Never thought I'd be blogging!!! Day one~~

From an inspiration from one of my dog's online friend's mom...does that make sense...I decided to try blogging. Our life here in Eastern Oregon is interesting and quite different from other areas. Something that should be fun to share!

Today is an unusual Saturday; John is usually home, but he had to work the dreaded Inventory at his work...yuck.

So, I've had a quiet morning drinking coffee, baking brownies, carving a pumpkin, feeding the chickens and exploring this blogging thing on the computer. Obviously, it's too hard to try to explain all of one's life in a single paragraph...I'll just take a few days, weeks, months, or years to share our ranch life...

In summary, I've been married to John for almost 10 years and at that time we lived in the Portland OR metro area. We had an exciting opportunity to move and chose Central Oregon as our new home...away from all the people and traffic...someplace where we enjoyed vacationing with our horses sounded perfect. That was in 2000. By 2005, it seemed like everyone from the "Valley" had also moved to Central Oregon....eeeeekkkkk. We took another blessed opportunity and followed our dreams and hearts~~we bought a ranch/farm in Eastern Oregon~~and we don't regret it one bit.

It's hard work...but a work of love. It's work to maintain a lifestyle that is slowly disappearing in America. Small farms and ranches are becoming a thing of the past. Economics pretty much sums it all up.

We have a very small place in comparison to others in the area. But, we work hard raising 45 acres of alfalfa hay. We lease out about 275 acres of grazing land in the summer (cow/calf pairs), and I train horses. To make this work, John works a full time job in town (45 miles away).

Ok...my pics for the day...

Here are my 5 laying hens...they sure do love pumpkin!!

And I sure love the eggs they give us.

My poor garden...when it starts freezing here at night, gardening is a done deal. No amount of covering could save my precious tomatoes and zucchini.

This little flower bed will look great next year. I transplanted these Holly Hocks early this year from out behind the barn where the old homestead used to be which was probably from the early 1900's.

My pumpkin carving project from this mornin'. I love the natural warts and skin marks on it...character!

This is a project I'm working on for John. He received a very sentimental gift from a dear friend; a pair of deer skin shotgun chaps. Sadly, they were about 6-8 inches too short for him. I got a pattern for a pair of chinks, which is a buckaroo type of chap. I took out the zipper and re-attached the fringe using a braided pattern. I now have to finish them by adding the straps with buckles and the concho decorations.