When we were growing up and going to school in Ballard, the Fourth of July always signaled the halfway point in summer vacation.

I remember marching with the Ballard Drum and Bugle Corps in the parade through Solvang as part of the celebration in the Valley.

Several members of the Drum and Bugle Corps, including Mike Burchardi, David Pedersen and our director, Herb Swanson, would end the parade and run back along the route to join the Village Band, playing atop the Carlsberg Beer Wagon making its way down the same route.

After the parade, many folks would go home and gather up their picnic baskets and head to Nojoqui Park for a community barbecue.

As I recall, many of the events for the Fourth were sponsored by the Santa Ynez Valley Coordinating Council. For many years, the council sponsored a queen contest as a way of raising money to support youth activities throughout the summer.

Usually, there were three girls representing various organizations in the Valley. They would begin their fundraising activities shortly after the Elks Rodeo in mid-June.

I believe they used to have a fundraising dinner at the Veterans Memorial Hall on the night of the 3rd to announce the Fourth of July queen for that year.

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It was all part of the patriotic, small-town, rural celebrations that are held all across our great country on this special day.

I’m sure my wife, Karen, and I will take the kids to see this year’s Fourth parade wind its way through the streets of Solvang. The community picnic and barbecue, once held at Nojoqui, has been replaced by a get-together in Solvang Park.

I hope you are able to come out and enjoy a real hometown celebration.

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Summer months are a great time for celebrations. Just a couple of weeks ago, I was up at my father-in-law’s cattle ranch in Woodlake to celebrate Father’s Day. The weather was hot, a preview to what was coming our way in mid-June.

We had a barbecue for family and friends on Saturday afternoon. Saturday morning found us setting up tables and getting ready for the big event.

My father-in-law, Jerry Beasley, asked me to repair a leg on one of the folding tables while he prepared some mountain oysters to deep-fry from the last branding.

I went out to their barn, where one end is set aside as a shop, to find the parts and tools I was going to use on the broken table. I found what I needed and quickly repaired the table.

I returned to the barn and began to look around. There, in one corner, was an old anvil, behind it an array of different-length pieces of metal stacked up against the tin wall. An older bolt bin made of wood was hanging on the wall behind the anvil.

Some of the bins were covered with spider webs. Against the other wall, I found shovels, some new, some about halfway worn and some with the handles broken waiting for a rainy-day repair.

On the north wall stood a workbench made from two, big 6-by-6 pieces of oil-stained wood. I believe the floor was dirt, and it, too, had its share of oil soaked in from different repairs throughout the years.

Older ranch shops like Jerry’s always have a distinct musty smell, kind of a mix of oil and diesel, sweat, dust and dirt. Any of us who have worked on an older ranch know that scent in a minute.

In another room, off to the side of the shop area, you pick up the scent of worn leather, and there in the corner are all the saddles, bridles and horse blankets Jerry and his crew use on the ranch.

Just past where the saddles are kept is an area used to shoe the horses, complete with a worn wooden floor and hitching rail.

It is easy to let yourself go back in time and imagine what life must have been like on the big cattle ranches of yesteryear.

I started to recall the huge barns located on the Paicines Ranch, where I worked in the early 1980s, once home to the huge draft horses used for farming before the days of tractors.

A great place to cool off in the summertime, with their wooden floors and stalls made from beautiful 2-by-12 lumber. A real link to our rich, agrarian past.

A barn half-full of hay, a rope for swinging and maybe your favorite dog make a great playground for kids lucky enough to live out in the country. It makes an even better playground for the kids that come to visit from town.

I hope you enjoyed a great Fourth of July holiday, and remember, the best half of summer has yet to come.

Kevin Merrill is a vineyard manager for Mesa Vineyard Management in Santa Maria. He is a board member for the Santa Barbara County Farm Bureau and the Central Coast Wine Growers’ Association Foundation. He can be reached at

kmerrill@mesavineyard.com.

July 13, 2008