And yet more...

I took a look at the web stats for our website. I hadn't looked at them before, because quite frankly, I didn't think it was that important. Well, as they say, live and learn. Today I learned that in the last week our website was viewed over 3000 times.

We have a lot of interested folks out there. And more than that, we have a lot of friends.

This is a great time to speak of all our friends. Especially when you see how busy we've been. You can bet that we haven't done that work all by ourselves. Especially since all of us but Willa work full time off of the ranch.

So, here's a partial list of friends and the credit they so richly deserve:

Philip: who built most of my apartment, helps around the ranch, and recently built the new shade on our tack shed.

Patty: who was kind enough to come and stay with me on the ranch last winter when Willa and Joseph were traveling. Who is kind enough to cook for us during the last camp, and who always brings us chocolate.

Vanessa: who really thinks she's coming out just because she loves horses and wants to be around them, but who really helps out every time she comes.

Sarah: who loves our kids, and likes to help do whatever is needed. She and Vanessa have done a lot of work to make our jump poles pretty.

James: who brought us 40 syrah grape plants--he is totally responsible for us getting our own vineyard.

Sophie: who is very young, loves horses and is the best tack cleaner we have ever met, and who would move in with us if her parents (Mark and Pam) allowed it.

Bill: who for next to nothing has spent most of the summer living in "the beast" and working like anything. If I made a list of everything he's done this summer, I wouldn't have room for the rest of the folks.

Time would fail me if I told about everyone else, but Lisa, Jim, Sheryl, David, Jenny, and everyone else, who I am probably forgetting. THANK YOU!!!

Without all of you Dream River Ranch wouldn't be the place that it is today. You all help to make our community such a special place to live.

VIVAT!!!

So Many Things to Say, Such Little Time

It has been a couple of months since my last post. Spring and summer are very busy on the Ranch as you can imagine.

Here are some of the highlights.

We've had one overnight camp and 3 morning camps so far. This weekend is our Horseback Archery weekend long clinic. Yipee! This is going to be a lot of fun.

We had a very green spring this year, as you can see from the picture. Lots of rain, lots of weeds, lots of mowing.

Our automatic sprinkler system in the garden has been installed. Our first plants were roses--a whole border of them along the front of the garden. We were also given 40 Syrah grape vines this year. We planted them and all but two survived! We have the start of our very own vineyard. In three years, we hope to experiment with our very first batch of Syrah Wine.

The round pen is no longer a future project. It is a current reality. It's been sooo nice to have a good working area to train in. We used "Dream River" sand for the footing and it is excellent.

We got our first "peep" this year. Yes indeed one of our chickens hatched her very own egg. Only one so far. However, we went down and got five more Arucana pullet chicks to join our flock. Yesterday we were able to obtain our very own Arucana rooster--Gandalf. Our current Banty Brahmin rooster "Pretty Boy" has decided not to push his luck too far. Pictures will come soon--they are such beautiful birds! Interesting to note that the flock is reestablishing their pecking order. They are such fun to watch.

Our water pump went out and we had to replace it. The bad news: it cost a lot! The good news, we now have better water pressure than we have ever had at the ranch. This means we don't have to replace the sprinklers in our lawn because the old ones work just fine now. We also have water at the arena so we can keep the dust down.

This week, we are adding a "porch" to our Tack Shed. This is so that folks can have some shade to sit in while we are having horse shows. We are also getting another shed built next door. It's going to be very cute, and very useful.

We had over 10 goslings this year. They were such fun to watch, and they grew up very fast. Currently we have a couple of duck families swimming around the pond. It is so great to have the two ponds. We also had a nest of meadow larks in the pole barn. It was such fun to watch the chicks peeking over the nest whenever we went in to do chores. I love listening to them sing every morning outside my window.

We were recently accepted for the Equip Program (Agriculture), and so will have the ability to further divide the horse pastures. We are now also able to irrigate. Someday, we will be able to grow our own hay for the horses. This will be a lot cheaper than buying.

There's more to say, but I'm out of time.... Hope to catch up with this blog soon.