A Little Lesson in Farming

I grew up with my dad farming walnuts, peaches, and rice in the traditional way, and when I was about 15 he purchased the farm that we live on and decided to farm it organically. I think it's interesting to note the differences in how they handle the different problems, like weeds for example. On a traditional farm you would spray the weeds with a chemical to kill them, but that just won't do when you have an organic crop.

So to handle the weeds on our organic farm they burn them. It's really quite interesting to watch, and when Brendon saw it being done for the first time yesterday morning he ran out there with the camera.

The flame looks enormous in real life, and it just eats up the weeds like candy and then dies out immediately after. It burns too hot and fast to be of any damage to the trees.

Also notable fire fun is burning rice fields after harvest.

My Favorite New Sport

One of the highlights of the family reunion last week (at least for me - b) was learning to wakesurf. Thanks to the expert instruction from cousin Colin, after a couple days and just two trips on the boat I was doing this:

It's an incredible feeling - very different from wakeboarding. It's tricky to get your feel for the balanced sweet spot on the wake but otherwise it's effortless compared to wakeboarding. The wake keeps you pushing forward rather than dragging through the water on a rope. Closest I've ever come to surfing. Maybe it will make learning to surf for real that much easier.

Anyway, it was fun to chalk up one minor athletic accomplishment that week after the embarrassment I suffered during the 18 holes of golf with all the guys earlier in the week.

Finally...A Sewing Day

Here's my sister modeling the little knit dress I made yesterday. I thought yellow would be a fun summer color.

Family Reunion

I can't believe I have been so terrible at blogging this summer...but we have been busy! Life on the farm is always go-go-go. This week we had the Leishman family reunion and all the cousins came down from Canada. It was a great time ... we spent a few days on the houseboat, a few days in San Francisco, and a day at Six Flags.
My immediate family...minus Blair who is serving a mission right now in Mexico.

Rylee loved climbing on Uncle Brendon's shoulders and telling everyone "I am WAAAY taller than you!"Dad, Tiffany, and Brendon showing off their hard-earned prizes.

Me with my nieces Rylee and Gracie, and my nephew Cole.
We got the ball in the bucket...yeah!
We were determined to win the water gun game!

Brendon was tubing with the guys and his tube starting going flat and making a Brendon taco.

The lake is super low this year so my dad went searching for buried treasure :) He found a pillowcase with rocks to weight it down. When he opened up the pillowcase he found hundreds of credit cards, social security cards, and driver's licenses. Wild! Of course he took it to the police.
Boating is our #1 favorite way to spend our days.

Boating With The Buddies

This weekend Nate, Melanie, & Scarlett, and Brooke, CB, & Jim came to visit us in Gridley. We had a great time riding the motorcycles, playing the wii, shooting shotguns, eating a ton, and boating.

Brendon won the first round of the "King of the Tube" competition, thus the victory dance.

Even Celebrities Love Our Puppy

This weekend we couldn't walk half a block without people stopping us wanting to pet our puppy. Everyone was going crazy over our little rottweiler. As we were out taking her for an evening walk this adorable couple walking their own beagle went crazy over Macey. They stopped us to pet her and we chatted for a few minutes, and they just kept gushing about how cute Macey was. They were so friendly. I couldn't help noticing how beautiful the woman was, and I kept staring at the man thinking he looked like an actor I knew.

The minute we stepped away from them it hit me - "My Name is Earl". I animatedly told my family how much he looked like the actor from that show, but none of them besides Brendon even knew who I was talking about. We laughed about how I should have asked him if anyone ever tells him he looks like the actor, but kept walking. Later when we walked back to our room we realized they were our next door neighbors at our hotel.

As soon as we got back from our trip I looked him up on IMDB - sure enough it was Jason Lee and his beautiful fiance. What a riot. Well, I must say - they were absolutely charming.

Happy Independence Day

Brendon and I told my parents we better do something pretty great this holiday to distract us from the fact that it would be our first year missing the 4th of July celebration on the South Lawn of the White House. Since the fires in Northern California are so terrible this year (all those fires you are seeing on the news are right by us) we decided to head to the coast to get away from the smoke.

The family picture...Me, Bren, Mom, Dad and my sister Tiffany.

We spent a relaxing weekend in adorable Mendocino, California in a cute little beach side hotel. (Our hotels is one of those behind us in the picture).

We went to the larget salmon bbq in the country. Tiffany fed Macey a hot dog which she devoured and loved!

Macey had her first experience with sand and ocean waves. I must say she was kind of a scaredy cat. Macey was sporting her patriotism at our tail gate party. We dripped a little root beer on the truck and she was all over it.

Manly Men

Thursday, after a long hard day working on the farm, we thought we were going to have a relaxing evening. But then the boy who mows our lawn came speeding up to inform my dad that he had run into our well (yep, we get our water from a well on the farm...can't beat the taste!) and that it was flooding everywhere. Oh geez.

Here are some pictures of my dad and Brendon fixing the well. It might not seem that impressive...but those wrenches they are wielding each weigh about 50 pounds! One of the things I've always loved about Brendon is that he knows how to do manly things :)