California Trace

Northbound Mario

Well, today Mario and I embarked today on a new adventure in our careers and lives!! We are now distributors for California Trace, an equine vitamin/mineral supplement.

I have been feeding it to my own horses for several years now, and then I became a dealer... selling the product to my interested hoof trimming clients. Around April-ish, we started entertaining the idea of becoming more involved in it as a distributor, and talking to the developer of the product about the options. Somehow, and to be honest neither of us are really sure how it all really took place... we decided to buy a pallet (1 ton) of the product. To do so we needed a loan, and after a disappointing loan complication - my mom came through for us!! THANK YOU MOM! You are helping us make our dreams happen!!

She lent us the money to buy the first load... which we will need to pay her back for of course plus save the $ to buy a replacement load. But, we are both (actually all 4 of us I think - the developer, Mario and I, and my mom) feeling very optimistic about this new endeavor.

Selling the product enables me to ultimately trim less (less wear and tear on my body, stress, fatigue, time, etc.) and enjoy everything else a bit more! I'll post more about our plans and ideas for it in future posts, but for now just wanted to share the good news...

Today after frantically getting trims done and boots fit/checked/delivered, we drove 3 hours north to King City to pick up our pallet. The drive was remarkably quiet - no traffic or complications... just straight up north, then a few miles off the exit, easy peasy load up and next thing we know... we are headed back home with 1 ton of horse supplement in the back of the truck!!

Me with our first pallet of product!

Mario needed to unload the pallet from the truck when we got home because he needs the truck for work in the morning. Since the product comes in 50 lb. bags, and we don't own a forklift, ahem! - we needed to get each of them into the house personally one by one - that was 20 trips each! We are temporarily putting them inside the house until we get the garage set up for rodent-free storage...

I already got our first 10 bag (10 lb each) order from a local feed store!!! It will be delivered on Monday. That was through the grace of a wonderful client. She's the owner of the mare that I posted about last year that was barely able to move due to her founder - and then one day walked up to me like a normal horse!

I have an order for 3 (10 lb) bags to be delivered tommorrow, so I had to fill my first retail bags tonight. We have a much more efficient system in the works for the future, but for now let's just say the procedure was rudimentary! Still, the end result is the same... 5 neat little bags of product hand packed by moi. Pretty farking exciting! :)