Harmony Farm is our 72-acre farm along Baker Creek in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, but our story here began long before we arrived.

For decades, the farm belonged to Carol and Duane Qualley, lifelong educators whose love of learning shaped both the property and the community around it. Like my own mother, they taught for the Department of Defense Schools. In the 1950s, Duane accepted a position teaching biology in Germany, and Carol taught music, then mathematics, before the two eventually returned to Oregon and purchased the family farm from Carol’s mother.

Education followed them home.

Carol transformed the old barn into a classroom for preschool. Today, colorful felt circus animals still decorate its walls, cheerful reminders of laughter, imagination, and the young lives she tended. Duane was the local high school biology teacher, inspiring students to see and appreciate the natural world around them.

I’ve spent many afternoons visiting Carol and Duane at their retirement community just a few minutes from the farm, listening to stories of “Qualley Farm” and the life they built here. Every conversation reminds me that we are not beginning this story; we are continuing it.

Since moving here in 2020, Tom and I have tried to honor that legacy while caring for the land in our own way. Baker Creek winds through the property, providing clean water for wildlife and nourishing willow, mock orange, birch, laurel, and countless other native and cultivated plants. Our orchard produces apples, cherries, pears, peaches, and plums that become preserves, fruit leather, and applesauce each summer. Concord grapes, raspberries, blackberries, currants, and vegetables fill the pantry, while honey bees, ducks, chickens, and peafowl have become part of the daily rhythm of life on the farm.

Tom has transformed much of the landscape with the patience of someone who believes every improvement should last. He restored the old bridge, built twelve raised garden beds, constructed a fully enclosed 3,000-square-foot aviary complete with a duck pond and waterfall, planted hundreds of lavender plants and a rose garden, erected a glass greenhouse, and designed an irrigation system that carefully balances the needs of the farm with responsible stewardship of our well and water rights.

In recent years, I’ve begun cultivating a botanical garden filled with medicinal and culinary plants, from marshmallow and elderberry to chamomile, lemon balm, bee balm, thyme, oregano, and helichrysum. Many of those plants find their way into homemade teas, salves, soaps, and skincare products. Others simply provide food and shelter for pollinators, birds, and beneficial insects.

Harmony Farm has become my classroom, my laboratory, my studio, and my refuge. It’s where science meets storytelling, where restoration meets creativity, and where every season offers another opportunity to learn.

Perhaps that’s the farm’s greatest legacy. Long before we arrived, it was a place where people came to learn. I hope it always will be.