Coffee shop ground zero for Valleyford community

VALLEYFORD – A coffee shop in its third summer season in the rural community of Valleyford is fast becoming an area hub for conversation and meetings.

And a recent 10-by 14-foot addition to the building of On Sacred Grounds Coffee, Tea and Specialty Shoppe at the corner of Madison Road and the Palouse Highway has made the business even more conducive to gathering.

“You never know who you’re going to meet over a cup of coffee,” says owner and sole barista Elaine Rising, who encourages customers to walk through her small shop and peruse the hundreds of gently used books and local artwork for sale. She also offers a variety of sandwiches and other food items.

Rising moved her coffeehouse to Valleyford in 2006 to property she already owned to grow her business and because she lived nearby. She first started selling specialty coffee from wood-fire roasted beans in 2003 at the Spokane farmers’ market, and soon graduated to a coffee stand at a Fred Meyer and later downtown at the foyer of the former Steam Plant.

Since moving her business to Valleyford, about a mile west off Highway 27, Rising has been creating opportunities to bring people together. This summer, for example, she hosted the Second Annual Artists Loose on the Palouse Art and Craft Fair on her property.

She also scheduled an outdoor evening movie showing and organized a community yard sale. On Sept. 13, she’s volunteering her property for a newcomer’s ice cream social sponsored by the Hangman Creek Chamber of Commerce. And her coffeehouse is a noted stopping place for the September Tour de Lacs bicycle ride.

“What I’m trying to help create is the sense of community … the feeling that Valleyford is a special place,” Rising says.

Other groups that meet here regularly include a writer’s club, a camera club, the Valleyford Historical Club and a reader’s club. She also hosts monthly artist’s receptions.

The additional square footage completed in July helps identify that On Sacred Grounds is more than a drive-through coffee stand. It now has capacity for 20 people and plenty of room outdoors.

Rising, a former schoolteacher, has become a history buff of the area as well as of the origins of coffee.

She’s entertaining in conversation and likens the creation of a specialty coffee drink to that of a symphony as she mixes flavors and milk. She’s a member of the Red Hat Society social club, and previous customers might recall her by the various hats she wears to work – each one a gift from customers that began with the health department requirement to wear a head covering while working with food, she says.

Some also might recall Rising’s cheerfully custom-painted “Lynda Latte” wood cutout sign pointing in the direction of her business. (She now has three custom-made character cutouts on her property, including the original that had gone missing more than a year ago but was found by a customer at a yard sale this summer.)

“I really just want people to have a good time,” she says. “I couldn’t make this without my customers.”