Although the weather has turned on us, and it’s gosh almighty cold (for us!) and wet… (yes, it does rain in So. Cali) the crew is soldiering through and work is being accomplished. It’s exciting to be watching this through the eye of my camera, and to be a part of the process of furthering our family farms commitment to sustainable farming.

Stay tuned for more information to come… but for now, please enjoy the pictures of the work being accomplished thus far.

The office has arrived and is waiting placement, there will be two identical offices and we hope to have a “quad” built at some point between them… for guests who are touring the facility to relax in as well as for presentations.

Looking north as I approach the Manure Processing site the crane is already placing our walls (shipping containers) onto their respective platforms.

Easy does it! Up, over and between the already placed wall, and high enough to miss the electrical panel.

Settling down into position the last wall is placed.

The first of two trucks shows up and drives through our front yard with it’s load of steel for the Clear Span structure.

LOTS of steel! And this is only one of two trucks hauling the structures “erector set” like building pieces.

A “birds-eye view” of the site… showing ongoing work on the canal for dairy waste water, the walls in position, the office waiting to be moved into it’s final position once the building is completed, connection steel being welded alongside the wall, and far off behind the wall to the left the truck waiting to be unloaded of it’s steel building pieces.

The southern wall mounted on it’s concrete pad.

Attaching angle iron to the top of the wall for connection points of the steel roof arch.

Looking like a giant load of erector set pieces the steel beams begin to be unloaded.

The second truck of building components comes through the dairy gates.

More pieces of the steel arch roof as well as all the connections under the blue tarps.

A heavier load requires a bigger forklift… and guidance to get the forks in just the right place to lift this behemoth amount of steel.

Work progressing on the placement and welding of angle iron to attach the walls to the arched steel roof structure.

The arched steel roof structure “ribs” begin to be put together.

Another view of the roof “ribs” as the stack continues to grow as they are assembled.

Looking north-east towards the eventual building you can see how big this structure will be. Manure to fuel… what a thought! Another positive step in sustainable agriculture… and a huge step for this family farm!

Yesterday the containers (walls) were placed on their pads in preparation for the Clear Span building to be set upon them within a few days. I’ll try to get pictures up soon of the changes going on here at Scott Brothers Dairy Farms! We’re definitely ringing in our 100th year (2013) of family farming in a BIG way!

Please click on the picture below (or copy and paste the link below into a new webpage) and enjoy the article… comments are appreciated and welcomed!

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/dmi_1/2012/11/from_grass_to_glass.html

Bruce, Brad & Stan Scott

Containers started arriving today; eventually there will be eight of them on site, they will become the “walls” of the manure processing area. These containers will be covered by a HUGE “tent-like” structure which will make the whole processing area weather proof.

Stay tuned for further developments as they happen and as time allows for sharing our progress.

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!

Wiping out my view with its creeping gray hand

Cold and wet it slithers along so slow

Hiding the early hot summer suns glow

A damp cold beginning to my day as I walk with my dog

Pondering where it came from, this early morning summer fog

Is it something as simple as the weather, although it’s really odd

Or is it just simply the mighty hand of God?

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.

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! :-/

Queenstown is a very picturesque town, nestled in between mountains and resting alongside a gorgeous lake. The evening that we arrived we were treated to a stunning sunset.

The View From Our Hotel Room

Looking out our room window the other direction.

The sunset that evening develops into stunning colors all around us.

It may be summer, but there was snow on the mountains when we woke up.

The morning of the day we are to leave we wake up, in the middle of summer remember, with SNOW on the mountain tops! 

And while the locals, and some tourists too I suppose who were caught unaware, are walking about in sandals and shorts… we bundled up to walk down by the lake and enjoy our last few hours of New Zealand.

Bruce enjoying a very tasty pot pie.

Reflecting back on our various stops during this trip we sat by a crackling fire in one of the local pubs and enjoyed a warm pot pie meal together. 

Bruce & I both feel so blessed to have been able to take this trip, and doubly blessed to have the wonderful traveling companions that we found ourselves sharing those two weeks with.

Our group, plus the owner of the sheep station we were visiting.

But that’s part of farming I believe, there is so much camaraderie whenever a group of farmers get together. It’s always just been a wholesome fun time when I’ve been with any group of farmers, whether for business or for pleasure and this trip was a prime example of that.

Our trip to New Zealand was exhilarating, and gave us a look at a country that both Bruce & I came to love and hope to visit again. We have memories of the steadfastness of the Christchurch people rebuilding their town building by building, of the beautiful aqua colored lakes of the South Island, of the Maori and their traditions that live on so richly today, of various farms that we’ve seen; cattle, sheep, kiwi’s, grapes, deer and forage crops. Then there are always the people… friendly, outgoing and curious as to what our lives are like. And you know what… we’re all pretty much the same, they just speak funny! LOL Actually I like the way the Kiwi’s speak, but I just can’t figure out why they could always know we were from America because of our “accent”!

Looking down upon Queenstown from the Skyline Restaurant after riding a gondola up the mountain.

Walking alongside Lake Wakatipu in Queenstown New Zealand

Jet Boats?

Yes…. while in New Zealand we rode on JET BOATS!!! And, Oh. My. Goodness. are they FUN!!! WooHoo!!! While in Queenstown we had an afternoon to ourselves, so Richard & Deanne, Jim, Jon & Anna, myself & Bruce decided that this was a “must do” while it was available. And did we enjoy our time on the boats!

Driving into the canyon we could see the river peaking between boulders… teasing us. “Is this where we’re going to be on a boat?” we wonder. The river looked very shallow and flowed very, very close to the boulders; in fact, it flowed right up to the edge of said boulders. And yes, it was where we were going to be.

Our ride started with getting into our life jackets… which, some had never worn. It was interesting to see the bewilderment on faces in trying to figure out the straps and fit. But, patience prevailed and soon we were all set to go.

We boarded the boat and listened to a brief safety talk. Then we proceed to pull away from the dock and suddenly we are flying down the river. Flying down the river headed right for those BIG boulders I mentioned! But no fear… we didn’t hit them. Actually, as my husband explained later, the water that the jet boat is pushing away from itself becomes a bumper between the boat and the boulder, so unless the boat loses momentum it just doesn’t hit the boulders… the water pushes it away from them and you proceed on down the river.

As I mentioned the river was shallow… very shallow, sometimes only 3 or 4 inches deep. The boats bottom is flat and meant to take a beating and that it did as we skimmed over the river rocks below us. Bumpity, bumpity, bump as we crossed over rocks worn smooth by the river and then SPLASH as we do a quick 360° turn in the middle of the river. Laughter, shrieks and great big smiles as we do several more on our altogether too short of a trip.

Yes, jet boating was thrilling. Something that I do want to do again (and again?) and feel so privileged to have experienced it in such a place of beauty as Shotover Canyon.