Business owner Scotty MacNeil is seeking participants for a farmers' market in Lucerne. Courtesy photo.

LUCERNE – A Northshore businessman is planning to set up a farmers' market and fair, and is looking for interested vendors and community members.

Scotty MacNeil owns a restaurant at Second Avenue. and Highway 20 across from the lake, which formerly was the site of his Scotty's Cafe.

In 2003, MacNeil purchased the site, which was the town's old lumber yard. He also purchased the older single story home next door and took it down to the studs for a complete remodel in the redevelopment agency's designated Swiss-Bavarian architectural theme.

Real century-old recycled railroad bridge timbers and barn wood were used to achieve as authentic an aesthetic as possible, MacNeil reported.

The old lumberyard grounds were transformed into a lovely lawned al fresco atmosphere complete with rock waterfall to add further ambience.

After a challenging go at trying to run a restaurant and coffee house, MacNeil said he decided he wasn't up for the long hours and stress of running the restaurant, and decided to lease it out to someone else and keep the property.

MacNeil is now looking for a tenant, and is hoping either a restaurant or winery take the place over as a wine-tasting and catering facility.

In the meantime, he and his San Francisco business partner, Alan Chu, have decided to start using the outdoor and indoor spaces as a local farmers' market and fair for vendors of all kinds, from arts and crafts, to antiques, to organic and other home grown veggies, and more. Acoustic musicians also are encouraged to attend to add to the festivities.

MacNeil said the farmers' market would complement the redevelopment agency’s great plans for expanded park facilities across the street. The county has put together the last piece of their redevelopment puzzle in this focus area, the infamous “Blue Monster,” which MacNeil said he hopes will be coming down sooner than later, so the fishing pier and park extension can be completed.

Those interested in participating as a vendor in the farmers' market are encouraged to either call MacNeil at 349-7790, e-mail him at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or visit his Web site, www.scottysolditt.com.

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NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that the Lake County Community Zoning Administrator will consider approving MINOR USE PERMIT 07-05 of Lynn Farmer in accordance with Chapter 21 of the Lake County Zoning Ordinance to allow the construction of a six (6) foot high fence within the front yard setback along Fairway Drive on property located at 9661 Fairway Drive, Kelseyville, and further described as APN# 430-141-05.  The Planner processing this application is Bill Stockton, who may be reached at (707) 263-2221.

      NOTICE IS HEREBY FURTHER GIVEN that the Community Development Director will approve this MINOR USE PERMIT with no public hearing if no written request for a public hearing is submitted to the Planning Division of the Community Development Department by 4:00 P.M., May 21, 2007.  Should a timely request for hearing be filed, a public hearing will be held on June 6, 2007 at 2:00 P.M. in Conference Room C, 3^rd Floor of the Courthouse, 255 N. Forbes St., Lakeport, California.

                              COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT

                               Richard Coel, Director 

                              By: ______________________________________

                                     Danae Bowen, Office Assistant II

SACRAMENTO – Sen. Patricia Wiggins' effort to allow teens to work longer hours in the county's pear sheds during harvest came one step closer to becoming law Monday.

Wiggins' pear shed bill, SB 319, passed the full Senate on Monday, according to Wiggins' spokesman, David Miller.

SB 319 extends an exemption first offered to Lake County by state legislators in 1996, following a rewrite of child labor law.

Specifically, the exemption allows 16- and 17-year-olds residing in Lake County to work up to 10 hours per day and more than 48 hours (but not more than 60 hours) per week during peak harvest season.

Existing law allows the state Labor Commissioner to issue exemptions for agricultural packing plants to employ minors for up to 10 hours per day during peak harvest season when school is not in session, Miller reported. The commissioner is required to inspect the packing plants to ensure safe working conditions prior to issuing exemptions.

SB 319 extends Lake County's exemption until Jan. 1, 2012, Miller reported. Without Wiggins’ bill, the exemption will expire on Jan. 1, 2008.

In light of recent labor shortages, Wiggins said letting teens work longer hours in the pear sheds will help the local pear industry get through the peak harvest season, which also coincides with the peak in tourism.

“It is clear that this exemption has been very successful for Lake County and that, without it, the local agricultural industry is at risk of additional revenue losses in the future,” Wiggins said.

The Lake County branch office of the state Employment Development Department (EDD) described last year’s labor shortage as "extreme," resulting in the loss of $2.5 million in lost pears – a situation that could have been worse had it not been for the minors working in the agricultural packing plants.

The EDD also reported that total summer wages were in excess of $60,000 for the participating minors, allowing students to focus on academic, rather than economic, issues during the school year.

No injuries among the minors or violations among the participating agricultural packing plants have been reported for the past two years, the EDD reported.

SB 319 has had the continued support of numerous local agencies and groups, including the Board of Supervisors, Lake County Sheriff's Office, Lakeport Police, local school districts, the county's administration and probation departments, Scully Packing and Adobe Packing, and California Women for Agriculture.

Wiggins' bill, which has enjoyed bipartisan support, next heads to the Assembly, said Miller.

If approved by the Legislature, the bill would next move to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's desk to be signed into law, Miller reported.

E-mail Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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Following the weekend rains, clouds were still scattered across Lake County skies. Photo by Harold La Bonte.

LAKE COUNTY – After a weekend of much-needed rain, forecasts are for clearer skies over the coming week.

Rain has been scarce across the county this winter, with local streams and Clear Lake itself at lower-than-average levels, according to county officials and water measurements.

Pictured above, a picturesque sky filled with clouds followed the weekend rains, which Harold La Bonte captured on camera.

E-mail Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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LAKE COUNTY – Like the ripening process of its Bartlett pears, optimism is budding in Lake County that Congress will pass long-awaited AgJobs immigration legislation by late this year.

Creating a pilot program to legalize farmworkers who have labored in the U.S. for a minimum two years and implementing a more user-friendly guest program, the new legislation should forestall future recurrences of the nightmare of a year ago when labor shortages caused 10,000 tons of the county's pears to go unharvested.

But the recent issue of the Lake County Farm Bureau newsletter reports that there is also general agreement among those who know best that it is already too late for the new legislation to bear fruit this year.

"If they pass legislation tomorrow, it won't get implemented in time for this year," Toni Scully, a county pear grower and operator of one of the county's last functioning pear packing sheds, is quoted in the Farm Bureau newslettter.

"This year it's not going to happen,” agreed Jack King, manager of National Affairs & Research for the California Farm Bureau, "but I think you're going to be much better prepared come July."

David Weiss, who manages more pear-orchard acreage than anyone in Lake County with his Bella Vista Farming Co. spoke of "a lot of hope coming from Washington" that the AgJobs bill may be finally passed after languishing for what Scully says has been 10 years now – others say five – now that Democrats control both houses of Congress.

Says Weiss, who last year personally saw 1,200 tons of pears go to waste in the orchards he oversees, "We certainly need it this year."

And Congressman Mike Thompson, co-author of the House AgJobs bill, says he is "cautiously optimistic" that they'll get it. Hopefully, by September.

But he adds, "It won't be with just Democratic votes."

"We need to have a number of Republicans vote for it and we need get them by June or July if we expect to get it to the Senate in time for passage in September," Thompson said.

He believes there's a good chance of picking up the necessary Republican votes "because they have some making up to do" for not passing a farmworker immigration bill before.

Scully says the county needs 900 workers for the pear harvest. The brighter side locally is that even if the legislation does not kick in until 2008, she believes the county won't see anything like last year when it was a virtual disaster zone, drawing nationwide media attention.

"You know why?" she said. "Because of the moisture, the crop was very late last year and we had a very big crop. Both of those things bode better for us this year. Nevertheless, we have to keep the pressure on (Congress)," said Scully, who has been the point person between Lake County's pear industry and the Capitol.

"When the time comes, they'll pass the AgJobs bill," she predicts.

The difference between now and failed past efforts to get the bill adopted, Scully added, is her belief of widespread support for it from both sides of the aisle in Congress.

"Republicans, Democrats, liberals, conservatives, the United Farm Workers and the growers are all supportive of this bill," she said, "and the president wants comprehensive reform. It has a lot of sponsors."

Looking back, King said that Lake County suffered a $2.5 million dollar hit and saw 25 percent of its pear crop rot on the ground last year largely because of circumstances.

"Not being in the corridor (for guest farm workers from Mexico) is a problem for Lake County," he said. "The (Sacramento) Delta pear crop was late, so workers were retained there. They were so late, in fact, that instead of going up (Lake County) way they went straight into winegrapes. I don't see that happening again."

In the interim before the AgJobs bill, if passed, kicks in, the short-term solution may be to get legal status for the workers who are here right now, King said.

Absent a short-term solution, Weiss said that growers of other commodities could yet be impacted by the farmworker shortage.

"I think it could be more significant statewide this year," he asserted. "The impact would be much more devastating because it's likely that the crops in California will be of greater magnitude than last year. Last year, most crops were below normal while Lake County had a big crop of pears.

"But if the cherry crop is normal or above normal we'll see shortages in May or June. Then it will matriculate through other crops. My point is that if there's not a labor program in place this year the impacts will be felt more broadly and more severely than last year."

Although there are hangups about giving people in the U.S. illegally citizenship status, as the AgJobs bill would do, Scully believes that greater issues regarding U.S. food production will rule the day.

"As consumers, we want to ensure that our production capabilities stay within this country," she said. "But we know that farmers need immigration reform or else we lose our food production capabilities."

And where does that legislation stand?

"I'll put it like this," says a hopeful Weiss. "It's more promising today than it was a year ago today."

E-mail John Lindblom at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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The vine mealybug is known to damage grapes. Photo by UC Davis.

BIG VALLEY – The Lake County Department of Agriculture is reporting the detection of a serious grape pest, the Vine Mealybug (VMB), in the Big Valley area.

In late December 2006, the California Department of Food and Agriculture diagnostic laboratory sent confirmation to the county's Agriculture Department that six male VMBs had been caught in special traps baited with a chemical attractant specific for mealybug males.

The Lake County Agriculture Department has been running a VMB trapping program in vineyards throughout the county since 2004, and this is the only location where VMB has been found, first in 2004 and now in 2006.

Following the notification of the 2006 find, as in 2004, the grower took the immediate action of applying an insecticide to knock down any population of the mealybug that might be above ground level.

Other areas of the state that are infested with VMB report that this strategy appears to control small, pioneer populations of this insect, affording many years of reduced risk of possible spread.

The find of only six males at the very end of the 2006 trapping season is typical of an incipient infestation, possibly limited in size. It is necessary to locate the affected vines and send females for diagnostic analysis to definitively confirm the presence of an infestation.

To date, no female VMBs have been found in Lake County. The VMB goes below ground during the dormant season and will not re-emerge until early summer.

The Department of Agriculture plans on doing field surveys this year to see if female VMB is present in the vineyard in question.

The Vine Mealybug represents a serious pest of vineyards wherever it has become established. It is very difficult to eradicate once it gains a foothold in a vineyard, as a certain percentage of the population is always below ground.

The VMB reproduces rapidly and produces copious amounts of "honeydew," a sticky, sugar-laden substance that promotes mold and bacterial growth and encourages ants to protect the mealybugs, as they collect some of this substance for food. The mold and bacteria will damage fruit clusters to the point of non-marketability.

As with any mealybug, they feed on the vascular portions of the vine, so they also sap the vigor of the vine over time and can cause a significant reduction in vine health and production.

Recent data also indicates that the VMB can vector a serious grape disease called Fan Leaf Virus, which adds more incentive for growers to detect this pest and guard against its introduction.

Early detection of this pest is critical to reducing its spread and possibly eradicating it at the find site. To that end, the Lake County Department of Agriculture launched a two-pronged detection effort for this pest starting in 2004.

First, the department runs roughly 100 VMB traps countywide in all the major grape growing regions, with traps spread out at University of California recommended trap densities.

The second, and equally important, aspect of the detection program, is the VMB traps that individual growers put in their vineyards. The Department of Agriculture supplies the traps and pheromone free of charge as well as the expertise to scan the old traps for possible VMB.

This grower participation represents a critical link in early detection of this pest, which is well established in Napa and Sonoma counties.

VMB trapping should be a regular part of every vineyard's pest management program, as this pest is "knocking at our door" and will be costly and require more pesticide applications for any vineyard which becomes infested.

If you have any questions or would like more information about the Vine Mealybug, you can visit the web page of the Lake County UCCE office at celake.ucdavis.edu and click on the "Viticulture and Enology" icon, or you can call the Lake County Department of Agriculture at 263-0217.

Chuck Morse is Lake County's deputy agriculture commissioner.

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