What Big Ag and I do when we're not homesteading

A job, or something like it

"Be careful what you ask for," was what the winery owner said to me Saturday night, at the end of a wonderful wine dinner we'd attended.  There had been fantastic food, dancing, and great company. In fact, it was so much fun that after most of the crowd had cleared out, purely out of habit I picked up a bar towel and began helping dry wine glasses as they came out of the industrial dishwasher behind the tasting room bar.  I guess you never stop being a Mom.  When the party is over and all the kids go home, you hang around to help clean up, even if it wasn't your party.  It's what we do.

And that was somewhere during that time that mentioned I really thought it would be fun to work at the winery, pouring for the guests and helping out with events, and that was when the owner told me to be careful what I asked for, saying he could pencil me in on the staffing schedule if I really wanted to work there.

But it had been a crazy night with much wine, and so I honestly was not sure if he was serious or not, until we went back today for brunch and the topic came up again ... the opportunity to work there, in exchange for wine, and help them out when they expected a busy day.  And if I enjoyed it, to eventually be put on a regular salary.

I jumped at the chance, and so next weekend I will spend Saturday and Sunday getting educated about the wines and learning the art of pouring.  I'm thrilled beyond words to finally be able to try my hand at this, to share my love for great wine with visitors from near and far and hear their stories, or answer their questions.

I'd be lying if I told you I'm not nervous about this new endeavor; it's nothing close to what I've done before, although I tend to believe my first career as an educator, my second as a teacher and my third as a journalist will stand me in good stead as far as meeting new people and remembering talking points about each wine, but time will tell.

Until then, I'm excited to check something off my bucket list that I've had on it since moving here.  When people asked if I was going to continue writing when I moved here, I told them no, I was going to work in a beautiful winery and make people happy all day long by pouring them wonderful wines.

Soon there will be a check in the box next to that goal!

I Got Tickets!

Ticket purchasing has come a long way since I was young.  When I was young, you found out the date the concert tickets you wanted went on sale, and stood in line, rain or shine, until the Ticketron office opened and you could get yours.

Yesterday I waited in line for concert tickets right here at my computer.  A half-hour before the box office opened, I was admitted to a virtual "waiting room," where I stood in a virtual line to buy my tickets.  When the box office opened at 10 a.m. sharp, I reached the front of the line quickly, hit a few buttons on my keyboard and got some awesome seats.

This is a little taste of what I'll be seeing on October 8.  I can't wait!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cva3nP6v4pY

Even cooler is that we will be seeing it at the beautiful, brand new Vina Robles ampitheatre -- imagine, a winery and entertainment venue all in the same place!  Should make for some heavenly evenings.

Vina Robles Ampitheatre - a work in progress

Cookin'

Sun Oven with impossibly cute dog in background

I normally enjoy cooking, but must say that I have not really enjoyed it since moving here.  I think part of the reason is that my former kitchen was a cook's kitchen, meaning practical, and designed ergonomically for cooking -- and this kitchen is not.  Plus we have some fabulous restaurants here, featuring locally grown and raised food, which is a sore temptation any night of the week. 

Since we're remodeling our kitchen over the summer, it will be interesting to see if I fall back in love with cooking once my utensils and ingredients are in places that make sense, and once I have storage space and organization, once again.  I hope so.

Until then, I will be able to fall back in love with cooking, just a little, by using my favorite summer appliance, my solar oven.  It saves me turning on the range when it's warm outside, and cooks many things better than a conventional oven does, due to the fact that there are no fans to dry out what's being cooked.  Everything from chicken to chocolate cake comes out moist and tasty, done to perfection.

I'm also thinking it will come in mighty handy once the kitchen is ripped apart and the whole place is non-functional -- for however long that takes (I don't even want to think about how we'll function with no sink).  

We can't eat out every night, after all.

Or.....can we?

Hen Spa

The last 24 hours has been all about hens, because I happen to own three chickens that could each star in their own reality TV show.

Portia, for example, has gone very broody since I went on my trip, and her normally sunny disposition has turned positively pre-menstrual.  She's being aggressive with the other chickens, nest protective, and less than sociable with me.  At first I thought she might be egg-bound or stressed from the changing temperatures (it skyrocketed to 102 on Monday, only to plummet into the high 60's by Tuesday, and the nights were downright cold).  So I brought her inside, kept her warm, and gave her some electrolytes.  She had a spa day, in other words. Today, she seems fine.  Still broody, but fine.  Back out into the run she goes.

Broody

Ellen, Portia's sister, needed a bath today, continuing our spa treatment of our hens.  She is also Buff Orpington, and has a thick, fluffy behind (Hey! Just like me!). But, unlike me, she tends to get messy back in her hinterlands, and if I don't want eggs with fecal smears on them, she needs cleaning up occasionally.  Which means she goes to the Hen Spa, a.k.a. our bathroom, for a little TLC.

Show and tell (or it is show and tail?) section!!

Here you see Ellen getting her feathers wet for the sake of hygiene.  I don't know why her vent feathers hang onto dung the way they do, but I happen to like my eggs dung-free. 

Embarrassment?  Remorse?  Exasperation?  Name the emotion of that towel-wrapped chicken!

The avian Brazilian Butt BlowOut

Red is the Nicky Minaj of the trio.  Bossy, brassy and almost always unpleasant.  She will launch a rooster-style attack on you if you turn your back on her, and you can never, ever enter the chicken coop wearing flip flops or shoes with no socks, unless you want some permanent ankle or toe tattoos in the shape of a large hole, roughly the size of a chicken beak.  I don't know why she is this way, feeling a rage that puts her in an almost rigor-mortis state of anger, 24 hours a day.  She awakens angry and she retires at night angry.  But if she had any underworld connections, I'd be in cement shoes somewhere off San Luis Pier by now, I am certain.  No spa for Red.  I can't afford the loss of blood that would come from pampering her.

She would just as soon kill you as look at you.

Now that the chickens are tended to, I am going into town for some interaction with beings who don't have feathers.  Gotta be easier than this.

A Few Days Away

On Saturday I boarded an Amtrak for Los Angeles to visit my son for Mother's Day.  It was a nice mini-vacation away from the homestead and its chores.  My son is in college and therefore does not have any animals and his one farming endeavor consists of a single tomato plant in his backyard.  So there were leisurely days of waking up and simply having coffee, and heading off to bed without checking livestock or watering crops.  Nice. We had an amazing brunch on Sunday at a place called The Sagebrush Cantina, complete not only with the usual champagne and massive breakfast and lunch fare, but also an oyster bar and a guy serving fruit-infused vodka shooters (I had strawberry and it was amazing).  Happy Mother's Day, indeed!

Nonetheless, despite all that fun, I was still glad to be home and out of the city.  Los Angeles is a vibrant, exciting city with plenty to do, but it's not home.  I missed Big Ag, missed our property, and missed the quiet of the area.  But a break from the routine is almost always a good thing, because it makes you appreciate what you have, and of course it is always wonderful to see my son.  

And now, back to my life's regularly scheduled programming

Why I don't own horses

Long before the area we live in was known as Wine Country, it was known as Horse Country.  The Central Coast of California has long been a place where horses have been kept, bred and shown.  If you drive through the area, you can still find horse ranches, breeding facilities, and even several race tracks, where thoroughbreds are raised up and trained, now nestled in between multi-million dollar wineries and tasting rooms.

But I don't own horses, and have no plans to get one.  At this point in my life, I'm living the wine country dream, not the horse country dream.  The horse country dream I've already done.

I was 30 before I owned a horse, and I've only owned one in my life:  FlyGirl.  FlyGirl was a Morab (half-Morgan, half-Arab) and was one of the great loves of my life.  But our relationship was not without bumps -- literally.  One afternoon on a leisurely trail ride, for example, FlyGirl spooked when someone on a nearby road threw the daily newspaper onto the driveway of a ranch, and the next thing I knew, I was waking up on the side of the trail looking at nothing but blue sky and a big horse face looking down to see if I was OK.  

A long time ago, on a horse far, far away

That in itself says volumes about our relationship, because as most riders will tell you, being thrown from a horse is not only traumatic for you, it's traumatic for the horse as well, and most of them will high-tail it back to home as soon as it happens.  But not FlyGirl.  She didn't budge from my side while I lay unconscious on the side of the road.

And while I recovered from my fall with just a small bleed on the back of my brain and a whopper of a concussion, it was not an injury I took lightly.  Because there are two types of riders in the world -- the ones that have been injured in a fall, and the ones who it just hasn't happened to yet.

FlyGirl lived many years after that, and we shared many more trail rides together.  And when she developed equine Cushing's disease, I didn't think twice about spending $400 a month on medication for her, even though I was barely making it on a beginning teacher's salary.  And to this day, I still light a candle for her on the day I had to have her put down.  I still cry.  And while many people I know look forward to seeing grandparents, children, or other relatives when they finally die and cross over to the other side, I am most looking forward to seeing FlyGirl again.  I have no doubt she's there, and if she's not, then I'm not sure I want to go.

So, bottom line, horses are expensive -- emotionally, physically and financially, although not without rewards.  I started thinking about all this last week when our mail lady had an accident on her horse and broke her back in three different places. A good friend was thrown off her horse a few years ago and hit an arena railing, breaking three ribs and her collarbone.  Expensive injuries, in many ways.

And so I look at all these things, as well as my own experiences, and it makes me realize I'm just not up to horses anymore.  We may buy a little donkey for our pasture to help carry harvest and be a pasture pal to the goats and sheep we'll be getting, but that will be as close to horse ownership as I will probably get.

Yet I love horses dearly.  It's funny though, there are things you may love but don't want in your life as you grow older.  Certain men, some types of friends, a tequila buzz and, yes, horses, all fall into that category for me.  They all represent things I've been through and experiences I've had, and loved, but no longer wish to repeat.

I think this qualifies as a type of wisdom.