You Know You've Finally Made It When...

When Mr. W was a youngster, he had three big dreams: To be a Top Gun fighter pilot, to work in the film industry, and to someday own a Porsche. While some guys his age had pictures of Tiffani-Amber Thiessen taped to their bedroom walls, Mr. W had centerfolds of Carreras.

Though his dream of becoming Maverick got back burnered, he chased his film aspirations from St. Louis to Los Angeles and vowed to buy himself that car as soon as his paychecks could support it.

After several years of grinding away in visual effects (and fetching the occasional coffee), Mr. W was established enough in the industry to splurge on the ultimate driving machine. He bought himself a shiny ocean blue metallic Porsche 911 Carrera.

It was a declaration that'd he'd finally made it.

His friends teasingly called him Jake Ryan. Shy guy. Good hair. I think it kinda fits.

Fast forward about 15 years and the marker that represents making it has changed dramatically.

I don't want to say that his double decades in Hollywood jaded him, but he outgrew the Porsche aspirations and moved onto fantasizing about a more practical sports car: The Tractor.

Success shifted from the Hollywood Hills to the Santa Ynez Valley, and included the remodel of an outdated house, the planting of a backyard vineyard, and the purchase of something powerful for mowing and tilling.

Folks, I am so happy to announce that my highly motivated husband has "made it" yet again. He is officially a real farm person now, with the purchase of his Massey Ferguson GC1715.

I've named it Mater after the tow truck in Cars. And it runs like a champion.

Weeds in the back 40: Watch out—he's comin' for you.

Dirt Pushing, Barn Raising, and Mid-Life Crisising

Our lower backyard feels like the perfect metaphor for our lives right now: A vast swath of loosely executed, bare bones possibilities. It feels a lot like the headspace Mr. W and I seem to be sharing about our next big life endeavors. Where should we focus? On wine? On writing? On coaching? On opening a coffee shop or launching an app? On kitten rearing? We've spent a lot of time staring blankly at one another across dinner tables and bed pillows lately.

I'm hoping that maybe, if we're lucky, our next big dreams will take shape in tandem with our wily back acreage.

Just as I've been devoting time to self-help books and journal entries to begin carving out the foundation for my next move, Mr. W has been tearing out old groundcover and grading dirt to start reinventing our yard.

I think he's having more fun than I am. I mean, look at that grin. Only a tractor could bring that puppy out, I think.

He worked for days carving out the framework for steps that will lead from our back patio down to the meadow we hope to turn into a relaxing retreat and garden. Thankfully, the much needed rain didn't wash the steps away.

Here's a reminder of what it looked like before:

The slope (which will ultimately hold grenache and maybe some viognier and syrah grapevines) is now pretty much a nice, clean, blank slate.

Everything that was on the slope is piled up in nice, big, dirty blobs of mud and iceplant and debris.

We're nowhere near having the lovely, structured yard we want, but we're making progress.

I never wrote about it, but we also got the agrarian needle moving a bit when we assembled a storage shed in the lower yard back in August. The instructions for the thing make it sound like such a breeze—5 Steps to a Completed Mini Barn.

It was more like 38 steps. Mr. W had to assemble a bunch of individual panels to build each of the 4 walls. Then he and I had to carry them down to the lower yard (they weren't light, lemme tellya). And then we had to unleash our inner Amish farmers to lift the walls and get them bolted together securely—at perfect 90° angles—so that we could attach the roof....which Mr. W did using semi-superhuman strength while I fretted and yelped from the top of a ladder (not really doing anything to genuinely help the process).

When it was all finished, I'm pretty sure I renounced my Amishness as fast as possible and went inside to get a beer...

So that's where things stand with the next big piece of this whole attempt at living the wine country dream life business. Hoping that many future blog posts will include charming and painless recounts about how easily all the rest of it comes together. In parallel with how effortlessly the two of us figure out our middle-aged lives... 

Pumpkins and Bumpkins

Autumn in the country is a lot of fun, doggone it. The pumpkin patches are going full-tilt, hay bales and corn husk decorations are adorning winery and shop entrances, there was even a scarecrow contest in the town next door to us. Life just feels more festive out in these parts.  

 

A couple weeks ago, Mr. W and I checked out another fall festivity in the area—the 33rd annual Los Olivos Day in the Country. There weren't pumpkins, but there were tractors. Truthfully, the tractors were the main reason we went. We kind of dream of being able to drive one around in the lower portion of our backyard. I'm now having a lovely vision of Mr. W doing some sort of number from Footloose that involves high kicks off the tractor and a sprig of wheat between his teeth...

 

Anyway... There we were admiring John Deere's fine craftsmanship when I told Mr. W to take my picture. I posed with a cheesecake grin, careful not to touch any of the machinery.

"You can sit on one if you like," a voice came from behind me. 

I think what he really wanted to say was, "Little girl, you can pretend to drive one of these if you want." So of course, I leaped aboard and made Mr. W take more pictures of me fake-driving.

Totally fueled the tractor-owning fire. 

After I got my fill, we wandered down the street to one of our favorite garden shops. Our main motivation wasn't just to check out their cute merchandise—but to steal see their chickens. 

The girls didn't disappoint. They were quite social with each other and with us. 

Some people dream of naming their future children. I dream of naming my future chickens. Are Farrah, Kate, and Jaclyn too weird for chicken names? Farmie's Angels?

As you can tell, the country air is having a spectacular effect on my brain. 

Whilst we wait for the right time to buy chickens, we'll keep doing our best to grow other goodies in the garden. Since my last post on our miniature plot, the greens have gone crazy. We ate kale salads twice over the weekend and I accidentally picked some immature radishes while I was weeding, so I'm going to eat them this week. Beets and Brussels sprouts should be coming soon.

 

It's really exciting to think that someday in the not too distant future, we'll have planter boxes filled with all kinds of goodies. We won't even have to drive to the grocery store anymore. 

Or maybe if we do, we'll just take the tractor.