I woke up this morning thinking, with a thought that the V6 Ranch will always be a work in progress, so as long as I have a breath of life left and a thread of common sense I’ve got a job. Now I don’t have but a minuscule amount of physical work attached to my job but I can champion Agritourism as some of our work in progress. Since the 1990s we have had Cattle Drives, Parkfield Rodeo, The Bluegrass Festival, and some new and encouraging important works in progress. That doesn’t mean we’re going out of the cattle business, far from it, but I do recognize both its importance and limitations. That it will only afford one family one living and that has been a constant since Zee and I settled here in 1962. So, what do you do with four children, nine grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren? You let each one paddle their own canoe and if some wish to come back some day and want to just have a place to hang their hat for a visit that’s okay, better yet to stay and carve out a new life, you're all welcome. 

The allure of always being a work in progress is its flexibility which allows for new endeavors that have yet to be discovered. I have a perfect example of the limitless possibilities. When our granddaughter Lauren, had decided to leave Ireland after finishing her college career and married an Irish lad, seven years had slipped by. It was time to come home. Cian, her new husband, was a sound engineer leaving me to wonder, how do sound engineering and cattle mooing meld together? Very nicely, thank you. All it takes is one nice, easygoing, talented sound engineer and old unused log cabin on the ranch that he converted into a remarkably functional recording studio. He has also tapped into a market where he now travels on cruise ships and lately to The Santa Barbara Bowl all to set up their sound systems for a touring band, a music festival, or a county fair and for the creators of songs to sing or a guitar to strum. Now they have a beautiful sound studio to record in as well: The Middle Ridge Studio.

There are goats that could be raised and rented out for brush and weed control, horses to train, and trail riding for our guests, sheep to shear and lambs to sell, chickens to lay eggs then to eat some villainous bug and then leave some poop for fertilizer. There are 200 different kinds of birds to watch by day and burrowing and barn owls at night. Stargazing is an awe-inspiring event on a moonless night as the ranch is surrounded by the Diablo Mountains making nights which are inky black to show off The Milky Way and a bright North Star to guide you on your way. 

My favorite haunt nowadays is to watch a wonderful drought-tolerant perennial grass that all grazing animals just love by the name of Perla Grass. It keeps expanding its sphere of influence in our Little Cholame Creek, which for the second wet year most of its seven miles of travel to then merge with the Big Cholame will show many above-ground places of running water. I’m sure the creek is going to outlast me but before that happens I hope to have all of its banks protected against winter rains and most of the Little Cholame Creek critters that once made their living here, to see their return. 

See Ya, 

Jack