10 Years Ago 1997

The horse and rider take off with a start. While still in motion, the rider hurls her body off of the horse and quickly binds the struggling animal. Is this a scene from on old western movie? No, its the skillfulness that is sending Shauna Flowers, a soon-to-be senior at Arlington High School, to the National High School Rodeo Association competition. Flowers placed in the top four in her division at the state competition in Pasco, where she tied a goat in 8.5 seconds. In that time, she rode the length of the arena, jumped off while the horse was sill running and bound a goats legs. I can do it faster than some people can tie their shoes, she laughed. While rodeoing is popular on the east side of the state, it may be foreign to many western Washington residents, Only five of the 130 national qualifiers came from the west side of the state. Over there (eastern Washington) its really popular and they have teams in their high schools, she explained. With no high school team in the area, rodeoing has been difficult for Flowers. Its not like other sports. You do your own practices. Its a big investment, she said. When she qualified for nationals, Flowers became part of the Washington state team. About 1,500 high school students will be competing at nationals. Each competitor is required to pay for his or her own travel, lodging, meals and other expenses; a total that comes to about $2,000 for the week. The North County Roping Association and Las Margaritas helped defer the cost for Flowers. One of the reasons Im doing this is that you can get really good scholarships, explained Flowers. The top 15 places will receive scholarships of up to $4,000. According to Flowers, it is not unusual for colleges to offer full rides to those who have good showings. The national champion can basically go to any school they want, she added. So what does it take to be a national competitor? Practice, practice and more practice, according to Flowers. You have to exercise your horse all the time, she said. If you dont practice, you dont win.
25 Years Ago 1982

The last couple of weeks have seen a flurry of activity at the Stan Faber Dairy Farm on Highway 530. The family home earned a coat of new paint, a brand new garage sprang up in minimum time and every road path and barn aisle has been graded and swept to within an inch of perfection. Thousands of sightseers, friends and fellow dairymen will descend Saturday on the Faber Farm to celebrate the Snohomish County Dairy Family Open House, sponsored by the county Dairymens Federation. Other organizations involved in the annual event are the Washington Dairy Products Commission, the county Extension Service and Washington State Diary Women. Starting with 23 cows on rented land in Skagit County, their farming business has grown to a herd of 285 milking Holsteins and another 250 young stock. The Fabers have owned their 130-acre Stillaguamish Valley farm for 18 years. Along the way, the family grew to include four sons. The eldest, Loren and Kevin, work on the farm, the former has the responsibility for crop production and machinery management and the latter has herdsmanship responsibilities. Son Larry is a junior at the University of Puget Sound and the youngest is a seventh-grader at Mount Vernon Christian School. Stan Faber grew up on his fathers farm in Whidbey Island. When the Navy base expanded and bought out that farm, the family moved to the mainland and bought Conway Feed. Stans brother, Charlie, currently owns the Feed business. Grace Hevsinkveld Faber is originally from Lynden. The Fabers have been members of the Dairy Herd Improvement Assn. for 27 years. A well-managed dairy they have been in the DHIA 600 Club for nine out of the last 10 years. The Faber Farm is located about one and a quarter miles east of Island Crossing on Hwy. 530.

50 Years Ago 1957

Nelvin Larson took home the prize again when his name was drawn from 26 entries correctly identifying last weeks Mystery Farm as the John Groendyk dairy, located just north of Arlington on the Bryant road. The second farm appearing in the photo was the Sprague farm, now the home of Mrs. Maud Blair, sister of the late Mac Sprague a well-known dairyman. The Sprague farm is now being rented to Mr. Groendyk. Mrs. Blair has a son, Tom, who is employed with the PUD at Monroe and a grandson Jim, who is with the telephone company in Everett. Another grandson, Royal, operates a logging truck while a third, Terry, is attending Monroe high school and planning for college later on. Mr. Blair was a patrolman for City Light at Hazel for 18 years. He is now deceased. The Groendyk and Sprague farm buildings are located side by side on a spur of land high enough to protect from seasonal floods. Mac Sprague and his father built their house and barn in 1914, while John Groendyk completed his four-bedroom house, barn and silo in a single year, with good assistance from neighboring kin. Later a machine shed was added. As a youngster, Mr. Groendyk did his share of his of choker-setting in the Cavanaugh Camp near Cicero and in the summers of 1923 – 1928, he worked for the forest service. There was a lot of packing and trail work and the lasting achievement was the construction by himself and Frank Bennis of the Mt. Higgins lookout building, the materials for which they packed in by horse and mule. He picked the ill-fated year of 1929 to buy a farm and launch into the diary business. Although the great depression took its toll. He survived falling milk prices and 16 years later sold out, with intentions of taking it easy. Six months of resting was plenty. The cows began to look pretty good to him again, so it was back to the diary business, first on the Rueben Sloman place, then his own present home. Mr. Groendyk is milking about 30 head of Guernseys and Jerseys now on 68 acres. He noted the constant trend towards mechanization and mass production on the diaries today. Machinery is a must, and with the demand, the prices have spiraled upwards, more than doubling pre-war prices. So, as in many modern-day businesses, life has taken on a faster tempo.