birth Center opened last summer.
side of things.
“I was having to turn
patients away who wanted to
see me, just because of time,”
she said.
The coronavirus pandemic
exacerbated the situation.
With two young children of
her own and school and day
care closures, Nygaard had to
condense her practice hours
and rely more heavily on
telemedicine. She was able
to take on new babies and
children as patients, but had
to close her practice to new
adult patients for a while.
Now, with b irth c enter tak-
ing on administrative respon-
sibilities and the additional
options for patients with Ste-
phenson, Nygaard said she
is excited to be able to spend
more time with patients and
see more children.
The b irth c enter is housed
in a building at the base of
14th Street off Marine Drive.
Nygaard’s practice will
remain in its current location
nearby on 15th Street and
Commercial Street. Stephen-
son will practice out of extra
rooms available at the birth
center. Family medical ser-
vices are set to begin July 1
with Stephenson.
Despite the growth, the
birth center is not interested
in becoming a hospital, Orton
said.
“It was always intended
to be a small clinic, a family
clinic,” she said.
“From the very beginning
the questions were: Does this
benefi t women? Does this
benefi t the community? And
does it benefi t families?” she
explained. “If the answer to
those things is ‘yes,’ then I’ll
fi nd a way to do it.”
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