our journey raising two country loving girls, and them raising us.

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paleo heaven & my new job description.

This was dinner last night and it was seriously delicious. My Instagram photo just does not do it justice nor do the amazing flavors justice but you’ve gotta believe me. This recipe came from Everyday Paleo and we will make this again I am sure. You can find the recipe here. (I used ground turkey instead of the ground pork and no complaints there). I would also highly suggest making artichokes with it so you can enjoy the homemade garlic basil mayonnaise with them. Yum! We ate outside with a glass of wine and it was unusually quiet as everyone chowed down; love when that happens.

Somehow the conversation drifted towards my evaluation as a ranch/orchard employee and it was less than steller.( Although in my defense I am doing an amazing job on the kiddos if I do say so myself.) Apparantly I am not upholding my duties so I asked for a more specific job description which included:

1. Drive through the cows once a day to make sure they have water and that none are laying off by themselves. (And if they are I get the tag number of said cow.)

2. Drive through the orchard once a day and run off every last f**ing deer off that are causing so much havoc!

So, that’s it. I don’t believe hubby thinks I will do this and believe he said it more out of joking than anything (we have a pretty darn good routine going in the evenings between dinner, kids, cows & orchard)– but he better watch out because it is on! I will now be doing this every day and will be sending him daily updates of my findings, including pictures which I am positive he will appreciate.

We also took a walk through the front orchard and he gave me a lesson on the terminal bud on the trees and why/how our front orchard is struggling so poorly. Between the deer eating the trees and the squirrels eating the irrigation piping we are more than frustrated with the wildlife and their love of our orchard.

By July 1st our trees were supposed to be as tall as the post next to them – most of the trees in front of our house aren’t even a third of the way there and quite a few will not get there and will have to be replanted next year (ouch). This is because the lovely deer have decided that they are a delicious snack and have repeatedly eaten them back and back and destroying the terminal bud that is crucial to the trees growth and development.

We walked by tree after tree and he showed me where the terminal bud had been eaten so the tree sent out another and that was eaten and it sent out a third. Sad. He told me not to post any pictures because he was so disgusted/frustrated/embarrassed that the front orchard looks like it does. On the flip side the orchard that is planted farther from our house is probably 90% better and is growing leaps and bounds so that is much more positive. I loved listening to him talk about the trees and tried remember as much as I could that he explained. We helped him tie the ones that had gotten a little taller to the pole (did you know they are tied to the poles so all their energy can go towards growing up rather than blowing and fighting the wind?).

Plan for the orchard: continue spraying them with liquid fence (smells NASTY but is somewhat helping keep the deer away) and he is going to be putting up somewhat of a deer fence to combat the deer….hopefully that will help.

It is so interesting! And it’s such a reminder of how at the mercy of the weather/animals we truly are. So much to learn – glad we’ve got friends going through it a little ahead of us to learn from. And thanks for finding me here. 🙂