This weekend, April 7th-8th (right now in fact), the Amador Flower Farm (22001 Shenandoah School Road, Plymouth) is holding its annual Spring Fling, featuring demonstrations by gardeners and the industry.  Sunday there’ll be a visit from the Easter Bunny and an Easter Egg Hunt.  For more information, contact the Flower Farm at 209-245-6660.

On Saturday, April 14th, The Fiddletown Preservation Society will celebrate Fiddletown’s gold rush legacy with Fiddletown Heritage Day.  To learn more about the Fiddletown Preservation Society’s work and especially their preservation of the legacy of Chinese pioneers in the area, see the recent article the Ledger Dispatach.  Events will include a gold panning workshop and demonstrations of other gold mining techniques, so if you’ve been looking to quit your day job, now’s your chance!

The Sacramento Bee today released an article about a law suit filed by Amador County against a proposed Casino in Plymouth.

Amador County officials, fearful of the impact of another casino in the Plymouth area, have filed a federal lawsuit challenging whether the group planning the casino actually is a legitimate tribe.

The county’s suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Sacramento, challenges the U. S. Department of Interior’s acceptance of the Ione Band of Miwok Indians as a federally recognized tribe.

The department decided in September that 228 acres in and around the town of Plymouth qualify under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act as “Indian lands” on which the Miwoks may conduct gaming. But that decision “constitutes an abuse of discretion and is arbitrary, capricious and contrary to law,” Amador County alleges in the lawsuit.

Read the full story in the Bee.

     It looks as though spring is in the air! Along with Spring comes the fury of home buyers and sellers looking for the best deal in town. I have the totals for the number of homes and properties sold in Pymouth, Fiddletown, River Pines, Sutter Creek, Ione, and Jackson during the month of February, I am anxiously waiting  to compare these numbers to March in a few weeks. According to the Amador MLS none of the homes in Plymouth or Fiddletown sold, however one property sold in River Pines, and the little (growing) town of Ione sold 7 homes with an average price of $245,285.00! A total of 6 homes sold in Jackson with an average price of $264,666.00 and in Sutter Creek 4 homes sold with an average price above all of $490,250.00.

HOPE Flyer    Are you looking to buy a home in Amador or El Dorado counties? We are holding a workshop to help you prepare yourself for the home buying process,  on Saturday March 10th from 9am-1pm at Placer Title in Jackson, you will have the opportunity to talk with lenders, Amador County Realtors, Title & Escrow officers, and receive assistance in understanding your credit.  Please call or e-mail Bridget at Bridget@BridgetSells.com  (530) 306-9111 reservations or required. We will have a list of homes in various price ranges in areas such as: Plymouth, Ione, Sutter Creek, Jackson, Pine Grove, Mt Aukum, Fairplay, and River Pines.

Well, with February almost upon us, I can sense the excitement Bridget feels about a new set of statistics to write about!

Oh my gosh — two months with me and she’s already in danger of being a nerd! I have that effect on people. With some people after just a few minutes they’ll go out and buy a pocket protector or put tape on their glasses.

But Bridget’s pretty safe, because she’s doing a simply wonderful job out in Amador County, and whatever other county she travels to as well.

This has been a terrific month for the company. Two new agents joined us, Vicki Agregado-Babcock, who lives out by me in Cameron Park and Susan Norris, who lives in East Sacramento. This means we now have three strong agents working in three counties (actually four strong agents if you count the verbose broker).

Bridget has sold her listing on Wheeler Loop in Plymouth, and is burning the candle at both ends between listings and sales.

As for me, I’m working with a smaller number of buyers and sellers and trying to get organized enough to keep up with it all. I’m looking into new software and systems for the company, and trying to nail down many of the other happy tasks you’d expect Joe Startup to have. It’s a time of tremendous excitement and growth for me personally, so I’m jazzed about that. I think on some level that enjoying a leadership role on a productive and creative team of people is something I’ve longed for on some level for the past ten years. Of course, I’m sure there will be ups and downs as time goes on, but as for right now I’m thinking you can’t beat my job with an aluminum bat.

     I would like to share some news about our famous Amador County and our progress toward helping those whom without programs like, H.O.P.E. would be unable to own a piece of Amador County Real Estate. We resumed our H.O.P.E. meetings this morning at the Amador County Board of Realtors and had a great turnout. Thank-you to all of those who attended, Barbara Nichols  and Gina Grubb from Diablo Funding, Susan Brown and Diana Rethford from Placer Title, Cathy Yochheim from Coldwell Banker, and of course myself, Bridget Felmley-Gay from Elite Properties. H.O.P.E. is also known as Homeownership Opportunity Planning Enterprise, the Amador County Association of Realtors and local lenders and title companies have teamed up to help assist you with the purchase of a home. The funds are donated by local Amador County Realtors,  loan officers, escrow officers, concerned citizens, and federal grants. There are some qualifications, one being the willingness to provide your new home with “sweat equity”. The funds typically help pay for improvements and items like pest work. If you would like more information regarding donations or an application for funds please contact Bridget@BridgetSells.com (877) 735-5657 ext 82 or the Amador County Board of Realtors (209) 223-3874.

      H.O.P.E. is offering a “Workshop” on Saturday March 10th at 10 am at Placer Title in Jackson. The workshop will focus on helping you to get your credit to the point of qualifying to purchase a home. For more information or to sign up for the workshop contact Bridget@BridgetSells.com (877) 735-5657 ext 82.

Looking at our local Amador MLS, it appears that Amador City and Drytown currently have six beautiful homes active on the market. Amador City is a quiet little town located just south of Highway 16 on Highway 49. This little town includes an abundance of history, great food and shopping.

    Plymouth, currently has eighteen homes active on the market in the local Amador MLS. Plymouth is a slightly larger town than Amador City and Drytown. Amador County holds their annual fair in Plymouth. Plymouth leads the way to our gorgeous Shenandoah Valley, where there are currently a couple vineyard and winery properties available.

It looks like congratulations are in order to Bridget on what’s shaping up to be Elite Properties’ 2007 “New Years’ Baby” escrow, her listing at 9431 Wheeler Loop in Plymouth.

Three years after my hungry first year in this business, I still get all excited whenever there’s talk of an escrow. I love escrows, especially the closed ones that we do. I just want to be there for all the little escrows of the world, and give them all a great big hug from Papa Johnnie.

C’mere, you!

This just proves that so far our Amador County Elite Properties office is winning the John Lockwood Associates coveted “Office of the Year” award, for the year about to start.

Those slackers over in the Sacramento Office had better straighten up and fly right, or they’re going to find myself out of a job.

[Editor’s note:  This was written before the Sacramento Office had any slackers besides the author.]

A few minutes after crossing over the Amador County line on my great adventure of the same name, I spotted civilization in the form of an intersection, where the Native Amadorians had established a settlement of sorts.

Following the tradition of my New England Ancestors, I decided to land here and name this settlement “Plymouth”.

(Actually by way of full disclosure, that’s a bit misleading. I did have New England Ancestors, but they weren’t Englishmen landing at Plymouth in search of religious freedom. They were Frenchmen travelling south from Canada in search of economic freedom in the form of textile factories).

Now back to our adventure.

It turned out the Amadorians were a friendly and welcoming race, engaged primarily in the export of wine and the basic Cafe service industries. An advanced people, they erected signs for the benefit of their visitors.

These signs described exotic places like Villa Toscano, Kelson Creek, Renwood, Karmere, and the Plymouth House Inn. (I was somewhat chagrined to discover later that many of these exotic places had already been visited by web site developers). Zinfandels, I discovered, were quite popular.

From this parking lot I established a sort of photographic beach head, and determined to chronical a great deal about the local commerce.

The Sierra Trading Post was across the street.

It had what appearted to be an ATM, but I did not explore further.

I did go in to visit Marlene and Glen’s, an indigenous diner. The gentleman there was extremely pleasant, so I told him I would tell people to go there and order food and beverages.

You should go there. It was very pleasant. The coffee was good.

They have record albums on many of the walls, including the rest rooms. This was a custom so strange I knew I would not be believed if I did not return with a photo.

By the way, this is part 3 or thereabouts of the Photos of John’s Great Amador County adventure.

This evening it ocurred to me that most of the day was spent on real estate one way or another, and that, because I had to run more comps and meet a seller in Camino tomorrow, tomorrow would look like that as well.

Well, that’s fine by me, I enjoy being busy. But it also reminded me that I haven’t blogged since “way back yesterday”, which is an acceptable level of blogicity for any normal period of time. Of course, if you’re running a blogathon, a post a day looks a lot to outsiders like goofing off, and heaven forbid you should think that of me.

I came across a fun article recently about excuses not to blog, which canonically take the syntactical form, “Sorry I haven’t posted in a while, but…”.

Sorry I haven’t found that URL in a while so I could link to it.

By now it’s clear that the dog who ate my homework is the same dog who is the bane of every kid’s homework, but as for a fine December: I’ve gotten to go to two parties so far with my wife, and it’s only December 2nd. My wife and I usually go to about two parties a year, so there you go, we’re all caught up. One of them was a bunko party, which is a woman-only gathering where they let the men in once a year near Christmas to see if we’re still alive. It turns out I am.

I considered that good news.

The other party was Micah’s birthday party! Hooray. We have some pictures you can enjoy over on my Folsom Site. You win a prize if you can find my wife. Meantime, here are the two I think came out the best, one of Micah getting to know Joey, and one of the happy mom and dad.

Oh yeah, and Uncle Bob is from Plymouth! So there you go, this has something to do with Amador county after all…