All Aboard

A book about Jim's grandmother, Marjorie Reed, was recently published and can be purchased on Amazon. She was a famous western artist, with quite an interesting life. Her paintings are both incredibly beautiful and capture the essence of early western living in a vivid way. She did a series on the missions of California, which was also published in book form. She traveled all over the western United States and even lived with the Bedouins in Israel for a time. She also lived on the Salmon River in Siskiyou County when she was married to a miner. Quite a lady!

Fair Recovery

We're done with 2nd crop and the fair and gearing up for school to start. Not much of a break this year. The fair went pretty well, although lamb prices were very low. People just don't seem to like lamb around here (after all it is beef country.) We're hoping to promote lamb at the fair next year by having a food booth. Well-prepared lamb can be quite delicious! There is some encouraging news that the dairies are starting to buy some hay, so maybe things will start to break loose and we'll live to fight another day. Or ranch. Whatever.

Jim and I saw an interesting documentary about farming practices in America called "Food, Inc." While it is anti-corporate farming, there were some very timely issues raised about our industry. The movie is based largely on Michael Pollan's book, "The Omnivore's Dilemma", which we had read. I think it is worth checking out for those in the agricultural community, if for no other reason than to raise our awareness of how we are perceived.