After 30 Years as a Firefighter, I Bought a Lavender Farm in Oregon. The Woman Who Answered My Ad Wasn’t Looking for a Job

My name is Mike Callahan. I’m 58, and for thirty years I was a firefighter with Portland Fire & Rescue.

I’ve carried people down ladders. I’ve crawled through smoke so thick I couldn’t see my own glove. I’ve seen the worst day of a thousand families’ lives.

Then, three years ago, my knee gave out on a training drill. Torn ligament, two surgeries, a long fight over a workers’ compensation claim, and a doctor who finally said what I didn’t want to hear.

“You’re done, Mike.”

I took my pension and early retirement, and for six months I sat in my apartment and watched daytime television.

I’m divorced. Have been for almost twenty years. The job was hard on marriages, and mine was one of the casualties. My kids are grown. My buddies were all still on shift.

I had never been so bored or so lonely in my life.

Then one Sunday, driving through the Willamette Valley, I passed a hand-painted sign.

“Lavender Farm For Sale. Owner Retiring.”

Twelve acres of lavender, an old farmhouse, a drying barn and a little gift shop. The owner was an eighty-year-old woman named Bea, who walked me through the rows and told me lavender was the most forgiving plant in the world.

“It likes neglect,” she said. “It likes sun. And it doesn’t care how old you are.”

I bought it two months later.

My financial advisor nearly had a heart attack. I set up an LLC, bought business liability insurance for the u-pick season and spent my first spring learning everything Bea could teach me.

By June, the fields were blooming purple, and I realized I couldn’t run the farm stand, the u-pick, the distillery and the weekend tourists by myself.

So I put an ad in the local paper. “Seasonal help wanted. Hard work, low pay, smells great.”

I got four replies. Three were college kids.

The fourth was Grace Holloway.