The New California Homestead

 

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Only In California - Unique Photos

cars - animals - plants -

Santa Monica Condo (bought with our son Dan)
 


Why did we leave wonderful Boston? Well, we recently found these photos taken from our Pru Center apartment window during the blizzard of '78:

Blizzard of 1978 in Boston  Blizzard of 1978 in Boston

What's New? We found a new way to feed the birds - stock our pond with fish! (January 9, 2007)

 

 After the third snowstorm in the week following Thanksgiving 2002 and our Snowplower calling to tell us the plow was broken so we were on our own, we bought two tickets to San Diego to look for a warmer place to winter. 34 years of cold winters was enough!

Karen had found an article about a place called Fallbrook touted as a great place for people who love cars and horses! Sounded like our kind of place. It was midway between LA and San Diego, where we already had friends and Karen had relatives.

While our original intent was to find a place to rent and look around, we hooked up with a super real estate agent and found a great house on the second day!

 

 

 One of the selling features was the view - a spectacular panaroma dominated by Mount Galivan, just over the county border (We're in San Diego County, Galivan is in Riverside.)

The House is on 3.2 acres with a grove of about 50 fruit and nut trees. It has a cactus garden, barn, pond and our own nature trail in the barrancas (ravines you you gringos) that surround the property.

Click Here if you want a bigger version of this picture.

 

 The next piece of the puzzle was to find a stable for Moonshadow. No problem here in horse country, where there were three in a row lined up along Mission Road.

Just like Goldilocks and the three little bears, Karen found one too fancy, one mostly for kids, and one just right - Del Rio Farms.

Moonshadow also had a long trip across the country and arrived about the same time as us.

 
   

 We went home to pack and prepare for our move. New England weather was very cooperative - making us certain we made the right decison. Here is a photo taken from our front door on Christmas evening.

 

The day we packed and left, it was 8 deg F in Boston. When we met our son and his girlfriend in Amherst, MA, it was 4 deg.

Were we ever glad to get out of there!

 

 Early January, I had driven out solo in my car. The second trip was in Karen's car with our 4 birds!

Here's Karen, tooling along at 85 mph in Texas, with our Cockatiel on her shoulder.

 

 We arrived in Fallbrook at the end of January. No fools us! We managed to avoid 6 feet of snow that fell during the winter in Boston.

When we arrived, we found the crop of citrus fruits just becoming ripe. We had oranges - valencias and navels, tangerines, lemons, limes and grapefruits.

Sounds wonderful, doesn't it. To some extent it is. But with all the trees we had and only the two of us, getting rid of it was the problem! We bought a juicer which helped with the oranges, but we coundn't find enough places to give away the grapefruits and lemons. Those trees have to go! But the tangerines were fabulous.

Later we had kumquats, loquats and plums. The apples, plums and peaches were less successful because we have not yet learned how to take care of them.

 

 The place we bought pretty much qualifies as a tropical paradise. Along with the groves, gardens, barn and fields of flowers and plants, we have our very own nature trail in one of the barrancas (ravines). It goes from our spring-fed pond up the barranca for about 1/4 mile (400 m.)

Here's Karen in the trail soon after we moved in.

 

What's Fallbrook like? A real country town! Find the cars in the parking lot at the grocery!

 

One of the big features of living in mountains is all the animals. When we moved in, we heard about the coyotes and rattlesnakes. Well, there is a lot more.

 

 

 

In the Fall of 2006, we joined our son Daniel to purchase a condo in downtown Santa Monica, near his job and perfect for us to have a city base when in LA.

 

 

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(c) 2001, Jim Hayes

 

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