Twenty years ago when Leah and I told family and friends that we were going to sell our house in Seattle and move to a place in a rural area across Puget Sound an hour from the city, I think folks must have thought we were a little crazy.
Our parents, who had had some experience with country life when they were growing up -- and who knew how much work it is to keep a garden and farm animals, which was the dream that Leah and I had -- looked at us in a way that I took to mean: “What are you two crazy kids getting yourselves into?”
Mind you, our friends and family didn’t necessarily try to discourage us or verbally poo-poo our hippie-ish, back-to-the-land move. They just kind of looked at us. They looked at us quizzically.
If you are of an age that you remember the old television show “Green Acres” about a city-slicker couple who move to a farm in the country where they have tinhorn, sit-com experiences, well I think that is what those close to Leah and me thought we were doing.
Fast-forward 20 years to present day.
It is spring.
The weather is warming and the magnolia tree in front of our home is blooming, signaling the end of lazy winter months spent indoors near the wood stove.
Our gardens are full of a winter’s worth of weeds, and, if I want a good strawberry crop come June, I’d better thin and weed my plants, pronto.
A friend down the road had six baby chickens she could not keep, and those, along with the old hens we already had, are living in our barn and need to be tended at least twice a day.
The cedar trees that tower above our home are sloughing seeds and other kinds of spring crud into the house gutters so I need to get up on the roof and do some cleanup.
At least one side of the house will need a fresh coat of stain this summer.
And on and on...
But believe me, all the work this place requires is worth it.
We sit on our porch on nice spring evenings. Birds are singing in the magnolia tree, and, from a lower part of our property where there is a small pond, frogs join in the chorus. We two latter-day, quasi-flower children sip on a glass of wine or a beer, taking in the peace of the place.
Strawberries will be coming on before we know it.
