Some good longtime friends graced Lifewater Ranch today.  We had a great time catching up and they enjoyed my amenities immensely.

Working on the pool.

With several delays we finally have our new liner in and it is beautiful!

To celebrate our new pool we will have a free open house on Saturday, August 17th, 2019 from 9am to 9pm.  Come and check out our place, enjoy the pool and hot-tub.  Check out our horse-shoe courses and our disc golf run.  Tour the house and our 160 acres full of creeks, springs and ponds and book your next stay if you like while you’re here.

Lifewater Ranch is the vision of Sanford Staab, an ex-Microsoft employee, also known as The Chess Guy, who has a vision to share his own home with others.  This remote yet posh estate is ideal for family reunions, corporate retreats, campers, fishermen, hunters and for those who just need a break from the city.

We offer reasonable rates and flexible options for small groups to enjoy a vacation rental, corporate event venue, B&B, RV or camping retreat as so desired.

See our new sign located at the end of the Kooskia bridge where Highway 12 and 13 intersect.

Book now for next year or next week and enjoy some of the highest quality amenities in the area at an affordable price.  See our website at LifewaterRanch.com or our facebook page at facebook.com/lifewaterranch.

The vision is to bring in money from outside of our area and pay local talent such as gardeners, chefs, herbalists, lumber jacks, cleaning services, event coordinators and marketing experts, as demand will support, to enliven our economy and attract people to visit our area.

Kooskia and its surroundings are absolutely beautiful.  We can see the growth in places like Boise and McCall but our area needs economic stimulus to thrive as well.  Lifewater Ranch is just a tiny enterprise to help us all prosper, share what we have with the world, and enjoy life better.

Come to our open house and experience one way life can be enjoyed to its fullest.

You can also contact us at LifewaterRanch@gmail.com

Lots is happening at Lifewater Ranch.  We almost have out new pool liner, but not yet so not post to show how it looks yet … any day now!

So here are our posts since our last newsletter:

  They Seek for a Sign

 A new arrival at Lifewater Ranch

 Highwater at Lifewater Ranch

 Our first flowers of the season!

Note that we get many many responses to our newsletter sign-up form by bots.  We can tell because the required user name is always a random number.

We want to let people know that bots are using them so they can change their email address or investigate how this is happening.

If you got this newsletter but don’t want any more you can unsubscribe simply by emailing to lifewaterranch@gmail.com with a subject line of “unsubscribe”.

We only send our our newsletter a few times a year.

Check out our calendar and pick a date to reserve.

Our rates are especially attractive for large groups and week-long stays.

To make our place a little more well known I decided it was time to put a sign up on the highway.  I have hesitated due to business license issues and found out that people outside the city limits in Idaho County do not need business licenses to do what I am doing and so advertising openly seem less scary to me.

I found a great place on the highway near the first Kooskia bridge and found that Nezperce Indians own the land which exempts it from all kinds of regulations you would normally have to meet.

I took my first large piece of cedar we harvested and milled from my property as the base for the sign and carved it out with my router and painted the letters white. That board used to be in our living-room on display for guests which I would occasionally use to raise my feet.  I plan to add attached signs in various colors to call out our many features.

This should help us fill in this summer with guests and help cash-flow here at the ranch.

It’s a little scary to open up this business to a wider and more spontaneous audience but I am excited at the prospects.

The goal isn’t just to make money for myself but to bring in cash from outside the area to support people here.  With sufficient cash flow I can hire cleanup crews, yard crews, cooks, herbalists, hunting guides, fishing guides, masseuse’s and other local talent to make people’s stay here even better and provide income for many people in the area.

This area is paradise yet is economically depressed.  Hopefully Lifewater Ranch can be a small solution to this problem.

As I was preparing breakfast this morning I discovered a new little one!  A surprise indeed as it had appeared that our only cow had a miscarriage several months ago but NO!.  I don’t yet know if it is a he or a she – more info will be coming.

Praise God for such a blessing!  This is such great timing too as we have guests arriving in July that will be able to enjoy watching this little one grow and scamper!

The whole Kooskia area has been flooded this last week.  People say they haven’t seen this much water in 28 years!  I am happy to report that it looks like Lifewater Ranch got through it intact – Praise God!

Here are some fun pix of the water on our property over the past few days.

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At Lifewater Ranch, April Showers bring…. April Flowers!

We still have a lot of rain but some days are spectacular and the flowers are coming up fast!  This is a magical time to be at Lifewater Ranch – life is springing fourth before your very eyes!  Consider doing a trial visit – you can rent a single room overnight for just $70/person and get to know the place at very little cost.  A nice (we’re talkin NICE dude!) breakfast is on us.  See our Reservations\Rates page for details.

So it is late March 2019 and here are the blogs we have posted since our last newsletter:

Spring is springing 

Some of the nearby sites 

Milling at Lifewater Ranch 

Kamiah Light Parade

Its time for a new pool liner

The swing that adapts 

Enjoy our posts and pix.

As the weather changes so does Lifewater Ranch’s activity.

Our Cow, Taffy is close to giving birth.  She disappeared for a few days and had us worried as she was too early to calve.  Luckily in a few days she was back enjoying the last of our winter hay and she looks great!  If you decided to visit us over the spring odds are good you will see her little one new born.

This year I hope to attack some of the wild rose bushes and berry bushes that are taking over.  There is a very simply way to do it by cutting the bushes down to the ground and applying a little roundup on the stalks.  I hear this works very well.  I don’t spray because I don’t want to contaminate the ground here.  Hopefully this method will kill what I need to without compromising the pristine condition of the soil.

April and May are open for monthly winter rentals and Wwoofers.  Its an excellent opportunity for someone that doesn’t want to spend much cash to see and enjoy much of what Lifewater Ranch has to offer during our off-season.

Some of our Woofers enjoying an evening after a hard days work.

The pool liner is shot and we need a new one soon.  The problem is cash.  But some income is expected soon that will allow us to get a new liner and this will make the pool look like new!

So sad, no new liner yet.  It will go in when the weather is better.

Of course there is re-staining the deck – I really want to get away from wood somehow eventually!  We are still not quite done refurbishing the deck railings but I hope to finish that in the next few weeks.

Deck and the railings need work.

Pruning the orchard this year will likely be skipped but maybe we can get more chips around them to continue to improve the apples and yield.

My daughter enjoying one of our great apples from the orchard.

Also our tulips will be coming up in April, another good reason to plan a nice spring stay here.  We have people booking up the summer months – but we can always use more!

Blooming Daffodils by the pool after an unexpected hail storm.

So, just keeping you up to date on the latest here at the ranch.  We’ll leave a light on for you.

The Palouse area is one of the hidden golden nuggets of the west.  Idaho is so beautiful!  Lifewater Ranch is in a deep forest, a little different than this movie shows but the sites here are not far away and the peace is…. MARVELOUS!