Our search for a farm was pretty much a Hallmark movie.
Mark was nearing the end of a 30 year career with the Department of Natural Resources living in shotgun bachelor pad on the water with all his tools and equipment crammed in the basement. His dog, a large Flat Coated Retriever named, “Belle”, needed a lot more space. I was laid off my job as a strategic planner and rattling around in a four-bedroom house in the suburbs trying to grow vegetables in garden boxes with an ancient and somewhat bossy pug named, “Flora”. We had four kids between us on the college track when we each took an uncharacteristic chance and answered questions on an online dating site. We met at a Krispy Kreme donut Shop.
On our second date (Christmas Eve), I brought “Flora” to Mark’s house to meet Belle. We were outside looking at the pretty lights on the harbor when we heard a splash! In an instant, we realized 12 year old Flora had fallen off the bulkhead and was swimming in the wrong direction toward the bay. Mark jumped in fully dressed with his shoes on to rescue her – and he made ravioli for dinner. How can you not fall in love with a guy like that? We entertained each other with stories about dogs. our experiences raising goats, chickens, pigs and in my case, horses. On Valentine’s Day, we gave each other the same book, How to Build Animal Housing. It would not be the last time we gave each other the same gift. We have been married eight years now, and it is uncanny how often this happens.
Between drives on logging roads visiting the tree farm that Mark planned to manage post retirement, I watched Mark do things I would personally never attempt like unload a freezer from a flat bed truck, build a retaining wall, and repair a washing machine. I got Mark acquainted with my culinary skills pulling off a sit down Thanksgiving dinners for 25 in the ‘Kayak’ (my name for Mark’s shotgun house with one oven) and my considerable ability to organize anything with Post-it Notes. By the way, that dinner would have never happened without that freezer, and you can keep food hot in an ice chest lined with towels. I digress.
Before long, we settled on a vision – find property with a house on it and create a small farm in the county we already lived in. Something close in, Mark likes to drive, but I don’t. In a past life, I have lived 20 miles from the nearest grocery store. You want to cry when you forget the milk, and we rather like seeing our family and friends.
We didn’t want anything too big (less than 10 acres) with some kind of house on it (even an ugly one) and maybe some out buildings. As much as I drooled over images of picture perfect kitchens on Houzz.com, a turn key homestead was not in our pocket book. As long the house had good bones and live dirt around it, we were confident that we could plan, hammer and shovel our way to the place that would suit us over time. It would be and still is a labor of love.
As if we just needed any more inspiration, on another trip to the bookstore, Mark picked up the The Have More Plan by Ed and Carolyn Robinson, a classic (original copyright 1943, updated in 1973). Yes, some of it’s outdated, but it has plenty of practical advice for first time farmers, like building a harvest kitchen. and making room for fruit trees. We read it cover to cover, and re-read from time to time just to see how we’re doing, highly recommend.
The search was on! We scoured online property search engines and used up a lot of ink cartridges printing aerial maps off google, satellite view. We shared listings we were interested in with our favorite realtor, Dan Bennett and touched base with Washington State University Extension Center. The Extension Center gave us links to soil series maps with lots of detail. While details on percentage composition of the soil and opportunities to improve drainage might seem more interesting to Mark, suburb living had me longing to move dirt without a jack hammer. We both got excited when it said a site might lend itself to blueberry production or short season annuals.
So heavy clay or rocky soils and swamps were out, along with really, really, long gravel driveways, steep hills and properties right up against apartment houses and motorcycle repair shops. Watching someone on their deck with their Hibachi would take the romance out of feeding chickens and milking goats. It was 2011. A lot of properties were in sad shape with saggy decks, scary bathrooms and more moss than roof. I wasn’t having much success finding a job either. We probably looked at 30 properties, and I applied for way too many jobs.
Like Elvis Presley said, “Some things are meant to be.”
And then, we got a call from Dan to take a look at a property in Puyallup. Mark had to work, so I drove out to meet Dan at this unusual property, a shy five acres with two houses and a barn all on the same parcel where everything (including the barn) was rented (as in income producing)! It was hard to see this place behind the 40 foot tall evergreens, but the view of farm fields from that not too big and very replaceable wooden deck (pictured) – be still my heart. I called Mark to come and take a look. This was the part in the movie when you know everything will turn out perfect.
