I’m delighted to introduce you to our next interviewee, Grace Maldonado.  She’s an attorney living in Spokane, but has roots in Wenatchee and Tonasket and fondly refers to herself as a “daughter of an apple farmer.”  After immigrating to Washington from Mexico, her parents got into tree fruit farming when she was a child. Grace spent most of her childhood with her siblings in Tonasket, a tiny town of 1,102 in Okanogan County, and grew up working in her parents’ orchards.  She later went to Gonzaga for school and stayed in the area.

We spoke mostly about growing up in Tonasket, and even though I grew up with apple-farming parents (read about them here), hearing about her experience opened my eyes to a whole different world in Washington.  I can almost guarantee by the time you’re done reading this interview you’re going to be convinced to pack up and move to a small town in rural Washington and work in an orchard.

 

Tell me about where you grew up to help the reader understand where you’re coming from

My town is named after Chief Tonasket. It’s completely an “ag” community — all the jobs are touched by agriculture. There’s lots of tree fruit, huge ranches in the area for angus beef cattle, and hunting is a big sport there. 

During spring break and summer, and after school, my siblings and I would work in the orchard. It creates a work ethic that a lot of people don’t get until later in life. Something becomes ingrained in you when you have to get up at 4am as a kid, but I wouldn’t change anything. 

Tonasket has a strong sense of community. Everyone in the community shows up for football games, basketball, tennis, and not only if you have a kid that’s playing.  Everyone’s church does something and the entire community goes, even if you’re not a member. 

People have multiple generations of their family there, and you may lose your job but it’ll be ok because you’re with your meemaw. I wasn’t making enough to cover rent in between school, but I knew I could go home with no issues and work on the farm if I wanted to, and had that generational and familial support. And I see that in most of the Tonasket families.

 

What’s something people wouldn’t expect about Tonasket?

At school they teach horticulture and agriculture and you can get college credit for it. You can take shop, welding, or a natural resources class. People would bring in their deer and butcher it in class and learn the different cuts and how to pack it up. I learned how to make sausage and pack things for the freezer, and even made a fishing pole from scratch! During hunting season students are missing school, and teachers know when opening weekend is and the teens are going to be gone and middle schoolers will go with their parents. 

 

And where do you live right now?

I live in Spokane at the Fort Lakes exit, a suburb of Spokane.  I found my “small town” near the big city.  It’s nice here because it’s quiet, but my neighbors are super nice and it’s a diverse neighborhood. You see their kids playing in the street with their parents and everyone says hi to each other.

 

What was it like moving from Tonasket to Spokane?

It was scary! Super scary! I had to drive on a freeway — there’s only one stoplight in Tonasket.

I got to Spokane and the campus felt like it was just as big as my downtown. I didn’t know where anything was, I didn’t know anyone. I had to find the cafeteria. I remember someone telling me it was through the parking garage, but I had never comprehended parking garages, I didn’t know what they meant! 

It was a culture shock. Tonasket is a conservative little town and everyone knows each other and is open to each other and different thoughts, but in a small area, there’s not that many differing thoughts. In a city there’s hundreds of thousands of people with different ideas. I’d never been exposed to that and I had to apply critical thinking in a way I hadn’t before, because everyone I knew at home had just agreed. 

I was also exposed to other things like homelessness and how to deal with that. In Tonasket there was one homeless lady once, and immediately everyone was helping her with food and shelter. I was used to everyone helping one another.

 

What’s something you love that people who aren’t from there wouldn’t expect?

Small towns get a bad rap, that there’s nothing to do in Tonasket. But there’s so much to do! There’s so many lakes within a 15-20 min drive, everybody goes swimming, places to jump, boats, little resorts there, fishing, people coming from all over to go hunting. There’s a Splash park for little kids that the community worked together to donate (including Jack Black!). We have the casino and they usually put on shows and live music at the local bar. So many hiking areas, history buffs can go up to Molson which is a historic ghost town. Little town that’s been preserved in time. A lot of high schoolers go shed hunting, bucks shed their horns. There’s always bonfires and big weddings too.

 

What’s changed in Tonasket?

It’s a lot bigger.  A lot more people have moved there and gotten a lot more diverse than when I was younger. A lot has stayed the same. There’s the same founders day parade, same companies donating to the little league team. The pizza place switched ownership but the recipe stayed the same.

But my sister used to work for a tree fruit exporter that just got bought by an investment firm, that’s a big thing.

 

An investment firm? Tell me more about that.

Little family farms, 40-100 acres aren’t turning a profit because they don’t have the workforce.  And you need to pay workers a living wage, which is good, but what the farmer is getting paid for their apples hasn’t gone up in the past few years. You also have to provide free housing and transportation, which, again, is good, but no one’s increased the price for a head of cattle or wheat. That makes margins for farmers even smaller, and they’ve gotten to the point where people are either living in debt or they’re having to sell off land. The thing about farming is we don’t get paid in the same year. We get charged for the packing and cleaning of cherries, but we get paid the next year when the fruit has been sold. We have to wait a full year to get the money to put ahead for next year. We’re always playing catch up and if you have one bad year, you can be put out of business. If you’re bigger you probably have a bigger diversity, like pears and cherries. Bigger farms and investment firms are buying smaller farms that can’t keep up with it. Years from now what will people we fighting for? It’ll be water. You need to have the land that has the water rights. It’s the most valuable, and most expensive, but you can buy it from out of business farmers for cheaper now.

 

Would you ever move back?

I love Spokane but my dream is to go back to Tonasket. It’s beautiful. That’s the thing about Okanogan [County]. When it rains there it smells delicious; you can smell the flowers and fruit. The people are also very different there. Here in Spokane if my car were to break down on the side of the road, I’d call my husband. In Tonasket, I would know anyone who would stop to help. It’s a very tight knit community where everybody knows everybody. Anywhere that isn’t a small town you don’t get that same sense of community. I miss my church there. I have one here but it’s bigger, and I like small churches. I miss going to hometown football games and everyone knowing the teachers and coaches, and everyone’s supporting the high schoolers.  As long as you’re not a jerk everyone gets along fine, and if you’re a jerk it will get posted on the community page. There’s something special about living in a small town. Something nice about having family help in the orchards, my nieces and nephews compete in FFA. It just feels like home.