It's a grim time for Granges

ALFALFA, Wash. -- There is such a place, Alfalfa.

It's near the intersection of State Routes 22 and 223, marking the spot to turn toward Granger's dinosaur park.

It once had a post office and a store, but those burned down decades ago.

However, the Alfalfa Grange -- constructed of sturdy brick and painted a rust-color -- still stands amid the canals and brush. And the few people who still gather there want company.

"To keep the community together," explains Dorris Cook, 84, a longtime member who used to ride horseback to the town to buy penny candy.

The story of the Alfalfa Grange is common to Granges across the state. Membership is declining, meetings are poorly attended and the few who attend are getting old.

"The people that are the cornerstone of the Grange are in our 80s and things are just getting too much for us," Cook said. "We need help."

Old-timers blame sports, families with two working parents, video games and electronics for distracting younger generations and making them too busy for the face-to-face interaction with neighbors that once made Granges community centerpieces.

Today, the Alfalfa Grange has 42 members, but only six or so show up to meetings.

Hoping to turn things around, Cook and her friends have organized a Tuesday potluck dinner they're calling "Save the Grange Potluck."

They've even brought in the cavalry.

Volunteers from the Grange in Molson, a tiny community east of Oroville near the Canadian border, will attend to help recruit new members and come up with ideas to revitalize the Grange.

"What we do is go out to Granges that are really struggling," said Wilma Penner of the Molson Grange.

Penner and her husband, George, are half of the four volunteers on the Washington State Grange's membership team. They visit down-and-out Granges to help local leaders think of new ways to attract members and raise money. They help organize pancake breakfasts, yard sales and chili cookoffs, pass out fliers and construct readerboards.

The trick is to help each Grange find its identity, often by finding a unique community service. For example, Molson Grange members maintain a local cemetery. Others adopt highways or give out scholarships. Many participate in Words for Thirds, a program that distributes dictionaries to elementary school children, namely third-graders.

"Granges are different like people are different," Penner said.

In the Yakima Valley, the Penners also have worked with the Cowiche, Tieton, Ashue, Fruitvale and Terrace Heights granges.

About two years ago, they helped the Terrace Heights Grange attract new members through a local equestrian group that used the Grange hall for its meetings. That Grange has about 15 new members, many of them horse lovers. They even have held tack sales at the Grange.

Connie Hauver, a longtime member of the Terrace Heights Grange, said the mission now is renovating their building. Growth is slow but many of the new members are relatively young, in their 50 or 60s instead of 80s or 90s. They even have a couple in their 30s.

She hopes to someday find more community outreach and take the Grange message beyond the walls of the building.

"I don't think a lot of people understand what the Grange is about," she said.

Historically, Granges were about farming.

The National Grange started in 1867 by a former U.S. Department of Agriculture representative alarmed by what he considered unsound farming practices and poor communication between farmers.

Growth was fueled by low prices, debt and unfair practices of railroad companies, according to "Washington Grangers Celebrate a Century," by Gus Norwood. In 1870, the Illinois State Grange helped convince their state legislature to regulate railroads, grain elevators and warehouses that farmers complained charged excessive rates or storage fees without competition.

Granges continued as centers for social gatherings and common causes throughout the West.

Institutions such as rural mail delivery, public utility districts and even establishing yellow as the color for school buses are at least partly the doings of the Grange, Penner said.

The Washington State Grange formed in 1889, two months after statehood.

But collective attitudes started to fade in the 1980s and so did the power of Granges, said Dan Hammock, communications director for the Washington State Grange in Olympia.

"The Grange rurally took a nose dive in the '80s like other fraternal organizations did when the focus turned from us to me," he said.

Meanwhile, fewer people farmed and rural communities shrunk.

Today, the National Grange has about 200,000 members in 2,300 local Granges, down from its peak of nearly 1 million members in the 1950s, said Edward Luttrell, president of the national organization.

However, Luttrell finds cause for encouragement.

Membership has been declining slower every year, he said, while many states, including California and Virginia, forecast net gains in membership when the 2010 counts are finished. Meanwhile, the country has seen more new Granges open in the past few years than in the previous 20, he said.

"We truly believe that right now we're starting one of the upswings," said Luttrell of Sandy, Ore.

The National Grange has been leading membership summits, publishing recruitment literature and training people such as the Penners to revive halls throughout the country.

It also continues to lobby for rural causes. For a recent example, Grange officials have been working with the Federal Communications Commission to increase broadband Internet access to remote areas, Luttrell said.

In Washington, the state Grange successfully lobbied to maintain the state's signature top-two primary and a new Grange opened last year -- Penn Cove on Whidbey Island, where local niche crop growers sought a place to band together.

In Alfalfa, about six miles west of Toppenish, Cook is the chairwoman of women's activities. "That means the food and the kitchen," she said.

Food is a big part of the Grange's remaining activities. Each spring and fall, the Grange hosts a fundraiser dinner that will attract 150 or more guests.

The Cooks also use the Grange hall for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners for her large, extended family, something her grandson, Travis Cheney, would hate to lose even though he is not a member.

"It's a family place," said Cheney, 28, of Toppenish. "We got a lot of little kids that run around so it's good for them."

Mary Kearl, the secretary of the Alfalfa Grange, said people used to rent the Grange hall for receptions as a way to raise money. But those parties require a Grange member to supervise. Few of the older members want to do that, she said.

According to Kearl's history, the Alfalfa Grange opened in 1931 in the former Alfalfa School building rented from the Granger School District. (The town and school district, incidentally, were named not for the Grange, but Walter N. Granger who helped organize and was president of a key local irrigation company in the late 1800s.)

People packed their own wood, coal and kerosene for lanterns to dances and meetings until electricity arrived nine years after the Grangers purchased the facility for $100.

Kearl, 79, and her husband Ray, 83, have been members for more than 50 years and held their wedding reception in 1953 at the Grange hall.

She did not work and her family shared one car raising three children on their ranch. The twice monthly Grange hall gatherings, attended by 50 or more people, were her contact with the outside world.

"To me, that was the social event," she said. "We met twice a month and I just couldn't wait to go."

Today, the Alfalfa Grange's 42 members pay an annual $34 membership fee. But that and fundraisers took in only about $6,800 last year, a few hundred less than expenses. Meanwhile, cost of insurance and propane for heating has increased.

Kearl hopes this effort works.

"I don't know what will save it," she said. "I'm concerned about it. It will be a passing of something I've done for 50 years."

* Ross Courtney can be reached at 509-930-8798 or rcourtney@yakimaherald.com.