We hired a contractor from a nearby farming community, whose workers came from a local commune. We planned to have them only frame the house. We would do the rest ourselves and Bill took six months off to work on the house. He installed the whole electrical system and beamed with pride and relief when it passed inspection. To save money when he put up the drywall, he carefully cut and fit small pieces into the odd angles that an eight-sided house created. It took so much time that we decided to hire professionals to do the taping and ready it for painting.
The men we hired couldn’t believe that Bill had used so many tiny pieces and never stopped complaining about all the odd shapes they had to tape. I did much of the painting of the walls, propping myself against the ladder with my increasingly pregnant belly. We moved into our almost finished home just in time to celebrate Christmas. One month later, Alex was born.
We were thrilled to finally be in a home of our own, but it didn’t take long to discover that while an octagonal house looked good on paper, it was full of angles that made rational furniture arrangement almost impossible. None of the rooms had the square corners required to accommodate a cupboard, a TV, or a chair comfortably. Our main living area—living room, kitchen, dining area, master bedroom, and large deck—was on the second floor, overlooking the vineyard. The kids’ bedrooms were on the first floor. Below that, a daylight basement opened to the carport. We framed in space for a motorized dumbwaiter, with the idea that I wouldn’t have to carry groceries up two flights of stairs. But in the eighteen years we lived there, we never got around to building it.
As the second child, Alex had the advantage of my having been broken in by Nik. The youngest of four siblings, I never babysat or even paid much attention to children. I had no idea how to handle babies and was nervous that I would do something wrong and wouldn’t be a “good mother.”
In the rented farmhouse, I was generally alone all day, sometimes in total silence except for Nik’s wailing and the creaking of the rocker where I sat holding him, unable to stop the tears of helplessness flowing down my cheeks. Nik just kept crying. I changed his diaper and nursed him, held him, rocked him, and sang softly to him. What could it be? I reread my paperback copy of Dr. Spock’s book until it was falling apart.
Checking out the vineyard on a sunny day in early spring before the vines leafed out. Bill has four-month-old Alex in the backpack. Three-year-old Nik is in between me and Bill’s father, John Blosser.
It took me a long time to loosen up enough to enjoy my baby. Later I understood that his crying reflected my insecurity, and I carry a rueful tenderness in my heart for Nik who, as the first child, had to bear my learning curve of motherhood.
As I relaxed, I was surprised to discover how interesting, how much fun, and how individually distinctive my children were. My two boys were born three years apart: Nik, reserved and intellectual, with an unexpected silly streak; Alex, gregarious and unconventional, with an unexpected intellectual streak. They complemented each other, and the older they got, the more fun they had together. I found motherhood deeply satisfying, but never easy.
With the vineyard in its infancy and only a few acres planted, I had time to get involved in non-farm activities. I joined the McMinnville chapter of the American Association of University Women (AAUW) and through my new friends learned of a teaching opportunity at Linfield, a small liberal-arts college nearby in McMinnville. I grabbed the chance to indulge my interest in American history and do the work I had trained for. Hired as an adjunct professor, I taught for the next two years, first History of the American Revolution, and then History of Women in the United States. I had my own office in the History Department and worked so hard that I managed to turn teaching one class into a full-time job. The whole experience—planning and giving lectures, talking to students, being one of the faculty—was intellectually invigorating. The department chair gave me the freedom to formulate the syllabus for the courses, and I felt as if I were in graduate school taking a tutorial, except that I was also teaching it. The material was always fresh in my mind because I was absorbing it only days ahead of my class. Here was the stimulation I craved, and I stayed until it became a luxury I couldn’t afford. I was needed in the vineyard.
PEOPLE IN THE LOCAL farming community were curious about us since none of the farmers had experience with wine grapes. Our first contact with the community was Carrie and Les McDougall, a retired couple who lived in a pink, ranch-style house on the large lot adjoining the top corner of our property, the site of our first planting. Summer evenings we’d see them settled on folding lawn chairs in the driveway in front of their house and we’d join them when we finished work. The four of us talked about farming and looked out across our rows of grapevines, past a few big maple trees, and down onto the patchwork of farms on the valley floor. The distance made it seem peaceful, but farmers work long days, and the valley was full of activity.
“Golly, look at that,” Carrie would say, pointing to a tiny tractor moving slowly across a light green field in the distance. “I guess George is letting little Sam drive the tractor now.” Then Les would pipe up with “Look, over there,” and nod toward a spray of water moving back and forth across a faraway patch of dark green. “Phil’s irrigatin’ his beans again tonight. Must have a good contract this year with the cannery.” They’d point out a crew moving the water lines in a field of broccoli and tell us how a young man had been killed when the long piece of irrigation pipe he was moving crossed an electric line. From their lawn chair lookout, the McDougalls knew what was happening on every parcel of land.
Over the course of the 1970s, we bought several parcels of producing orchards from other neighbors, Ted and Verni Wirfs, who became our good friends as they slowly retired from farming. Ted showed his tractor skills helping us during grape harvest, hauling full totes of grapes from the steepest parts of the vineyard down to the winery. His expertise proved invaluable when it rained and the wet, slippery hillsides made maneuvering treacherous for less experienced drivers.
Verni knit Christmas stockings personalized with the names of each of our kids, provided us with one of her kittens when we wanted one, gave me starts from her unusual African violets, and showered us with a large box of her seasoned pretzel/cereal snack mix every Christmas.
Ted had an endless repertoire of stories about his years of farming, and he and Verni became a source of comfort and encouragement. After visiting with them, the problems we were struggling with always seemed more manageable. They lived from harvest to harvest with a curious combination of fatalism and optimism—making the best of whatever hand Mother Nature dealt and then welcoming each new year as a fresh start and another chance. As novices, we were grateful both for their advice and because they took us seriously. Many local farmers stopped short, looked at us sideways, and narrowed their eyes when we told them what we were doing. “You’re growing what? Why’re you doing that? Nobody’s done that around here.” Ted and Verni won our hearts and our loyalty by supporting us with their farming knowledge and their friendship.
I met many of the local farm wives when I accepted Verni’s invitation to join the Unity Ladies Club, which took its name from the local Unity School District, which had actually ceased to exist long before most of the club members were born. The ladies were older than I was, ranging in age from forty to nearly eighty. Each month a different member hosted and her dining room table, covered with a lacy crocheted tablecloth, would be laden with plates of freshly baked cookies, homemade pies or cakes, local walnuts and hazelnuts, and the obligatory dish of mints.
We chatted, sipped coffee or sweet punch out of flowery china teacups, and ate primly off the hostess’s best china. It was a Norman Rockwell painting and reminded me of the fun I had as a little girl having tea parties with my dolls and my mother, pretending I was grown up, and a lady. Here was the real thing. The ladies were very kind to me. When I was pregnant with Alex, they surprised me with the first