Spring things...

We are having an absolutely lovely spring weekend here! The temps are supposed to reach nearly 70 each of the next three days and we are thrilled! We have a lot of spring things that need doing around our little farm and the pleasant weather makes us much more motivated! Here are a few pictures I just took today of some things that are happening here on Red Pony Ranch.


You might remember from two blogs ago (on March 17th) I posted a picture of our rhubarb just peeking out of the ground. Well, here it is today! I am so happy that it's doing so well, as you might remember me talking about its rough life the past two seasons. One thing we did to protect it is to use a plastic barrel sawed in half to keep the chickens out and us from mowing it. I do realize that this is not the most attractive landscaping feature, but it is functional for now. Frank says I should pull it off and just put it back on when the chickens are out, but I bet those leaves will spread out and I won't be able to get it back over the plant. I guess I need to graduate to Plan B. I would like to pick a couple of stems, but I also think I should let this plant get strong. Decisions, decisions.


We are very blessed to have a number of fruit trees. This is a picture of one of our plum trees blooms. I love this tree as it produces those really big, round, red-skinned freestone plums that are soo sweet and juicy. We also have an italian prune plum that makes wonderful fruit too! We also have two apple trees that were thoughtfully planned by some previous owner so that one bears early and the other bears when the first one is done. This keeps us in fresh apples for about three months, and up until Christmas with the ones we put in our unheated shop or barn. New last year to our farm were two hazelnut trees and a peach tree. They seem to be doing fine so far.


Every year we dump a bunch of manure on the garden. Here it is in the ugly stage before our neighbor with the tractor and really big tiller comes and makes it a thing of beauty. If you look on the right you can see what's left of our leeks from last season. It was fun to have them there all winter and go get one when I needed one. Leeks seem to do better here than onions as they have a better tolerance for the moist soil. Eric will probably come to till the week before Mother's Day, as that is when we traditionally start planting. He does a number of gardens in our neighborhood on the same day. It is so nice to have a neighbor with a tractor and all the implements! We are happy to pay him to do this and other tractor things around the farm as it keeps us from having to buy one of our own!


You've heard me mention a few times that "The Boys" have a summer pasture that we lease from the neighbors. What I really wanted was a picture of them grazing in this pastoral setting, but what I found when I had the camera was them napping in their shelter. Oh well, you take what you can get! There is a nice shelter that they boys are happy to share, and I am happy that I can see it from my back porch so it's easy to check on them during the day. I can see most of the pasture from up here except when they're grazing on the part that is behind the neighbor's house. They like having the boys around and not having to keep the pasture mowed, although the owner does go out twice a year with his brush hog just to knock the tall stuff down that they're not going to eat anyway. We are very thankful for this pasture and for such good neighbors.


Another sign of spring is when little Sophie the chicken decides to stop thinking she's a rooster (she crows all winter, just like Colonel!) and start laying eggs again. She doesn't seem to like laying in the nest boxes in the coop, and since she can get out of the run (for the life of me I have never caught her) she prefers the barn for her laying. I found these two eggs on the hay stack this morning. She's going to be unhappy when I have to feed that hay!


The big girls, however, have been laying like gang-busters for a couple of months now. We get between 6 and 9 eggs every day. Of course we can't use this many, so enjoy giving them away to people who now realize the huge difference in taste and quality between home raised and store bought eggs. I don't think I could ever go back.

Well, hopefully spring is springing at your place too. The clerk at my local co-op tells me there is a HUGE upswing in the number of people who are planning and planting gardens. I think the economy gets tough and people learn to be a little more self-sufficient. I know I sure think that way, even when things aren't tight. It just makes sense to grow some good stuff of your own. We sure enjoy it, as well as sharing the surplus with others who are not so fortunate to have the space and resources we have. We are truly blessed.

Spring break activities

Like most Washington and Oregon teachers, spring break means getting out of the rain and the gloom for some sunny and warm destination. This year we made reservations with our time-share in Indio, California, which is in the desert near Palm Springs. The 2 hour flight from Seattle to Los Angles makes the whole west coast seem close for getting away! Ordinarily, we would have flown into Palm Springs, but we got cheap flights into LA and rented a car there and drove the rest of the way.


The 'rest of the way' turned out to be about 2.5 hours, with an In-N-Out stop along the way, of course! We had to use a few highways to get out of the LA area, but eventually settled on to I10 and followed the sign you see above. Since we felt like it had been so wet at home we were growing webs between our toes, some desert sounded like a really good idea! The metro area around LA is HUGE, and we didn't really get to fairly rural landscapes until about 1.5 hours into the drive.


We pulled into our impressive resort about 4:30pm. This picture is of it when it was fairly new; the vegetation is quite lush and well manicured now. (We forgot to bring our camera, so all these pictures are 'borrowed' from internet sources!) Our unit was up to the usual high WorldMark standards and was a wonderful place to relax after hours floating in the lazy river! Boy was that fun!! We found a couple of pool noodles and used them instead of the inner tubes, as they let us float along lower in the water. Our friend Jay joined us there that evening from his home in Phoenix, and we enjoyed a late dinner of steak, caesar salad, garlic bread and mexican beer.


The next day we decided to check out the area. This part of california grows 90% of the country's dates, so we made sure to visit a couple of farms and even got to watch a video that showed the whole production, as well as taste a 'famous' date shake! It was just one of those things you had to try, but probably don't need to have again! Apparently, date trees are either male or female, and don't seem to be able to find a love connection on their own, so someone has to do it for them. I want to see that guy's resume!


Then we ventured on further south to a place we've always wanted to see: The Salton Sea. It was featured in a book we read and our interest was piqued. I know this picture makes it look fairly nice, but truly it is a foul smelling body of water ringed with decaying signs of a life long past. Frank said it was apocalyptic, I thought it reminded me of scenes out of the original planet of the apes. The weirdest thing was a playground's metal slide, only two feet of which was sticking out of the sand; the jungle gym similarly buried. Now, to be sure, we didn't venture much along the rim of the lake, and probably should have, but it was getting to be a very hot afternoon and the pool back at the resort was beckoning.


The next day we ventured out to Palm Springs to take a tram to the top of Mt. San Jacinto (pronounced HaCINtoe). The views from the top (8600 feet) were breathtaking, but the snow significantly restricted our ability to take the trails and see the 360 degree view. I guess in the summer it is significantly cooler at the top, and the locals go up there to escape the desert heat. Good idea!


Now of course I am not mentioning every time we were in the pool, as it was several times a day, starting at 8am with a reverse-lazy-river walk, and followed by dips every few hours until 10pm at night. Of course we had to break for food, and our way of thinking was: When in southern CA, one must eat real mexican food. Frequently. Copiously. We had some of the best, freshest quacamole I have ever had. I could make a meal of just that, but of course there was always something else coming!


We tried to break out of chosing only the 'safe' things like chicken enchiladas and burritos and try some new things and we were mostly successful with that. We tried chili verde made with pork and a tomatillo sauce, and chili colorado with beef and a poblano pepper sauce. Frank also tried tamales and flautas for the first time, and I don't remember all what Jay had, but it was washed down with good mexican beer!


Well, all good vacations come to an end, and there are always chores to be done even on a little farm such as ours. It's time to move the boys to their summer pasture, but not before we fix the minor damage from winter storms and restore the electric fence to it's pony-deterring shock (Bailey wouldn't even think to cross a piece of dead fence laying on the ground!) Here is Frank moving one of the small trees that didn't survive the winter.


There were numerous places where large branches had come down as well and were easy enough to lift off the fence and chuck back into the woods or the gully. We were happy to find that none of the string fence broke...


so all we had to do was tighten the fence, as you see me doing above, and also lower all the insulators about a foot in some places. We discovered that the power company had come and cleaned out a lot of brush under their power lines, but apparently that vegetation created a natural fenceline that the electric fence just reinforced. With the vegetation gone now, the electric fence was much more critical and needed to be lowered to be more pony proof. Of course, as many of my friends who have ponies know, nothing is truly pony-proof so we just do our best. Those darn ponies do keep us on our toes!


One thing we did discover is that with the newly brush-cut easement, the boys have a lovely river view! Some people pay good money for this! We have a similar view from our house about 300 yards to the north from our home toward the Olympic Mountain range. We are so blessed to live in such a wonderful place...but it IS fun to get away once in a while and see something so totally different! It's all beautiful in its own way, but, in my opinion, better to live here and just VISIT the desert when we start feeling like we're getting a little moldy!