Animal house
Less than a half-hour commute from the big city sits a delightful oasis for both humans and animals.
Michelle Kerbs pauses by the paddock in front of her house and lowers her head as Midnight, a Bolivian llama, takes a whiff of her scalp. "That's how they get to know you -- by your scent," Michelle says. Not wanting to be left out, Frasier, a Connemara thoroughbred, trots over and gets an affectionate pat on the muzzle from his owner.
"I love standing in the kitchen or living room and being able to look out and see these guys," muses Michelle.
So close, yet so far away
While it's not uncommon to have horses and llamas grazing in your front yard, it's rare to find such a bucolic spectacle only 20 minutes from downtown Seattle. But that's what Michelle and her husband, Rick, enjoy on their 11-acre estate in suburban Issaquah, Washington. Here, in a narrow valley hemmed by emerald mountains, horses gallop in pastures, chickens amble underfoot, and eagles soar over a rambling creek.
daughter Madeline, 4, love
the menagerie of pets that
share their 11-acre homestead
in Issaquah, Washington. Both
Rick and Michelle grew up in
southern Idaho. They have an
affinity for the country life, and
Michelle is an accomplished
horsewoman who shows and
competes in the hunter jumper
class on the West Coast.
The Idaho natives missed this kind of connection to nature when they first moved to the Seattle area. Then four years ago, Rick spied an ad for the Issaquah property in a local real estate magazine. After touring the grounds, he started speed-dialing his wife, imploring her to come and take a look.
"He called me like five times in three hours," laughs Michelle, who was participating in a horse show at the time. When it was over, she hopped in the car and went to check out the property. Pulling up to the gate, Michelle was greeted by a long, baronial driveway lined with blossoming cherry trees. She was hooked.
1940s, is a large Georgian colonial
that now features five bedrooms
and four baths. An original cookhouse,
built around 1900, is now a mossy
garden shed.
Her elation didn't end when the driveway did. The property boasted a charming 1940s brick Georgian with inlaid floors, paneled walls, whimsical murals, and a brand-new five-stall barn.
"It had everything we wanted," recalls Rick, a manager at local software giant Microsoft.
Making it a home
The pair moved in with their baby, Madeline, and began making the property their own. With the help of a landscape designer, they softened the starchy flowerbeds with rustling waves of ornamental grasses and injected seasonal color with sprays of irises, black-eyed Susans, calla lilies, and lavender. Iron gates and crunchy gravel pathways, modeled after ones they'd admired back East, were added around the barn and the mossy, swayback garden shed -- a former cookhouse dating back to the early years of the last century.
(shown on the cover), four cats, two
llamas (shown above in front of the
barn), one rabbit, three chickens,
and a constantly shifting number
of horses.
An award-winning equestrian, Michelle first became acquainted with horses at age 5, when her family left Chicago to start a new life in Twin Falls, Idaho. A few weeks after they arrived, a neighbor invited them to the local rodeo, where Michelle's brother held the winning raffle ticket for a pony. Since no one else in the family wanted anything to do with the animal, Michelle adopted the horse and taught it to jump fences in her backyard.
Today, Michelle rides five days a week and travels up and down the West Coast attending hunter jumper competitions. She participates at events in which horses vault over a series of 3-foot fences and are judged on form and style, rather than speed and height. The rows of ribbons lining the walls of the barn attest to her skill, which she shares with her 4-year-old daughter. "I've always been around animals, and I wanted Madeline to have that experience, also," Michelle says.
driveway, fenced areas for the horses,
a beautiful new horse barn, a sport
court, large grassy areas, and a
quaint old garden shed.
Pets and wild things
In addition to the horses and llamas, the property is home to four dogs, four cats, three chickens, one rabbit, four frogs, one lizard, and two fish -- not to mention any deer, coyotes, possums, or raccoons that happen to wander over from the neighboring woodlands. Glance up at the sky and you might even spot a human; the mountain to the east is a favorite launching pad for paragliders.
"On a hot summer day there can sometimes be 30 of them," says Michelle. "The parachutes are all different colors. It's like a rainbow."
During their first autumn in the house, Michelle and Rick were startled to hear loud splashing sounds emanating from the creek out back. "I thought there was some wild animal in the water," recalls Michelle. Scurrying across the lawn to investigate, they discovered spawning salmon bounding upstream. Now the homeowners look forward to the fishes' return each September, often tracing their progress from the suspension bridge crossing the creek.
opens the property up to hiking trails.
Issaquah Creek runs through the
backyard. On sunny days, paragliders
sail off Tiger Mountain as colorful
reminders of just how close the
property is to Seattle.
Autumn also heralds another event: the Kerbs's annual Halloween party. Michelle and Rick recruit friends and coworkers and spend a month decorating the barn with monsters, cobwebs, fog machines, and colored lights. Madeline's classmates and their parents arrive in costume, then the kids play games or sit on hay bales and listen to scary stories while munching on pumpkin cupcakes. Originally a one-time event, the party proved such a hit everyone insisted it become an annual event.
hens that roam the acreage. She
often invites her friends and their
parents to parties at the homestead.
With so much activity in their lives, the Kerbses welcome a little break now and then. Unfortunately, on a recent foray to Disneyland, the family found they couldn't wait to get back home to Issaquah. After all, who needs a make-believe Magic Kingdom when you've got the real thing right in your own backyard?
Learn more
Michelle and Rick Kerbs
12031 Issaquah Hobart Road SE
Issaquah, WA 98027
Phone: 425/427-2352
E-mail: RichardKerbs@msn.com
Rose Dalsin, Landscape Designer
Greenscene
20502 Patterson Road East
Orting, WA 98360
Phone: 360/893-1713
