This Little Place

Tonight, I’ll sleep at our little place on Joeger Road in Auburn for the last time. My real estate agent hired a cleaning service to clean the entire house; I’ll sleep outside tonight to avoid getting anything dirty. I still have several days of work left to move everything, but from this point on, I’ll sleep at the home of friends here in Auburn, or at my new place in Mountain Ranch. And tonight, I’m thinking about what this little patch of earth has meant to me and my family.

We moved here in March 2001 - the realtor who sold my house this summer represented us in that original transaction. This place was a step up from our first home in Penryn, CA (which we bought in 1994) - three times the acreage (at 3 acres!), plus 2 barns, a detached office/shop, and irrigation water. We quickly made use of all of it!

This little place saw lots of new life in 23 years. My mule Frisbee was born here shortly after we moved in. The next year, Sami’s mule, Boomerang, was born - and so was Flying Mule Farm. Over the next 2-plus decades, we had 3 litters of puppies, multiple broods of baby chicks, and countless bottle lambs. And, in 2003, our second daughter Emma arrived. This little place was the only home she knew until she went to college 18 years later.

Our first daughter, Lara, loved this place, too - she was 4 years old when we moved here. Somewhere, I have a wonderful photo of her with some of the first sheep we raised here. Later, she would ride horses, build forts, catch bullfrogs in the pond, swim in the irrigation ditch. And take prom photos. As would Emma. We had slumber parties and graduation parties (in both the front yard and the backyard). We “camped” at the pond. We sheared sheep and held harvest festivals in the barns.

This little place, like most farms, also saw death. There are four outstanding dogs buried on this property. My first horse, Cali, who I bought in college, died here, as did Indy, the horse that both the girls rode. And just a year ago, our family surrounded Sami as she passed away from brain cancer.

Curiously, we didn’t do much to improve the house - despite our best intentions. We put a new roof on, remodeled a bathroom, and replaced the deck. We re-roofed and re-sided the barns (Sami was pregnant with Emma when we re-roofed and remodeled the hay barn - she supervised!). But tonight, the house still features the dark green carpet and off-white walls that it had when we moved in.

This little place also grew food - for our family and for our community. For several years, we grew an enormous garden and sold vegetables at the Auburn Farmers Market. One of my favorite memories is when our nieces came to visit one summer when we had a big sweet corn patch. One Friday, the four girls disappeared for several hours. On Saturday morning, when I went out to pick corn for the Farmers Market, I found a 5-gallon bucket full of empty cobs. I can’t imagine the stomach aches that the girls hid from us! That much raw sweet corn can’t be good for the digestive system!

We also raised much of our own meat in the 23 years we lived here. This little place was the “home place” for our larger sheep operation - and so we always had home-raised lamb in the freezer. And on the barbecue. We also raised meat chickens - commercially for a couple of years, and then just for our own consumption. I processed several deer in the back yard, too - and once (at Sami’s insistence) we raised a hog. I loved the bacon, but I prefer lamb chops!

This little place was home to several small businesses, of varying degrees of success. Sami’s large animal veterinary business was by far the most economically successful of these endeavors; AgResource Solutions, Flying Mule Farm, and (recently) Flying Mule Timberworks were my own attempts at business ownership. And during COVID, I worked at my current job for the University of California out of our home office.

In many ways, our yard was a farmer’s yard. Green, colorful, and unkempt most of the time. The dominating features of both our front and backyards were the enormous fruitless mulberry trees. These trees provided so much shade that the last time we used our air conditioning was in 2003, when Sami was pregnant with Emma. But if we loved the trees from July through September, we cursed them in November and December. Our compost pile loved the leaves, but the 6-8 weeks of raking were not much fun.

As much as I’ve loved this place, there are things I won’t miss (in addition to the autumn leaf drop). I won’t miss being less than 50 yards from a heavily traveled county road, and less than a mile from a four-lane state highway (CA-49). Perhaps this a reflection of my age, but people seem to be driving faster as I get older! I won’t miss the dark hallway that feels like a cave. I won’t miss coming home in the winter to a home that’s as cold inside as the air is outside (we didn’t use the furnace after 2003, either).

But I will miss the laughter and the celebrations. I’ll miss waking up before Sami. I’ll miss seeing my sleepy (and sometimes grumpy) girls emerging from their bedrooms in the morning. I’ll miss the fire in the wood stove after a long, cold day of lambing. I’ll miss the lilacs and daffodils in the spring. I’ll miss that first morning in August when I can tell that fall is on the way. I’ll miss my garden and the lawns I mowed every week from April through October. I’ll miss this community.

One of the things I’ve tried to do over the course of my adult life is to make the little patch of land where I’ve lived better. To increase its fertility. To help it grow more food. To improve it’s ecological function. I don’t know if I’ve succeeded with this little place. But I do know that I’ll miss it. I do know that I’ve loved this place. And I know that I’ll walk around the house and the barns and the back pasture this Saturday with a sense of gratitude. And I’ll see Sami at every turn.