Another month has just flown by! With the recent spike in temperatures on the ranch we have had to adjust our schedules slightly. Up at 5am for our morning routine, Coffee up Clark mtn and tending to the birds/bees, veggie guilds and perennials, walk dogs by 7 and by 8 it's already 30 degrees so we know there isn't a lot more time for chores or getting ahead but we do as much as we can before getting heat stroke lol... By 3:00pm maximum we have done a full day of work and then take the dogs and ourselves to the beach for some reprieve. Call it Groundhog Day if you will but it has been the schedule on repeat every day for some time and the feeling of that precious Pacific Ocean salt on our dirt caked skin never gets old. Cry me a river though, this beach is one of the nicest beaches we have ever seen in our life and once there we practice gratitude for the day and living in such a beautiful place that even has this option for us. It's also a great place to let the dogs run, as the place we go is in the salt flats next to the beach and with nobody else around (usually) the dogs can run and run and run before going for their big swim! Rest assured we all sleep very well at night, and with our power working so much better now we can actually run a fan in our room at night too! Yes huge game changer and making the rancho a lot more survivable in the harsh heat... Have finally found a way to pull a veggie harvest here on el rancho after years of the wildlife beating us to the harvest in every way shape and form know to man and animal ...We call it plant prison and the name is pretty self explanatory, I have to grow everything in a predator proof cage with a malla (shade cloth) lid I can access by pulling a few tie wires to tend to the gardens. We've already had a bountiful cuke and dill harvest and you can guess what we've been doing with those two items ! Yes epic fermented pickles with real organic homegrown cukes and fresh dill, honestly the best dill pickles we've ever had and are eager to expand this enterprise so we can offer them to our customers at the markets, no shortage of ideas for new products and endeavours for the next high season so we are pretty excited to see what's in store for us.
Suppose we can't do this newsletter without an accident update lol... Before Sab's dad and step mom left for Canada, her stepmom Linda said "Promise me one thing... no more injuries"! Well it's been mostly good but it's a tough life sometimes and the lessons are still coming in. Yep, one more happened as Sab pushed on her little chef tote to close the lid when low and behold the meat/candy thermometer was sticking up and since she muscled the lid shut it popped right through the lid and into the palm of her hand! The scream was loud and it did some temporary damage to the nerves in her hand. But her body is getting so fast at healing with all this practice that it was almost completely healed within 2 days. Rico was doing so well before but suddenly he's got a split nail too and something bothering his hind quarters. But with time the nail finally fell off and he is mending too. Zora and Gallo are steady eddies these days and just love surfing the waves at the beach and pretty much wait around all day for their bliss.
We have to keep working our business this summer as we weren't able to save any money to take a couple months off during the high heats. There will be times in August and September mind you that we won't be able to run the wood fire, as it's already seeming like too much on hot days. Plugging along though we are doing our best with expanding now into Todos Santos given many of our regular Pescadero customers have left for the summer. The ranch is demanding as far as the general upkeep with all the plants, animals and wildlife that it hasn't left much room for getting ahead. We have a few projects we absolutely need to get done and hopefully before the real heat of the summer and hurricane season hits us. We are finally trying to fence the front of our property to keep it more secure this summer plus do some work on our chicken coop so we could safely let them stay outside in a smaller run and go into their house without us opening and closing the door every day. This will allow us a bit more freedom if it's too hot and we are staying elsewhere. We also need to finish the roof of our building so it is sealed from rain and won't drain all the water directly into our kitchen like last year. Our poor fridge was sitting in a foot of water every time it rained and if that happens again this year we will likely lose it completely. We also have our new washing machine to protect so need to seal off our one room we call the Bodega even though it isn't even close to being one. It needs to have the roof finished and walls sealed to protect from rain and all the elements of summer! All our solar panels need to be secured properly too and all that can't be done until all this roof work is complete, seems the list is almost endless but poco a poco.
This week its supposed to cool down significantly, so we are really hoping to crush out some projects while working the business as much as we can this month to keep us alive and hopefully put a couple pesos away for August and September. It's funny how much hotter the ranch is than the beach, every day we look at our temperature gauge in the truck and often it'll say something like 36 and then we watch it creep down as we drive to town, by the time were at the beach it is usually at least 10 degrees cooler than the ranch. Thank god we have such a great friend living in Pescadero right by the beach, he has been a huge support over the years and he has a glorious pool and really shady cool property he's been working on over the last 20 years. He's literally living in a jungle and it's so green and lush, it's our home away from home and we are so grateful to have this amazing option. Without his love and support over the years, we truly don't know where we'd be. Thank you Randy, you ARE our family down here!
With June here now, we are really praying it will be a classic Juneuary and give us some cool weather to get our projects done or atleast underway while hopefully having success in our business expansions. As we all know down here what happens when the light switch of July hits!!! Hot hot and more hot, humid weather! Don't forget Hurricanes !
We hope you will come to the Todos Santos Rancher Markets, the Baljalla Night Market or even put in a pre-order for Pescadero, we really need the support more than ever this month to survive the summer and its relentless heat!
Thank you, blessings, and cheers to your good health!
Much love
Dante y Sabrina
