We’ve finally had a real snow fall in Nevada County last night and early this morning. We’ve also had the power go out in Cascade Shores, (where I live), last night for about 4 hours.
I measured the amount of snowfall this morning on my back deck after it stopped snowing and it came in at 11 inches. The pictures tell the rest of the story.
Another shot from my deck
The Grass Valley’s Group parent company, French media technology company Thomson has breached its debt covenants and has been in talks throughout most of 2009 with creditors.
Thomson now plans to ask creditors to vote on a restructuring plan on 21 December.
This plan will be based on the terms agreed by many of its senior creditors in July.
Chief executive Frederic Rose said: “After 10 months of constructive discussions with a majority of our creditors, I am satisfied that we have now a clear timetable for closing our debt restructuring. [Safeguard] allows us to provide clarity and certainty to our employees, customers, suppliers and shareholders.”
Safeguard is the French equivalent of Chapter 11 and prevents anyone that is owed money by the company from attempting to call in debts or instigate winding up proceedings.
Thomson said that it has enough available liquidity to be able to continue to operate under normal conditions during this period.
Various parts of its business, including broadcast equipment manufacturer Grass Valley, have been put up for sale in an effort to help with debts.
The Grass Valley sale was expected to have been completed by September but a ‘challenging’ market has delayed the process.
Thomson also owns Technicolor, the parent company of the Soho visual effects facility Moving Picture Company.
Source: Broadcast
November 15, 2009
I took this picture from my deck yesterday looking at Scotts Flat Lake. It has its own eco-system and generates a fog over itself. The nice thing is my house is at 3,700 elevation and the fog usually never gets all the way up here. Wish I could say the same thing about snow sometimes.
A couple of weeks ago I saw a black bear scooting across the road at 8:30 at night. Fortunately, he just crossed the road and we missed each other. Not so fortunately for my son, he was traveling along the same road and hit a black bear a couple of days ago. He doesn’t how badly hurt the bear was, but he has a large dent on the left side of his car. I’ve heard that there has been a high rate of deaths of deers and bears this year from car accidents, be careful, espcially at night.
If you have been reading my blogs, you know that I bought out my franchise and am no longer Realty World, The O’Dell Realty Group. I’ve gone back to O’Dell Realty. It sounds simple, but I’ve had to order new signs, inform the Department of Real Estate, change checking accounts and it goes on. This coming week everything will be in order and I’m back to your local home town realty.
In other news, California Land Title Company, in business in Nevada County for thirty eight years closed its doors Friday. The recession has affected all of the title companies, downsizing their offices and the number of employees.
Coming home late from the office the other night, late enough that it was pitch dark, I saw a black bear crossing Banner Mountain Quaker road. Fortunately, I was driving slowly so I did not hit the bear and I got a good look at him. What a beautiful animal, big, with huge feet. From the back, other than its feet, it looked like a giant long haired black dog.
Black bears are fairly common in Nevada County and every once in a while they get a little ornery. One of my neighbors had his garbage can pilfered several times, dumping garbage all over the road. So he thought well, I’ll just strap the cover down and the bear will not be able to get into the garbage can. The next morning, he found his garbage can down the side of the mountain with big claw marks on the can. The solution was to put the garbage out first thing in the morning instead of the night before garbage was to be picked up.
The American Black Bears are from 5-6 feet in length and about 2.5 to 3 foot tall. They can stand as high as 7 tall which would be enough to scare anyone away. They can weigh as much 600 pounds for the male and about 400 pounds for the female. There have been reports of a male bear that weighed 880 pounds, but that is unusual.
Most of the time, they are as scared of you as you might be scared of them, so they tend to run when approached by humans. However, be careful if you come across of a female with cubs, then it is different story. They’re out to protect their cubs at which point they can become aggressive. If it’s any consolation, there are only 56 documented cases of black bears killing humans in the United States in the last 100 years.
According to Wikipedia
“The cubs are generally born in January or February. They are very small, about 283 to 397 grams (10 to 14 oz), and are blind, nearly hairless, and helpless when born. Two to three cubs are most common, though up to four and even five cubs have been documented. First-time mothers typically have only a single cub. The mother nurses the cubs with rich milk, and by spring thaw, when the bears start leaving their dens, the cubs are fur-balls of energy, inquisitive and playful. By this time, they are about 2 to 4 kilograms (4 to 8 lb). When their mother senses danger, she grunts to the cubs to climb high up a tree. They are weaned between July and September of their first year and stay with the mother through the first winter. The cubs become independent during their second summer (when they are 1.5 years old). At this time, the sow goes into estrus again.
Cub survival is totally dependent on the skill of the mother in teaching her cubs what and where to eat, how to forage, where to den, and when and where to seek shelter from heat or danger.”
There have been numerous sightings of black bears in the Cascade Shores Subdivision, in which I live. I had one standing on the road in front of my house last year during the night. Have you seen any black bears around your house or had some experience with them?
Contributed By Paul August
The Auburn 49er Fire could have been much worse. 60 homes burned. It was headed for Lake of the Pines. In 1991, the Oakland hills fire destroyed 3,354 homes, 25 people died and hundreds were injured.
What happened in Oakland and Auburn could happen here in Grass Valley and Nevada City. At the start of the Yuba Fire last month, I stood on my deck in North San Juan and watched a tidal wave of billowing black smoke explode miles into the sky. It was scary.
This North San Juan area gets hit with a catastrophic fire every thirty years. My wife Muriel left this home for a day trip to Tahoe back in 1960. “When I left it was green and beautiful. When I came back it was ash and charred wood.” The home survived. The trees didn’t.
The wind decides the fire. Fortunately, the Yuba Fire wind blew gently, and not in our direction. In the Auburn fire, however, gusts of wind pushed the fire forward and it surged beyond all fire defenses.
In Oakland, Santa Ana winds blew in from the south, swirling, gusting and fanning flames that engulfed house after house. No air tankers were available that first day to fight a city fire.
The home owner’s best fire defense is to clear 100 feet around your house. But even that’s no guarantee against a tidal wave of flame and their falling embers. I’ve seen homes with stucco walls and tile roofs burn as fire licked under the eaves and through the wooden front door.
The only house to survive in one Oakland hills neighborhood was a cement home built by a Vietnam refugee who vowed never to lose his home to fire again. He didn’t. But ash, dust and reconstruction noise surrounded his home for years. There’s no escaping the after effects.
Home owners need to prepare for the consequences of a fire. For those with well water, if the electrical wires burn down and there’s no electricity, the pump in the well won’t work – no water. If the driveway is blocked by fire, be sure to have a secondary plan of escape.
And get to know your local fire department, especially if you’re in a rural area with volunteer firefighters. In one Oakland neighborhood, the fire department saved one home owned by a firefighter who fought flames in another part of town. They saved his home although others around it were destroyed.
We had big fires up here in 1960 and 1989. 30 years later is about 2020. Be prepared.
Paul August is a freelance writer and singer. His latest CD, “Welcome to Nevada City, God’s Country,” is available through cdbaby.com
If You Want to Enter an Exhibit, You Can Still Enter On-Line
The deadline to enter an exhibit (or two) in this year’s Nevada County Fair has been extended for another week.
Nevada County residents interested in entering a still exhibit in one of the many exhibit categories can enter on-line, using the Fair’s on-line entry system, until Friday, July 24 at 5 pm. There is no on-line entry fee! Simply log-on to the Fair’s website at Nevada County Fair, and follow the step-by-step process.
Complete descriptions of all categories are also available online in the Fair’s Competition Handbook.
This year’s Nevada County Fair is August 12 – 16. For more information, call the Fair Office at 530-273-6217 or visit Nevada County Fair
By Wendy Oaks
Nevada County Fair Grounds
I believe that one of the nuggets of Nevada County is the Empire Mine State Park. Located in Grass Valley, nestled among tall pines, oaks and cedars, it has been brought back to its original grandeur of the mining days of old.
This is really one of the state parks that is a must visit. To mention some of the activities there are 12 miles of beautiful trails for hiking, mountain bike riding and horse back riding. I have ridden my mountain bike on many of the trails and the trails range from flat to very, very steep. Visting the park is like going back in time to the 49’s era, seeing how the miners worked and how the rich mine owners lived.
Tours are available inside the Bourn Cottage, as Volunteers in period dress recreate characters from Empire’s colorful past. This two story country home of William Bourn, Jr., styled after the noble estates of nineteenth century England, was built in the late 1890’s. The architecture is distinguished by a remarkable redwood interior, leaded glass windows and massive granite walls. Cottage Living History tours are available every weekend May through mid-October.
A brief history of the mine:
“For more than a century, from 1850 to 1956, the grumblings and rumblings of the stamp mill could be heard for miles around Grass Valley. Twenty-four hours a day, huge banks of machines sent iron rods crashing into chunks of ore blasted from deep inside the Earth. The noise was a constant. Living near the Empire Mine was like living near an interstate highway: You got used to it, or you went nuts.
“People only noticed when it stopped,” says Donna Jones, interpretive ranger at Empire Mine State Historic Park. “And one of the few times it stopped was when Maude Bourn married. They turned it off for three days.”
Maude Bourn was the daughter of William Bowers Bourn Jr., who took over the mine from his father in 1887 and went on to become a big name in California, leaving, among his many legacies, the 43-room Filoli mansion in Woodside and the Greystone Winery (now headquarters for the Culinary Institute of America) in St. Helena.
Empire Mine was one of the first — and eventually the largest and most productive — hard-rock mining operations in California, having its start with the discovery, in 1850, of flecks of gold in an outcropping of quartz where the park’s main parking lot is now. Some 5.8 million ounces were eventually extracted from the vein.
The usual method of entering the mine was aboard a cable-operated “man skip,” which resembled a giant toboggan on tracks. Twenty men at a time would pile on for the rip-roaring, 600-feet-per-minute ride into the bowels of the Earth.
“They always put the new men in front so that, if they lost their breakfast, it wouldn’t affect anyone else,” Jones says dryly.”
Source Sacramento Bee
For more information of the activities, fees and tour dates visit Empire State Park
If you have visited the park, please leave your comments of your impression of the park.
Camp Far West Phone Number (530) 633-0803
Camp Far West Reservoir also called Camp Far West Lake, is located at the junction of Placer, Nevada and Yuba counties. Both Beale Air Force Base and the Spenceville Wildlife Area lay directly to the north of the lake. The lake’s location makes it easily accessible by coming from Nevada City, Grass Valley and Western Nevada County along with Sacramento, Roseville or the Yuba City/Marysville area.
Camp Far West’s 185 foot high earth and rock dam was completed in 1963 as part of the Central Valley Water Project impounding water from both the Bear River and Rock Creek. The dam was built for the purpose of flood control and irrigation, but has proven to be a boon for anglers and recreational boaters in the years since.
Camp Far West is situated at an elevation of 280 feet. It is a fairly large lake, impounding 104,500 acre feet of water when at full capacity with a surface area of 2,000 acres and 29 miles of shoreline. The lake got its name from a gold rush era immigrant camp that was located just downstream from the present day dam site. Since it was the last camp on the immigrant trail before the 49ers coming from the east reached the Sacramento Valley, it was dubbed, Camp Far West.
In the spring when the lake is full, the hills are green and the oak trees lining the shoreline are covered with budding leaves, the lake is quite beautiful. In the fall when the water level is drawn down 60 feet or more, the grass is parched and the leaves have fallen, the visual impact isn’t quite as awe inspiring, but the camping and recreation can be just as good as it is early in the year, plus crowds are typically very light during the fall.
Fishes in the lake include largemouth and smallmouth bass, black bass, crappie, catfish, brown trout and striped bass.
Availability: The North Shore is open year-around. The South Shore is open mid-May to September.
Camping and Lodging: Camping facilities and a store are available at the lake. There are 70 campsites on the North Shore and 8 RV hookups. There are 67 campsites on the South Shore and no RV hookups.
Boat Launching: The North Shore and South Shore each has a boat launch ramp and mini marts. The mini marts also include tackle and bait.
Activities: Swimming, boating, water skiing, jet skiing, hiking, biking, fishing and horseback riding
Reservations and Fees: Camp Far West Lake (916) 408-5037 or (530) 633-0803
Their Website: Camp Far West Lake
Ed Scofield has been named as the 2009 inductee into the Nevada County Fair’s Hall of Fame. The Fair’s Board of Directors chose Ed for this honor because of his support, dedication and commitment, which is evident throughout the Fairgrounds today.
Scofield retired at the end of 2008 after serving as the CEO of the Fairgrounds for 26 years. During his tenure, he helped the Fairgrounds become visible as one of the top ten outstanding rural fairs in America, oversaw the formation of the Draft Horse Classic and the Country Christmas Faire, and fostered the partnership with Music in the Mountains and their concert seasons at the Fairgrounds. Within the Fair industry he has served as Past President of the Western Fairs Association and was elected to the Western Fair’s prestigious Hall of Fame for contributions to the Fair industry.
“Ed has provided vision and leadership to the Fairgrounds, and he has been instrumental in creating the venues that we all enjoy today,” said CEO Sandy Woods. “He is admired and respected by many and it is a well-deserved honor for Ed to be named to the Hall of Fame.”
A native in Nevada County, Ed has been active in the community from an early age, starting in leadership roles in 4H.
Most recently, he was elected to the Nevada County Board of Supervisors. He has also served his community as a big brother in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program; Past President of the Grass Valley/Nevada County Chamber of Commerce; Past President of Grass Valley Rotary; and as a former Grass Valley City Council member.
Ed will be formally inducted into the Hall of Fame at opening day ceremonies on Wednesday, August 12. In addition to access to the Fair and its many activities, he will receive a portrait donated by Schaffers Originals.
For more information about the Nevada County Fair, August 12 – 16, call 273-6217 or visit Nevada County Fair
What the figures show for April of this year is that residential sales are about the same number as it was for April of last year. However, we’ve had a further decline in medium residential home prices of minus 23 percent. Here are the stats for sales in Nevada County.
There were 67 residential properties sold in April 2009 compared to 62 residential sales in April 2008. Total residential sales from January to the end of April 2009 were 191 sales compared to the same period last year of 203 sales.
The medium price for April 2009 was $299,000 compared to April 2008 of $387,500 a decline in market price of 23 percent. There were 1,165 residential properties listed for sale at the end of April, which based on the number of sales from January to April 2009 equals about 1.6 years supply of residential property for sale, assuming sales continue at the same rate.
There were 20 land sales from January to April in 2009 with a 45 month supply of land at the end of April. Last year there were 45 land sales with a 49 month supply of land.
I’ve noticed a pickup in pending sales, which I post on this website daily for those that are interested, and it seems that the pending sales are up. They have been hovering in the 200 pending sales starting within the last month. However, this is for all sales, not just residential sales.
Where are we with future sales? It’s anyone’s guess, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac asked lenders to forestall any more foreclosures until March 6, 2009. What they are doing now that the agreement date has expired? Some circles say we are in for a tsunami of foreclosures. The following banks had agreed to the government’s request and their expiration dates of the agreement.
JP Morgan Chase – New Owner-Occupied residential loans that are owned and serviced by JPMorgan Chase. As with Fannie Mae, the moratorium of foreclosures end date, March 6th.
Citigroup – All Citi-owned first mortgage loans that are principal residence and on loans for which understandings with investors have been reached. Moratorium end date – March 12th.
Bank of America (also Countrywide now renamed Bank of America Home Loans) – Delay foreclosures sales on owner occupied properties whose mortgage loans are owned and serviced by B of A or Countrywide – Through March 6th.
Wells Fargo (also Wachovia) – For Loans it holds. The moratorium is expected to remain in place until the government’s foreclosure prevention plan is announced. The majority of Wells Fargo’s mortgage loans are serviced by it and owned by other investors.