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11/20/2006: "Who We Are Part 2"

I’m going to chat a bit about Nate, Rebecca and I!

Nate grew up in Northern California, on a large parcel of land overlooking Clear Lake. His parents built an A-frame house, from scratch, (with bone tools and lava rock nails…just kidding) and had a solar array to help fuel the home. Anything the solar didn’t power was augmented with propane gas. Nate had no siblings, and so helped his dad “tinker” with many inventions and gadgets. Nate’s father once built a car, Earth Rover, that got 50 mpg, and was featured in Mother Earth News in 1974.

Nate also had the guidance of his grandmother, who took him on walks and taught him to name trees and flowers. She gave him an early appreciation of the outdoors and an eye for details.

In 1990, Nate and his family moved to Cottage Grove, Oregon. The property they settled on bordered a Weyerhaeuser tree farm. This provided a lot of opportunity for Nate to become familiar and fall in love with the flora of Western Oregon. Nate started college in 2001, at Lane Community College. He studied botany, and worked for several summers as a botanist for the Forest Service. He was active in the Native Plant Society, tutored botany and biology, and planned on pursuing his botany degree at Oregon State University. That’s when he ran into trouble: me.

I was born in a hospital about 3 miles from Living Green Farm. My family lived in Jefferson for a few years, then Toppenish, WA, then Roseburg OR, and finally Eugene. I had some rough times as a teenager and left home when I was 15. I lived all over the US during those turbulent years. I reunited with my family when I was 19. I took my GED the following year and enrolled in community college. Within 2 months of starting college one professor had convinced me I was too much of a smartass to become a nurse, and should pursue medicine. I worked on my science degree, transferred colleges, and enrolled in a cooperative education program. I taught English for 6 months in Bangkok Thailand and Kyoto Japan. The time in Asia really changed my perspective on the world, and I returned to the states eager to move forward.

Nate and I met in front of the edible landscape at Lane Community College. We were introduced over bees pollinating the garlic. Nate also tutored my biology class. We saw a lot of each other, went hiking, kept our romance secret while he tutored me, and were engaged within four months. We moved up to Corvallis together at the end of the school year, got jobs and tried to figure out how to get the three cats to agree to live in harmony.

By the end of the summer working for the Forest Service, Nate confided in me that he didn’t want to be a field botanist. After the first term at Oregon State, Nate realized he did not want to be an academic either! I continued with my education in Zoology as Nate searched for what he wanted to do with himself. He switched his major to Crop and Soil Science.

One day, on a trip to the library, I happened upon John Seymour’s book “The Self Sufficient Life and How to Live It.” I checked it out, took it home, and told Nate about how I had a fantasy of being able to “do it myself”. Nate glommed onto the book, reading it from cover to cover.

Over the next few weeks and months, Nate became more and more interested in animal husbandry and self-sufficiency. I was a little concerned when he had some crazy ideas about living a nomad’s life, ranging cattle and chickens along with us in the unused grass of the highway median. After a lot of soul searching and thought, Nate decided to make farming his professional goal. We had a few laughs about the up and coming young doctor to be and her farmer husband.

Nate became involved with the Organic Grower’s Club as a way to get his hands dirty while he worked to finish his degree. He ran a crop of corn, planted at different intervals, to try for an extended corn harvest. That’s when the AP showed up and found a headline in Nate.

After the AP story ran, we receive some interesting mail. Nate got a letter from a man in New York, who just wanted to say hello, and nice article. Also there was an email from James Cassidy about a man with extra acreage in Albany. Nate and Marshall agreed to go meet him.

Nate came home that night very excited. Kurt sent him some interesting things to read, and the wheels really got churning.

I tried to be objective, cool, and distant as it became more and more obvious that this could turn out to be a dream come true for Nate and I. Here was the perfect arrangement: we get to farm! No waiting six years for Channa to finish medical school. Here was Kurt offering us a partnership in stewarding the land.

This first spring and summer has really been a challenge, getting the farm “up and running”. Some tasks seem so daunting, and others so easy, until you start! We’ve been blessed with good friends to help and gifts from all around.

In June, after we were moved in and the bachelors moved out, our friend Rebecca approached us about living in the farmhouse. She is a fellow ORGs club member and very committed to sustainability. Rebecca is our connector and innovator. She is well known in the community, with many resources and has a fountain of good ideas. She just finished her Master’s degree, studying the effects of different cover crops in grape production. As soon as she finished her thesis, she was recruited to work the “crush”, or wine harves up at Left Coast Cellars. Crush is a killer season of 16 hour days, 6 days a week, scrubbing fermenting tanks, punching down must and transferring gallons of wine from one place to another. Crush ended about two weeks ago, the wine safely aging away, and the purple stains are just starting to fade from Rebecca’s hands. She’s happy to be back at the farm, and has really put her energies into farm projects.

Over this past summer, being on the farm and volunteering in “free” medical clinic, I’ve had a real change of heart in the professional plans. No, I’m not going to be a farmer, too. I’ve been thinking more and more that I want to learn the system that makes society tick, not just the system that makes the human body run. Also, medical school, and the associated internships and fellowships, would really be too much of a sacrifice for me. I turned my attention to other options and kept coming back to law. I took my LSAT exam in September, scored very well, and am being courted by all sorts of interesting schools. The exciting news is that there are two great schools within commuting (albeit, lloonnng) range.

Right now, Nate and I both have one more term of school. Nate is planning on being at the farm full time come spring, while I am heading off to law school in the fall. Rebecca is planning a six-week trip to Mexico, and should return to the farm in February.

So there’s a little bit about us!