“You know it’s funny what a young man recollects, Cause I don’t remember bein’ born. I don’t recall what I got for my first Christmas and I don’t know when I went on my first outdoor picnic. But I do remember the first time I heard the sweetest voice in the wide world…” – Forrest

Where do I start, well, I suppose the beginning…

Callie and i met years ago approximately 54 years ago.. my dad and her mom were in cribs together as infants..

Going through High School, FFA (Future Farmers of America) was a big part of my life. I made many friends from FFA and met many people who I will know for life but the one most special is Callie. We didn’t date in those days but that was when our friendship started. As I graduated from college at 22 years old and single, I had no plans but to go home to the farm. It wasn’t long during that summer that my sister started poking at the idea of the farm girl down the road in Ferndale. I had been in the dorm in college with one of her two older brothers and knew at the time in July of 2014 that she was single… It was then that i had gotten wind of a barn dance she was planning so without second guessing myself, I asked my sister (a long time friend of Callie’s) for her number, called her up, and told her about a band that could play at here dance. Not long after that phone call I invited her brother to come up to Crescent City and casually told him to bring friends and his sister to our county fair and rodeo. They came, it was a blast, we had a campfire, Callie and I danced and fell over in the tall brown summer grass and it was fun. The following night was the rodeo dance at the fair where  we danced, (without falling over…) for the first time since the high school ag dance five years before. On the edge of that dance floor, her brother said, “Christian, you should date Callie.” I took him very serious, thought seriously about if for a while and took it slow. We liked each other, that was clear but for the first time, i knew, this girl was the one I wanted to marry. I tried really hard to take this relationship the old fashioned way.

Meanwhile, Callie’s in college – six excruciating hours away, I’m home on the farm, and a month or so goes by.  We talk on the phone a  time or two, we each visited one another’s family and we planned on meeting at an organic dairy conference on October 14th 2014. What she didn’t know was that the Friday before the conference, I wrote her a letter, sent it in the mail and waited for her to call. The letter,comprised of a simple poem followed by a question. I couldn’t help telling my own parents about it and when Tuesday rolled around we met together and she still hadn’t said anything.

-Christian

The Conference was great, we learned about the growing organic dairy industry and sat together the entire three days. After the conference, Christian went back to home and I headed back to college. After a wonderful couple days together I was still left wondering if he even liked me?? The next day I drove back to school and not long after i get a phone call from my mom. She tells me she just talked to Christian’s Noni at the post office (small town) and wondered if i checked my mail, so naturally i hang up the phone as quick as possible and make a beeline for the mailbox. Sure enough, there was a letter from Christian and a sweet poem. At the end of the letter there was a check yes or no box asking me to be his girlfriend, of course I said, YES. That was October 16, 2014.

I had two more years of college left and Christian was back at home for good, we saw each other once or twice every month, sometimes less or more but each of those times were so precious. After two year, one month, and twelve days of dating, in the middle of a field with green grass all around, Christian asked me to marry him. With God’s help we will married in Ferndale on my family’s ranch and live in Crescent City on his family’s farm near the pastured egg ranch and work with his family!