A Tour of Tumbleweed Ranch and more

Yesterday I went up to Chandler with Josh Wright to explore Tumbleweed Ranch, an eccentric ranch that serves as a meeting ground for festivals and educational excursions to learn of Chandler's farming background. The purpose of touring Tumbleweed Ranch was to determine whether it would serve as an interesting field trip destination for the upcoming council retreat.

The ranch featured an amphitheater for outdoor shows and presentations, a garden, displays of historic farming tools, historic houses, and animals! There are 2 alpine goats, a pot-belly pig, and a bunch of chickens housed in the area. The historic houses were my favorite. There were two set-up as historic single-family homes, and one as an old-fashioned grocery store. Here is a video-tour:

The grocery store was extremely interesting and fun. They had stocked it to look entirely like a grocery store in 1920's farmland. I felt like I had stepped back in time. I could look at an antique cash register, see samples of what money looked like (back in the day they were much larger!), and realize what life must have been life back then in comparison to shopping at today's supermarkets.

The Tumbleweed Ranch is now home to the ostrich festivals that Chandler is famous for. They also feature classes in urban farming, and hold Cuck Wagon Cook-offs.

I really enjoyed getting to see what other cities did for their parks and attractions. It's a great way to start thinking about what your own town can do. I think the farming aspect is something that is definitely relatable to the Marana environment. In addition to preserving the historic farming tools, houses, and practices, the ranch is also located near Playtopia, an amazing playground with a farm theme.

In Project News...

I've begun an interesting project on researching Marana's history and looking through old collections of photographs to determine how best to outline an "Images of America" book for the town. This is an exciting endeavor, because I've seen these books in stores for other areas (Tucson, Old Tucson, Tombstone, Goodyear, etc), and thought it was high time Marana got its own publication. So far I've managed to create a rough historical outline of the major points in history. Now I need to figure out what photos we have to go with those events. I went down into the heritage center and started purusing old photo boxes that have been stored in there. There is quite a charming collection! It don't think it is enough, however, and plan to contact some additional resources for more images.

In addition to that, I've returned to my work on the Emergency Support Function #15 for public information. Before I had just created a general list of references from other municipalities highlighting what they used that I found to be applicable to the town's version. Now it's time to create the actual draft.