Our situation was destined to change. Shortly before my dad's passing, he wrote us a letter. Enclosed was an advertisement for a dairy in the Tillamook area. If we were interested, he wanted us check it out and report back. We were never able to go in time or give him our review. Some time later we did travel to Oregon on vacation. We stayed with friends near Salem where I discovered the Capital Press, an agricultural news weekly. To my delight, the real-estate ads listed numerous rural properties for sale. One add among the multitudes caught my attention. I clipped it and we went on our wanderings. The directions were vague in the add, somewhere on a rural route between Bellevue and McMinnville. We felt the challenge and decided to see if we could find it. We never missed a turn and when the valley came into view it fit my mental image perfectly. We knocked on the door and Mable Toliver warmly welcomed us and sent me to find Tim, who was working in the forest. She made Harriet feel at home visiting with her about how things might be when we moved up. Tim also treated me as if the sale were already closed. He said he would bring spring water to our building site and we were to construct a home for our down payment. I think we already hooked and very much agreed in spirit, but felt we should probably visit a few other properties before committing. Other places didn't compare. We had felt a sense of home in the valley of ancient volcanoes and muddy creeks and signed up. Some months later, we packed belongings in a nineteen foot camp trailer, and headed north to set up camp on a knob in the middle of a blooming crimson clover field. The hot summer days were busy times. There was a house to be built, machinery to be purchased and crops to be planted before the November rains would turn the ground to muddy jelly. Tim helped us get started with crop farming, a new ball game for me. The first need was to buy some equipment. While attending an auction, Tim informed an acquaintance that he had sold half of his farm in preparation for retirement. The fellow commented " now you can both go broke', because in those days it took five hundred acres of quality well managed cropland to make a living. Tim was one of the best managers around and with his system and advice we had picture perfect crops heading into harvest time. After many grueling hot days in a fog of chaff from an old AC combine we had harvested a bumper crop of Crimson seed. Things looked bright. Then mother nature took over with five inches of rain in August. For two weeks our wheat was saturated until the ripe heads were full of green sprouts. Still in the field were four thousand fifty pound straw bales which turned into two hundred pounds blobs of soggy organic mess. Even with the setbacks in crop farming, our enthusiasm still persisted. It was not connected to business success but rather rooted in the love of the outdoors and the bounty of nature which this rich land of promise had in abundance. From our first years in the valley to this day the challenge has been to meet our daily bread needs and not fight or destroy the very thing that brought us here.