Tips and Advice on all things Homestead related

When I was 18 at the time of life where leaving home and learning how to be on my own was everything I wanted in life, my parents were urging me to go to college and figure out what I wanted to do in life. Really though, the only thing that made any sense to me was studying about horses. I finally was able to find out some information about a vocational college in southern California in a town called Bonsall. This was the age before computers and internet and looking back I really don't know how people found out information back then! How the times have changed and continue to do so at such a rapid pace. I applied and was accepted and we all flew to the United States and I got delivered to the college. The girls dorm was right above the main stallion barn in which was house a stallion called Colonel Freckles who at the time I had no idea who he was but now I know that he is a very influential and famous stallion in the Quarter Horse world. The vocational college was also a kids ca...

Leilani was one of the most special horses I ever had the privilege to own. Her story starts a long time before she became my mare. I was at a horse event one weekend. There was one big ranch owned by rich people who had a big beautiful barn full of nice horses and a bunch of arenas, a fancy auction arena, a straightaway race track for horse racing, arenas for roping and barrel racing and who knows what else. Any time I heard of a horse event going on there I made a way to get there and attend. This weekend was one of those fun events. I loved to walk through the barns and admire the horses and dream of one day having a barn full of fancy horses like those. There were two horses in particular that stood out to me that weekend. One was a tall grey mare and one was a big dark bay mare. They looked different from the other horses so I asked around and found out they were recently brought up north from southern Brazil, the land of good registered horses and rodeos. Both these mares were w...

In my early twenties I came to a turning point in my life. I felt like I had two paths to choose from as far as which direction to go with life in general and as I prayed about what to do and asked God for clear direction I felt like either one was a path He would bless and allow me to walk on. My first choice was to go to Veterinary college and become a vet. Now in Brazil, to get into college is different from getting into college here in the United States. You have to know what degree you want to pursue and which college you want to attend and then you go take a long college entrance test for that degree and if you pass you are allowed to go to that college for that subject. Before this turning point I had spent about a month or so in Rio de Janeiro with some missionary friends of ours and I saw in the newspaper that a college there was offering this test and one of their degrees was Veterinary Medicine. I had up to that point never really considered trying to get into college in Br...

My first dog that I ever owned was a little tan mutt we brought home from the Indian village when I was 6. I named her Ginger because she was ginger colored. I don't remember a whole lot about that dog except that she wasn't very nice and she tried to bite and attack people. I remember we had to keep her chained up a lot. One day I went to school and came home and my parents had had her put to sleep because of her behavior. I cried and cried but looking back we decided that she was probably demon possessed because of the circumstances of where she came from. I wanted another dog so badly I almost couldn't stand it. When I was 11 another missionary family was moving back to the States for health reasons and they had a young German Shepherd dog named Lobo. They needed to find a home for him. I begged and begged my dad to let me have Lobo. He said that if I could promise to walk him every day, cook his food every day, bathe him every week that he would let me have him. I pro...

Our ranch in Brazil was given to us by God when I was 17. I was on a river boat trip with a group of young people from Canada who were showing the Jesus movie and evangelizing to the river communities. I had gotten invited to join them and help with translation. We spent a little over a week travelling down the river in a large boat and stopping at each small river community. We would go out among the village and invite people to come join us for the movie viewing and then evangelize afterwards. One day we had split up in teams to go hike along the trails by the river and invite the families. The girl I was paired up with and I got very thirsty so I suggested we ask for a drink at the next house we arrived at. The kind lady happily brought us a small glass of water. However it didn't exactly look like water, but more like yellow pee or something. But since we had asked and she had brought it to us with such joy, I felt obligated to drink it. I prayed before I took that first sip an...

In the jungle there is not much to do as far as recreational activities except going to the rivers. Of course in the Amazon, all rivers eventually lead to the great and mighty Amazon river. Even the smallest creek waters end up there. But I want to tell you about some of my favorite rivers that we swam in. To start with of course, the Amazon itself. I was born in a city right on the banks of the Amazon but never swam in it until my 8th grade year when I was 13 years old. My parents sent me to boarding school for missionary kids in that year. It was a beautiful location and groups of kids lived in a home with a missionary couple. This particular year something went wrong with the well or the pump and they told us that we had to bathe every day in the river. So every day we would get on our swim suits and jump off the dock into the beautiful river, attempting not to lose our slippery bar of soap. If you swam too far out the current would be strong but along the bank it was just like a l...