Slide show on the website

I spent the last two days working with Willa to get a nice slide show going at Dream River Ranch . So many of the pictures reminded me of all the things we've done this last year.

We really are an active community.

We've currently got 13 chickens, 12 of which are hens. And now we have a waiting list for our eggs. They are really tasty!

We have two barn cats, Tuffy and Shadow. They are such a pleasure to have around. But they serve a necessary function. Without them, we'd be inundated with mice. As it is, I think we will have to get some more barn cats, in order to really keep the critters under control.

We have Sam, our Great Pyrenees dog, and Rusty, our Australian Shepherd. Between the two of them we never have to worry about coyotes attacking our other critters.

We have the fourteen horses.

We had 4 summer camps this year. And boy were they fun! But exhausting! We had no accidents during camp and I think I learned as much as the kids did. What a great joy to be able to share our ranch for the weekend. We shared our lives as well as our ranch. And I watched the horses really help the kids to grow and learn.

We have our garden. This year, we learned about what not to do. Yet, in spite of all the mistakes we made (mostly not watering enough and not having time to weed), we still got a great crop of lettuce, corn, cucumbers, beets, carrots, potatoes, onions, and large pumpkins. We also grew some herbs: chives, parsley, lavender, and rosemary. We also planted several rose bushes and some berry bushes.

We put up a new arena, we changed the tack room, we put up two horse stalls, we put up two large paddocks and we put up wind breaks in each. And weeds! We have a whole crop of weeds, but we've actually made a dent in them from last year. The yard is looking a lot nicer as well and we got the sprinkler system to work.

All this and even more we've done this last year. And somewhere in all of that, we managed to remain friends, and have some fun.

Our next big goal is to figure out a way (or ways) to turn Dream River Ranch into a money making proposition. In other words, this ain't no hobby farm--we're for real and we intend to show it.

And by the way, if you want to see pictures of some of this stuff--just take a gander at our website. It's really cool--even if I do say so myself.

Dree