Boyd's Mills 1831 - 1875
Avondale. 1875 - 1905
Fresno 1905 - present

The question came up about the three official names of Fresno. Located where the three branches of White Eyes Creek merge, Because of the water, the Boyd family built a series of Mills, grist for making flour, saw mill for lumber. Boyd also manufactured bags. The mill was first built in 1831 and soon houses sprung up around the Mills. The town was never officially platted. So we can say founded in 1831. By 1855 Adam Gardner owned the Mills and founded the Boyd's Mill Post Office becoming the first town Postmaster.

In 1875 the town's people held a convention to change the town name. Avondale was chosen by ballot and the Post Office changed to the new name April of 1875.

As there was another Avondale near Cincinnati, mail would be confused. Henry Wallace who had moved to Fresno , California from Avondale, suggested that name for the town.
The official documents were filed and the town officially became Fresno on August 4, 1905. 

History Lesson Credit: Larry Stahl
Photo Credit: Louissa Geese

​Hey friends!! Tucker Bear checking in with a quick fall farm update. QUICK because mama says we can have pumpkin ice creams when I'm done writing
I think it's pretty great the first day of fall happens on Tucker Tuesday and I didn't know what fall was (other than when mama falls because the puppy girls knock her down the hill ) but mama says fall is the bestest part of the whole year so we walked around the farm and I'm starting to see what she means!
The last few pole beans are climbing up the sunflowers which are losing some of their pretty flowers so we collected the seeds from those so we can plant more next year which I'm pretty sure is forever from now! Then mama picked up these pretty nuts but she said I can't eat them which is silly because I can eat other nuts just fine but she says these ones are bad for you so we collected some of them for our friend Jeanne and IDK why mama wants to send her poisonous nuts but... they are pretty!!
And we found this little black fuzzy guy curled up hiding from the chickens and mama says if he's right it's going to be a really bad winter and I didn't hear him say anything so mama musta talked to him earlier today to know what he said. I sure hope he's right because I've never gotten to run thru big snow drifts and I think it sounds like great fun!!
It's really pretty when we go for walks up the road, all the trees are starting to think about putting on different colors. My sisters even got to go for a walk today and they had a good walk since it's not so hot and mama says that's one of the best parts of fall is how outside feels like campfires and football games and sweatshirts and stuff.
Hope your farm feels like all that stuff this fall, too. I’ll check back in next week to show you more great things. Have a good week and don't eat the pretty nuts!!
Autumn Loves,
Tucker Bear

YaHOOOOO it’s Tucker Tuesday! Hi everyone, welcome to the farm!
Wow the world outside has been really great lately because I don’t feel like I’m swimming in the air when I go for a walk and that means mama wants to play outside more too!
So one day this week we were walking around in the yard and I found this neat slickery thing and it smelled funny like nothing I’d ever smelled before and I was like WHOA and I showed it to mama and she was really brave and picked it up and so I smelled it while she was holding it because I thought surely it wasn’t scary if mama was holding it but then she wiggled it and laughed because it made me jump and bark! But then she let me smell it again and it was a little less scary but it still smelled weird. Mama said it’s called a snake skin and I thought that was pretty wild because that means… somewhere in our yard… there’s a NAKEY SNAKE!
So I was looking around all over for the nakey snake and I didn’t find that one but I did find this one little guy in the garden that looked about the right size to wear the little skin suit I found but he had his skin on so it couldn’t have been him. Still, he was pretty cool and I said HI and he stuck out his tongue and scooted away under the bucket and I thought that was kinda rude but mama says snakes are shy (and that makes me wonder why there’s one running around nakey because if I was shy I wouldn’t leave my skin lying around!).
I did find a whole bunch of leaves that fell off the trees and I thought maybe we should grab those and hang them back up but then I realized it’s more fun to shake them like the dickens and chew on them and they’re all crunchy and taste like happiness. Mama says the trees will all be nakey again soon too and boy there sure is a lot of that going around. I’ll have to keep a close eye on MY skins! Apparently this happened to the trees last year, too, but I was just a baby so I don’t remember.
A lot of the baby chickens are laying eggs now and the eggs are really pretty colors . Mama says we’ll have eggs for a good long time with these friends on our side, but then she said they’ll probably not make so many eggs for a little bit because it’s fall and they’re moulting and I didn’t know what that word means but it turns out… YUP you guessed it! They’re getting nakey!!! So then mama says when they get their winter feathers back in they’ll make some more eggs because they can’t grow feathers and eggs at the same time and that makes sense because I can’t talk and hold my squeaky ball at the same time.
Then there was this weird little bug and IDK if he was nakey or not and I’m not sure how you would tell but I put his picture on here because he was really neat to look at up close even if he turns out to be nakey.
Daddy did a good job building a puppy shelter for my sisters and last night mama said they had to sleep outside under the stars and I don’t know if they liked that or not but I didn’t like it because if they don’t go to the shed to sleep then I don’t get to run in the pasture at night and that’s my favorite thing to do so mama says we’ll have to work something out so I still get lots of running time so that made me happy.
Oh and since I couldn't play with the nakey snake mama and daddy bought me this really terrific big orange rope snake to play with and he was perfect, just the right size and chewy and then I accidentally started eating pieces from him so mama had to take him back. She says we'll have to work on that...
So that’s what’s happening around the farm - everything is getting nakey.
Have a good fall, y’all!
Love from your not-so-nakey pal,
Tucker Bear
PS - here’s a bunch of flowers from around the farm, too. IDK what they all are but mama says I can’t eat them so I thought maybe you would like to look at them.

​Running - a short story by Tucker Bear.
Some days I like to take lots of naps. It’s like my batteries just need to be recharged and I can’t keep my eyes open. Other days I like snuggles. Most mornings I want to cuddle in the blankies with mama and then sometimes when she gets up and makes her tea I just wanna curl up in her lap because I’m not ready to be out of bed yet. I’m a big fan of naps and snuggles.
But more than that my most favoritist thing in the whole wide world… is RUNNING.
I don’t know how to explain it, but sometimes when my batteries get charged really really good it’s like I get all zoomie inside and I just have to run and run. If I’m in the house I find something great to run circles around, mostly on the rug because the slickery floor makes it hard to go zoomie fast (I have to go fast, fast is the best part!). My favorite tho is when I get to run in the big yard outside.
In the evenings after the sisters go to bed and I don’t have to share the pasture with anyone, mama takes my frisbee and we go out to the grass and I RUN. Up the hill and then back down, chasing the frisbee, chasing the birds, chasing the wind. I love to run.
There is this one spot in the pasture where the water runs down and makes a little groove and when mama throws the frisbee over it I run and jump. I’m a great jumper and I love the way the wind blows while I soar higher and higher across the dip and then just when I think my feet will never touch the ground again and I’m gonna fly right up into the sky with the birds , the ground comes up on the other side and catches me so I can keep on running.
My favorite part about running tho is the part where the world just melts away while I do it. Do you have something like that? Mama says her thing that does that is reading a good book . She can just read for hours and not think about anything else and that’s how I feel when I’m running. Nothing else matters - not the ‘rona or the squeaky toy I ate or the kitty I’m not allowed to chase - it all goes away and all that’s left is the freedom of flying and the feel of the grass and the frisbee mama throws across the field.
I think everyone should have a thing like running. Something they look forward to doing, that makes them feel free, that helps them get away from all the other things the world wants them to look at.
So tell me, what’s your “running”? Maybe I’ll try it next!
Happy Tucker Tuesday!
Tucker Bear
PS - Mama says it’s a good thing I like to run because in October we’re going to do something fun that lets me do running and jumping and I don’t know what “a jility” is but I can’t wait to try it!

​I didn't know I was going to the garden to cry.

I could have put it together of course, but I didn’t go out there to think. I went out there to do a job - to harvest the veggies I’ve been ignoring all week. The ones I address every evening as I walk by on my way to bring the puppy girls in from the pasture promising I’ll take time the following morning to get them collected before time marches them past their prime.

Veggies have a prime, just like people. It doesn’t take as long to get to it, but they have one.

Unlike all the times I sprinkled well-intentioned lies to my aging vegetation in passing as the girls hurried me (I like to pretend I’m walking them, but put them together and at 6 months old they nearly outweigh me already) toward the supper bowl and clean straw bed, this night I grabbed a couple of bags and made a special trip to the garden with the sole purpose of collecting veggies.

Well, maybe there was something else, but I didn’t know I was going to the garden to cry.

When I consider what similar gardeners ponder while working in similar gardens on similar evenings across America I assume most of them are reminded of people. People who taught them to garden, grandparents who planted for survival, parents who planted for fun, kids who planted because it’s fun to dig in the dirt (before they grew up and realized they were too cool to dig in the dirt with parents)(for the record I will never be too cool to dig in the dirt with ANYONE), or spouses who have moved on for whatever reasons spouses move on.

On this particularly lovely journey through the jungle (as Brian refers to our tomato patch - I’m unable to grow normal tomatoes in normal rows at normal intervals) I was struck by the absence of my favorite gardening partner.

You may recall a piece I wrote last year about “firsts” - wondering if we pay enough tribute to the firsts in our lives, particularly the firsts that occur after losing the ones we love. I thought my firsts were over. Turns out I missed one.

Much like the five pound cucumber hiding in plain sight among the vines you’ve already cleaned and cleared, this first should have been pretty obvious. It wasn’t, and the recognition of my first harvest without Toby was as bittersweet as the red berries growing on mom’s fence each fall.

It was bitter because I didn’t see it coming. Memories can be unfair, like that. Sneaking up on you without giving you the chance to steel yourself against their enormity. Imagine enjoying a handful of plump, ripe raspberries when you realize one of them wasn’t as ready as the others. Yup - that kind of bitter.

It was also sweet. In fact it was mostly sweet. Sweet because I own the memories of the coolest puppy dog ever. Sweet like the snap peas I caught Toby stealing from my harvest basket the first year he was old enough to hang out in the garden with me. Sweet like the corn he would eat off the cob in a way that would put any sweet-corn-eating pro to shame.

When tomatoes begin to turn midsummer it’s easy to miss the first few that begin to show color and approach the correct level of doneness. Not for Toby, he didn’t miss one. His nose would lead him right to the very first ripe tomatoes in the jungle and he would nudge one gently until I caught up to pluck it so we could share it right off the vine. Are dogs supposed to like tomatoes?

The year of our best garden yield, the bounty spilled in colorful waves across our kitchen floor as I worked to find ways to use, store, share, and enjoy it all. Toby surveyed the treasure and followed his nose to the produce that met his discerning palate, then carefully hurried it away to enjoy at his leisure.

Toby was a marvel at the art of weeding. I’m not sure where he learned the difference between squash vines and morning glories run amok, but he had learned it well.

Warming soil in mid spring that welcomes gardeners from hibernation as winter sighs her last frigid grasp across the ground will always make me think of my friend Jenny. The joy with which she welcomes the task of planning, planting, and loving her garden would inspire the staunchest carnivore to take up a spade and plant the seeds of the season. I try to channel her love for the task when the heavy work of beginning a garden is finally at hand, and I’m able to do so with about half the enthusiasm she exudes. I promise you it’s infectious, but not many can keep up with that girl when she’s on a mission.

But the midsummer and fall garden - the harvest - that will always belong to Toby.

Toby would have been 12 tomorrow. That’s the part I shoulda seen coming. It’s not like I didn’t know what day it is. It’s not like I didn’t think of him today - I do every day in lots of little ways. If I’d seen it coming I maybe could have steeled myself against the memories. I maybe would have shed fewer tears in the potato patch.

But the moments in life that heal us best are the ones we don’t see coming.
​
I didn’t know I was going to the garden to cry, but I bet Toby did.

​What a dreary day for TUCKER TUESDAY! Hope you aren’t letting the rain get you too far down, but just in case I have some news that might cheer you up!!
One day this week, when it was warm and sunny so we could play outside and not get my feets all muddy, I smelled something really special out in the yard! I didn’t know what it was but I thought mama should have a look so I sniffed around until I found it for sure and then like any good pupper would do I stomped my feet in the grass beside it so mama would see there was something to see ( because she doesn’t speak very fluent puppy yet, we’re working on that).
I thought for sure once she saw how great this was she would dig it out of the hole and let me play with it, so I waited patiently (ok I wiggled and whimpered a lot because I was really excited but I WAS trying to be patient) while she checked it out.
Mama got just as excited as me when she saw it so I thought we were going to play with it, but she pulled me away and said we have to be careful and protect the furry things in the hole. She said inside all that fluffy stuff there are baby bunnies and they’re really little so their mama won’t let them come out of the hole to play until they get bigger and I can’t wait for that to happen because I want to play with them!
It’s just that… Well… I don’t know what bunnies are.
I wanted to pull them out of the hole so I could take pictures and show you my bunnies but mama said they would get cold so I just took pictures of the fluffy stuff and then mama let me look up on the interwebz to see if I could find pictures of bunnies. I’m not for sure, but according to what I read the bunnies are going to come out looking something like this picture I found here and they’ll poop out eggs but not like the chickens do because these eggs will be full of CANDY and they’ll hop around and play with me and we’ll eat all the candy and then they’ll go away until this time next year or something.
Sounds like this is all supposed to happen this Sunday, so everyone get ready for the candy-egg pooping bunnies!
Hope you have baby bunnies in your yard like me, have a great springy day!
Your bunny-loving buddy,
Tucker Bear
PS - I was worried about the bunnies getting wet today but mama says their mama will cover them with leaves and fur to keep them safe and dry. I don't know, I think we should bring them in for cuddles while it's raining.

​Don’t let PERFECT be the enemy of GOOD.

That’s some advice I was given in a firearms course I took a few years ago. I was psyching myself out because I didn't think I could do the drill to the proficiency level I wanted it done, which of course was interfering with my ability to just DO IT. Like other tips I’ve picked up over time this one strikes a chord in so many aspects of my life, not just when I’m shooting.

I tend to be a perfectionist. Not the kind that judges the work of others against a crazy high standard. The kind that judges my own performance so harshly that I often opt NOT to do something I may be able to get good at simply because I’m not already an expert at it. I “prejudge” before I even begin, because I know there is a great chance I won’t be PERFECT on the first try.

Somewhere along the way I started learning I didn’t have to have all the steps memorized before I started down a path. I realized the phrase GOOD ENOUGH isn’t an insult… it’s literally GOOD ENOUGH!
I have a confession. I don’t know how to be a farmer.

I grew up on this land, but we didn’t farm it. We had a few (OK, a lot of) critters over the years but they were pets, not livestock. I don’t know how to raise a cow. I don’t know which breed of goats to start with. I don’t know how to build a rabbit colony.

In fact along the way there have been a host of things I didn’t know how to do.

I didn’t know, that is, until I DID!

We live in a fabulous era where all the information, opinions, and resources we could want are literally at our fingertips. Don’t know where the nearest gas station is? There’s an app for that. Lonely and need a date? Several apps for that. How to train your dragon? Well, that one’s a movie, but lots of info lives on the interwebz depicting how to train everything from your puppy to your iguana to your baby brother. Yup, it’s all out there and FREE to anyone wanting to learn.

Unfortunately that means there is also a lot of pressure to get it PERFECT the first time. If you read everything there is to read about how to purchase, raise, and care for baby chicks, you will likely feel it’s an impossible task that only seasoned veterans should attempt. Afterall, what if the brooder temp falls below 90` during the first week? Who can stay up 24/7 making sure that doesn’t happen?? SURELY you shouldn’t attempt chicken rearing if you don’t have a professionally built coop with exact dimensions to suit the breed and number of chickens all completed WELL in advance of getting said chickens!

And opinions? OH the opinions! Do THIS! Don’t do THAT!! Who can keep up?? If I took nothing else away from the beekeeping class I attended, I will always remember this: If you ask 100 beekeepers how you should tend your bees, you will get 105 different answers!

Want to know how to raise chickens? Ask your grandparents. If they didn’t raise them, good chance they knew someone who did. And you know what? They didn’t have the interwebz to tell them how to get it PERFECT, so they tried some stuff and figured out how to make it GOOD ENOUGH.

If we’d waited until we knew how to make things perfect we’d probably still be waiting for our first flock of chickens. Instead I read enough to have a pretty good idea how to NOT kill a box full of chicks, got Brian some ideas about what we needed in a coop, and placed an order online with a hatchery that got some good reviews. When the post office called to tell me the chicks were there we didn’t have a coop, we’d borrowed a feeding trough for a brooder, and had food, water, and a heat lamp to get them started. Then we started DOING!

The first flock was a little daunting. We tried to make it all perfect. Food, temperature, coop dimensions. Things went well, but we probably put a lot more PERFECT in it than was necessary.

Much like a lot of parents will tell you - first child = perfect set up.

Next few kids = GOOD ENOUGH!

Our newest batch of chicks has a heat lamp. No thermometer. When they stop huddling under it I’ll raise it higher. When they start avoiding it I’ll remove it all together. When they run low on food and water I'll refill it. Find some worms in the yard? Throw them in (smallish ones) and see what the girls do.

Remember, their mama wouldn’t be feeding them medicated granulated formulated poultry starter. She’d been feeding them bugs… so…

Housing? When we moved here with our established flock I looked at our 40 year old shed and said “I think we can make that work”, and wouldn’t you know it… we did.

I’m not saying you should jump in without doing some research. I’m saying don’t wait until you’re an expert to TRY something!

Start a hobby farm.
Take a shooting class.
Remodel a house.
Start a beehive.
Paint a portrait.
Write a book.
Start a business.
Prepare a new meal.

Do some research, use common sense, but remember if you aren’t failing, you aren’t learning! You may never be PERFECT at everything, but if you don’t start you also won’t ever be GOOD at anything.
​
Don't let a fear of PERFECT keep you from being GOOD!

​Cast against a grey spring sky, the marquee sign for our temporarily shuttered small town movie theater speaks volumes.

I call the current situation a speed bump. An unintended reminder. A call to slow down the crazy bustle we've created for ourselves, effectively moving our ambitions toward surviving our lives rather than LIVING them.

Surviving another day of work, another meeting, another temper tantrum, another recital. Surviving the lifestyle we've built so that years from now our post-retirement selves can enjoy life.

Why not enjoy life now?

Here's your chance. A trial run. A call to recognize the good things in your life even as circumstances hurl one bad thing after another directly into your path. There is still a lot of good, but sometimes we have to be forced to STOP and LOOK for it.

This isn't the end, friends. It's a detour, it's a diversion, for some of you it's a turning point. A chance to pivot, if you prefer

I wonder how many of us will make life altering choices in the coming weeks. Decisions about family and our future, contemplating options and freshly opened doors we never would have considered without a speed bump to slow us down.

No, this isn't the end. It's a thing we will get through, together, because that's what human beings do.
We pick each other up, and we move.

Onward.
​
I Still Believe.

​Happy Tucker Tuesday!
Whew! Boy is there a lot happening right now.
First of all, mama invented a new game and let me tell you it’s really something! You can see all the players in the pic below, it’s really simple. See we have this kitty named Marley and she really likes to play with me, I can tell because when she sees me she takes off running so I can chase her which is really nice of her because I LOVE to chase things! Mama and daddy yell and cheer and say my name really loud when I chase the kitty, so I know they like that part of the game, too! Sometimes Marley jumps up on that kitty tree thing so I can practice my jumping skills. I can’t quite get there yet, but I’ll keep trying!
So today mama said she got an idea from her friend “Linda” that she could put water in a squirty thingie and shoot it at me while I’m chasing Marley. I’m not sure I completely understand the objective of this particular step, but it’s really distracting when she sprays water my direction! The first time I stopped really fast because WHOA I didn’t see THAT coming and I had to stop and see what was all over the floor there in case I needed to clean up something yummy. The next time she accidentally got the water all over ME so I had to stop again and clean it off because I don’t like to be wet or dirty and stuff and mama knows that so she waited patiently while I cleaned it up. And then the NEXT time she accidentally got me right in the FACE! Now, I’m not one to complain about much because I really like playing games and the kitty uses her sharp toes sometimes which is way worse than water in the face, but I have to say I didn’t really feel like playing with the kitty for a while after that one. It made me jump and then sneeze and sneeze and I don’t think she meant for it to make me stop playing but I decided to take a break after that, all the same.
The people on the picture box sure have a lot of things to say lately, but it seems like the thing people are most excited about has to do with some kind of saint (Bernard? ) and all of his green stuff. I don’t know what “green” is, so mama tried to get some of my toys together and told me those are “green”. I don’t see it, but people seem really excited. I mean I guess I understand because apparently my favorite squeaker ball and favorite bouncy ball and my very first chewy bone are all “green” and I get pretty excited about all of those things. So, whatever your “green” stuff is today I hope it’s as cool as mine!
Oh yeh, the people on the picture box also talk a lot about some kind of “corn-teen” because of some kind of bugs (and I sorta get it because I don’t like bugs because they bug me and I run at them and they run on the air and get away from me only sometimes they don’t and then they taste gross when I lick them ) and those people seem kinda worried about it but mama and daddy don’t seem all that worried. Mama says we have plenty of puppy food and treats and we can still go for walks and play with the chickens because they aren’t worried about the bugs that are causing the “corn-teen”. All the same, it might be something worth keeping an eye out for, so hopefully all of you are safe and have plenty of puppy food, too. I climbed up here on mama’s shoulders while she’s working so I can keep an eye out for those bugs and let her know if I see them (or cars, or chickens, or birds, or aliens ) and that way she won’t be distracted by anything while she’s working and she can concentrate on her… whatever that stuff is she’s doing.
I can’t wait for next Tucker Tuesday. I don’t know why yet… but mama says it’s going to be exciting with lots of stuff to write about so – I can’t wait!
Your “corn-teen” friend,
Tucker Bear
PS – if your name is “Linda” and you have any more bright ideas… don’t call mama about them