Enthusiastic Lawn Care

The Business Magnates expand!

This year they're working hard trying to get some commercial jobs to add to their residential lawns. College and Mission are coming right up.

I'd hire them in a heart beat!

Granny Smith and his car, "Thunder"

Pinewood Derby 2011

Looks Great!!

Butchering the Pigs

Marco and Polo, our two pigs, became pork the first week of March. The mobile butchers came and they were fantastic. They walked back to the pen, where the pigs were calmly munching on grain, killed them with one shot to the head, and the pigs didn't suffer a bit. Plus they weren't distressed so the meat will be perfect.

Winesap and Alaskan Wild Berry wanted one pig. So there was one for us and one for them.

The truck couldn't get back to the barn because of the snow, so we dragged them up to the truck. Cindy, the cow, followed close behind. Prairie Spy was distressed at this and said, "gosh, Cindy, you're just the kind of cow that would watch horror movies!"

Here they are skinning the pig. They halve the carcass, put it in the refrigerated truck and then take it to the butchers to make bacon, ham, sausage, pork roast, pork chops and ribs. Yum!

It cost us $227.00 to buy one pig and raise it, and the butcher costs were another $200.00. So, with out charging anything for our time.... total cost was $427.00 for just under 200 pounds of healthy meat.

And here is part of the liver and the heart, sitting on my kitchen counter while I meditate on what to do with them, and I listen to the kids saying, "UUUHHH GROSS! we are NOT eating THAT!"

I can't say I blame them. I partially froze them to make them easy to cut. Then sliced the liver thinly and froze it and diced up the heart and froze it too. Probably we'll just have really healthy dogs...

Blue and Gold Banquet

Granny Smith is very lucky to have a new scout leader. Sis. Frandsen was the Spy twins old scout leader and she is the best!

Flag is Up Farms

Sunday morning it was beautiful again. We put on our church clothes and drove north and inland to the town of Solvang where we went to church. Then we drove to nearby Flag is Up Farms. This is the famous ranch of Monty Roberts, author of, The Man Who Listens to Horses.

I got to push the button to open the gates! Exciting!

The racetrack...

One of the round pens where Monty "joins-up" with horses, using body language to communicate trust and confidence. It was fun to see all the tree lined avenues and everything else described in his books for myself.

It was very quiet and we were the only guests. There was a lady working her horses in one of the covered areas. Some sort of dressage, or formal movements - and people feeding and mucking out stalls. We wandered around and had a great time looking the whole place over.

Granny Smith Hatches From the Egg

The Santa Barbara Zoo

Saturday afternoon we went to the zoo. Once again there just wasn't ANYONE there because of the rain! It was fantastic! We even took the little train ride around the zoo which Granny Smith was delighted with.

Then we toured downtown Santa Barbara, had late lunch at an Italian restaurant on State street, and walked out on Stearn's Wharf. By this time it was raining like crazy and the wind was whipping around so we went back to the hotel. There was a hurricane watch for that evening so we just watched college football on tv. Since we don't have tv, that was a treat.