I know, it doesn't look much like the farm does it? Well we took the week off last week and traveled to Reno, NV and on to Lake Tahoe to spend some time with our two sons, Ian and Sam/Zac/Satchmo (who I will call Zac for the purpose of this post). Tahoe is an incredibly beautiful area. We had been there once before in 1999 with some friends on a ski trip, but never before in summer. It has so much to offer.
We got a 2 bedroom 2 bath condo through my mom's time share exchange. Incredibly, it was within a mile of our sons' condo, up at the top of "the grade", which is a road which goes from the floor of the valley on the desert side up and over a mountain and down to the lake on the lake side. Our view was of the desert valley. Here is was at sunrise.
My mom went with us as she had not seen the boys in quite some time. Ian and Zac had a busy week planned for us and Mom kept up quite well, even on some pretty severe up hill hikes! I think the one back up from Skunk Harbor on Friday was the toughest, though.
We drove around the lake one day, we went wine tasting in El Dorado, hiked Emerald Cove to Vikingsholm, took a paddle wheel lake cruise, went swimming in Skunk Harbor and even got some culture at the Tahoe Shakespeare Festival. Too cool sitting in a lakeside amphitheater with the sun going down sipping wine and enjoying the Bard.
At right are Sam, Mom, Ian & Zac on the trail to Vikingsholm, a beautiful Nordic styled estate on the shores of Emerald Bay.
We also had the opportunity to see our sons' band, Those That Kill, perform live at RoJo's, a bar in South Lake Tahoe. They got together with Ryan Evans, who is on the right in the photo, when they worked together at Evergreen Lodge in Yosemite and the band's name is actually the English translation of the Indian word "Yosemite". The drummer is a guy they met once they all moved to Tahoe together last year. We had seen them play at Evergreen, but had never seen them with a drummer. They definitely have a good time!
I think Sam's favorite part of the trip was visiting the Mt Tallac brewery in South Lake Tahoe. They sell pints of beer fresh from the tap between 5 and 7 pm and it is enjoyed on their loading dock in plastic chairs and on benches made of old snowboards. They have cornhole games set up and it is kind of like a neighborhood party where everyone knows everyone else. Not a tourist attraction. I think you have to know someone local who knows about it. I wish I had taken a photo, but I did not. We visited twice.
And like all good times, our trip eventually came to an end and we returned home very early Sunday morning (flight delays and a 2 hour drive from the airport) and now it is time to play catch-up! The animals all seemed to do fine, despite the heat. We did lose 2 chickens at some point while we were gone, which I was afraid would likely happen. Our farm sitter was letting them out of the chicken enclosure and then shutting it again at night, but not shutting the door to the coop. If he had shut the door to the coop, he would have needed to be there too early in the morning to let them out, so we went with the twice a day plan.
I spent a good bit of time Monday on the tractor, doing weed-control.
I am now working on the spin-off for the alpaca show in the mid-west in October. I can't remember the name of the show off-hand, but I hope to finish it by the end of this month. I also have to start dyeing roving and yarn for the Wool Gathering in Yellow Springs in September. My friend Tari and I have a vendor's booth under the name of Ridge & Hollow Fiber Folk. Here is a link to the show's site: http://my.voyager.net/~nfisher/
This will be my first big fiber show and I need to make sure I have plenty of product to last the weekend!
I took my sock project along on our trip and did not have a lot of time to knit. But I did manage to get one sock done. Now to do the other. I forgot to photograph it, though. Maybe next week.
This weekend our spinning guild is having another "Dye Day" which I hope to attend. Here is a link to the post about last year's Dye Day: http://straightforkfarm.blogspot.com/2010/08/dye-day-hay-2nd-cutting-more.html
And that reminds me, we will also be doing hay in the next week or so!
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