MADERA COUNTY — Residents of North Fork were worried that there was a fire in the Cascadel Woods area on Thursday, due to all the helicopter activity. Though there was no fire, Task Force agents did spend the entire day in the Sierra National Forest, ripping out more than 20,000 marijuana plants and hauling out nearly six thousand pounds of ...

EASTERN MADERA COUNTY – Agents with the Madera County Narcotic Enforcement Team (MADNET) completed a marathon mission on Wednesday, June 12, eradicating nearly 15,000 marijuana plants in two separate grow sites in the Sierra National Forrest. Working at an elevation of almost 6,000 feet, it took agents 12 hours to not only haul out thousands of marijuana plants, but reclaim ...

COARSEGOLD – Firefighters started a very busy day on Father’s Day with a call at about 1:30 p.m. to yet another vegetation fire on Road 400 just north of Yosemite Springs Parkway. The fire was burning on the east side of the road in dry grass and brush, and consumed about half an acre before crews had it contained. As ...

MARIPOSA – Walk around your house, imagine a wildfire heading to your house, are you prepared? Will your house survive? Do you have an evacuation plan for your family and your pets? If the answer is no, please take the time to create a plan, share it with everyone that lives in your home. Remember – get ready, get set, ...

COARSEGOLD – Firefighters made quick work of a blaze on Wells Road this afternoon, knocking it down and stopping the spread in less than an hour from the time of dispatch. At about 2 p.m. on Tuesday, May 21, Bill Imrie and his wife saw smoke coming from a property nearby, and called 911.

I looked out my back door one morning last year, and realized that I could see my propane tank. It wasn’t that my eyesight had improved during the night, but rather that a bunch of munching deer had eaten all the leaves off the Photinia shrub that had, up until then, beautifully blocked my view of the unsightly thing. (The ...

NORTH FORK — Local resident Kim Bethel is a very busy person these days with the new business she started this year, Down Home Hand Spun Fibers. Kim has a Belfast mini fiber mill housed in a converted carport and she processes animal fleece into ‘roving’, a cleaned, carded and wound natural product that can then be spun into yarn ...

Cal Fire crews from the San Diego area have been keeping busy during their detail to the mountain area. Five engines and a strike team leader from the southern end of the state have been stationed around the Eastern Madera and Mariposa County area since Monday, Aug. 24, and have had plenty to do. They were hard at work Tuesday, ...

The Forks Resort, located on Bass Lake, in the Sierra National Forest, is only fourteen miles from the southern entrance to Yosemite National Park and eight miles from the southern end of the Golden Chain Highway through California’s Gold Country. The Forks Resort has built a reputation as a traditional family vacation spot. Family owned and operated for three generations, ...

Recently my friends Patti and Donna invited me to become a part of a local volunteer group of women called “H.O.W. : Helping One Woman.” The idea appealed to me because it’s kind of like “Real Housewives” meets “Queen for a Day,” only there are no annoying cameras following you around, and no mean women. Only really nice ones who ...