Our first cattle drive of the year
The V6 is really starting to spread its wings in terms of the several new activities that I believe are a win win for everybody, most importantly Mother Nature. As she watches there’s a smile on her face because her grass covered mountains are still as beautiful as ever.
Just finishing up today is a photo shoot by a photographer and his entourage of about 15 helpers needed to create photo stories about the selection of goods sold at all Boot Barn stores.
Then yesterday evening started our first cattle drive dinner but what was different is because of all the rain this year, for the first time in 29 years our road to what we call Mustang Camp at the top of Mustang Peak is a washout so we’re camping at Blue Oak Horse Camp at the bottom of the mountain. The cattle have scattered, due to a snowstorm in February and its winds and two feet of snowfall on top of Mustang Peak. Enough snow that our youngest grandson Kincade strapped on his ski boots and told me he was going snowboarding down through the Mustang pasture. Sure enough, with a cellphone camera to prove it, there was snow a plenty. Here are two pictures he took.
The grand finale for the week will be the grand opening of the Middle Ridge Studio. Cian has come from Ireland with his wife Lauren, John and Barb’s oldest daughter. Lauren met Cian while she was studying in Ireland. Well, to our good fortune we couldn’t have had a better young man that was trained as a sound engineer in Ireland. Cian saw an old cabin that my son John had built many years ago on the ranch that was lying vacant. He asked if he could repair the cabin then put in the sound equipment needed to record anybody that has music to record. Not in my wildest dreams could I have ever imagined a sound studio on the ranch. So tomorrow night Zee and I along with many others get a chance to listen to three different entertainers that will help launch the new Middle Ridge Sound Studio and I couldn’t be happier.
Middle Ridge Studio Launch Party Recap
Our cattle drive will wind up on Sunday with a Team Sorting for our guests on the drive that is always lots of fun.
I can’t forget The V6 Ranch Hunt Club. They’re the ones that keep my incentive engaged. They keep me working, to make sure that all the wildlife from Lizards to Black Tail Deer have food, water, and cover (a safe place to sleep and rest) for all the many critters that choose to call the V6 home. The members treasure this beautiful place just as much as anybody else that falls in love with these magnificent surroundings. So for me they are just nice people that would rather hunt than ride a horse and they help to pay a lot of bills.
The Pistachio trees are looking very healthy and I was able to do all the first weeding without using Weed Eaters, but by using 123 head of little Mexican cattle to graze all the grass and weeds down and they did a better job than a man with his WeedEater.
Our new venture into the raising of Honey Bees as pollinators and making honey to sell in the Parkfield Cafe gift shop is ready to go and I’m also hoping to turn the egg laying business back into a profitable and land improvement venture. But so far nobody in the family has said “grandpa I want to feed laying hens and gather eggs.”
Lauren says that she wants to merchandise grass fed beef. So we are working on getting that back up and running.
This week was filled with a million different activities on the V6 Ranch. I’m a happy guy watching my my whole family create a life for themselves in Parkfield.
See Ya,
Jack