Here is a little back story on how the G & E Ranch became what it is today, and where we hope if goes in the future. In 2014, Greg and Emily where dating and throwing around ideas of realistic dream places they would love to live. Greg’s dream was to have a little piece of land near an airport, such as Aurora, Oregon. Emily quickly started searching for properties that matched the description. They initially looked at two locations, but the properties weren’t quite right, and it was just a dream anyway. A while later, Emily was online looking for homes for her mom who was relocating, and while searching came across a 6-acre piece of property on a private runway in Molalla, Oregon. The only reason either of us knew where Molalla was is because they happened to go skydiving there a week before. It so happened to be on the exact same airport. I guess when you are jumping out of a plane at 10,000 feet, you are not paying attention to the homes near the DZ (drop zone). Emily emailed the sale information on the property to Greg with the subject line reading, ‘OMG! Check this out’!
Greg was working out of town on a job and agreed to look at it over the coming weekend while he was in town visiting Emily. Friday, he flew into the Skydive Oregon Airport for the first time. We looked at the property for hours. Greg had to be persuaded by Emily and the realtor to look in the house and stop looking at the property, shop, barn, hangar and outside amenities. His response was, “I am sure it has bedrooms, bathrooms, and kitchen. I am not too concerned about it.” By Sunday, an offer had been put down on the house. For the first 6 months, Emily lived there basically alone while Greg was out of town on a different project, but once he was back to working from Portland, thing outside the Ranch began to change. What was once a big field with old worn-out fencing on three sides became a beautify fenced U-shaped pasture. The center of the pasture was designed and built to house a 7,500 SF fruit orchard. At the entrance to the long 12-foot wide corridor up the orchard, we built a large 12-foot wide arbor. Later down the road, Greg and Emily got married under that same arbor. Today, the arbor is covered with beautiful honeysuckle
Peyton’s Guided Tour
After the pasture fencing was built, Greg transferred the chicken coop he had at his previous home (which is now a rental) to the Ranch, and we had our first farm animals. Greg then built a large animal shelter, a 5,000-gallon rain harvesting system, a large garden, and other out-buildings/pens. He even wrapped the entire property with an invisible dog fence to keep our dogs in. From then on, it has been a constant work in progress to accommodate more and different varieties of animals. Currently, we have cattle, sheep, hogs, llama, alpaca, laying chickens, laying ducks, meat chickens and meat turkeys. There is one rule for animals on the ranch. They must be low maintenance and stay in the pasture, hence no horses, goats, rabbits, bison, etc. If we can’t leave for a week-long vacation, then they don’t fit the equation for us. Everything has automatic water via a trough or nipples that are regulated by floats. Everything has automatic food in the way of pasture grass, hay feeders, solar powered feeder, feed tubes, or transportable self-feeding carts. For example, this last Memorial Day weekend, we flew from the Ranch to Coeur D’Alene, Idaho Thursday evening for a long weekend away, returning Monday evening. In that time, no one came to the Ranch to collect eggs, check on any farm animals (over 250), water the garden, or look after our two dogs. With the exception of our dogs who really missed us, the farm animals didn’t not know anything was off, because it wasn’t. At this point, all the infrastructure is complete, things are in place, and the farm just needs regular maintenance, which means a lot of little projects.
Some may ask why we are putting all this time and effort into a ranch. Well, it is our way of ensuring that as much of the food we eat and serve our friends and family is the best quality possible while our business sales support the effort. We have four freezers and three standard fridg/freezer combos on the property to accommodate the flow of products, backed up by two generators. We have shelves and shelves of canned meats and vegetables preserved with the ability to can products off-grid. I guess you could say we are prepared for emergencies and all set if ‘The Big One’ comes to the Pacific Northwest.
It may have been the airport that drew us to the piece of property originally, but together we have transformed it, or maybe we should say Greg has transformed it. LOL, yes, Emily is not big on all that the ranch entails. She had no idea what Greg envisioned when they purchased the property but has been supportive. She appreciates seeing him using his hands to create a place he has always dreamed of.
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