North Spokane’s Green Bluff swelled Sunday with apple lovers, pumpkin pickers and families out enjoying the sunny, slightly crisp fall weather during a traditional trip to the Apple Festival. With this year’s bountiful harvest and apple crop, the 36 farms that participate in the monthlong event have plenty to celebrate and sell. “We had a great crop this year,” said Todd Beck, who helps run the Harvest House & Orchard family business. “The apples are heavy on the tree.” Beck’s farm is the biggest draw on Green Bluff. Aside from apples – grown on 22 of the farm’s 37 acres, there are pony rides, hay rides, hay mazes, corn mazes, bouncy castles and a Jumping Pillow about the size of a small basketball court, Pumpkin Land, live music, crafts, a gift shop, various food vendors and the legendary pumpkin doughnuts/Jody Lawrence-Turner, SR. More here. (SR photo: Dan Pelle)

Question: What do you like best about Green Bluff in the fall?

On her Facebook wall, HucksOnline super sub CindyH shows what happens when she's left alone with a dozen hot pumpkin doughnuts at Green Bluff.

Question: What draws you to Green Bluff?

No Sunday drive to Green Bluff is complete without a stop by Trezzi Farm. Walking into the one-of-a-kind barn-style home and kitchen, we were warmly welcomed, as always, and came away with a box full of delicious homemade lasagna, meatballs, pesto and polenta to stock the freezer. Not to mention a bottle of their wonderful '08 Barbera  made with winemaker Don Townhshend.

I know Davide and Stephanie have gotten a lot of press since I first wrote about them for The Spokesman-Review in 2005. (You can read that story here.) But, I still find myself linked to their progress. As I interviewed and then wrote about them, I fell a little in love with the couple and the way they dream, plan, build and succeed together. How could you not?

Since that first feature story they have added a vineyard and now grow the grapes for Davide's wines. They built a tasting room and event facility and continue to grow. Even as he showed me around, he talked of what is yet to come.

It was a good Sunday for a drive and a good day to stop and say hello to friends. Serve that with homemade Italian food, wine and hospitality and you are well fed, indeed.

Mangia!

 

To see more photos of Trezzi Farm, click below…

Some proposed changes in rural housing developments known as clusters will have to be decided by Spokane County commissioners. The county planning commission, with only four of its seven members present, deadlocked Thursday on some of the more controversial changes, including whether to ban the developments in what’s known as small tract agricultural zones.

If all that makes you go “Huh?”, you probably live in a city, where changes in the suburban and rural landscape are something you notice on that yearly trip to Green Bluff to buy apples and pumpkins.

But it is a hot topic in rural areas. Simply put, cluster development is a practice of grouping the yards and homes into one or two spots on a large tract of land and leaving the rest of it open, as opposed to subdividing it into larger lots spread out across the whole tract. In some cases, a developer can get extra housing parcels, but in others they get the same number of houses, just not so spread out.

Some think clusters are a good thing; others think of them with the Army term that starts with cluster and ends with a word that in military jargon is “foxtrot.”

Thursday, the Planning Commission split 2-2 …