The Buttercups of Rosalia

Garth Meyer, Gazette Reporter | Feb 10, 20160

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Buttercups close up

Widman sisters Angelina, 11, and Sonia, 5, arrive Monday at the Gazette office with the first buttercup of the year.

A heavy coat left on a rack, a white cloud bending in blue sky on a drive home, a thermometer reaches 50 before lunch, and a phone rings at the office of the Gazette in Colfax.

It's the Widman family of Rosalia. They have found the first buttercup of the year.

For the past eight years, the family has claimed the prize – a dollar bill from the wallet of publisher Gordon Forgey.

The first yellow bloom was found last year on Jan. 15. This year it wasn't until Monday, Feb. 8.

Emmy Widman had met her three kids at the school bus on their quarter-mile long driveway and went hunting.

Older daughter Angelina, 11, had already been looking, as they all had.

“It usually takes a few 45-degree days and sunshine,” Emmy said.

They then drove south Monday afternoon.

Last year, Sonia, 5, arrived at the Gazette office sleepy-eyed. She fell asleep in the car.

Reed, 8, missed the trip this year. He was in Plummer with father Allen, where he participates in a boxing program.

Allen and Emmy raise wheat and poultry five miles northwest of Rosalia, with a stand of pine trees in the scrubland, where Allen's grandparents, Edgar and Helen Widman, worked the land before. Allen is now the fifth generation on the property.

Helen is 94 and lives in Spokane. Edgar died in 2002, after which Allen and Emmy bought the land and are now raising their family.

Two weeks ago, once the weather gave its familiar signals, Angelina was out with the dogs walking, looking, sometimes by herself, around the property, up the great hill by the mailbox with its south-facing slope.

“For whatever reason, that spot puts out a buttercup before any other every year,” said Emmy.

Last year, Angelina's cousin, Camie Bothman, claimed the first buttercup, but the Bothmans took Angelina along with them to the newspaper in Colfax.

This year, three weeks into January, Angelina found a promising bud.

She set a ring of pine cones around it to mark it and keep watch.

“It's her title she wants to maintain,” said Allen.

Then on Monday after school, looking with her mom and younger sister, they spotted it, the first buttercup. It wasn't the bud she marked.

“We had walked back to almost where we started,” said Emmy.

After the 2016 first buttercup's turn at the Gazette, it went next to Rosalia Elementary Tuesday to be shown around school. Reed took it to his class first.

“It's always surprising that we find the first one, that we're in the northernmost part of the county,” said Emmy.

Before the Widmans, the late Mildred Riley of Riley's River Ranch at Central Ferry on the Snake River claimed the prize for many years, for a contest which it is unknown how long it has been going. It was well established by the time publisher Forgey came to the Gazette in 1985.

It's now an anticipated family tradition in Rosalia.

After the first buttercups bloom each year, more arrive, and more after that, which then wilt in two to three weeks as the petals fall off.

Before they're gone, the Widmans pull down jam jars and place them inside to put in mailboxes.

“We have relatives all the way down Babb Road,” Emmy said.

It all started when Angelina was a toddler. Allen knew of the contest from Mrs. Riley.

“I had a cute little girl and we had buttercups,” she said.

Each year, after leaving the newspaper office, after their picture is taken, the Widman kids each have a new dollar.

By tradition, they have gone to Arby's for milkshakes, but Arby's has closed since last year.

So Emmy made the kids milkshakes at home, and they still have their dollars.

“When they're good, I tell them they can go to the Dollar Store,” Emmy said.

It's a sign of a changing season on the farm. On Tuesday Allen was feeding chickens and fixing breaks on tractors.

“Spring is coming,” he said. “Plants know best.”