Truckeroonie had been Bill’s first vehicle, bought while we were at Stanford. Despite a two-year rest while we were in Chapel Hill, it was feeling its age. Bill commuted to Portland in the VW camper, so when Truckeroonie broke down, I was at the wheel. I learned never to go out in it without rain gear, rubber boots for walking in the mud, and a backpack for Nik. I will always be grateful to Hank Paul, the local mechanic in Dayton, the nearest town, who got used to my sudden appearance in his shop. His scruffy little white dog, with the shaggy hair over its eyes, always scampered out to greet me. Hank would stop what he was doing; Nik and I would climb in Hank’s big pickup, with the dog; and we would drive back to wherever Truckeroonie had stalled so Hank could get it going again.
With its old green cab, worn leather seat, and long wobbly stick shift, Truckeroonie had taken us camping in the California redwoods country, where we had slept under the towering trees, and to the San Francisco Opera House, where we had watched Rudolf Nureyev make jaw-dropping leaps across the stage. Truckeroonie was our transportation, whether I wore dirty jeans and hiking boots or a slinky black dress and high heels. One day, Bill came home with a shiny new sky-blue pickup. We sold old Truckeroonie to a farm kid excited to get his first wheels. I had a lump in my throat watching him drive it away.
Always on the lookout for used equipment, when we heard that the local pole-bean farmers were switching to bush beans, we jumped at the chance to buy their used poles and wire. We sorted through piles of old bean stakes to find the strongest, straightest ones, and then Bill soaked them in foul-smelling, poisonous pentachlorophenol so they wouldn’t rot when he put them into the ground.
Not all our penny-pinching deals worked out. The spring after Nik was born, Bill bought an old Cat 22, a small Caterpillar bulldozer. The farmer guaranteed that it was almost ready to go. The cans of parts sitting on it, he assured us, would go together quickly. For the next two months, Bill and his dad spent many hours in that farmer’s field, forty miles from home, trying their best to put the thing together. Nik and I started out going along, but got bored sitting in the field watching them try to match the pieces. They got it running enough to load the little crawler on a trailer, along with miscellaneous cans of parts, and brought it to the vineyard. When, at long last, Bill proudly tried it out, he discovered it would turn only to the right. Neither he nor those he consulted ever did get it to work right. It was a long time before he was able to chuckle at his great money-saving scheme. We sold it for parts to someone equally ambitious about making an old Cat 22 run again.
Bill orchestrated our first vineyard planting in the spring of 1972. Bill’s family—aunt and uncle, cousins, and sister—came to help. When we were ready to put the plants in the ground, I drove the tractor, with Nik in the backpack, freeing Bill to carry the heavy bundles of dormant plants and pails of fertilizer. My job was to drive down the row, stop at the right spot, and drill a hole. The auger was mounted on the back of the tractor, so lining it up with the marker stake required prolonged twisting to look behind me. Nik had a great view of all the activity, but at seventeen months he was not happy being cooped up and his weight in the backpack made my job even more tiring. My back ached after the first hour.
August 1971. Bill Blosser (left) and me (right), with eight-month-old Nik on my shoulders, taking a break as we work on our new vineyard property. Bill is wearing his French vigneron beret.
I was rescued by Bill’s parents, Betty and John Blosser, who took their vacation time to drive up from Oakland and work in the vineyard for a week. Bill’s dad, an orthopedic surgeon, had a grin from ear to ear as he took my place. He loved driving the tractor. I never heard him complain about the twisting, or about back pain. Grandma Betty freed Nik from the backpack, played countless games of patty-cake, fed him, and made sure he napped. I gratefully accepted her help. From then on, until they finally moved to Portland, John and Betty came up every year, and we intentionally postponed major projects until they arrived.
We planted five acres that first year—one White Riesling, one Müller-Thurgau, one Chardonnay, and two Pinot Noir. When it was all over, we walked to the top of the hill and surveyed our new vineyard. I stood next to Bill, who had Nik on his shoulders, and looked out over the valley. Little sticks poked out of the reddish dirt in neat rows, and the freshly turned soil smelled clean and sweet. I was sweaty and hot, but a chill went up my spine. We had done it. We had literally put down roots.
WHEN PEOPLE ASKED, AND they always did, why and how we ever decided to start a vineyard, I was slow to answer because I really wasn’t sure how it happened. I said we were part of the back-to-the-land movement of the early 1970s. I said it was because we had more guts than brains. But I winced inside as I answered. Yes, starting a vineyard was unconventional, even outlandish, but neither of us were known for eccentric or bizarre behavior. We weren’t flower children or hippies, although our kids like to portray us that way. I picture us as a fresh-faced young couple, well educated, solidly middle class, and looking to be engaged in life with a purpose.
It is only with the perspective of time that I realize, looking at the bigger picture, that Bill Blosser and I were bit players in a drama far larger than we knew. We shared a small part of the incredible entrepreneurial energy that enveloped the world when we were young and ready for adventure.
The decade of the first plantings in Oregon vineyards, 1965–75, was one of political and social upheaval. When those of us who lived through it look back, what stands out are the Vietnam War, civil rights, and feminism that dominated the news. Race riots, antiwar protests, political assassinations, and bra burning were what we saw every time we turned on the TV news. What we didn’t see, but experience today in every facet of our lives, was what was happening behind the scenes in the business world, which was facing its own upheaval.
Radical thinking flourished in more than politics. This was a decade in which young entrepreneurs started looking at the world differently. Innovative companies that became household words got their start. Apple, Starbucks, Microsoft, Nike, and many more all began in that decade. Laptops, lattes, cell phones, high-end sneakers, word processing, gourmet home cooking—all these things that have become part of our lifestyle had their birth or blossomed in the decade between 1965 and 1975. It was an extraordinary time on all fronts and we are still reeling from the momentum created.
When Bill and I decided, in 1970, to start a vineyard—out-of-the-box thinking for two history majors—we were manifesting the innovative energy of the time. Like the Eraths, Letts, Adelsheims, Campbells, and Ponzis, who also dreamed of European wine grape vineyards, we were each following our own dream, not realizing we were part of a global phenomenon.
IN 1973, BILL AND I decided it was time to move out of our drafty rented farmhouse. We had lived the seven years of our married life in rented housing, never more than two years in the same place. I was pregnant with our second child, and we wanted a home of our own. We tried to buy a house nearby, but there weren’t many and none were for sale, so we had to build. A sloping corner of our vineyard, not good for grapes, would work for a house. Bigleaf maples and Douglas firs lined the west side, but we could look east, north, and south over the vineyard from the second floor.
The library’s books of house plans showed