With big dreams, our friends, a great couple from Truckee, CA, bought this rancho up in the mountains about 35 minutes from us. I love dreamers, especially when they act on their dreams like Gene and Brenda did.

These friends aren’t here right now; they are back in Truckee working. I don’t know anyone who has gone up there recently, and Greg and I have been wondering what the rancho looks like after the hurricane. So many trees around us were stripped clean when Odile came through. We haven’t had time to go up and check because we’re so busy with our own clean-up, getting things fixed for a few of our neighbors, and now we are rebuilding our palapa.

The last time we visited their rancho, named La Cuesta Farms, it was so beautiful. (I hope it still is). The drive to the mountains was fun in our little, red Ranger.

 

They have lots of old mango trees, citrus, ciruela plums, other fruits as well as flowers and a garden. The rancho includes a couple of outbuildings, an outdoor kitchen and a well on the property that serves a few other ranchos in the vicinity.  The cacophony of sounds you hear are of the goats and cows nearby, plus the mountain breezes shaking the leaves in the trees that are always alive with chirping birds. Two little kitties greeted us with very loud meows. The neighbors were feeding them while Gene and Brenda were not there, but the kittens were happy to have some human company I guess. We brought our lunch and after a tour we sat down to eat. Funny how food tastes better in the mountains.

 

We are hoping La Cuesta Farms is okay after the hurricane. It is a sweet spot tucked in the mountains in Southern Baja.

 

Many months ago, Brenda, Greg and I went up there on another beautiful day and I took a lot of pictures. The mangoes weren’t ripe yet, but they were hanging heavy in the trees. Same with the ciruela plums. The plums are tiny, have large stones (pits) in them and are green on the tree. After you pick them, some varieties turn yellow, some red. You need a lot of plums to make jam! When the time was right, the picking began. Brenda saved a bunch for us and I had so much fun cooking them down, making agua fresco and jam. The aroma of the fruit filled the room, and it got steamy and sticky in the kitchen! That’s half the fun, right? It was all totally worth the effort (work!) it took to remove the pits and skin. I have a lot of pulp saved in my freezer for making more jam.

Baja is a lot more than desert and beaches, as you can see. The tropical storms and hurricanes may come and go, but we’re staying.