Reading · Frenchtown’s Substack

It’s been a minute, friends, and you might be wondering, in your expansive free time, if we’d forgotten about you. The answer to that one would be nope — we’ve been working for you! Well, more precisely, we’ve been working really hard on the site and the organization. I’ll send you all another history note soon, but today is all about the many different kinds of work that the board has been doing these last few months.

We welcomed four new members to the board this spring — shout out to Martina Gordon, Mike Manley, Nate Davin, and Jacquie McKevitt! And in case he didn’t make it into a newsletter, Cullan Oliphant, who joined us in the fall. Each brings valuable knowledge and connections to our organization, and we like them to boot. Lucky people we are, to get to work with such excellent humans.

We’re working on revising our bylaws (the main piece was to approve remote attendance for our meetings—hey, Frenchtown, welcome to the 21st century!). We’re also building a handbook. That is a really big lift — we are what’s called an AVO, or all-volunteer organization, and that means that there’s no staff, nobody to supervise and guide — the work of the board IS the work of the foundation. In making a handbook, we’re trying to accomplish three impossible things before breakfast (with apologies to Lewis Carroll), threading the needle between clarity, flexibility, and accountability.

We need to have a reference document for how to do all the things we do.
We need to have an organizational structure that is sufficiently flexible to allow us to match the person to the task and adapt the task to the person.
And we need to hold ourselves accountable to the boundaries of the law, our mission, and to our practice of mutual respect and care. Would you like another cup of coffee to go with all that? :-)

Sometimes I think the reason we never made a handbook before is because we were afraid if we told new members how superhuman we actually are, they’d never want to join. But it turns out that effective boards are attractive to effective people, and that’s the standard we want to meet.

Now for the list, and then the pictures. We’ve tackled a bunch of more physical tasks this spring to maintain and improve the site. Buckle up, people — we’ve been busy.

20 of the 22 shrubs we planted in December are still alive! Hooray! That’s really good. We also got a thick layer of straw down all around these new plants, to hold onto the moisture and suppress (most of) the weeds.
Cullan Oliphant has been working as a paraeducator with the ABLE Program at College Place High School. He’s been taking a small group of students out to the site twice weekly. They clean the signs, pick up trash, and keep the concrete swept under the shelter. Things are looking pretty darn spiff as a result - you should check it out!
Charles Saranto led the charge to get our road graded our road and put down four loads of gravel. Your suspension will thank us, and we thank the Wildhorse Foundation for the support that made these repairs possible.
We hosted a table at Fort Walla Walla Open House on April 4th… and nobody took a picture of it. We spent spare moments at that event talking about history, and making plans for a tabling “kit” to make it easier for board members to set up and host.
We did a board adventure up to Westminster Woods by Meacham, Oregon to cut new teepee poles on April 11. These are possibly the most robust teepee logs -er- poles that I have ever seen, but Westminster Woods is a wonderful facility, it was a great outing, and we’re looking forward to planning some events around stripping the poles and erecting our new teepee this spring. (RIP old teepee)
We received three loads of arborist chips from Mountain View Tree Service, and spread them in the cemetery, at the upper turnaround, and by the shelter. These chips will help keep the public areas of the site comfortable for our visitors (and their dogs), keeping down the weeds and the dust.
We planted a dozen trees on the east boundary, replacements for trees lost from the original planting in 2018. These are habitat trees like chokecherry and elderberry, to make homes for a wider web of bugs and birds and critters at the site. Thanks to CTUIR Native Plant nursery and Christopher Galasso (who prunes a mean fruit tree, FYI!) for the tree stock.
We were able to spread the chips and plant the trees thanks to a crew from Walla Walla University that came out to help us as part of the Tri-College Community Day on April 19th. I tell you, my knuckles were dragging all the way down on the ground at the end of that day, but we got So. Much. Done. with the help of these students.
We (well, Nate, actually) harrowed and seeded the area where the wheat project was planted last year with native grasses. We’re hoping to get that grass established by staying on top of the irrigation it needs at the outset, but the skies are giving us a head start on the project today. Once the grass is established, we will only irrigate it once or twice a year, just to keep our thumb on the scales.