him Cola. He spends some of his time sleeping alongside Walter, our young Morgan. We were adopted by a cat who came to us from the forest fires that swept through the country a few years ago. She lets us call her Sage. There is a big deer population in the valley and they quite enjoy nibbling on our plants, both vegetables and flowers.
We had to put in a floating dock at the lake because the water fluctu- ates too much for a permanent dock. We usually count on some of our friends to help us take it out in the fall and back in early in the spring. It’s Linda’s favourite place. A tractor is another necessity, as we do get some snow in the winter. We have a lot of company, mostly during the summer months. We seem to gather in one of three places; with the horses, at the lake or around the camp fire where we cook most of our meals. When we’re alone, Linda is often on the lake  and I’m on one of my horses, riding the country. It can be a tough life out here in the frontier.
We bought our property in the ranching country of Nicola Valley between Kamloops and Merritt on the old highway in 1999. It is situated between two large ranches in the valley on Stump Lake. Linda wanted a vacation property on a lake and I wanted to be on a ranch. We often kid that it is Linda’s lake and my Ranch. We completed the barn with our living quarters in the fall of 2000. We did some fencing the following year and moved our horse, Dancer, to the property. Later we added two more horses. Two years later we finished Linda’s pottery studio and moved all her equipment and supplies up from her studio in Langley. Of course no ranch would be complete without a dog so, we bought a Border Collie and named