by Karen Bledsoe

Created on: February 23, 2011   Last Updated: February 25, 2011

The year I started third grade, Dad bought a farm. No, not THE proverbial farm, but A farm, or, to be exact, the piece of land that would be our little family farm.

All my life up to that point had been one move after another as Dad was bounced from job to job, sometimes trying for something better, sometimes getting the sack unexpectedly. But this time it looked like we were back in our home town to stay, and Dad decided to do something he'd longed to do: build a house. Not only that, but he would build a house out in the country. We'd grow something. Christmas trees, maybe. Dad had heard that Christmas trees were a good crop for weekend farmers, suited for the red clay hills in our area. And we'd have a garden, a real garden, not just a few flowers and a tomato plant or two, but something big enough to fill the freezer with fresh produce. With three kids to feed, the thought of growing our own food must have been pretty appealing to my parents, especially since my older brothers were hitting the hungry teen years.

The eighteen acres he bought were nothing but sunburned, overgrazed pasture and two patches of woodland when we first visited. Mom and I looked askance, thinking of Dad's ideas about green meadows and babbling brooks. But the east-facing hill looked straight at Oregon's Cascade mountains. On a clear day, Mt. Jefferson was directly ahead, Mt. Hood to the left, and the Three Sisters to the right. On a brilliantly clear day, Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Adams were faint peaks far to the north. With a view like that, and a decent price, the acreage seemed like something we might take a chance on.

Building began that year, with heavy equipment cutting into the heavy clay soil to dig out the pit that would eventually be the daylight basement of our house. Our red clay, worn from basalt hills, wasn't much to grow anything on except trees, livestock, and us three active kids. It stained our socks and stuck to our rubber boots when we came out on the weekends to do what work we could ourselves on the house and to plant the first Douglas Fir seedlings that would become our Christmas tree farm.

Our garden, too, went in as soon as Dad could get a tractor to turn over a large plot and plow in some manure to lighten the red clay. We didn't even have a well at that point to provide water, and little money left after buying the land to spend on fancy gardening equipment, but that didn't stop Dad. What did we need, after all, besides dirt and seeds? Black plastic, old newspapers,

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