Arriving back to San Francisco from Japan, we rested a half day and night. The following day we flew to Portland. Spent two nights with Marc. During our second day Celeste and I drove to Mt. Hood. Lunched at the rustic Timberline Lodge. Amazingly, hundreds of people were still skiing on the glacial parts.

The next day we drove down to “The Farm”, Ben & Meg’s self sustaining farm in Falls City, a 1800’s logging town. It’s 3 block long downtown has two restaurants (weekends only for one and 5 days for the other), a general store and no gas station & 4 churches. Falls City is approximately 25 miles SW of Salem, near McMinville and Independence.

The next day Marc, Dawn, Heron & Aria, day tripped down to the farm for a Brodehl family gathering.

Celeste and I spent 4 days on their self sustaining farm. Celeste spent time helping Megan with a very extensive garden growing everything from lettuce, tomatoes, potatoes, cucumbers, to kale. A lot of watering was done. The following photo is 1/3 of the total garden.

On the farm you get up at 5:30, one half hour after light. For three days Ben and I arrived at their newly purchased  5 acre parcel at 6:30. Ben had the acreage professionally logged of pine and fir trees to turn the acreage into pasture land. The remaining maples, oaks and alders were all cut down. These trunks are piled up, cut into 16″ sections and then split. Ben cut and split, and I stacked the split wood. I stacked roughly 2.5 cords over 3 mornings. Had to stop at 10:30 when sun breached the trees along the creek. Was 100 degrees each day. Hardest I worked in some time. Estimated that there are 125 cords of wood on the 5 acre parcel. Lot of wood to be split yet. The visual beauty of the terrain made it worth it. Had a great time working with Ben. Felt like I was 42 again!

We had a great time on the farm.