Yes! Thank you.
I don’t have to fly the plane!
Tim and I started Grace Harbor Farms in 1999 after we had purchased two goats as part of our preparations for Y2K. We had gardens, a water source and other preparations in place when I suggested to Tim that we get a couple of goats for the dairy products.
Tim’s response was, “Lord, what do I do with this woman you gave me!”
But we started looking for goats, and found two Saanens. Their names were Kimberly and Lockett. Their names were based on the letter designation in their registration papers. Every year there is a new letter in alphabetical order. The idea, we learned from the lady we bought the goats from, is that if you know the goat’s name, you know how old she is. We continued that program the whole time we had goats.
Now, 25 years later, we no longer have goats. We still own and operate the skin care part of the business we started all those years ago, but we gave the dairy business to David, Tim’s son, and moved out of his way so David could run it without his dad looking over his shoulder. By the way, David is doing a great job!
I am retired. Tim still works for Grace Harbor International—the skin care part of the businesses we formed, and he works for his son, too.
This seems like a good time to tell you one of the “founder stories.”
We started by making goat milk soap, and selling it at the Bellingham, Washington farmer’s market in the year 2000 when the commerce of the world did not come to a screeching halt at the turn of the millennium.
(BTW: the Y2K potential crisis was no hoax. We learned from a man who worked diligently all over the world, for 10 years, doing everything he and his team could do to prevent the melt down. They were almost 100% successful. Praise God. The lesson that Tim and I learned from it was, “We can do this”. It was a great practice run for any prepper.)
The soap sold surprisingly well. People told us that it cleared up skin problems that we had not heard of before. Soon the people asked me to figure out how to make lotion out of goat milk. I accepted that challenge and before the farmer’s market season was over, we had goat milk lotion to sell.
People asked us where they could find us when the farmer’s market season closed. We decided to rent a kiosk at Bellis Fair Mall.
Wow. The thing about the mall was—our booth had to be manned every hour the mall was open. The rent on the kiosk was exorbitant! During the holiday season that tiny space cost us $3000 a month. We made a lot of soap, and lotion, to pay the rent and a part time employee.
We took turns manning the booth—up to 16 hours a day. Tim made the soap: I made lotion, wrapped soap, and put together hundreds of gift boxes of our products.
Except for the years I fished halibut commercially, helping to keep this business going was the hardest, most exhausting work I have ever done.
One evening, near Christmas, I collapsed emotionally. I raged at Tim. “This is not what I am designed to do! This is not my gifting! I am stretched beyond my limits. I absolutely can’t do this anymore!”
Tim, with great wisdom, did not say anything.
I went to bed still in anguish.
Then I had a dream.
In the dream I was on an airport runway. There was a commercial-sized plane, in flight, but it was tethered to the run way. I was loading cargo on the plane, an inexhaustible pile of stuff. Suddenly I found myself in the cockpit, alone. The plane had taken off!
“OK, OK,” I thought as I tried to discern the control panels.
“I can do this. If I can figure out how to keep the plane level,” I thought, “and if I can get it over the water, I should be able to put it down on the water.” I was half-panicked, but working to solve the problem.
Then I woke up.
My heart was racing! Oh, thank God. It was only a dream. But what did it mean?
Then I heard the voice of the Lord, the audible voice. It was only the second time in my life I had heard that voice.
He said, “Are you going to move over and let me handle this.”
In a nano second peace fell over me.
“Oh, yes!” I said, “thank you that I don’t have to fly the plane.”
I gave up trying to fly the plane.
We submitted every every decision, every choice we made as we grew the business, to the Lord. That started with the finding the name. We asked the Lord to give us a name for the business. After much prayer, he gave us “Grace Harbor Farms”. It means that God, by his grace, brings us into a safe place, a harbor–out of the tempest, out of the storm, where we can grow.
The Lord was not helping us flying the plane. He was not our co-pilot; he was, and is, everything.
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