A Visit With Bob.

 

Bob’s Van.

I took a ride to see how Bob was doing on the engine removal from his van.
Bob had already gotten the engine out of the van;
when I got there he was just coming out of the house.
His goal was to figure out the best way to remove the back of the engine compartment in order to install the new V8 engine.

We spent the morning discussing the in’s and out’s of the problem. We discussed several options and finally came up with a plan. We talked about several other aspects of the project and when we had hashed it out pretty thoroughly Bob decided that that was all he needed to do on the project for now.

Tom’s Garden.

Bob suggested that we go over to Tom’s garden and eat some strawberries. I did not demure.

New Construction and a New Bridge.

On the way to the garden we have to cross Bob’s neighbors farm.
We walked through the apple orchard. The owner has taken part of the orchard and converted it to a place to have weddings.
They have built a nice cook shack and stage and covered a large area with wood chips.

They also have built a good bridge across the creek.

We used to have to climb down and up the steep side of the creek to get to Tom’s garden.

The bridge is much nicer.

Strawberries.

We finally got to the berry patch.

We proceeded to stuff ourselves with fresh, ripe, fat, juicy, sweet strawberries.

We ate until we were sated and wandered around the garden to see what else Tom had planted. There was a lot of stuff coming up; some greens, potatoes, melons, squash, and asparagus, etc. but not anything to eat off the bush so to speak.

Piggy's.

As we were walking back to Bob’s we went by the neighbors pig pens to say hi to al the little piggy’s.

As we approached the fence they all ran over to see if we had anything for them.

They are some kind of flat nosed pig. I guess they are raising them for sale.

Bob’s Orchard.

We came back to Bob’s orchard and wandered around eating several varieties of plum that he has growing. They range from one that is almost black and tastes like a prune to sweet crunchy green ones.

 
He also has some ripe apples and a peach that is getting ripe.
His Mulberries aren’t ripe yet, unfortunately, neither are his grapes.

I don’t think I have ever eaten that much ripe fruit at one time in a long while.
I should be pretty regular for the next couple of days.

4 Wheeling.

After filling up on fruit we decided to take my jeep across the road to Bob’s family property. They have several acres that border Armstrong Woods State Park. The property has a lot of old skid roads and several other roads that crisscross the area. There is a long flat valley surrounded by steep hills on three sides. The roads zigzag up to the top of the mountain where there is a nice view of Guerneville.

We crossed the road, went through a couple of gates and followed this dirt track through the trees.

Our first stop was another of Tom’s Farming projects.
We stopped to pay our respects to the hens in the chicken run and wandered around looking for more fruit. We found some ripe peaches. Yumm!!

Up the Hill.

After a bit we got back in the jeep and headed up the hills.

Water System.

The next stop was at Bob’s spring fed water system.

I think Bob said that they have over 20 thousand gallons of storage in their three stainless steel tanks. Bob has tapped several springs across the hills to feed the system.

We continued up the road toward the top of the mountain. As we went along we came to several trees that had fallen across the road. Several of these we were able to just drive over but others we had to move out of the way.

Still others we had to back up and take a different trail.

After an hour or more and a lot of back tracking we eventually made it to the top where we stopped for a while just to sit in the shade and enjoy the view.

Heading Home.

When we got back to Bob’s gate I said good by to Bob and headed for home.

It was an interesting, tasty and fun day.