Fifteen million dollars will be shelled out this month in a national attempt show our love to each other; stuffed animals, chocolate, perfume, chocolate, flowers…and did I mention chocolate? Oh yes, and cards filled with mushy words…

Please bear with me as I express my words of devotion not to an individual person, but to a place. Even though my love letter is personal and specific to Hacker Valley and Red Gate Farm, I believe it reflects sentiment most West Virginians feel towards their own special place.  (The first line is borrowed from Elizabeth Browning.)

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

1.  I love that you don’t get in a hurry. The morning sun takes its time coming down the hill after it tops over the ridge letting the frost linger in the shadows and  fallen leaves that it’s outlined.

2.  I treasure the vivid backdrop you paint for my childhood memories and those of my parents. For example, fifty yards from the front door I can stand in the cool waters of the Holly River and laugh as I imagine my mom and her sister as youngsters involuntarily baptizing all their hens. (As the hens would willingly crouch down for the rooster, mom and auntie would pluck them up, run out the door of the chicken house “of ill repute”, and dunk them under the “cleansing” waters of the Holly.)

3.  I am mesmerized by the wind currents swirling around and through the mountains. Once in the hayfield on Balli Mountain, the clouds, being encouraged along on a blessed breeze, cast shadows that washed over us like waves in the ocean. The only appropriate response was to stop raking and catch my breath only to have it taken away again in awe.

4.  I love the exhilaration of riding dirt bikes in the meadow under a blue sky, or catching spring peepers in the ditch. You enable me, for just a few moments, to step outside my role of housewife and mom and be a kid again.

5.  In addition to the usual flora and fauna like dandelions and black bears, you go the extra mile and give us wine berries, ramps, doodle-bugs, and ferrydiddles. Oh, and there is a marvelous patch of touch-me-knots on Sleepy Pugh Hill that means more to me than a dozen roses.

6.  You are a marvelous teacher who encourages us to think outside the box to fix things, which I’m impressed to say nine times out of ten involve duct tape.

7.  I love to go barefoot and feel the mud between my toes more than a pedicure! And the mudslide behind the house that my ten year old son discovered was marvelous.  He slid down on his belly repeatedly and we had to hose him off with the garden hose.

8.  Thanks for challenging me. There are endless opportunities there to push oneself beyond what you think you can do…cutting briars (filth) with a heavy gas-powered weed eater for five hours till your side bruises…or putting up hay as temperatures soar into the 90’s–physical challenges that when met builds confidence as well as character.

9.  I think it’s cool that a traffic jam is when a tree falls across the road until someone comes along with a chain-saw in their trunk (sooner than you might think).

10.  Night is so truly defined you can’t even see your hand in front of your face. When the moon is full the entire valley is illuminated so barns and trees cast purple shadows. Looking up at the starry sky makes me humble.

After 44 years together, I appreciate you now more than ever. Happy Valentine’s Day to Red Gate Farm and the special people who live there. My heart aches when we are far apart—for it is with you that my heart sings the prettiest love song.

I miss you, Janet

    Janet Fliegel is a WV farmgirl currently surviving in a suburb of Cincinnati.