Biannual Reports from
Ancient Oaks Farm
to the Kriz Family, report #3

From: Bruce Damer

To: Joe and Donna Kriz

Dear Joe and Donna,

Well it has been a while since my last report to you (in Spring 2001) but I wanted to give you another update and include some mail that came in the box for Kriz family members (along with something personal and historical that I found while clearing wood out from the mechanics shed). I hope you are well and your new home is all finished. Galen and I would love to visit you sometime there on trips north (perhaps in July or August of this year?). Let us know if we could do that.

The biggest news of all is that Galen and I are now married! We had our own private ceremony (official) in Lake Tahoe on September 7^th and then followed up with several wedding celebration events for friends and family all over the country, one of which was here. See the photo of us in our Boulder Creek ceremony below held in the living room here in the house.

The big projects

Ancient Oaks Farm (as we are now calling it) continues to amaze us and show us the way of what to do at each step. See photos we picked out below. The big stuff done in the past year and a half, for your information included:

1. We redid all PG&E Electrical drops, neighbor’s property no longer goes via our pole and underground to them, this took about a year of paperwork with PG&E. Our drop now goes right to the house, and then from the peak of the house roof over to the barn. We will relocate the pole to the upper meadow.
2. We fenced in the entire center (2.5 acres) of the property! That is over 2000 lineal feet of fencing, much of it redwood. Deer fencing in the back so no more deer on the property proper. Now there is total privacy from all neighbors. This includes a dozen gates. We replaced the railings in the upper meadow with this fencing. The barn is fenced in across the front and the entire place feels much more private now.
3. I made a petition and had our road officially named “Ancient Oaks Way”, ordered and put up the sign. All of our addresses are now changed. You will see this sign if you come through the area again. I know you had a sign on the power pole at Bear Creek Road that said Ancient Oaks, so I paid homage to that by naming the street the same. At the same time the post office moved all our rural postboxes up in front of the houses so mail is very convenient now.
4. I built a computer museum in the barn! I call it the DigiBarn Computer Museum and the three rooms upstairs plus some of the downstairs houses over 500 vintage computers.
5. We built a culvert under the community road that now takes the water from the upper road down into the main stream and via our culverts. I did this in conjunction with the neighbors, all of whom actually paid their fair share. This was done to save the road (or give it a few more years) but taking the main storm surge runoff off the road. See the original Ancient Oaks Community Road Drainage Proposal here.
6. I Designed and had fenced in a great garden area below the greenhouse where I think you had beds in the past. It is very productive. Eddie Ranch supplied us dumptruck loads of horse manure and I had a good first year from this garden with tomatoes, cantaloupes, cucumbers and peppers.
7. We replaced carpets in the house with hardwood floors all except for the front (pink) room, which is next. This solves various cat (peeing) problems.

Documenting the history of Ancient Oaks

Any old or even recent pictures you might care to make copies of (I will reimburse you) of Ancient Oaks here including documentation of your many construction projects would be much appreciated! I am building a history web site about this place and I have so far, including only one picture of the house, from the early 60s. Any gaps you could fill in here would be kindly appreciated.

By the way, do you know much about the early history here, including the original construction dates of the house, barn, and prior families? I found news about a family named Ray who the old fire chief said raised eggs for sale in the valley.

Animals

Blackie’s two offspring that we adopted (Max and Mix) are doing very well along with Galen’s cat Min. The potbellie pigs had one litter of which only one pig (called Piglet) survived so we had the male fixed. So we have one happy pig family living in the outside horse stalls and inside in one horse room in the barn.

Again, any pictures at all or writing about how you did such a wonderful job here would be appreciated. Its all a bit of a blank to me. All I recall is your stories and descriptions when we walked around (like the apache Indian chief authorizing some of the tile patterns?).

Warmest regards to you and please stop in for a visit here any time (let us know ahead of time).

Bruce and Galen

Photo Gallery

Fence in front of property	Fence line at top of property
Gate through to lower garden	New garden beds below greenhouse
New culvert under road at top of property	New Ancient Oaks Farm sign
Pear harvest	Grape harvest around fire pit (new bower and arch)
Gordon Candee looking at pole where his power will be rerouted from	PG&E Drops the lines from the old pole
New Ancient Oaks Way sign	Putting up sign
Harwood floor where green carpet used to be	New gate in front of the house
Crowds at the DigiBarn Computer Museum opening, July 13, 2002	Fenceposts marching up into the woods

That’s it, see you some time!

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