Another Work Day

 After working 12 hours days for a week in Las Vegas Ryan called me Saturday morning and said, "We're going out to the ranch to clear more blackberries today and tomorrow. Wanna come out?" I told him I was game for Sunday and we agreed to meet there around 10:00 a.m. Sunday morning Ryan called to say, "I should probably give you a heads up that the guy that runs the produce farm across the street will be out mowing the meadow on our side. He is having a Harvest Festival in about two weeks and asked if they could park cars in our meadow. Papa and Grandma are fine with it and we get the meadow mowed for free." I have to admit at first I thought, "Hell no! I don't want people getting the idea they can drive over anytime they feel like it", but then I thought how nice the meadow would look. When I arrived "the guy," Patrick was in fact mowing. He jumped down from his tractor and came over to talk. He is a really nice guy. "Come on out for the Harvest Festival," he said. "We are going to have farm tours and a hay barn for the kids with games and pumpkin carving. There will be a potluck under the big walnut tree and bluegrass music." I had to admit it sounded pretty nice................

 About half an hour later Ryan and Sadie and the kids arrived and we started in on the day's work. This time we had two gas weed eaters and the help of young RJ. First he had to set up his army encampment though. I gave him the plastic army stuff I had found at a garage sale while visiting in Oregon this last summer. Sierra helped to keep Shasta happy.

 Papa and Grandma Debbie arrived a couple of hours later. Papa donned his work gloves and got right into organizing the piles of brush. Papa noted to me, "Before you can start the process of clearing blackberries, you have to get really pissed off." I laughed out loud. "You're right," I said, "once those damn thorns hook you and poke you, you're mad as hell and want to start yanking!" We laughed together. Daddy didn't waste anytime proving his point. Sierra notice a little blood dripping down his arm and hollered, "booboo! booboo!" Doctor Debbie came to the rescue with her handy first aid kit from the car, cleaned it up and put a bandage on it. It was Dr. Debbie's second medical procedure of the day. A little earlier Shasta was crawling around on the tarp and got stung by a bee. The bee clung to Shasta's chubby little hand as she cried out. Dr. Debbie brushed the bee off but the stinger stayed in. Dr. Debbie's assistant Dr. Daddy came over to pull out the stinger. Poor little Shasta got her first cruel taste of nature.

Even RJ got busy with the weed eater. Takes after his dad

We took a break and gathered under the canopy to have some of the wild blackberry cobbler Debbie had brought from Ikea's fruit stand in Auburn. We laughed at how ironic it was that we were tearing out wild blackberries while eating cobbler made from local farmers that probably grew them on purpose to produce fruit for cobblers and pies.  The cobbler was excellent and we chatted away about how great it was going to be to burn all the piles of brush this Fall. I'm not sure if you can tell from the photo, but in the background you can see where Patrick has started to mow the meadow.

 I took my camera up to the starting point of the extraction process. You can see by the distance of the cars and the people that quite a long section of the creek has been cleared. I took Sierra down to the creek and took off her shoes so she could wade in the ice cold water. Since the water comes from the bottom of the canal it is pretty darn cold. She loved it in there. She picked up a stick and started whacking the berry bushes on the opposite bank the way she had seen her parents to with the weed eaters. "I work'in," she said.

After I posted these pictures Lizzy pointed out to me that I neglected to mention the chaps RJ has on. They happen to be the very handmade chaps that daddy made and wore as a boy. I noticed when RJ was wearing them they had the initials VCS and RLS burned into the leather.  Victor Curtis Simpson AND Richard Lee Simpson. So proud our little RJ (Ryan Lee Caldas Jr.) carries on the tradition.

 At the end of the work day Ryan wanted to go up where PG&E had hired a lumber grew to come in and extract the trees that had been cut along the ditch. The equipment was parked up in there for the week-end. We took the opportunity for a photo shoot.

Sierra needed a family group shot to take to school to share. Too bad she wasn't in the mood to smile. It was another good day of hard labor. We decided we needed to organize a family picnic at the meadow this September. Ryan will be gone working in Arizona for the month of September and Sadie may go out to meet him and take a quick jaunt to Colorado Springs to welcome home a friend from deployment. Therefore, we will picnic in September without them most likely and then picnic again in October. We'll have our own damn Harvest Festival!!