Why We Do It

We have just returned from a two-week stay with our grandchildren in eastern Oregon. "It's an ugly land," remarked Lowell, their next door neighbor, "but I like it." We've visited there often in the two-plus years since our daughter and her husband moved to Heppner.

It's wheat farming country and the landscape of rolling hills seems barren except for irrigated fields where the crops are grown. Some trees grow along creek beds and in spots where they're tended in people's yards. But it's mostly brown because, unlike the verdant western part of that state, it doesn't rain much.
We traveled to Portland last weekend to visit Arthur's sister and her husband and our route took us through the Columbia River Gorge. On that drive along the river you experience the transformation gradually as the brown and gray gives way to endless shades of green. Of course, the green comes with a price as it seems to rain almost every day this time of year and it makes driving on the interstate a real trial!
I was looking through my computer photo files while we were in Oregon and I was drawn to this photo of our potato field taken early last summer. It was a reminder of why we live where we do and why we are doing what we do.

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