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s t a n l e y • F a i r f i e l d • S h o sh o n e • P i c a b o
Booksigning for Historic Hailey Book Page 3
Stocked in Time for Friday’s Free Fishing Day Page 5
Caritas Chorale’s Spring Fundraiser at Gail Severn Gallery this Weekend Page 8
Students Learn Building and Market Skills READ about it on PaGe 6
J u n e 6 , 2 0 1 2 • V o l . 5 • N o . 2 3 • w w w .T h e W e e k l y S u n . c o m
COURTESY PHOTO
April Vokey, FLY GAL! P BY PAUL HOPFENBECK
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n the hallowed halls of the fly-fishing elite, it is difficult to find anyone more deeply entrenched in the sport or the industry. Fly-fishing is April Vokey. Friday we will welcome April to our Valley for what will be three very special days of casting and fly-tying instruction. April was born in British Columbia with a passion for fishing and was relentless in coaxing her father into taking her at every opportunity. At sixteen, when most young ladies are either involved in more genteel pursuits or spending their free time in organized sports, April, new driver’s license in hand, could be found exploring the holes, runs, and fish-holding seams of her local rivers. April worked night jobs so that she could spend the daylight hours on the river, often logging 300 days a year, and in her early twenties became a guide for a large outfitter. She soon tired of the “get ’em in, get ’em out” mentality that was so prevalent in the B.C. guiding community, and in 2007 she founded her B.C.-based guide company, Fly Gal Ventures (www. flygal.ca). April’s résumé is impressive and extensive: guide, expert casting and tying instructor, author, filmmaker, photographer, and conservationist. Her love for the fish may be most apparent in her devoted stewardship of those rivers on which she cut her teeth and now afford her a living. She sits on the board of the Steelhead Society of B.C. and is the founder and director of the popular fundraiser, Flies for Fins (www.flies4fins.com). In 2011, April was invited by Patagonia founder and impassioned wild fish conservationist Yvon Chouinard to accept a position with the Patagonia ambassador team where she is assisting in the design and direction of the women’s line of fishing apparel. Recently, April joined the cast of Bonefish and Buccaneers, which is filming flats fishing exploits the world over. In the late summer of 2011, Jason Roth and I were sitting in his office doing a little head scratching. Both of us are board members of Idaho Steelhead and Salmon Unlimited and, having just completed our annual fundraiser and drift boat raffle, we were planning our next event. It dawned on us that in order to involve the entire community and follow in the tradition of incredible Sun Valley events and high-profile personalities, we needed to bring in some word-class talent. Now, after almost a year of planning, dealing with ever-changing schedules and a crushing agenda of travel plans and obligations, April will be here to kick off the “Ketchum Cast Away and Fly-tying Festival” with the Friday evening, June 8th “Meet and Greet” from 6 to 8:30 p.m. at Silver Creek
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STORY & PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
addy McIlvoy is a self-described “tomato nerd.” He’s tried more than 300 varieties of tomatoes in his quest to find the best tasting tomato in the world. He’s growing 81 varieties from 27 countries this year, ranging from tiger-striped tomatoes that taste like pineapple to the blue-colored Indigo Rose, in his yard in the heart of Old Hailey. He can wax eloquent about the Galapagos tomato, which only germinates after it’s gone through the digestive system of the giant Galapagos tortoise, prompting the Japanese to develop an artificial tortoise digestive system. And he can recite the stories behind such tomatoes as the Purple Dog Creek tomato, a century-old heirloom tomato that the 43 residents of Dog Creek, Ky., grew to sell to build a new church. “There are probably only ten other people in the world growing some of the varieties I’m growing. And that’s kind of fun,” said McIlvoy, whose list of tomato conquests include the African Queen, Bear Claw, Big Ben, Amish Gold and the yellow- and red-striped Texas Star. “I was always attracted to growing things I can’t get in the supermarket. My mother has a phenomenal green thumb and she let me have a chunk of her garden to play in when I was a kid. And I had macro gardens in college.” McIlvoy grew up in Las Cruces, N.M., the chili pepper capital of the world. In fact, he worked across the hall from the U.S. National Chili Pepper Laboratory when he worked for the agricultural communications office at New Mexico State University. “New Mexicans feel about chili peppers the way the French do about their wine,” he said. “They acknowledge that chili peppers grow elsewhere but they believe they’re inferior to those grown in New Mexico.” It was fly-fishing that lured him from the land of chili peppers. “I came here to fish for a week and never left,” said McIlvoy, who works as a fly-fishing guide for Sturtevants Mountain Outfitters when he’s not digging in the dirt. “This place has the best fly-fishing in the world. There are very few places in the world where you can fish a river running through town. Silver Creek, which has one of the densest populations of wild trout in the United States and is one of the best spring-fed creeks in the world, is a half hour in one direction, and steelhead and salmon fishing is an hour away in the other direction.” Some would have said that the move was a poor
“Every time I hear people say you can’t grow tomatoes in the Wood River Valley, I say, ‘You’re wrong and I have the pictures to prove it.’ ” Paddy McIlvoy grows seedlings in his 900-square-foot house in Hailey using seedling heat mats, 48-inch shop lights with T8 bulbs and a small electric fan.
choice for someone who likes to grow vegetables as much as McIlvoy. But McIlvoy, whose yard was already sporting alpine strawberries, garlic, onions and bok choy in April, says otherwise. “Every time I hear people say you can’t grow tomatoes in the Wood River Valley, I say, ‘You’re wrong and I have the pictures to prove it,’ ” said McIlvoy, whose 1,100-square-foot garden is larger than his 900-square-foot house. “They grow tomatoes in Siberia—and we’re warmer than Siberia. And they breed tomatoes to grow in the Arctic. “We live in an excellent place to grow tomatoes, except for the temperature. And we can get around that by growing our tomatoes inside black
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