A New ... Old ... Place to Call Home

In Cache Valley (isn't that a great-sounding name?), just outside of Logan proper, are two little unincorporated areas: College Ward and Young Ward. 

(Mette with her adored cousin Gwen.)

Mike's parents grew up in these little farming communities. In fact, his connection to College Ward goes clear back to his great-great-grandpa Hans Hansen--the immigrant from Denmark (that we named our own little Hans Hansen after)--who settled and purchased land in the area.

Hans's son Abraham (another namesake) added to the College Ward land; and his son Glen (whose name Mike carries!), and who was nothing if not an incredibly hard worker, eventually bought the farm, purchased more land to add to it, and passed large pieces on to each of his six children--one of whom was Mike's mom: Gayle. 

Her particular piece was purchased in 1920 and has now been in the Hansen family for over 100 years!

(Gayle with her younger brother Lee.)

It's been farmed--used, among other things, for running cattle, growing alfalfa, and, at one point, a portion even housed Del Monte's large pea viner. (Which is why, even now, it is often referred to as "the Pea Viner land".)

But in all of this time, the Pea Viner land has never been lived on. (Though there does remain, on some adjacent Hansen property--that has made its way down to Mike's cousin--the very tiny, yellow house that Glen and his wife lived in for some time with several of their children. The children all slept together in the little basement while their parents slept in the living room on the main floor.)

While Mike didn't grow up in either of the two little communities of College and Young Ward, he did grow up visiting them--spending time with grandparents, hunting pheasants, helping build fences, celebrating Thanksgivings, shooting clay pigeons, etc. And the College Ward land has been a place for constant family "farm days" throughout our married life. (If you take a moment to look, you'll notice that my blog is teaming with these pictures.) Mike has always felt some inexplicably strong loyalty towards it all--some, perhaps genetic, pull back towards his family's Cache Valley roots. 

For years, when he'd talk about wanting to live up there someday, I'd sort of vaguely nod but then dismiss it inwardly at once. Our lives weren't up there. Our parents. Our siblings. Our familiar roads, and stores, and doctors, and schools, and so on. They were all here. Mike could dream, but I was confident that by the time the land might ever conceivably come into our possession, we would be so firmly entrenched in this home and our kids' lives right here that we would never actually consider such a move. 

But then one day, about four and a half years ago, on a whim, Mike took a few hours off of work and we drove up to Logan with a few of our smallest kids. I don't know what was different about that day from any of the many other days I'd been up there--perhaps it was the weather, the rays of sun that filtered in v-lines down through the gray clouds, or possibly the rainbow that stretched right into Cache Valley as we arrived, but somehow something quietly shifted in me that day. I didn't know if it would be Young Ward or College Ward, but this area, so connected to Mike's family lines, I gently felt, could be our home. There was no sudden, clear path forward; no idea of how (or even if) any of the land up there might ever come to Mike; no sudden urgency; and no certainty that it would even be; but there was simply a new, calm ... openness. I was, for the first time, willing. 

And now, four and a half years of wondering later, it's looking like it actually will be! We are going to move our family to the College Ward/Pea Viner land! Oh not immediately. There are a thousand hoops to jump through still--water right transfers; and septic tank tests; and a number of heavy-handed, time consuming and expensive demands from the county for anyone who might even consider building in their jurisdiction. (And of course the whole business of finding a builder, and packing up, fixing, and selling a house full of twelve people and their belongings.) 

We don't know exactly how soon it will happen or how everything will finally fall into place, only that paths have begun to open, it feels right, and it's the spot on the horizon to keep our eyes fixed on. Cache Valley is the plan.

Perhaps I should have seen some sign in that line of male ancestors all connected to College Ward--Glen, Abraham, Hans--having had their names cycled back into our own little line; like dots being created on a map directing us back. Perhaps I should have trusted Mike's draw to that place from the start. But I'm no farmer. I don't even particularly like involvement with animals beyond ... looking at them :). It was going to take time for me to see it. And yet, now, somehow, Mike's dream has slowly taken root in me. "Intreat me no to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God."

It feels like magic being on the farm to me now. And I don't know quite what to do with my feelings of extreme gratitude because in some ways, I don't feel I have any right to be there! What did I do? What was my family's sacrifice to preserve this place? Nothing. I married my Mike. That's all. It was he who loved the land and took an interest in its upkeep with his parents; it was his mom who held fiercely and loyally onto the property all these years (when a million times it might have made more sense to sell it); it was Mike's dad who planted the trees, built the fences, had the well dug, and made the pond a magical part of it all; it was Gayle's dad who worked so hard and with such constancy to be able to take care of and pass down all this land, and her grandpa before that, and her great-grandpa even before that (who bravely left all he knew in Denmark and settled determinedly in Cache Valley to begin with). And somehow I've just been ... gathered into it all! Pulled right into being a part of something significant that I have done absolutely nothing to deserve. But! I'm determined to love it. And not take it for granted ever. I'm excited to, with Mike, draw our kids more closely, and with more gratitude, to this Hansen line of theirs by bringing them to a physical place tied to them, a place worked for and protected and passed on to them. I'm eager to try and make it a place of welcoming and blessing to all we associate with there in ways that Mike's mom and ancestors will be pleased with.

(All pictures in this post were from a recent chilly and windy, but very happy farm day we had with Mike's family.)