American Miniature Horses & Great Pyrenees/Maremma Livestock Guardian dogs  

Our ranch might be small but we have plenty of room for all the miniature  horses, guardian dogs, goats, peafowl & guineas to run around and graze in the shady pastures and paddocks of our mini ranch. Our place is located about 2 hours northeast of Sacramento in the Sierra Nevada foothills, in between the Yuba and Feather river canyons. We are in the lower foothills south of Lake Oroville, situated on 9 grassy acres scattered with several varieties of native Oaks and Pine trees. Just below the snow line & above the valley fog we have bright, sunny days through the winter when it's not raining and somewhat mild temps in the summer time when it's scorching hot down in the valley. The perfect spot for our lil ranch and all our critters!

This property has allot of history that is some what of a mystery to us till we have time to do some research. We are lucky enough to have an old homestead site, that dates back to the 1800's. There was a small 20'x20' cabin built here & the sunken cellar of the cabin is still mostly intact. It was built using flat sided boulders & rocks some of which are at least 4' across. All of them are lined up to match so the walls in the cellar are smooth & flat. Next to the cellar we found a hand dug, rock lined water well that is 4' across in diameter & still about 12' deep. We find all sorts of "artifacts" ...some people would call it "junk" or "garbage", but I think of them as more like "historical treasures".  Old glass bottle tops & pieces of broken glass, lots of square nails in all sizes, pieces of old tools, a number of horse shoes, an old milk bottle & tin pail and a couple things that look like old horse hoof picks.

There was nothing here but the "artifacts" and a lil junk when we bought the property, but someone settled here a long time ago. We have found a couple old floribunda rose bushes that bloom, several ancient pear trees & an old crab apple tree still alive and producing fruit every year.  Down at the bottom of the hill there is a seasonal creek running through our property and it has the remains of an old stone bridge abutment we were told the Calvary used to access a fort on the hill top near our ranch.

We moved our little mobile home here and started setting up in the spring of 2012.  It's been a long wait & allot of work but totally worth what the end result will be. Currently we're working on more pasture fencing, clearing & access roads. In the last couple of years we have started phase one of building a small mare/foaling barn near the home site and set up a round pen. The gold fish pond came back to life with one of our original lily plants that came down in the move and is now stocked with some gold fish.  Plus we still have plans for the bottom of the property to put in a small pond, arena and then driving trails on the back few acres across the creek. Living here at the ranch with us we have a herd of about a dozen American Miniature horses, a few pet Dwarf Nigerian dairy goats & a flock of free-range guinea fowl for ticks & snakes.

Among other things there is a pile of huge quartz boulders someone brought here, probably hoping there was gold in them. There is evidence that someone did allot of placer mining down in the creek with huge rock tailing piles & diversion channels everywhere. And there is still some stacked stone fencing from when the area was cleared and used for cattle ranching. One of the coolest things we have found is a huge granite boulder about 6' across with 4 grinding holes from when the area was home to the Maidu Indians. I was lucky enough to find a matching grinding stone while clearing an area near by for some new fruit trees. We feel pretty lucky to have found this place...to know both the Native Americans and early settlers in the area chose to live here makes us feel privileged that we get to enjoy it too.

This page is still under construction.....More of our story & photos coming soon as I continue to format and add to our new website.