Mike and Ivy Roulette started Hope Ranch in 2009 after moving to Hood River from Long Beach, Calif. For more lifestyle stories, visit issuu.com/thegorgemagazine.
Mike and Ivy Roulette started Hope Ranch in 2009 after moving to Hood River from Long Beach, Calif. For more lifestyle stories, visit issuu.com/thegorgemagazine.
A family’s farm gives comfort through difficult times
HOOD RIVER — Hope Ranch sits just over the crest of Pine Grove. The 22-acre farm belonging to the Roulette family is nestled between farmhouses with a double mountain view. As you pull in and park in their make-shift lot alongside their crisp white lavender shop and climb from the car, you’re likely to feel the cortisol in your system dissipate. The murmur of industrious honeybees and the dusty-floral scent of lavender fills the air.
Up the sloped grass lawn sits the family’s sweet ranch house, which is the center of everything. North of the house are two large fields peppered with a dozen or so black and white cows, a large chicken coop, and a larger barn.
Adjacent to the lavender sprawls the family garden. Fruit trees, an over-zealous plot of strawberries, beds of leafy greens, eager tomatoes and root vegetables are in full force. The door to the kids’ playhouse is open, the greenhouse is bursting with baskets and starts. There’s an old barn that holds, among other things, a blue 1952 Chevy pickup truck that Mike brought home one day for Ivy as a gift. To know Mike and Ivy is to understand that the surprise delivery of a vintage truck is akin to a husband presenting his wife with a pair of diamond earrings. To know Mike and Ivy is to know what love looks like.
Mike and Ivy’s farm is a physical manifestation of their love story. Prior to moving to Hood River, they lived on a thirty-foot sailboat in Long Beach, Calif. Mike worked as a firefighter and paramedic, Ivy as a high school art teacher. After a decade of living with 17 square feet of floor space and saving up, they came to the Gorge where Ivy had vacationed as a child, and they fell in love with the area.
“Nothing’s as beautiful as the Hood River Valley,” Ivy said. They bought their property in 2009 and named it Hope Ranch, after Ivy’s middle name (and her grandmother’s name).
Mike and Ivy are first-generation farmers and they relied on the expertise and advice of others as they worked to turn their land into the functional farm it is now.
“Our neighbor and his wife took us in and they said, ‘You can’t maintain these fields without having animals on it. Come on, we’re going to go buy cows together!’” Ivy recalled with a laugh. First came the cows, then the kids: Grace, Ben and Olivia. Mike commuted to Portland for work, often gone for days at a time, while Ivy stayed home raising and educating the kids, and tending the farm.
“All that stuff on the farm is her,” Mike said, gesturing to Ivy. “She’s had three babies in the back seat and a sick calf in the front seat driving to the vet.” On his days off, they all worked together maintaining the farm, selling beef and a bit of hay, mostly to locals.
Ivy Roulette hands a bouquet of lavender to a customer. For more lifestyle stories, visit issuu.com/thegorgemagazine.
Kacie McMackin photo
Having a lavender field was always part of the dream. After nearly a decade, they finally began transforming the south swath of their property. They invested in the plants and irrigation, prepped the land and got 10,000 plants into the ground in the summer of 2019. The plants wintered over, but in spring 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic was settling over the world, the ground became saturated with rain. The wet spring ultimately contributed to the damage of over half of their fragile new plants.
On Mother’s Day, Ivy returned from the lavender field dejected. “I said to Mike, ‘We’re losing all these plants.’ Hillsides of plants were just … dead. May and June were terrible.”
While losing the lavender was devastating for the Roulette family, things were about to get worse. As they tried to wrap their minds around the loss of the plants, Mike began experiencing tingling in his right arm.
“We were watching the plants die, die, die, and Mike’s arm started getting numb,” Ivy recalled.
On July 20, he had an MRI that revealed a large cancerous tumor in his brain. The next day, at home, Mike had a seizure, and he was transported by life-flight to OHSU in Portland. Two of the paramedics that came to get Mike, and Mike’s doctor, Nic Buser, happened to be good friends of the family. Nic’s wife, Heather, drove a rattled Ivy into Portland, and proceeded to let their friends know what was going on.
“I don’t know if this is just bragging on this amazing place,” Ivy said, “but we were crumbling, everything was coming to implosion, and it was an instantaneous rally.”
Mike had brain surgery on July 24, and the next day, while Mike and Ivy remained at the hospital, more than 100 people gathered in their masks and work clothes under the hot summer sun to pull out thousands of diseased and dead lavender plants.
“I had started doing it myself and, emotionally, I couldn’t take it,” Ivy said. “Someone else needed to rip it all out, and they did. We’re most lucky because of the community we’re in. People really leaned in.”
To learn more about Hope Ranch and order from the online shop, go to hoperanchlavender.com.
Kacie McMackin photo
Mike and Ivy returned home to their farm and family, and Mike began his recovery and oral chemotherapy. The lavender field was a clean slate. Due to Mike’s illness, he was unable to return to his high-demand work. They turned their focus to the present: their kids, their love, their farm.
In the summer of 2021 they began distilling lavender oil and saving the hydrosol, a byproduct that can be used as a freshening spray. Their old barn wall was quickly covered in drying bundles of fragrant lavender. They built the small, white shop building and Hope Ranch Lavender officially opened on Father’s Day 2022. Locals came, as well as visitors from all over the world. They sold pure oils, dried lavender, fresh-cut flower bouquets, room and linen sprays, bath salts, lavender extract and culinary lavender.
As 2022 ended, Mike’s cancer returned. He had a second brain surgery early this year. He continues doing chemotherapy, and in mid-April he finished a round of radiation.
Hope Ranch Lavender opened for the season on June 1. The Roulettes plan to continue replanting their lost lavender and improving the shop. Eventually they’d like to build a structure where they can host events.
“We’ve always been the type of people who work, then build what you can, and then do it again and again and again,” Mike said.
“Organically letting things grow,” Ivy added, her hand covering Mike’s.
Making future plans for their farm, writing new chapters of their love story and their family’s story, feels a bit like new lavender plants — fragile but resilient.
“As far as being in the situation we’re in, we’re about as lucky as we can get,” Mike said.
Commented