How that might change the neighborhood

This morning I'm the only member of my original family with property inside the City of Sandpoint. Until yesterday afternoon, our family owned 35 acres of this city. That all changed at a title company in downtown Sandpoint when the deal between Mother and Litehouse Dressing Inc. closed.

With this sale, it's pretty well-assumed and, no doubt, soon to become public knowledge that the 25-acre hay field pictured in last week's Slightdetour posting will eventually serve as corporate headquarters for our nation's largest refrigerated salad dressing company, which began as a small mom-and-pop business for the Hawkins family not that long ago.

I stood in that beautiful field yesterday, just minutes before the closing and quietly said good bye to an era for our family that has lasted for 55 years. It all began when Mother purchased 40 acres from Howard Balch in 1950. I was 3 when we moved to North Boyer from our little white house on Euclid Avenue, less than a block from the big brick high school.

As we began our lives on a farm, Mother began to fully realize her earlier dream of leaving Michigan and moving to North Idaho to start a horse ranch. When we moved from town, she brought a yearling Saddlebred mare named Largo with her to the farm. This made the folks in our city neighborhood happy. After all, they had told her there was plenty of land outside of town to raise horses.

When I was six, my mother remarried. Her new husband and our new dad was a cowboy named Harold who had lived down Boyer with the Racicots. Together, we became a hard-working family, following five-year goals. All members had their chores, and our farm served as home to numerous horses and lots of registered Hereford cattle. Eventually, the kid population grew from the three originals, Mike, Kevin and Marianne to half a dozen, including Barbara, Laurie and Jim.

In 1966, a neighbor named Basil Gooby suggested to my folks that they consider buying the Harney dairy, a 55-acre farm which was behind our place. It extended across Great Northern Road to a hillside and ran nearly to the base of Greenhorn Mountain. We always called it "the other place." My dad kept his cows up on that beautiful farm with its rustic barn and slightly leaning wooden silo. The lower flat acreage served as the hayfield.

About 20 years ago, Mother and Harold sold a portion of that field to the Nordeen family---the southwest quarter, to be exact. The remaining field continued to produce more than enough hay to help meet the needs of cattle and horses. During this period, airport expansion continually loomed in my folks' faces as the county eventually took a portion of the lower hayfield in front of the North Boyer home. When the airstrip, now serving lear jets along with the local small craft, ran just a few hundred feet from the house, my folks started looking for more peaceful pastures.

They sold the remainder of the original 40 and moved to the old Tucker dairy at Colburn in 1994. A few years later, they sold the farm at "the other place," leaving the 25-acre field along Great Northern Road and Woodland Drive. When my dad died in late 2003, Mother decided the field needed to be farmed. So, she contacted Harvey Lippert who plowed it up and replanted it last year. This year's first hay crop from the field yielded nearly 100 tons in two cuttings.

In spite of the wonderful hay crop, Mother is very proud to have sold the property to Litehouse because of the owners who are longtime, good friends and because the company, which employs hundreds, can remain within the City of Sandpoint.

This sale has also created a lasting legacy for her and another link to the Michigan connection for both Mother and the Litehouse folks. Their other operation is located in Lowell, Michigan, just outside of Grand Rapids where my mother attended Marywood Academy during her junior high and high school years.

Her best friend, Mary Ann Collins since high school (for whom I'm named) lives in Lowell, where Litehouse has its beautifully-landscaped grounds. When Mother saw her friend for the first time in 63 years this past spring, we walked into her retirement apartment, sat down, and five minutes later, watched a red, white and blue Litehouse truck drive by. It was a good feeling, to say the least.

And so, another era for our family has ended. A new one is about to begin in this neighborhood and for Litehouse. I have also learned that a house and five acres owned by the Thorpe family just north of us on Great Northern Road has recently sold to the Union Gospel Mission. It will serve as a mission home for women and children. Tomorrow, Quest Aviation, directly behind us, holds another open house to celebrate its Kodiak plane and the newly completed 56,000 square foot manufacturing building. By next year, their work force will grow considerably.

The neighborhood is changing. I've watched these happenings for more than half a century. It will be interesting to see how long my unique perspective from our little farm within Northwest Sandpoint continues---especially since there's been more news of change in the last five days than during the previous 55 years.