An early start
The calendar said that I was still enduring the last weeks of winter, but the thermometer read in the high sixties, and during my evening walks around the property with the family I realized that there was more green than brown covering the hillsides that ring our ranch. Those environmental factors taken together could have - maybe should have - meant that it was time to get to work. There's plenty of things that need doing on any old ranch property, this one as much as any other. The chicken coop is looking ragged and needs planter boxes built to keep down the dust and the feathers. The orchard that experienced 80% die-off last year is primed for replanting. There's at least two woodpiles that need to be stacked, and there's couple days' worth of tractor work needed just to clean up the front of the house after the last storm. Naturally, given everything that I could be doing, I chose to go fishing. Our ranch sits in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, at about ...
