It's that time of year

A star in the East has appeared, three travelers and their camels have finished their long  journey. An angel appeared to a Shepard and his flock of sheep just outside the town of Orcas and told him about the good news of Jesus being born. Mary and Joseph found shelter in a local barn in the little town of Orcas. You can see everyone of these people from the road as you drive through Warm Valley on your way to the ferry. Four angels have shown up on the scene of Jesus's birth also along with the mysterious travelers baring gifts and the Shepard

Here's some background on the Nativity scene that is in front of Warm Valley Farm's barn. The original life size portraits of the people use to be down at the ferry landing. When they remodeled the ferry landing they didn't have the space anymore for the Nativity scene so they asked Bill and Barb (the owners of the Warm Valley Farm barn) if they would take over the responsibility of putting up the Nativity scene during the Christmas season. Bill and Barb said yes and had been putting up the scene till it became harder and harder for them to put it up. This is where my family and I became involved.  Our warm valley friends gave us the job of putting up the scene during the Christmas season. Every year until last year I dreaded putting up the scene because it took forever (at least it seemed to take forever-probably 2-3 hours)  The partical board on which the Nativity scene characters were drawn, was slowly, but surely falling apart.  During last winter my family, with the help of a friend, cut out the characters on marine plywood. Then we put a primer coat on the wood to keep the rain and weather from affecting the characters. Then began the long stretch of painting the new characters according to the right colors on the old ones. Boy was that fun... Anyway, after painting all of the characters over the winter/spring/summer the scene was ready to be put up. We had come up with the idea of putting PVC pipe in the ground and having metal pipe on the back of the characters that was smaller than the PVC pipe. That way we could just slip the characters into place instead of having the place them correctly and tie them to the barn (we still do but its easier with the pipe in the ground). So the next time you head to the ferry, take a look on the left side of the highway and you'll see this great nativity reminder.

This is ColdWaRrior out