An Interview with Lise Hubbe
This is a long distance, long time, interview with amazing, stalwart organic horse farmer Lise Hubbe of Scio, Oregon. We are fortunate to have her as friend and inspiration. LRM
LRM: Has your farming life lived up to the dream you held so firmly all those years ago?
LISE: My farming life has far surpassed the dream. The original dream came to me spontaneously, at the age of 9 or 10, when I received a vision and comprehension of where things were headed with the world: ecologically, economically, societally. I didn’t want my family to be waiting in line for a food handout, wanted to see myself on the provision end of things, and figured that what we’d need, in order to take care of ourselves and help others, would be a farm. Starting then, I went after life skills learning and personal development opportunities, gathering abilities to enable myself to do what needs to be done to take care of basic needs. I was called to the path of farming, but had no idea what that path could or would hold for me, or how a life path unfolds.
Even in the early years of my farm-as-survival-when-things-get-tough imaginations, there were work horses. And it was a psychological/emotional/spiritual self-survival vision of “one-horse-one-gal-hermit-in-the-woods” that led me, at age 39, to cold call the only person I knew of who could teach me how to “harness, hitch, and drive”. When Harry Lehman invited me for ice cream and introduced me to his horses, I landed on my farming path. Within a couple of months he had pointed me in the direction of a collection of horse-drawn farm equipment being liquidated by a retiring farmer Fritz Lonsway…