A Farmers Wife and Life

Walk (or run) with me as I share our story.

A Bugle Calls and “They’re Off” Resounds Through The Air July 20, 2012

Filed under: Animals,Family,Nanette,Travel — cntryrose @ 11:38 am
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Recently I crossed off a “bucket list” item… and boy of boy did I have fun!

I was born and raised in San Diego County… the home of Del Mar, its fair and its horse racing track. But I’d never been there for the horse races. When you think of the Del Mar race track you conjure up thoughts of Jimmy Durante, Bing Crosby, Dean Martin… and all of the old favorites sitting in their private boxes watching fabulous thoroughbreds running the track.

Well, we didn’t have a private boxes to sit in, but we did watch some fabulously beautiful horses running like the wind in the cool ocean breeze. But that’s not all we saw…

We saw lots of people!

We saw lots of very expensive cars!

We saw some really beautiful, and some really odd looking hats perched upon lots of women’s heads, or in a few instances perched on their foreheads!

Did I mention that we saw lots of people?

We also saw kids bouncing along the track in their own little race.

And being a wife of a farmer I, of course, had to take pictures of the beautiful (yes, tractors can be beautiful) John Deere tractors grooming the track. With the American Flag right behind one of them it’s an “All American” in my opinion.

My sister, Penny King, my niece Lindsey King with boyfriend Tyler Twohey and my nephew Brad King all very much enjoyed the day… we didn’t win anything but we did gather up a lot of wonderful memories to reflect back upon – which in my book is just as good as gold.

Here is a pictorial of what we saw… enjoy the view… and if you ever get a chance to see Del Mar and all of it’s finery, please do yourself a favor… and go… enjoy… and maybe you’ll even win!

 

Dust, It’s Not Just On Your Furniture June 8, 2012

Filed under: Dairy,Family,Farm,Scott Brothers Dairy Farms — cntryrose @ 9:02 am
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We all live with dust… especially if you live in the country. We all dust our furniture, perhaps the interior of our personal vehicle. We may even dust off the outdoor furniture as well. But how many of you “dust” your driveway?  Yes, you read that right… we have to keep dust from “escaping” our driveway. Or, better said, we have to contain the dust created from the dirt roads on our farm.

We have, approximately, 5 miles of dirt roads on our farm. They are dusty, dirty, rarely muddy, dirt roads.

South Coast Air Quality has a dust mandate. No dust shall “escape” into the air from dirt roads, or more precisely no dust can leave our farm from our dirt roads.

Yep – no dust …from dirt roads. And you wonder why farmers can turn gray early on in life.

We use a HUGE water truck to keep the dust at bay. And in our efforts to always stay sustainable, we use reclaimed water to fill the truck. All 5,000 gallons of its capacity. The truck can run on some days every hour – especially if we are harvesting crops. On days when no harvesting is going on we usually have it in use once per day – first thing in the morning before the equipment gets moving. Secondary benefit from this… the deep roar of the truck’s engine makes a wonderful alarm clock at 4:30 a.m. when our employee starts it up and runs it past our home.

Our boys, Shane & Tim, grew up driving various vehicles here on the farm… one of them was this huge beast of a water truck. While it may seem “scary” to some for young people to be driving such a huge piece of equipment I can tell you that as young boys they approached it with eagerness, tempered with the wisdom a young person has innately developed while living on a farm. And I can also tell you that they are both very competent and extremely safe drivers now, and have been since they obtained their licenses’ to drive on the public highways. This I firmly believe is due in part to their work here on the farm “dusting” the driveways in their youth.

 

(Getting) Older Bones Don’t Bounce! May 27, 2012

Filed under: Family,Flowers,Garden,Nanette,Scenery — cntryrose @ 1:41 pm
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OUCH! I’ve been working on thinning out grasses and poppies, weeding and removing seedling trees in our “cactus” garden. This garden is a native garden and rarely needs attention. However, twice a year I need to thin out the Mexican Feather Grass and remove the California Poppies that have overgrown and gone to seed. I’ve been working diligently on this project the past three days during the cool of the morning.

Below are the “before” pictures of the garden area I have been working on. As you can see, it was a bit overgrown (to say the least!). But I just don’t have the heart to pull the poppies before they are done. They are so colorful, so bright early on in the spring when you are craving color after a drab fall and winter.

Poppies Gone Wild!

Today – I was digging up and or pulling up 4 foot “baby” Mesquite Trees. Five of them. On tree number 2 I gave a big tug after digging around its root system, its tap-root suddenly broke (DANG!) and down I went!!! Right onto a boulder… I landed on my right hip and my right elbow. OUCH!!! Besides my dignity being severely bruised I’ve also bruised my elbow, my hip and have a small cut on my knee (from the thorns on the tree which fell with me landing on me). However bad this was… I’m just forevermore grateful that I did not land on the cactus right behind the boulder! I’ll take a hard landing any day over a SHARP landing! LOL

The Rock!

The “Almost” Alternative

Rock and Cactus

And here are the “after” pictures… a much more presentable garden!

A Clean Walkway

All Done!

And the pile of pulled poppies and grasses… we’re going to spread them around some of the ponds and the dry riverbanks to see if they’ll grow there as well as they do in our garden.

Seeds and Mulch

I “was” going to paint our bathroom today, but I think I’ll leave climbing ladders for another day. A day in the near future when I’m not so sore, and not so stiff. For the rest of today… I’m going to go and curl up on the couch, knit or read, and keep taking something to keep the soreness at bay. Nope… (getting) older bones just don’t bounce like they used to! :-/

 

I’m BACK! March 29, 2012

Filed under: Family,Nanette,Travel — cntryrose @ 9:24 am

Well, sort of. I’m sorry everyone for dropping the ball, so to speak, on this blog. I will be finishing up our New Zealand trip – hopefully this coming week. I’ll also be adding all of the reasons that I’ve not been able to post recently.

Whats been keeping me so busy? Well, it started out with our son’s graduation from Motorcycle Mechanic’s Technical Institute and the delightful weekend we spent with both our boys in Sedona Arizona. Then I’ll talk a bit about the Water Forum at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo that my husband Bruce spoke at and the delightful time we had at the Apple Inn. Within a week of that trip I took off for a bit of traveling by myself and went to Maryland to visit with my daughter, her family and our son Shane who had just moved there after graduation. While I was back east I met my sister in Virginia and we spent two delightful days exploring Pennsylvania and the Cherry Blossom Festival in D.C.

I returned home last Saturday and my husband and I left (again) on Sunday for Sacramento – and there’s a story there as well, he received a well deserved, but humbly accepted Water Customer of the Year award from the WateReuse Association.

Stay tuned… dairy news, family news and the rest of New Zealand will be coming soon. :)

 

Age, Experience & Wisdom March 10, 2012

Filed under: Bruce,Family,Flowers,Garden,Nanette,Scenery — cntryrose @ 4:56 pm
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With age comes experience and with experience comes wisdom ~ right?

Well one would hope that with age comes experience and then along comes wisdom with that experience. So that’s why I can say… from experience and from wisdom of a job done… that yes, I LOVE my new gazebo, and yes, it was fairly easy to put together, in fact it took us about 3-1/2 hours  from start to finish.

However, if anyone ever asks me to help them put their new gazebo together, because yes, I am experienced… but from that experienced wisdom I will wish them well and promise to them that’s it’s fairly easy and goes pretty quickly. However, I won’t mention to them the aching arms, the oh so sore back and yes, even my leg muscles which are screaming from climbing up and down the ladder many, many times; all of these “fun” experiences from this adventure today. Nor will I mention to them the broken fingernails, nor the sweat that starts running down your face and other body parts… but I will tell them how awesome it is to sit under your gazebo after construction is done, and how much we are looking forward to enjoying “fly/mosquito free” dinners out-of-doors and I will also wish  anyone well on their adventure to come… when they put their own gazebo up… without me! ;-)

 

Lake Tekapo & The Collie February 15, 2012

Filed under: Animals,Bruce,Family,Nanette,New Zealand,Scenery — cntryrose @ 5:16 pm
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Yes, we’re freezing here! The wind was coming down from the snow laden mountains and believe me it was a bitter biting wind that cut through the merino wool top like it wasn’t there!

We are beginning to see that the stunning color of water here in New Zealand is pretty much everywhere. It’s an indescribable blue, aqua color that pretty much takes your breath away, if you have any left after the cold wind robs you of it that is!

This bronze statue is a tribute to the Collie Sheep Dog and was placed on a large boulder at the shores of Lake Tekapo in March of 1968. Standing proud and tall this dog is a reminder to everyone on how hard these dogs worked on farms dotted throughout Mackenzie Country. The collie dogs were originally brought to New Zealand in the 19th century when Scottish shepherds arrived to begin farming New Zealand, without the help of their loyal companions the shepherds would have had a very hard time keeping their flocks together in this mountainous countryside.

 

A Time to Chat February 12, 2012

Filed under: Bruce,Family,New Zealand,Travel — cntryrose @ 2:11 pm
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After touring the Davey’s farm we had a bit of time to chat and enjoy Bill, Lynda and their son Nick’s hospitality. Their home is beautiful, and the gardens very relaxing. I could easily have stayed the day listening to the breeze sigh through the trees and enjoy the company of everyone, including Lynda’s 14 year old tabby cat who lay stretched out on the lawn as if she didn’t have a care in the world.

Bruce took this time to chat with Bill about rye grasses, and crops in general… as well as the irrigation systems that we had seen.

Leaving their farm we see Guinea Fowl and some beautiful cows grazing in the paddock. Thank you Lynda & Bill for a wonderful time.

 

 
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