A new story on the farm’s sesquicentennial status came out in the April edition of the Douglas Electric Company monthly magazine. April was the month my great-great-grandmother Martha Maupin purchased the family farm in 1868.
The story with photos: the book, me with the hills behind, me at five, and Martha’s house she had built for herself and her many children.
Craig Reed, local writer, visited the farm and talked with my daughter Carisa Cegavske and me before writing the cover story which got a nice spread, shown above. The farm would have qualified in 2018 but I didn’t put in the application until 2024.
Martha was the subject of my first published book, pictured in Craig’s story, A Place of Her Own: The Legacy of Oregon Pioneer Martha Poindexter Maupin, published by Globe Pequot Press. I didn’t have to write a book to qualify the farm for sesquicentennial status, but my research for the book certainly helped me put together the extensive information required for the application.
I grew up on this farm. The little girl curtseying in her overalls is me enjoying the freedom I experienced there. When my dad died in 2007 Carisa and her husband Robin Loznak decided to join me in keeping the farm. I had been away all my adult years so it was quite a change from city life I experienced in the interim. Their son Alex Loznak moved there with us, as well as my other daughter, Christiane Cegavske, and her child, Aspen Boutilier. Carisa, Robin and I still live there.
I love the farm’s hills for walking, and the quiet, where I find inspiration to write my books. My whole family loves the beauty of the land, the rich history, the wildlife. Christiane, Aspen and Alex visit as often as they can. That’s easier now for Christiane and Aspen, who lived in Kansas for ten years and now live in Portland, Oregon. Alex took a stint in New York City, then Eugene, Oregon, but he’s in Portland now too.
We all take pride that Martha was the founder of this farm, a woman who dared take on this treasure when it wasn’t all that easy for a woman to do.
Today marks the spring equinox when days and nights are equal. And the earth’s axis lines up so both hemispheres get the same sunlight. We give passing thought to this moment nowadays, though some of us cling to the hope that spring has come. But in the far distant past when most folks depended on these markers for scheduling the vital business of producing crops and other significant events in their lives it was important to observe this phenomenon. Perhaps even more central was the spiritual meaning. It must have represented for many a time of rebirth.
Knowth Passage Tomb, River Boyne Valley, Ireland
Many people know about the solstice alignment of the Newgrange passage tomb in Ireland where the rising sun on winter solstice shines right up the long passageway to the inner chamber, but a few miles up the River Boyne Valley another passage tomb has an east-west alignment which may suggest that its passageways were designed to receive the sun’s light at equinox. This is the large central tomb of Knowth. Alterations of the passages during reconstruction may have affected the course of the light, whether sun or moon, but many of the kerbstones are carved with images of the sun and moon.
Kerbstone at Knowth Passage Tomb
The people who constructed these great monuments surely honored the signs in the skies that affected their lives. I had the privilege of visiting Knowth and Newgrange just last April when I was doing site research for my book set in Ireland and snapped the above photos. You can see part of the large tomb in the upper photo with several of the distinctive satellite tombs around it. Some of the kerbstones can also be seen at the base in that upper photo, and one more clearly in the closeup.
At home this year I think we’re clinging to the hope of spring more than usual as multiple days of heavy rains caused flooding of rivers and streams, while also saturating soils that sent mudslides down the slopes to block roads.
The road up the hill on my farm. Robin Loznak photo.
There’s that old saying about March coming in like a lion and going out like a lamb. Well, we were enjoying day after day of warm spring weather early in March.
The photo below was taken on March 10. Much more lambish than lionish, I’d say.
Early daffodil bloom on a Marchmorning on the farm.
You never know about March. But I think we’re ready for spring and more of those sunny, lamb-like days.
Hey! The daffies are out and the sun is shining. It’s even warm. I had to take my coat off on my walk this afternoon. Everything brimmed with the hope of new life.
The mighty Oregon Oak stands tall against the blue sky, its many clusters of mistletoe clear to see on the branches still bare of leaves.
One of my favorite trees, it’s just up the hill from my house. I pass it often on my daily walks when I do the uphill first.
Grass seems brighter. Sure does feel like spring. Of course nothing is certain about western Oregon weather in late February or even March. Yesterday the wind was hurling rain against my windows. But I’ll happily cling to whatever snippets of spring we get.
I walked on up the hill, feeling good. This morning I finished a long book project–reading through the entire series I had revised, making sure everything flowed together.
I paused to look up into the tree’s branches overhead, tangled as the stories, but every gnarled limb knew its place and carried the tree’s essence to the buds that would one day open and breathe out life. I had felt each of my stories, as if those glimpses into history breathed with life too.
Yesterday was Winter Solstice and I went outside to try to capture a moment of the new morning light. Clouds covered much of the sky but left a few thinner spots where a bit more light promised to shine through. I kept thinking I had the most light I was going to get for a picture of this gnarly oak above my house who’s seen many a solstice morning in its long life. And I took one picture after another that wasn’t quite there.
I almost gave up on a full sun until this happened.
A sudden full spray of sunlight brightened the green moss on the sunny side of the leaning trunk, the two larger branches seeming to reach for the warmth. I let out a cry of joy and snapped this photo. Even in the distance you can see firs and plains caught in the broadening light.
Earlier that morning people at Newgrange in Ireland had waited with great hope as the sun hid behind a low bank of clouds. From my researches I knew what an important day Winter Solstice was for them. Some 5,200 years ago Neolithic people with little more than stone tools had built the stone passage tomb of Newgrange with such precision that on Winter Solstice morning the sun would enter through a small doorway and shine all the way down a narrow passage to an inner chamber and touch waiting ashes and bones of the dead.
You can see the square hole for the sun’s entry just above the people’s heads in my photo of the great tomb. And it still works!
On this solstice morning I watched Irish Central’s livestream of the event at Newgrange. It was a replay of course. They’re eight hours ahead of us, but I still felt the excitement of the moment. Great crowds had arrived for the occasion this year, and a few lucky people were finally allowed to enter the passage, winners of a raffle that had drawn hundreds of thousands of hopefuls. Each winner was allowed to choose one person to experience this phenomenon with them.
Like Oregon where I live, Ireland has its share of rainy mornings so the sun doesn’t enter that passage every year. Would it break through this time? I felt the excitement and optimism shared by the commentators. Then, with sudden splendor, the sun lifted above that dark bank of cloud and shone down the passageway to the inner chamber.
With a thrill I recalled that I had been in that very chamber myself just this year. Back in April. That’s the sun’s doorway into Newgrange behind me in my profile photo. I traipsed past the great carved kerbstone with its mysterious designs cut deep in the surface. I drew in my shoulders to walk through the long, narrow passage where more designs were carved in the stone uprights that hemmed us in. Once in the chamber I gazed up at the corbelled roof to the capstone on top, so meticulously constructed it still doesn’t leak after 5,200 years. We didn’t see the sun come down the passage, but the event was simulated. Our guides struck all the interior lights, leaving us in darkness, and then sent a stream of artificial light down the narrow way to fill the inner chamber.
What amazing symbolism! How important it must have been to the builders to create such a monument. We cannot know the minds of these builders. Yet I think it was the commentators who said, “Nothing ends with darkness and death. New light always follows.” This must have been a powerful belief in the people all those years ago.
Today, in our own way, we can take comfort in longer days and in the light that must follow the darkness. After I got my picture of bright sun on the old oak, I turned and strode down the hill into the sunshine.
One December morning last year I woke to this and snapped a picture which I posted on Facebook with a short comment, “Sunrise! New day. New hope. New promise.”
On this morning’s gray, rainy morning I looked back with some yearning for such a day.
The year in between has had its ups and downs. I took a wonderful trip to Ireland and Hallstatt, Austria, to check on scenes for my latest book–Ireland because it’s the center of the story, Hallstatt because that’s where the Celts were at the time of this dip into the ancient world of the setting. Another highlight came when my daughter Christiane got a job in Portland, Oregon, and she and Aspen moved back west after ten years in Kansas. One more highlight was an excellent writers conference in Seattle where I pitched that latest book, and those pitches went well.
I’ve always been a glass-half-full kind of person. And I need to move forward embracing hope. Without a new novel in the works right now I’m working on a companion book for the series which is related to my newest Irish story. I had already drafted parts of this companion book, but it shifts as my focus shifts. In the last few days I’ve been going back through old travel journals of my first trip to Ireland, reliving some experiences there.
The beauty of the land in its cloak of many greens. The wonder of great stone monuments with their intriguing mysteries, like the passage tomb of Newgrange, below. [The photos below are all from my 2024 trip; I didn’t have a digital camera on the first Irish visit.]
The magic of an exquisite woodland where wind spoke between great oaks. My traipses across green fields with my ready umbrella as boiling clouds opened and let streams of sunshine through to create one of those many Irish rainbows. Stunning cliffs descending into surging waters at the Cliffs of Moher.
And the birds. Oh, the birds! Were they ravens? Or rooks? Or jackdaws? All cousins of the common crow. The latter two weren’t familiar to me. We don’t have those where I live. But whatever the bird we saw great flocks of them sweeping across the historic Hill of Tara and others hovering around the haunting Rock of Cashel where they nested in those stone niches. My daughters joined me on part of that trip and marveled with me. [This morning I spent hours online trying to determine what birds we saw, listening to sample bird calls, reading about the different behaviors, watching videos of onsite tours, and my guess is that the bird shown below outside the Rock of Cashel tower is a jackdaw. And I’m guessing the birds at Tara were rooks.]
In this companion book I want to share the journey, the joys, and the challenges of my research to offer background for the novels.
So in these gray days some streams of sun shine through and I find purpose. May the promise of yesteryear sustain me. I wish such hope and promise for you, my good readers.
The dark days of November have come upon us. A darkness that can bring us down.
Today the forecast looked like rain all day. Then I glanced up from my morning tea and saw that the sun had come out. Better get my walk in fast. But by the time I got bundled up skies had already darkened again. I grabbed my umbrella and went out anyway.
As I tromped down the road through the drizzle remembering October’s warm sunshine my thoughts turned to the stages of writing–the light and the dark. The spark of inspiration. The thrill of creation. You put so much of yourself into the project. It’s a bit like breathing a long breath out. And it’s such a bright, light feeling. So when that’s done what to do next? Well, I guess you have to take some breaths in. Read. Watch movies. Restore.
After I got back to the house from my drizzly walk I thought I would take a picture of the dreary day–just to reinforce and share my gloom. That’s when I snapped the photo at the top and what do you know. The light just had to shine through those heavy clouds and create a sweeping bright spot. Not for long, though.
Still feeling a keen sense of the dark I wrote a draft for this post and when I thought I was finished I looked up and saw that I would have to take another picture. This is what happened.
So there we are. You never know. Out of the dark comes the light. Blue skies. Hope. Inspiration will come again. We’ll find a way through the darkness. Time to breathe in and find peace.
Here I am in one of the hotel’s pleasant courtyards near the end of this whirlwind event, feeling happy about all the wonderful connections I made this time.
Great writing conference in Seattle a little over a week ago. I decided last minute to fly up and attend so I could pitch my new historical novel set in ancient Ireland. I was delighted by the responses from agents I pitched and have now sent off the queries with material they asked for. Fingers crossed. It’s all in the words of course. Hope they love it.
I so enjoy the people at these conferences. Everybody has a story. They are, after all, storytellers. When you meet someone they often ask what you write and you tell the story about that and of course you ask them and hear their story. Attendees also encourage each other. After the pitching begins you share with each other how your pitches went and maybe glean a little information on someone you hope to pitch next. A very upbeat, mutually encouraging atmosphere.
I stopped over in Portland to see family on the way home. One of my daughters just got a new job in Portland and I hadn’t seen the new place yet. Now all my kids are in Oregon for the first time in ten years. I’m so glad. A couple of photos below show views from our walks on a hill overlooking downtown Portland. That’s Mount Hood on the hazy skyline in the second photo.
Looking down to the Portland city center from the heights near Washington Park.A city building seems to echo the sharp peak of Mount Hood behind it.
With Martha’s Farm gaining Sesquicentennial status it’s making the front page news.
Drew Winkelmaier, reporter for The News-Review in Roseburg, Oregon, came out to the farm in Kellogg last week and put together a nice story for the Sunday edition.
That’s me on the porch, photo by Drew. We talked awhile then went down to the old barn that has stood on the property since the 1930s when my father bought the place from his great-uncle and had the barn built.
From there we visited the hazelnut orchards, our newest crop on the farm, which had been a prune farm since 1895 when Martha’s son Cap planted the first prune orchard.
With the prune market turning iffy and a burgeoning hazelnut market we began making the switch in 2011 when we planted our first hazelnut trees.
Drew’s story delves into the history from our discussion as well as information I had put together for the Oregon Century Farm and Ranch Program, much of it based on my research for the book I wrote about Martha, A Place of Her Own. When I took over the farm in 2008 I became another woman in the family to own the place and thought there might be a story in that. And yes, Martha had far more story than I ever imagined.
My family got together at the Oregon State Fair last Saturday, August 24, when fourteen farms were honored for Century status and two, including ours, for Sesquicentennial status. We received lovely certificates at the presentation when short narratives were read about each of the farms with photos on a screen above the stage.
After that we did what everybody does at the state fair. We visited the animals, including a competition among elegant horses in the historic horse barn. And the poultry and pigs and sheep and goats and cattle. Oh, and the beautiful family of huge black draft horses. Such magnificent creatures! And we saw exhibits of photography and artwork and ate too much fair food.
And on the way out we enjoyed strolling through the rides as the skies darkened and the lights came up.
The Martha A. Maupin Farm which I now own has been approved as a Sesquicentennial Farm, having been in the family for 150 years. In fact it reached the 150-year mark in 2018. Martha purchased the farm in 1868. But this year I finally went through the process of applying for the Sesquicentennial status through the Oregon Century Farm & Ranch Program.
The families approved this year will be honored at a ceremony at the Oregon State Fair this month on Saturday, August 24 at 11 am in the Columbia Hall on the staged area. Fourteen families have been approved for Century status and two for Sesquicentennial status for 2024. Photo highlights for each award winner will be presented at the ceremony with a desert reception afterward.
The photo above shows Martha and her family in their early years on the farm in front of the house she had built soon after her 1868 purchase. That’s Martha standing on the front porch, her eldest son Cap on the horse. Cap became part owner with his brother Tom when their mother sold it to them in 1886. Then Cap became sole owner when he bought his brother’s share in 1894. From Cap it went to my father Eugene Fisher, Cap’s great-nephew, and my mother Marian in 1934, then to my sister Nancy and I, and finally to me when I bought my sister’s share in 2008.
Part of the application involved finding the documents to verify all those transitions, which can be a challenge. I had obtained some documents, like Martha’s original purchase, when I researched my book about her, A Place of Her Own.
But I was missing some of the documents, which took me back to the Douglas County, Oregon, County Clerk’s office to find the missing links.
The application also required a two- or three-page narrative of family history, including the transfers from one generation to another. My research for the book helped on the early part of that history. Memory served on later events, but I had to scour some local histories and the newfound documents to bring in the middle. The local histories had also helped with my book research.
Martha’s place has been a Century Farm since the 1960s, and I have been pleased to know that this was one of the few Century Farms in Oregon named for a woman, which seemed especially sweet since I’m the second woman to be its sole owner. Now it’s an Oregon Sesquicentennial Farm named for a woman.
I do love history, so it was an intriguing process, and I have a clearer view now of the farm’s history.
The sample of Martha’s purchase document shows the flowery writing one has to pore through in order to glean what you want to know.
In addition to the legal documents and narrative, the application required maps, and requested photos. I also sent a copy of my book about Martha, which the Program Coordinator said they would be very happy to have.
I’m excited to honor my great-great-grandmother Martha for her historic achievement of founding this treasure when it wasn’t easy for a woman to do such a thing.
Below are a couple of photos from the farm, our new hazelnut orchard and the old 1930s barn that still stands on the hillside, looking down to the river bottom. For more on those hazelnuts, see the story here.
The photo above brings stone and sea together, the upper line of the stone echoing that notch where the sea gleams bright blue when the air is right. This is one of the pillars in the Bohonagh circle near Rosscarbery, Ireland, sacred circle of the protagonist’s clan in my story.
With this last post in my “Going There 2024” series I’d like to reflect on the highlights of my recent trip to immerse myself in the main settings of my upcoming historical novel. More than anywhere I went it was Rosscarbery on the southern coast of Ireland where my story lived. I had time to wander by myself there and let it all soak in.
I passed a few people when I went down to the beach below but for the most part it was a solitary stroll. There I learned about beach grass on that Irish coast–unlike Oregon’s tall beach grass that found its way into my Irish story and has to be replaced with the low grasses I noticed here.
This is why I “go there.” It’s part of my work as an author. To see the places, and feel them, and try to get it right, so I can bring the reader into these worlds with me when they read the words of my books.
My explorations showed me the lay of the land along the bayshore, which will help with my descriptions. The stunning beauty of an afternoon sunlight on the water might come into a scene.
And the circle? There wasn’t another soul where I climbed to the circle and stepped inside to experience it and imagine how it must have been when musicians played and people danced. Or when they came alone to pray, stepping inside through the portal stones, honoring their Great Ancestress, Grand Mother of them all.
The next most critical site where I could feel my story come alive was at Newgrange. The lofty passage tomb with its own partial circle of stones. The incredible passageway where the light of the winter solstice sunrise shines all the way down to the inner chamber with its meticulous corbelled roof, filling the chamber with light.
I learned that the tomb did not lie in front of the ridge as I had described it, but actually crowned the ridge, the back side having sloughed down the hill behind so it covered some of the surrounding kerbstones and standing stones. The archaeologist who restored the monument brought it back as near as possible to what it was when my characters walked down the long, narrow passage into the vault, and I of course thought of them when I walked inside myself.
Back in Dublin I marveled at the goldwork produced during the time of my protagonist, a young woman goldsmith, as I walked through the remarkable array of gold displayed in the National Museum of Ireland – Archaeology. Here’s just one example of a collection there from about 800 to 700 B.C.
On another excursion I saw more clearly the rugged stones of the great rock, the outcrop of the Rock of Cashel that stands bold upon a broad green plain. I could better describe it now after climbing up those knobby limestone walls myself–not the walls built by men on top of the rock but those left by nature long before, the only walls my characters would have seen.
And when I left Ireland for Hallstatt I would see and learn more. Why Hallstatt when my story is about ancient Ireland? Because of the Celts. Yes, when we think of the Celts we may well think of Ireland. But at the time of my story there wouldn’t have been any Celts in Ireland yet. Not in any numbers anyway. Their homeland in 750 B.C. would have been in Hallstatt, Austria. So to bring the Celts into my story we go there. And I followed.
I had visited this remarkable place once before. But with this visit I would refresh my mind’s image of the brilliant water of that lake between steeper slopes and more massive cliffs than I remembered. I thrilled to the play of light on the water. Was it something different in the skies this time? Or the brush of wind that came with unsettled weather? Or was it always so and I forgot?
It took me awhile to find the waterfall I describe in my story. But there it was above the museum, fog hiding the higher slopes.
I reached the falls at last and will show it more clearly now in the description. Back down on the lake’s edge, I got a better sense of the sheer drops on those bold mountains where my characters walk.
In the Hallstatt Museum I saw a Hallstatt sword, like those I describe in my story. Here’s the real thing, which had been found just up those mountains. I could almost hear the swish of bronze slicing the air.
So much. I left these amazing places, my head full of images, words. How to describe? How to take the images from my head and put them into the words that will let the reader see and feel. Ah! The challenge, the joy, for every writer.
Out of the many experiences I had on my trip this spring of 2024, these are the ones that stand out to me, highlights that will surely affect the work. The journey gave me so much. People along the way offered so much. I am ever grateful.
As I continue to absorb the wonder, may these memories reflect in the pages. Story came to life here.
NOTE: This concludes the “2024 Going There” series. I’ll keep the list of titles on the sidebar so you can navigate the stories whenever you might like. I’ve had fun reliving the moments and hope you’ve enjoyed sharing some of them with me. I’ll continue to post snapshots from the trip on social media now and then. I love hearing your thoughts. Thanks so much.
