Olympic View - From Small Farm to Garden© Carol Wallace
Jan 15, 1999
As I write this, I am amazed at how quickly the past 23 1/2 years have gone by! I guess when you are busy raising a family
while making changes to your property, you can easily lose track! When Ron and I started our life together in 1973, we
began in a single wide trailer on Bremerton¹s East Side. He had grown up on a farm in Southern Idaho, and I was a local
girl who enjoyed a beautiful large yard and garden on Erland¹s Point (this is all in Kitsap County, which is in Western
Washington State). We planned to have a family and wanted to find a place where we could have some space and ³get back to
the land,² so to speak. I had hopes of having livestock and a vegetable garden. Home industries were a real interest and
for years I baked all my bread, canned and sewed most of my clothes. I¹m not doing all that lately, but still make my own
soap and have part of my web page devoted to that interest.
When we saw this place, we fell in love with the area, the view and the atmosphere. What a great setting for kids!...they
could romp in the fields and enjoy a bit of nature that you don¹t really get being in town. It was a charming little 5-acre
farm that had been occupied by two Serbian fellows in the 30's and 40's. They farmed the place and it is said that one of
them did most of the outside chores and the other tended to the house, cooking, etc. One of the long-time neighbors told of
how the manure taken out of the barn would be spread around by hand (and I mean literally!). The house had its problems and
was old, but the view of the Olympic Mountains and neighborhood were wonderful. When we walked out onto the porch at dusk
after looking at the bleak house (it had been empty for six months), we were impressed with the QUIET. Another thing I
observed when we went into the field toward the barn was the mole mounds. The soil looked wonderful! No chipping away at
hardpan with !
a pickax was to happen here (my mother always battled hardpan when she would plant her beloved rhododendrons). Despite the
house, the place had lots of charm and possibility. The only down side to the land was that it was nearly void of
trees...most of the property was in pasture with a few fruit trees and a handful of ornamental trees in the yard...one
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at reading this article! But I enjoyed hearing your early-marriage tales of gardening. We bought our first home on Keyport Road between Silverdale and Poulsbo at the time you lived in Bremerton. I ...
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