When friends invite you to their ranch out in Kern county, you go! Have I mentioned that California is a very big state? This property is just 3 hours from LA and feels like a whole different world.
Years ago I remember hearing ads on the radio about owning your own piece of land in California. Little did I know that I would actually know someone who bought some of that land, drilled very deep for water and now has a lovely ranch. I think he’d be happy to live here full time, not so sure about his wife.
One way to make a weekend more fun is to invite friends to come along. Out among the mountains east of Tehachapi is this wonderful location.
Teddy the dog is thrilled to run around the property.
Caravaggio and Cloud are more like big pets. They have free rein to roam around the whole property.
They even prefer sleeping outside rather than in this great barn.
The horses followed along as we walked the perimeter of the property.
And showed up at the front of the ranch house begging for carrots.
I think Caravaggio is wondering why I don’t have more carrots to share.
Not all horses are flesh and blood.
Speaking of water, this isn’t a natural pond, the water is pumped up, but this is thick bedrock, so although it was quite a task to dig the pond, there is no need for any plastic lining. Fish thrive here, well they did until this winter when there was a flood and they were washed away. Now there is a new batch. As well as birds, can you see the bird in the upper left corner? I saw him flying around, didn’t realize that I had captured him on camera until I got a close look at the photo.
Those smiles are real, not just posing.
It was a bright hot sunny day. Although there are water and electricity, there is nowhere to go, so we all joined together and made some great meals, and had great conversations along the way.
Back outside, the kind of plants that thrive in the high desert, lavender and rosemary.
As well as bright orange-red thistles.
Speaking of orange, the lichen on the rocks provided more color.
and yellow-green.
When our friend bought this property, he didn’t do his homework very well. Today he would have searched for water before buying the land. 10 years ago, he bought the land and then looked for water. The specialists found none. So he resorted to walking every square inch of his 40 acres with two L-shaped metal rods performing water witching. It is a real thing, I had heard about this from the middle ages in Europe. In this case, it worked, he found water and now has two wells on the ranch, one 450 ft. deep and the other 600 ft. deep 
First I gave it a try. Of course, today he knows exactly where the water pipe to the house is, sure enough, it worked for me.
As well as for Joel. He is right on the pipe and the wires crossed on their own. The fact that water 450 feet down was found this way is amazing to me. Btw, the other guest, a very scientific engineer tried and it just didn’t work for him. There are mysteries on this earth that simply can’t be explained with science.
Here we all are, on the steps, at sunset.