Memory Lane

Every year about this time (mid-January’ish), I receive a newsy update from my first business bookkeeper, who lives in Australia now.

This is gonna date me. Am I ready for this kind of full disclosure?

Okay, it’s 1993, and I’ve just printed one of my first catalogs (really more of a magalog, printed at my local newspaper, Moscow’s Daily News). My bookkeeper, Mare Rosenthal, was also a neighbor. She and husband, Greg Brown, had moved here from Iowa, purchased an 80-acre farm, and then proceeded to plant hundreds and hundreds of pine trees in order to restore their farm land back to its native state and turn it into a wildlife preserve.

Now, this is really gonna date me.

Bookkeeping back then involved ledger paper (kept in a cloth-covered binder), and a pencil that sharpened.

In this grainy “vintage” photo (before digital cameras), hubby and I

posed with our teenage children, farm hands, and another local organic farmer and his children. Mare is the woman standing next to the door handle of the truck and I’m driving things, so to speak.

Mare (below far right) now has a family about to spread their wings! Kodi (far left) was the first of their flock and came into Mare’s life while she was working here. Rather than take him to town for child care, Mare and I decided we’d take turns attending to his every need (that meant I put him down for naps, giving myself permission to take one right alongside him). Together, in between work and play, we exclaimed over his every little baby moment—you know, like when he rolled over for the first time or sat up by himself. And NOW HE’S ALL GROWN UP along with his sisters, Nurit and Mizan, additions to Mare’s family after she left Idaho.

Kodi, who recently graduated from high school, has a passion for digital multimedia and makes videos. He’s looking into options for attending college in the U.S. (Father Greg is a professor at the University of Queensland.)

Here’s our first label for my line of organic backpacking meals, a project Mare helped with.

And here’s where we are today with backpacking meals sold nationwide and in Canada. A girl can dream, can’t she? And her dreams can come true, can’t they?

In 1995, my farm and business were featured in National Geographic. The issue also featured the farmer and his family that were in the photo on my first catalog (oh, and a primate picking nits from Jane Goodall’s head).

Here’s my catalog from 1996. My farmhouse (pictured in the front cover drawing) burned down only a few hours after I’d taken the initial bulk mailing of this latest new catalog to the post office.

And today, 2013.

And Mare’s dreams also came true. Here’s an aerial photo of their tree-less 80 acres way-back-when. And …

here’s Mare’s former 80 acres in a current view from Google Earth. Looks like we both made our mark, raised some awesome kids, and, AND saw our dreams come true.

High five, Mare!!!!!!!