You're Selling Rice WHERE?

Things are starting to heat up around here.  One week from today it's supposed to be 106 degrees.  Woohoo!  Surprisingly, it going to be 102 in Tucson Arizona.  Maybe not in town, but up in the foothills where I'm located, it shouldn't be as hot as here.  People ask me why I go to the desert in summer.  Because it's cooler!!!

Thank you everyone for the prayers and well wishes for Mr. Cooper, my constant companion.  Here's the before picture.  Other than his loud bark, which I can't fault him for since he's such a good watch pup, he's just the sweetest thing ... especially if you have a ball in your hand.  Stay tuned for the AFTER.

Sitting around the house really isn't my thing.  I guess when you've kept so busy all your life, always working on something on the ranch, or feeding baby parrots every two hours, or working overtime making sure the County property tax documents get sent out correctly, it's hard to just sit.  At least it is for me.  

That's why I decided to get into the business of puzzling.  I admit, I'm not good at it.  Patsy can run circles around me, putting in piece after piece, while I just sit there and stare at it.

So ... we are back to the rice ranch story, not to be confused with Rice Ranch in Quartzsite.  Things were going great ... we were producing more rice per acre on our property than anyone in California.  Can you believe it?  Imagine the work that went into the invention of that particular strain of rice, not to mention the work of harvesting so much per acre.

And then it all crashed.  Suddenly the Japanese market dried up.  They wanted nothing other than THEIR rice grown in THEIR fields.  It was something about the texture.  The Mill frantically began looking for new markets and we readied ourselves for failure once again.  Lucky for us, my parents had the ranch paid off and did NOT go out and buy huge lots of equipment to farm the place ourselves.  We continued on with the lease.

Hey .... let's try RUSSIA said the Mill.  I rather imagine if we had any choice in the matter, that would NOT have been who we wanted to deal with.  Beggars can't be choosers however.  We just sold rice to the mill ... it was their decision where the rice went.

It was a tough decision not to go completely into business for ourselves.  After all, I could have been driving those Cats every day.  That's probably why I err on the side of being conservative and CHEAP nowadays.  So for the next few years our rice went to feed Russia while we kept it a secret.  After all, they were the "enemy", right?

Intermission

Cooper's AFTER picture.  My poor baby now has a crooked smile.  He's wanting to play the take-away game (I pretend to take the toy away).  He still has all four canine teeth, which is a good thing, and seems to be happy to play.  Though he still looks for the ball, we only play with the soft toy.

Back to the rice fields ..... suddenly, out of the blue, the government steps in once again.  That's how we ended up here ... the government declared eminent domain and took our high desert property away from us, paying less than it was worth.  Now they were interfering again and would not allow ANY farming products to be sold to Russia.  I'm sure most people don't even know about that.

As with eminent domain, they had to pay for that decision.  They began to give us a tiny dollar amount NOT to grow anything in "X" number of acres.  It was a crazy idea, but we had no choice but to go along with it.  With no overseas markets for rice, the U.S. became flooded with it, which caused the price to plummet and the Mill to quit farming our property.  Those government payments, which didn't even cover the property tax, ended a few short years later.

NOW WHAT!!!  Lucky for us, although my parents did build a small house on the ranch for themselves, they kept most every dime that they made.  There was never any extravagant spending going on, which is probably where I got my THRIFTY tendencies.  

Intermission again

Here's the "during" picture, where I was actually able to find the pieces I needed.  Here's my secret ... buy a puzzle that has many objects of different colors.  It's easier when all the colors are bundled together.

There's still more to the ranch story, in spite of not being able to produce rice, but that's for tomorrow.  

Yahoo ... I was actually able to finish the puzzle.  I think this is the first one I've every completed in my life!!!  Although at first I felt like I was completely wasting my time, I discovered it certainly is good for the brain.  

I'm going for groceries today in readiness for heading out soon.  I just can't believe how fast the time flies by.  As they say, it waits for no one!!