Kathy Judy

It's cheat grass season again in the desert part of the Intermountain West! If you happen to go off pavement or manicured lawns you are doomed to deal with one or all of these.

If you are wearing sandals or other light summer shoes your chances of tromping through acres of dry thistley weeds increase exponentially.

Lark MacKenzie in our office was doomed from the start yesterday. Not only was she wearing open toed strappy heels, she was also wearing a short skirt. It's a wonder she didn't wind up listing a dairy! Walking through a few feedlots and corrals can just make your day.

One of the farm agents with another office told me that he has great fun when a city girl type agent (like from Boise) wants to show one of his farm listings and shows up in the heels and suit bit. He meets them in the middle of a pasture - so they have to walk through a few acres- tee-hee.

At least we seldom feel the need to wear pantyhose anymore - that really made it awful. Not only would you have cheat grass and foztail in your shoes, they'd be stuck all over your pantyhose too.

Our lives are just SOOO glamorous! Have a profitable and/or fun weekend everybody!

One of our cherished family traditions is hunting morel mushrooms on No Tellum mountain on Memorial Day weekend. They are available throughout the country in treed areas - but in the Northwest it's in the mountains at a lower level.

Hunting them is my kind of sport, you amble through the trees staring hard at the ground - picking them at a casual pace. We have our favorite spots, and we've made it even easier by doing some road -hunting. This is driving very slowly through the woods staring hard at the ground and jumping on and off the 4 wheeler to pick them.

Cooking them is a labor of love, you wash, split or quarter, dredge in flour and fry in butter. Messy but worth it. We like to do it over an open fire right there.

I love the number of things you can do within an hour or so of my home on the Oregon Idaho border. It's one of the good reasons for living near Boise Idaho. We live where people come to vacation!

This coming weekend I'm vacillating between fishing and where to go, or going mushrooming again. And YES I'm working hard - I'll be doing all this after 2 on Saturday.

I'm taking this Cinco De Mayo opportunity to thank my hispanic clients. When I started selling real estate I was the only one in my area who spoke Spanish. To be accurate, I bumble through Spanish - the grammar is poor and the words are sometimes not exactly right but my clients understand me and are patient. One third of my business is with latino customers and it has been a pleasure.

I enjoy helping people buy a home for their families and invariably it is family in the larger sense. There is a willing obligation to have a place for mom or dad as they get older. I admire that.

I like that every home considered has to have space for family gatherings and a sense of neighborhood is important too. The idea of being within walking distance of schools, churches, shopping is something that has usually been important to my hispanic clients and now it's become "green" and fashionable.

I enjoy it when people who are used to having their children interpret realize that if they talk slowly we can communicate directly and that as they are patient and understanding with me likewise they can feel free to speak English with me and not be embarrased because it's not perfect. Hilariously lots of my conversations are half and half.

I want to personally thank the Rodriquez Moncada and Mendez families and Maria Encinas and Daniela Zambrano.

Idaho City is just 39 miles from Boise. You get there by taking the Gowen exit and continuing on Hwy 21. The road is well developed and the drive is spectacular. For a lot of it you are going along Lucky Peak Reservoir and at the right time of the year you are watching people ski and fish and just motor around. It's a little early for that - the reservoir is filling and the creeks that run into it are running high and muddy. The high mountain run off is yet to happen.

I went there with my cousin/assistant Sandi to see my friend and client Helen. I've done a lot of transactions with Helen over the years, she's pretty much settled down now in Idaho City but she's always interested in the local market.

I've been involved in Idaho City for about 8-9 years since she moved there. I've been waiting for it to take off - it has it all - proximity to a large market, beautiful mountain scenery, a "let it al hang out" atmosphere and so on. But it just kind of sputters there . Wheeler dealers with good ideas but no money come and go. I know someday it'll take off and then I'll regret having sold my lot up there and not buying more.

I am really realizing over and over again this spring how local our business is. The market can vary by 10 miles. In our little rural onion growing area there are not that many repos right now. There may be more later but now it is just a normal slow year. We like to think of ourselves as all citified but in reality our economy is based on the agriculture that goes on. That and the retail that comes from being near a big market (Boise) and not having sales tax. We have a good cheap workforce here and that helps too.

So we didn't see the huge appreciation in the market and we haven't seen the huge drops either. We have seen the slowness with the general shrinkage of credit and uneasiness about jobs. There are layoffs and hour reductions but people are hanging in there making do until it gets better.

And it is. In areas that aren't as affected by the slowdown in the nationwide economy buyers want houses and they are looking. Our area has a lot of retirees because we have good access to medical care and our living costs are less. Many of these buyers and sellers have government retirements that are steady and not vulnerable to the markets. The medical care area is another where there are good jobs and people are as secure in them as anyone can be.

The point of all this is that I am grateful to be here and have the business I do. Real estate sales in Eastern Oregon and SW Idaho aren't that great but they aren't that bad either.