Home Is Where the Barn Is

How my family found a sense of place

In the 1980s, my folks sold the ranch house, barn, and riding arena my five siblings and I called home—the soon to be empty nesters lured into moving their cattle to Idaho for economic gain and a change of scenery. It was only natural that their new place would become our family’s center, and for thirty-five years it was where we (now all adults with families of our own) gathered for holidays, picnics, and other special occasions.

But when an accident, age, and illness edged Mom and Dad off the land that had supported a pasture full of cow horses and pack mules, we gravitated to what was familiar: my brother and sister-in-law’s farm in Washington State. It was just over the mountain from where we grew up, and it quickly became our new family center—a home away from home for weddings, anniversaries, and the celebration of lives ended too soon.

We all thought Mike and Mindy were crazy when they bought a chunk of undeveloped land on a mountainside miles from civilization. Old-timers knew the area as the Yacolt Burn, where in 1902 a catastrophic wildfire killed 38 people and destroyed over 238,000 acres. Ninety years later, my brother Mike and his wife Mindy had the audacity to think they could build a life on this wreckage. It was 1991 and the unit had just been logged—and let me tell you—they had a mess on their hands. They spent the next few years clearing branches, burning slash piles, and pulling stumps just to walk the property. To their surprise, they found several spiky ghost-stumps that remained from the 1902 fire, and they took great care preserving them as part of the land’s history.

First, Cleanup

Before the parklike setting, the land was awash in tree branches and stumps.

Then came this…

A house, a barn, and two kids raised into adulthood, today they have something very few of us have: roots that run deep. I must admit to being oblivious of most of their hard work, although I’m wise enough to know it didn’t happen overnight. A fruit orchard that produces apples, pears, apricots, and more. An organic garden that gets bigger each year, with its harvest put up in the canning shed each fall. The horses keep the pastures down for the most part, but there is the constant chore of mowing for fire suppression and the seemingly endless task of keeping trees limbed, fences mended, and firewood cut. And that’s not the half of it. There is always something going on with the animals, foster animals, kids, and grandkids, not to mention a large extended family. You’d be right to guess that the barn is generally ground zero for whatever is going on. Decorated for a party. A sheet draped across the front for movie night under the stars. Tables and chairs setup inside when the picnic gets rained out. A hayloft full of keepsakes. Mom and Dad’s ashes.

These days my brothers, sisters, and I are spread out the way families can get—Texas, Nevada, Idaho, different ends of Washington. Yet whenever we plan a get-together, it’s a given it’ll be at Mike and Mindy’s farm. This sense of place is a product of their pioneering spirit and the knowhow to build a barn befitting a family. What a gift for the rest of us!

Several photos courtesy of Michael Roggenkamp

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