The author lives with her daughter and her family in a farm in Oregon.
Courtesy of the author
My husband and I bought our farm in Banks, Oregon, 25 miles outside Portland, in 2017. From the start, we dreamed of retiring there and envisioned multiple generations of our family living on the property. We had plenty of room with acreage, a four-bedroom farmhouse, and a barn. My daughter Maria and her husband Stephen moved to the farm where she ran her horse business while my husband Scot and I lived in Montana, following a job for him. Retirement took longer than we planned. And we never envisioned living in a multigenerational home. My daughter paid us rentWe longed for the ease of country living and wanted to help our daughter launch her business: training horses, teaching people to ride, and caring for 20 horses. Maria and Stephen paid rent and did the heavy lifting of farm life. They fixed whatever broke (pipes in winter, the tractor in summer), maintaining the barn and property. Scot and I loved the space — a hay field, pond, garden, horses, ducks, a white fence, and a red barn that reminded me of the best part of my girlhood. I especially loved a barn in the rain, listening to the plink, plink against its metal roof.
