I am so excited to announce my partnership with the Northern Fruit Company during my preparations for this Olympic season!

Northern Fruit grows, packs & ships the best apples, pears & cherries in the Wenatchee Valley.

I am excited to be working with Northern because Northern Fruit is a true Wenatchee business & I am, and always will be at heart, a Wenatchee girl. Northern was founded in 1928 and run by the Tedford family for three generations, surviving the Great Depression. What started as a local fruit buying operation is now a state of the art packing facility, keeping it local but currently exporting to over 40 countries. I'm a Wenatchee girl too... fourth generation of the Valaas family to graduate from Wenatchee High School! And hoping to export myself to Canada next winter for some of the 2010 Olympic races!

I am thrilled to be involved with the fruit industry because it's been an integral part of growing up in Wenatchee. I remember going out to my Grandpa's orchard when I was little and picking asparagus and pussywillows (at that point in my life pussywillows were the hot item and asparagus was rather more dreaded). I also spent four summers working in a pear entymology research lab (pears specifically, but I can tell you more than you want to know about coddling moth). I spent mornings roaming the valley's orchards surveying insect populations, pests and good guys, and afternoons getting a closer look back in the lab. Growing up in Wenatchee I heard more about what effect a rain would have on the cherry crop and how time is measured in degree days than about how political events might be effecting the stock market. The fruit industry is important here!

Finally, I can 100% back Northern's goals. In a strange way our goals are the same. This summer Northern will be looking to produce the highest quality apples, pears & cherries and I will be striving to produce the highest quality training sessions. We'll both be considering our plans and looking for ways to improve.

This is my favorite Northern Fruit statement:

"A child reaching for a second Nordic apple, pear or cherry is our most important measure of success."

because I, as you have probably have concluded if you check in regularly or know about my ITA work, value community service and involvement more and more as I have embarked on this skiing journey. Inspiring youth to be healthy is wonderful & I'm so proud that Northern explicitly states that as a goal. I, in contrast and similarity, am not pushing apples, but I would claim to be pushing dreams. The more I work with kids and the more I see how I can influence their perceptions of what is possible, the more meaningful my ski accomplishments become to me because I see their power to inspire. So I'm going to borrow Northern's statement about how we measure success:

"A child reaching for another dream, with the belief that he or she can accomplish it, is my most important measure of success."


(aside from all that, I really like polar bears. and apples. and pears. and cherries. yum. but not yum when it comes to polar bears.)