In Farrier Coulee...

The home place of Tree Heart Ranch Ltd. is located in Farrier Coulee which runs through the middle of the farm. We don't know if the man who bred and raised horses up by the big springs was named Farrier or if that was his occupation. There are still remnants of the stone corrals where he kept horses. Forry says that he turned his domestic stallion loose with the wild horses, then caught and trained the ensuing colts. All of the many springs that used to line the coulee are long gone, victims of the dropping water table due to the deep wells used for irrigation. When we were first married, we got our domestic water from a now-defunct spring across the coulee that was piped into a cistern in the house yard.


When Forry was a boy, he found lots of arrowheads along the creek (which has long since been dry except for spring run-off) and his older brother talked about finding an area where it looked like the Indians had chipped rock for arrowheads.



There are about four hundred acres of unfarmable land in the coulee. We used to raise about twenty head of cattle here. Along with the farmland that is in the Conservation Reserve Program, Forry spends a great deal of his time in the spring spraying out the noxious weeds in the coulee.

It's been interesting to see all the varities of wild flowers that bloom in the coulee. There are lots of yarrow plants that bloom in amongst the sagebrush:

Tree Heart Ranch, Ltd.

We started out today on Interstate 5 heading towards Portland,

then cut off on Highway 205

to connect up with Interstate 84 and head east down the Columbia Gorge.

From I 84 we drove Hwy 14 through the Tri-Cities to Highway 395 --

Then Highway 21 to Rosenoff Road --

to Batum Road --

and up the lane to the ranch.

Dinner with Dawn!

I had been feeling a bit blue, as we are very close to where our youngest daughter and son-in-law and those precious grandchildren live, but could not spend the night there as our daughter had basically placed them in quarantine! The whole Hubbard community has been passing around a Noravirus type thing with lots of puking and diarrhea and it has been ravaging their whole family. Dawn and the kids have all had it and now it's Todd's turn.

We had come as far as Wilsonville this afternoon so that we could do some needed shopping at Camper World -- and could spend the night in their parking lot. Daughter Dawn decided that since she had been well for a few days (she actually went to school today), she would come and have dinner with us. It was so good to see her! We left their place right after New Year's, so it's been a while. We didn't get to see the kids (Dawn had dropped Granddaughter Havela and two of her friends at her first inter-school dance in Canby) but at least er got to see her. Havelita, who is now 14, will be bussed into Canby for high school next year.

It was a good day for catching up with folks as we get closer to "home." Our friend Sarah called this afternoon to plan a get-to-gather and our friend Mary called to catch us up on friends who are starting their RVing adventure tomorrow in a 5th wheel.

We will make it to Tree Heart Ranch tomorrow afternoon sometime (even though the ranch is leased out, we have water, sewer and electrical hook-ups for Auntie Violet there). It will be good to be home.