I came across an interesting column written by Wally Smith dated September 12,  1968.

At the time when Wally wrote this, I, being the last child, had left the nest, which gave Wally and Auntie Kay the freedom to make decisions for themselves. At the time of this writing, none of us kids were interested in taking over the farm.

” It has been a hectic week for me and Auntie Kay. We have sold the house over our heads and now have to build a new one.

It has been a week of frenzied planning, of making important decisions, and of wondering how it would all work out.

Mr. and Mrs. Paul Hawley, who come from Dubois, Wyoming, are taking over November 1, which doesn’t leave us much time to build a new dwelling.

Some people have a nomadic bent and an urge or necessity to move every couple of years. Others such as the Smiths, put their roots down, get a firm grip on one spot, and stay there for many long years or even a lifetime.

To all of us there comes a time with advancing years when it is wise to make either a drastic cut in the work load or to retire from active life. Not wishing to go into retirement, our choice was to sell part of the orchard, keeping three acres where construction of a new house is now under way.

It has been difficult to part with the family home after 34 years of living and working  and enlarging and altering and improving and raising four youngsters, through difficult times and happy times. We remember and cherish mostly the happy times.

We don’t really want to leave the family home with all it’s fond memories, but that’s the way it’s going to be; we must change and adapt to changing conditions. Our family house is not the product of an architect’s drawing board nor was it constructed according to a contractor’s set of plans. Like a homesteader’s shack on the prairies, it sort of grew with the needs of the times.

First there were three rooms, then, as the family grew, so did the house. Perhaps Parkinson’s Law could be quoted to show that ‘ a family grows to fill the house space available’,  but we like to think our house expanded to provide space for a growing family.

At any rate it went through four different enlargement programs and finally turned out surprisingly well from an architectural view point.

For prehistoric man a home was a cave where he could get shelter from storm and protection from wild beasts. Today the essential purpose of a home is still to provide shelter, warmth, and privacy for the family, but many persons have come to look on their house as a great, golden god to be worshipped and appeased with sacrificial offerings to be painted and polished, decorated and filled with expensive things the owner cannot afford.

May I never be guilty of house worship.

With three acres of orchard we are still in the fruit growing business and hope to remain so for years to come. “

Wally farmed the three acres until his death in 1982. The farm is still prosperous even though it has changed hands many times.

The property he sold to the Hawley’s has been sold at least four times that I know of, and declined to where it is now, a derelict plot of land, a portion of which is used only for ground crops.