Green Acres Is the Place to Be

Some of my students were talking about fruit trees. I chimed in that I had several fruit trees. They asked me what kind I had so I started naming different trees in growing orchard. They asked me what else I had at my house so I told them about our 50 or so chickens and our 25 or so goats. They wanted to take a field trip to my house. I think they wanted out of doing their journal question. To the left is a picture of our goat field. Right now we are discing the field and planting a pasture. Pasture and fencing will definitely not only improve the value of our property but will give me piece of mind knowing that Garrett and Noah will be safer inside a fenced yard, albeit a really big fenced yard. To the right is a picture of our garden. We use raised beds to grow most of the vegetables and some fruit like tomatoes. Weeds are a big problem in our garden. The raised beds reduce the amount of water our garden needs and the weeds we have to pull. Besides, it will look nice when we have finished our garden. Our goal is to plant the rest of the fruit and nut trees, add landscape cover, gravel, and more raised beds, and build a green house. Although you cannot really make much money farming only a few acres, we decided to turn our liability into an asset by planting this garden to help reduce grocery costs and eat better quality food. I will defiantly learn to can and will share with any family member that wants fruits, nuts, and veggies! We are also raising chickens that lay eggs and chickens that will be dinner. When I talked about eating our chickens, Garrett reminds me that chickens are for laying eggs and not for eating. When he tells me this, I remember a time when John, Amanda, and I were sitting around our table at our house in Utah. We were happily eating stew until one of my parents let it slip that there was elk meet in the stew. Almost in unison, we all chimed, "Yuck, elk!" I guess what goes around comes around because I am trying to teach Garrett to eat right and like fruits and vegetables. If it isn't lasagna, pizza, or cheeseburgers, it is yucky!


For those who have not been to our house, we live on about 5 acres of land. Although I do not care for our house (we will remodel and or build another house on our acreage), I really like our location. We live on a dead end street and not so far from the nearest city and freeway. We have a blueberry patch across the street, an empty field on one side, great neighbors on the other side, a large empty field behind our house, and walnut and cheery orchards within walking distance. Sadly, we have no other cchildren on our street so Garrett will either play with his brother, cousins, or travel to friends home. To the left is a picture of Garrett climbing one of the walnut trees that has sadly almost been destroyed by the goats. Behind Garrett is our water machine that should be making us money instead of sitting in a goat field. It is never dull at the Lee Family home!

Garrett has many things we can do at our house. He can climb trees, ride tractors, chase animals, pick walnuts or other goodies from the garden, ride his bike, or run to his heart's content. To the right is a picture of Garrett riding his tractor. He really loves tractors especially combines. As you can guess, his favorite part of the movie Cars is when Frank wakes up! Garrett also likes to collect leaves and rocks as well as gather the chicken eggs. Although, I think he is a little afraid of the chickens! I am sure Noah will learn many trick from his older brother! Right now, more than anything Garrett wants to be a farmer with farm animals and lots of tractors. He even told me that when he grows up and has his farm, he will build me a house. I can live in it only after I pay him money for it. He must be listening to his daddy talk about business while mommy is teaching school!


The water machine is still in the goat field. We have someone from a welding lab coming to exam the welds. I hope that all of our "to do list" is completed soon so we can open for business! Sometimes it is hard to know what to do when you haven't gone through the process. Hindsight is always 20/20 they say, and boy is that saying correct. We will definitely do things differently now that we know the process. It is too bad we did not know the end from the beginning! We are going to have the newspaper come out and do a story. Everyone in our family is invited to come if they want to be part of the celebration! After all, we are the first Mr. Zippy's Express Ice and Water House in our state! Not bad for a young family! To right and below is a picture of our machine's location. It might not seem like the best location. This is the easiest place to put our machine because the factory rep for our area owns the lot. At least I am not paying a rental fee while the machine sits in our field. However, when choosing a location, one has to consider the demographic that will use the machine the most. In our case, we feel like the Hispanic population will use our machine the most. If you were to turn and look in the other direction, you would see a taqueria that has been open for many years and has quite the loyal customer base. We have eaten there a few times. They have really good food so I can see why many people enjoy eating there. Maybe they will buy ice and water from us while they wait for their dinner to cook! It seems like forever we have been waiting for this machine to come. I hope that it will do well like we expect. If this machine is profitable, then more machines will be easier to purchase, permit, and install. My students ask me every week how the machine is doing. They want me to bring them in some Mr. Zippy ice. I think they are just buttering me up!

On Saturday, we attended the opening game of our local minor league hockey team. We upgraded to the business section so my husband could give tickets away to clients and the cost of the tickets would be a tax deduction. We have a restaurant behind out seats. We ate a great dinner that was actually cheaper than eating at the concession stands! The game was not a disappointment for hockey fans. I saw at least 6 fights. We had to leave after the second quarter because Jordan had to go to work. Our team was behind by one point. I am guessing they lost the games. But miracles happen!

I hope you have enjoyed our family adventures this week. Please have a good week!

Only Time Will Tell

Our new water machines has arrived. Unfortunately, the City has not been upfront with all of the permits so we are in the process of having our engineer make corrections to the blue prints. In the meantime, Mr. Zippys is spending quality time in the field making friends with the goats, chickens, turkeys, and whomever else lives in the shadows of the pasture. Here are pictures of Jordan and his friends, Vic and Vince, unloading the machine. Although it is comical that the machine is in the field, it is frustrating all the same because it seems as if the red tape is never ending. If people could only do their job, then all of this could have been avoided because we would have had all the proper permits and corrections made long before the machine arrived in California. We will immediately be securing a lease and pulling permits for the next machine before we even order it!

Jordan had shirts made up for our water vending business. Both Garrett and Noah have Mr. Zippys attire. Our next family picture will be in our new shirts! Hopefully, we can take a picture in front of our machine! To the left you can see Garrett in his Mr. Zippy shirt. The boys have white shirts with the logo embroidered on the shirt. The adult version has racing strips on the collar and sleeves. In the background, you can catch a glimpse of our garden (and some of the field). We have been working hard on using our land to help us become more self-sufficient and to allow our family to eat less processed foods. We are going to add several trees next spring including oranges, nectarines, peaches, apples, pistachios, macadamia nuts, almonds, pecans, and grapefruits. We are also going to add some vines including grapes and kiwis. We are going to add more raised beds and cover more weeds with landscaping cloth and gravel. We are also going to build a greenhouse. I am surely going to have learn how to can fruits and vegetables!

Speaking of trees, walnuts are now ripening. Every year we have lived here, the squirrels have gotten the walnuts before we could harvest them. This year I have help. Julius, Sean, Garrett, and I pick some every day. Even if they are a little under ripened. If you leave the nuts in the sun, they ripen just fine. We have gathered several pounds already! Now my TA will spend the next few weeks cracking them all. This past Saturday, Sean, Garrett, Noah (in his new EllaRoo sling) and I were gathering nuts. Because we have one tree that is really tall, we had to knock them down with sticks. Since we do not grow walnuts for a living, we do not have all of the fancy harvesting equipment. Garrett was more worried about the goats eating his leaves (for his leaf collection) than gathering the nuts. Nevertheless, we had fun!