We are located on the Olympic Peninsula. Banana Belt Kelly Gift Shop is part of the Lodge.
Todd and Laurie Yarnes are your hosts and owners. Todd is retired from the Army and Sheriff’s Department. Laurie is an artist. We bought this property in 1997. It was love at first sight. What a peaceful place. We loved the history of this place.
This was the old farmstead built in 1920. The house we call the Gumdrop House was built as a sled house originally. It was pulled from logging site to logging site. This information was given to us from the Johnson family. It then became a farm as it went through its life here. It is built from hand hewn boards and layers of shiplap. It is one solid well made house. The original clawfoot tub is in the bathroom.
When we bought the place there was a bowl of gumdrops on the kitchen counter. Hence the name. We still have them. The property came with cupboards and buildings full of the previous owners things. The Sorgenfrei family owned it. Mrs. Sorgenfrei was in her 90’s and in a nursing home. Harry Johnson sold it for her through power of Attorney. He owned a place on River Rd. He was family from what we know.
We were told that the future Olympic rower Rantz lived just around the corner on West Silberhorn when he was young. The author of the book, The Boys in the Boat, told us that and he posed for photos with Kelly. Rantz did work for neighbors and most likely here because there were only a few houses here then. We found many old bottles, toy cars, marbles, horse shoes and such burried on the property.
The old cattle shoot and milking stantions finally fell apart a few years ago. The old chicken coop is now the game room with the original beams intact. The woodwork shop Todd does his carving and turning in was our sheep pen for awhile. It has the original beams and roof. The loafing shed is still original but we closed in the west end for a cat shed for our cats.
The shop for Banana Belt Kelly is still the same building. We closed the hayloft all the way across and the original ladder is in the shop. There was a sliding barn door on the east side which is now a window. There was a little canning room on the west side. We saved the door and it is on the A frame yellow potting greenhouse in the garden. Todd took the old hand hewn boards off the outside and planed them. They are now preserved and on the inside walls. Laurie did the stonework on the bottom of the walls.
The yellow potting greenhouse is made from local wood from Yada. The carved fish head on the original wood center beam came from here in Kelly’s shop In the loft. The concrete stepping stones came from here and were original to the property. Handmade. The bricks on the floor came from the old schoolhouse in Port Angeles. The small side windows came from the old house on the corner of Secor and River Rd. The big windows came from the old barn at 1734 Woodcock Rd. The old woodstove was in the Gumdrop house when we bought it.
The Gumdrop House had no insulation and just a propane heater in the wall in the livingroom. The old woodstove was in the first bedroom. We had the house insulated with a PUD program. We also replaced all the old metal windows, updated the electric and plumbing. New carpet revealed different floors beneath. The west half of the livingroom is concrete, then tongue and groove thick boards. One room was plywood. The kitchen floor is hand poured on site. It was done by the owner of Bauer Interiors in Sequim when he was young. Our updates try to be minimal and keep the character of the historic home that it is.
We added the main house in 2001. When we opened the wall in the gumdrop house kitchen to add on we found an old doorway had been walled over at some point. Probably when they added a sliding glass door. So we are using the original old doorway. The exterior window we left open. The outside wall of the house had the dates written in pencil that cows were bred and so on. We sealed that back up in the wall. There was a big apple tree where the Gumdrop dining room is now.
The main house was built by a barn builder. Gary Ristick. It is made very well. It has radiant floor heating upstairs and downstairs. Tubing downstairs we did ourselves with the help of friends. The floors are poured concrete downstairs and warm in the winter. The kitchen counters are poured in place concrete. The fireplace in the kitchen is a Rumford. It really heats well. Around the fireplace is wormwood from a old house in town. The wood doors at the end are from the same old house. Pencil drawings came already on the doors.
The courtyard fountain we made ourselves. The land was all overgrown brush and rocks. We had a bulldozer come in and shape it after we bought it. We planted all the trees to the north and made all the gardens. We brought in gates from different old English Estates from England. Our gardener built the rock walls with rocks from the property. We love rocks! The Dungeness River used to run through here. Our irrigation water comes from the Dungeness River. It is piped right to the property. That is how we keep things alive in the Sequim dry summers. Some of the fruit trees are very old. Especially the big apple tree by the Gumdrop house.
As you can tell, we love this place and its history. There is more to tell and we are making history here all the time. Things are always changing you can count on that. Here change is a good thing. We love the historic ways and add them wherever we can.
