Mountain Homestead in Oregon

After a month-long journey across the continent we arrived at Mountain Homestead in Coquille, Oregon. This was a community that Janet had picked out of the Communities Directory and they were nice enough to host us. We've found communities need a fair amount of advance warning before your arrival so they can “be ready”. What they need to be ready for is less clear, however. Every place we've been we just show up with work clothes on and ask where we can help, an approach that has been pretty well-received.

Mountain Home is in a valley on the Pacific side of Oregon's coastal mountains, so it stays pretty dry in the summer but gets a ton of rain in the winter.

The valley is steep so there is a great deal of slope on the land, which the community is dealing with by building a series of terraces that add topography and serve to keep water on the property. It is a lot of hard work to do this, and while they could do it by hand they use a tractor instead. This is the work I did during the two weeks we stayed there.

Because the land is heavily wooded trees must be pushed over where the terraces are to be. A cable is wrapped around the tree, the other end tied to a tractor and the tree comes crashing down. But it's rarely that easy. Often roots need to be chopped, or the tractor may not have room to pull, or the tree must fall in a different direction than the tractor is pulling. In these cases, the cable is routed through a pulley attached to another tree which causes the tree to fall in the right direction. (Without a tractor a “block and tackle” would be used.)

Doing this kind of “ecoforestry” I got to drive the tractor (thanks, Eli) operate a chain saw, and swing a machete, so I am even more of a man now than I was before. I also got a horrendous case of poison oak so the trees had their revenge!

Janet got to do a lot of gardening and helped prepare the lunch meal one day. She dug up potatoes, preserved kale seeds, and helped build cold frames.

Children!
There were some wonderful children at Mountain Home roughly the same ages as Connor and Alexis. A boy named River was Connor's bud, as was seven year old Julius. Imani and Nia, Julius' sisters, made wonderful companions for Alexis. There have usually been children where we stay, but at Mountain Home we hit the jackpot. Unfortunately, the families with children appear to be moving away soon, so bummer!

Vegans vs. meateaters
A conflict was in its end-game when we arrived. Apparently, the vegans in the community opposed the raising of animals for food, and those who wanted to raise goats for milk and meat apparently lost out and were preparing to leave (perhaps for other reasons too). Unfortunately, these were the families with children.

Throughout this journey we've encountered vegetarianism (may eat eggs and dairy, but no meat) and veganism (eats plant sources only). The main justification we've heard for these diets is a sort of spiritualism that translates to “I don't want to kill anything for a meal.” We don't want to kill an animal either, but we think meat is part of a healthy diet so we'll do what we must. We are open to a biological or anthropological justification for vegetarianism/veganism, but haven't heard it yet. Instead we see a lot of dietary practices that are obviously unhealthy like the consumption of soy. Becoming malnourished has never been an interest of ours, even if it feels good spiritually, and an omnivorous community remains one of our criteria.

Winter comes on
We arrived in Oregon in September, just when it started getting cold. Unlike the flat places in the country, here in the mountains there are what are known as “micro-climates”, which may be warmer or colder for various reasons. In a valley bottom, like Mountain Home's, the air rises during the day as it is heated by the sun. At night, however, the cool air goes back down the valley and causes people living in trailers to shiver uncontrollably. Also, because we were in a valley, the sun shown on our solar panel only a few hours a day, and since we rely on the battery for lights and most especially the refrigerator (electronic ignition lights the propane) we had a very hard time keeping the battery charged. We're still working out this solar thing!

So, in a quest for warmth, we moved on from Mountain Home, but we'll go back there and help them out. They are doing a lot of interesting things and are laying the groundwork for a fantastic food forest.

Thank you Mountain Home!