QUILCENE — It’s mid-morning and Herb Beck anxiously awaits delivery of a load of hay — 20 tons he said he had to order for his beef cattle after a long, dry summer set his 72-acre farm’s hay yield back about 70 percent.
A Black Angus-Hereford breed of “baldies” dot the pasture beyond the Beck home, sharing the green, cattled-gnawed pasture with a champion bull and wild white swans that occasionally fly in.
Beck, who on Dec. 31 leaves the Port of Port Townsend commissioner position he had filled for 36 years anticipates a lot of work ahead on the farm.
Beck is believed to be the longest-serving port commissioner in state history.
Port Ludlow resident Leif Erickson, 58, who is a production manager at Townsend Bay Marine and vice president of the Marine Trades Association, will be seated on the port’s board in January after defeating Beck in the Nov. 3 general election.
Patricia, Herb Beck’s wife of 44 years — with whom he has four children and a grandchild — has many projects awaiting her husband.
“I’m going to enjoy it,” Pat Beck said. “I’ve had a honey-do list for a long time.”
Beck, 71, said that even with farm work, he plans to stay involved.
“Don’t worry about it,” Beck said. “I am not going away.”
Beck’s Quilcene farm lies down a narrow, paved road named for his father, Frank Beck, a rugged logger who handed his work ethic onto his son.
Frank Beck bought the spread, set where the Little Quilcene River flows into Quilcene Bay, for about $5,000 in 1917.
A shiny new green and yellow John Deere tractor with a front-end loader sits in the Becks’ driveway for some of that farm work.
Beck roves in his John Deere Gator to look at the Little Quilcene River and Quilcene Bay delta salmon restoration project that he supported.
The project by the Hood Canal Salmon Enhancement Group and state Department of Fish and Wildlife cuts through his property, which has about 1,800 feet of river frontage.
Woody debris and tiny new fir trees are visible in and along the easy-flowing river that workers restored to its original meander into the Quilcene Bay Estuary.
‘Hear salmon spawning’
“I can hear the sound of salmon spawning from my bedroom window at night,” Beck said.
His home, which is the site of Quilcene’s first U.S. Forest Service ranger station originally built in the 1920s, has been added onto over the last 40 years and made into a comfortable farmhouse.
The Beck family presence in Quilcene dates back to the early 1870s, when Beck’s grandfather, Julius, homesteaded land in the area now used by Penny Creek Quarry, south of Quilcene’s downtown off U.S. Highway 101.
His grandfather grew food and ran logs to the railroad mainline that ran down Linger Longer Road, dumping them at Quilcene Bay.
It is not far from the site where the Port of Port Townsend now operates a marina and industrial park named for Beck after he fought for port improvements there. Those improvements included the building expansion of Quilcene’s main employer, Coast Seafood, the world’s largest oyster seed producer.
Port in the family
Beck’s uncle, Pete Beck, was a Port of Port Townsend commissioner in the 1920s.
“Back then, freight mobility was big,” Beck said, relaxing in his living room overlooking an unpicked apple tree he and his wife left for the birds they love to watch feeding.
Beck fondly remembered being voted in as a port commissioner at 35 and how then-port commissioner Bob Porter took him under his wing as a mentor.
“His comment was, you do a lot of looking and listening, then you make your decision,” Beck said.
Beck was in on port commissioner decisions to build the marina’s C and D docks and he pushed to dredge Quilcene Bay at the marina to make it passable at lower tides.
What to do with the port’s Kah Tai Lagoon property was as much a hot-button issue in the 1970s as it is today in Port Townsend, he said.
Diversify now
Today, Beck said the port has to diversify to survive the worst recession he has ever seen in Jefferson County and the future “ups and downs of the economy.”
He said this recession is worse than that of the late 1970s.
That’s why he sat intently in the front row of the Jefferson County commissioners chambers last Tuesday and stood up to thank the three commissioners for approving a 24-acre light industrial rezoning on property the port owns that adjoins its Jefferson County International Airport to the south.
Citing the fact that his own children have had to leave Jefferson County for jobs outside the area, Beck said he has worked for 25 years to get the rezoning through.
“I think all small communities should be allowed to have their own industrial parks instead of making it so hard with rules and regulations,” he said.
“My experience has been that folks want to create jobs and opportunities . . . They don’t want to go through all the permit process.
“They want a turn-key operation and will go somewhere else if the can’t get it.”
1990s debate
Beck compares the controversy over the airport industrial rezoning to the debate in the 1990s over a proposed 300-ton marine lift that could carry large boats in and out of the work yard at Boat Haven Marina.
“But look at what it has done for the city,” said Beck, who was the swing vote on the commission that approved it.
Today, port leaders estimate there are at least 400 marine-related jobs in Jefferson County, making it the county’s largest private sector industry.
Beck said that continuing rate cuts of port services, such as those for the marine trades in the port boat and ship yards, could ultimately hurt the port’s bond rating, making it difficult to get the revenue bond loans for port improvements, such as the AB dock marina proposal and the 70-ton haulout reconstruction project now on the port’s work plan.
“We are being mirrored by other ports and it’s creating competition,” he said.
Beck wants to push for a recreational-vehicle park for up to 17 spaces with utilities, similar to the port’s high-revenue-generating RV campground at Point Hudson but for only up to 17 RV campsites.
“Don’t worry about it,” Beck said. “I am not going away.”
“I ran because we were kind of the lost child down here at the end of the county,” Beck said.
He doesn’t want to see the southern part of the county, which includes Quilcene and Brinnon, become the port’s lost child once again.
“I am going to be like a toothache,” he said. “It only goes away when you take care of it.”
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Port Townsend-Jefferson County Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.