This morning after a quick breakfast, I got Shadow and Chisum in from the small pasture near the barn. They are horses, full brothers, a year apart. Shadow is a smoky black. Chisum is a perlino dun. If you aren’t a horse color enthusiast, that means Shadow is black; Chisum is white. We joke that they look so much alike, we can’t tell them apart.

While the horses ate their grain, Bard and Caine accompanied me to the cattle pasture to check the water tanks. Bard is my ace English shepherd cowdog, and his son Caine is the associate-cowdog-in-training. The water level was fine. The cows started following us back to the barn, so I gave them a little grain as a reward. We’ll need to get them all in day after tomorrow to work heifers. It would be exceptionally nice if they came in on their own.

I worked Shadow in the roundpen, watered and fed chickens, cats, and dogs, and then got photos of one of the two English shepherd litters. Anyone who makes a living photographing animals is a saint. The rest of us can get pretty impatient and frustrated with a one-week-old puppy who won’t hold still!

I met Bernie at the office where I proofread a few documents and got a couple mailings ready for him and filled out markings charts on our new foals. At noon, I fixed dinner (lunch) and took a power nap. After that, I gave Shadow another brief lesson to make sure this morning’s education had stuck.

Next, I turned on water to the orchard. As always, I walked the line to be sure everything was working correctly. One splice had come loose and was making a lake. After dog, cat, and chicken chores (this was a different location than this morning’s chores) I helped the guys clean out window wells. That involved scraping up junk that had accumulated (about a 5-gallon bucketful) and then several buckets of soil—the top five or six inches—in order to expose the brick ledge for the masons. Bernie or Wyndom hauled up the buckets by rope, emptied them, and sent them back down.

Finished with that, I went to the garden and harvested greens (spinach and lettuce), onions, summer squash, sugar snap peas, radishes, cilantro, and a few potatoes. After watering the potted plants on the porch, I headed inside and cleaned and chopped the veggies for tomorrow’s dinner (lunch), put away the clean dishes, filled the dishwasher and started it, and made bread dough to bake in the morning.

Now, I’m going to take a shower, brush my teeth, and find a horizontal surface.

Summer sure is more laid back these days. For the last several years, we’ve roomed and boarded nieces and nephews in addition to our own four kids. The crew built fence, cut thistles, cleared brush, pruned tree rows, mended irrigation lines, and developed blisters and character. They also ate a lot and generated laundry. With no “spare” kids and only two of our own, the pace this year is gentler because otherwise, in addition to the daily tasks I accomplished today, I would have been cooking and washing for the Seventh Fleet!