And the Garden Works

Last time I wrote about gardens and dreams. Here is a picture of a dream coming true. Yes that is lettuce! And look at those radishes, in only a few weeks! Next week, I'm thinking that we will be eating our lettuce with radishes and spinach. Yummy! This is only a partial picture of one box, we have two boxes, the other one contains okra, spinach, beets, cabbage, and kale. Not pictured in this box is the broccoli, colorabi and basil.

Next year, our garden is going to be a lush, food producing bit of loveliness on the ranch. But it's nice to know that we get some it the benefits this year.

Steve and Tammy also planted some very lovely roses, all in a row at the front of our garden. They are soooo beautiful. I really do love roses and it's nice to have some planted, and growing, on the ranch.

So we've also been getting the hay in for next year. We don't have all of it in yet, but we do have it ordered, which is very good. No more panic! Willa is so wonderful to keep on top of this! And I'm sure that the horses appreciate it very much.

Last weekend we did Cavalry Drill and Jousting training. Everyone had a really good time and the horses did very well. We will be posting some pictures from the Jousting training and the Mounted Archery soon.

It is so much fun to live on the ranch!

A Work of Garden

I took this picture this morning on my way to work. Steven and Tammy have worked so hard getting our garden just right. It's been an absolutely huge project. First they had to get all the infrastructure in, including a beautiful sprinkler system. Then they built the boxes and hand filled them with dirt.

The boxes are pretty big 4' x 12' each, so it wasn't trivial to fill them up by hand. After everything was ready, we finally (at the end of July) could plant. So we planted all cold weather crops which will grow this fall. We have lettuce, brocolli, radishes, some beets, and other really great stuff.

The thing I've been learning about dreams is that they happen slowly. Much more slowly than I thought at first. They require that you don't give up on them just because they don't happen as fast as you want. Even then end result isn't always what you thought it would be. But dreams are worth doing in spite of all that you go through to get them to become reality.

This year we have done so many things, and now we are looking forward to fall and this year, the fall will be not just a time of harvest, but a time of new beginnings. Usually, lettuce and radishes are the first crop, not the fall crop. But this year they will be. Because dreams that are worth having, take time.

Little by little we cross the ocean.

After Camp

Our last overnight Kids Camp finished on Monday. What a blast! Unfortunately, I got my foot crunched on Sunday morning by Scotch, and so missed the rest of Sunday and most of Monday. I did get to help with clean up on Tuesday.

This time Willa taught the kids horseback archery. They really enjoyed it, and I think they learned some great skills. At any rate, a very good time was had by all in spite of the heat. It was over 100 Saturday, Sunday, and Monday but everyone managed to press through the heat and drink LOTS of water. There are now sprinklers around the outside edge of the arena and it was really helpful to turn them on every so often and cool off.

Someday we might even have our own "Mongolian Horde" with mounted archers.

Also this last weekend, Steve and Tammy got our first two planter boxes done and we all planted the first one, they planted the second one. These are all "cold weather" crops like lettuce, beets, and brocolli. Next year, the garden will be all ready to go first thing in the spring and it will be automatically watered by our sprinkler system. What a crop we will get next year! Yum.

The pole barn is getting ready for this year's shipment of hay. Willa, Joseph, and Bill are working very hard to get the floor evened out so that we don't lose any hay to water seeping underneath the stack.

The chickens are getting used to each other. The new Arucana pullets are fitting in nicely. We did lose two of our new Guineas to accidents, but we still have one left and she seems very spunky and a bit wiser than her siblings were. The new Arucana rooster is quite beautiful with his irridescent blue tail feathers and his gold and red "mane". He is also quite the showoff. He must be, all the big girls hang with him now. It's interesting the new Arucana hens are all hanging with the old Banty Rooster "Pretty Boy" as well as our little Guinea.

It is cool and rainy at the ranch today. Kind of weird for August, but really nice just the same. I know the animals are enjoying this break from the heat of last week. Seems like we've been transported to Puget Sound, but I don't think any of us mind too much.

And so life at the ranch goes on. Next big event: Jousting Clinic!

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.

Thinking Dreams

When I was a little girl, if a fairy had come down and granted me one wish, it would have been to live on a horse ranch.  I realized this as I was mucking out stalls the other day.  I'm living my girl hood dream.  The sad fact is, growing up I buried this dream because I thought it was so impossible. Yet here I am, living my dream.

At this point I could make several moral observances, but I'm not going go.  I'm going to be grateful.  I'm going to try and apprecitate this dream just as though I was that little girl wishing to live with horses. Every morning when I get up, I'm going to thank the Lord and smile. I want to enjoy this dream to the fullest.

When I pet the dogs, take care of the chickens, and the cats, and the horses...I'm going to revel in the fact that once upon a time when I was young, this was my highest wish and it has come true. 

Cinderella?  Ya got nothin on me!

Thinking Green

We've had rain the past few days. Not like you get in the east where it pours buckets for hours on end, but we have had rain on and off. Enough to turn everything green.

This is the time of year when we like to see things turning green. The garden plot has been rototilled and is awaiting the installation of automatic drip system. No more losing plants because they don't get watered often enough. The back pasture which we seeded with Idaho Bunching Blue grass is looking pretty fine. The east pasture where the alfalfa is growing, is also turning a very nice shade of green.

I was thinking about this yesterday. Most of the time, our mountains and prairies are all different shades of brown (and purple--yes really purple). Even when we get lots of water, the natural plants turn on their own by July. So we really have a short window in which to look out our windows and see...green.

It's a very special time of year this "green" time. The old things have been blown away, the new green plants are fresh to look at (and smell). Even though the wind blows a lot it isn't that cold wind that blows through you and chills your bones. It is the frisky wind that blows around you and invites you out to play.

The horses love this time of year. They kick up their heals and gallop around the pastures at full speed. They show off by bucking and kicking, and leaping high (I saw Mercedes do a real live capriole the other day). The chickens are laying more eggs, their feathers are sleek as they cluck contentedly and dig for bugs in the fresh unfrozen soil.

The dogs are out chasing coyotes again--because the coyotes are active again. I've seen lots of bunnies, and the prairie dogs are thick this year.

All this rain, this beautiful rain, this beautiful "not snow", is bringing us more than May flowers, it's bringing us spring in all her green.