Dear Family and Friends,<\/p>\n
Winter holiday time is here and whether you are celebrating St. Nicholas Day, Winter\u00a0<\/span>Solstice, Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, New Year’s, or Three King’s Day, we send\u00a0you our very warmest wishes for joy during this season. At the farm we have been\u00a0enjoying the cool, rainy, short days and long nights around the fireplace.<\/p>\n This past year was eventful. We were saddened by the discovery of Harriet’s struggle\u00a0with cancer. We rejoiced in Harriet and Ted’s celebration of 50 happy years of marriage.\u00a0And we drew closer together in another Pope Family reunion. It was a year in which we\u00a0heard over and over again how wonderful it is to belong to a family that loves each other\u00a0and embraces that notion of family in its broadest sense.<\/p>\n Mom (Harriet) passed away on November 1st. How fitting it was that she passed on All\u00a0Saints’ Day or “Dia de los Inocentes.” On the Day of the Innocents we remember saints\u00a0known and unknown as well as children who have passed away. On November 5th, a\u00a0memorial was held at The Church on the Hill in celebration of her life. And what a life\u00a0she led!<\/p>\n In the last year, with the same zeal and love for life that characterized Harriet, she\u00a0pursued her dreams. At the reunion and the anniversary party, she celebrated her love\u00a0of people. Then as fall began, she traveled to places she’d always wanted to go. In\u00a0September, in the company of her sister, Sue, and her friend for over 50 years, Marlene\u00a0Gaynor, she went to Williams, Arizona and rode the Grand Canyon Railroad to the\u00a0south rim of the Grand Canyon National Park. Later they traveled to Sedona where they\u00a0marveled over the beautiful southwest landscape. After being home just a few weeks,\u00a0she journeyed to New England to see the fall color. Ted, Marlene and Ann traveled with\u00a0her to Boston where she met Aunt Sue, Uncle Mike and Aunt Wendy. There she\u00a0explored the city in a trolley and went on a tour of the Christian Science Mother Church.\u00a0Thea met up with the group and they all (except for Ann) boarded a Holland America Over the past year, Harriet and Ted completed a long-term project of planning for the\u00a0future of the farm. The first phase, completed in 2010, was the purchase of 310 acres of\u00a0the farm by The Nature Conservancy. Except for the 40 acre homestead and\u00a0surroundings, what we referred to as the Gahr Farm is now part of the Nature\u00a0Conservancy’s Yamhill Oaks Preserve. The Preserve is significant, as it represents a\u00a0part of the 2% of remaining prairie and oak savanna habitat that once dominated the\u00a0entire Willamette Valley. Here the Nature Conservancy seeks to protect more than 25\u00a0at-risk species, including the endangered Fender’s blue butterfly and Kincaid’s lupine.\u00a0Conservancy ecologists and volunteers are conducting biological inventories and\u00a0developing a management plan for the preserve. Restoration activities include\u00a0controlling invasive species, thinning encroaching trees and planting grasses and\u00a0wildflowers, including Kincaid’s lupine and other butterfly-friendly species. The Gahr\u00a0Preserve Endowment provides the financial support for these activities. We thank the\u00a0many of you who supported the endowment with your contributions in memory of\u00a0Harriet.<\/p>\n The second phase of this long-term plan is setting up the management of the 40 acre\u00a0homestead, which includes the main home and the two bed-and-breakfast cottages.\u00a0The farm is now managed by an LLC board comprised of Ted, Brian, Ann, and Tim.\u00a0Though that may sound a bit formal, be assured the Gahr Farm will remain a place for\u00a0family and friends to gather. We will continue to be available to the community for By necessity our communication style is evolving. We sorely miss Harriet’s role as\u00a0grand central communicator. We will start with this newsletter to provide seasonal\u00a0updates from the Gahr Farm. We’ll be in touch through email, Popemania, the Gahr\u00a0Farm website, and, for those of you who request it, by U.S. mail. Of course, you can\u00a0contact us through any of those means or by phone or visiting. In a family and among a\u00a0group of friends with so many diverse talents and backgrounds, we encourage all of\u00a0your input as we find our path.<\/p>\n Sending our love and blessings on your winter holidays,<\/p>\n Ted\/Dad, Brian, Ann, and Tim<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear Family and Friends, Winter holiday time is here and whether you are celebrating St. Nicholas Day, Winter\u00a0Solstice, Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, New Year’s, or Three King’s Day, we send\u00a0you our very warmest wishes for joy during this season. At the farm we have been\u00a0enjoying the cool, rainy, short days and long nights around the fireplace.… Continue reading Winter Letter 2011<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gahr-family-news","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/gahrfarm.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/PB160220.jpg?fit=1600%2C1200&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p66Ita-1","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gahrfarm.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gahrfarm.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gahrfarm.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gahrfarm.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gahrfarm.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/gahrfarm.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4,"href":"https:\/\/gahrfarm.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions\/4"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gahrfarm.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gahrfarm.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gahrfarm.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gahrfarm.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nCruise to Nova Scotia and down the St. Lawrence River to Montreal. She reveled in it\u00a0all. When she returned from her travels, family and friends gathered to hear of her\u00a0adventures.<\/p>\n
\neducational projects that correspond to our goals of understanding the natural world and\u00a0our place in it.<\/p>\n