Reminiscing The Past 35 Years; My 2nd House, 1988

Since I am in California visiting family I am going to go and see the 2nd house I bought to, remind me of all the crazy projects I put together over a 24 year span. The idea and concept when I bought the ranch was to create Rancho De Las Palmas Special Events and Equestrian Center in Moorpark, California.

​​I bought the ranch in 1988, when I was a young lad of 26 years old, and I closed escrow and moved into my 2nd house.

I had to figure out a way for the ranch to pay for itself so I started a horse boarding facility and had the idea of building and creating an event center to hold weddings and special occasions such as proms, reunions or any type of get-together to hold up to about 350 guests.

When I bought the 15 acres farm, it had a nice custom built house on the property and also had a 10 stall barn for horses with a lighted 100x300ft riding arena, but it was set up for a person to have a few horses in the yard.

If I wanted to make a profitable business out of the ranch I would have to figure out how this property could pay for itself by creating a few business ventures on it, and maybe in time have a fun and profitable business.

I started this project in 1988 and then sold the ranch to my brother in August 2011. Now he and his wife run the premier wedding and equestrian facility.

In the 24 years of creating and operating the ranch from 1988 to August 2011, we slowly created a one of a kind setting for weddings, special events and a top notch riding/equestrian academy.

Over the years, we built several more horse barns for an increased horse capacity of 60+ head, and had 2 professional jumping/show trainers teaching English style competitive riding full time on the facility.

It took about 7 years of construction to slowly create and build the wedding facilities, adding a lake with a bridge and island, 13 water features, parking lot to hold 250 cars, large closed gazebo that could seat 250 people, large bathrooms and caterer area/BBQ serving areas etc.

We started our first wedding event in 1994 or so of about 150 guests, and over the next 15 years of operation we had serviced 800+ large weddings at the ranch and were voted #1 Private Wedding Event Facility in Ventura County.

Over the years we held at least 20 large jumping/competition horse shows, large sales and auctions, company picnics, a host of specialty fundraisers and filmed many movies like “Air America”, and many popular commercials on the property as well.

The ranch turned into my own personal animal sanctuary with over 200+ exotic birds, 250+ water turtles, 6 exotic deer, many large snakes up to 15 ft long like Anaconda and python varieties, a variety of large Iguana lizards, 15 pot belly pigs, goats, miniature horses, raised jack russell terriers to name a few of the animals in the Dr. Bizarre zoo 🙂

It’s great to look back at one’s life and see what you have created in your lifetime. When I look at all of the projects I built on the ranch I can’t believe all the creative work we did 7 days a week for 24 years straight – it was a project of love that never stopped.

When I say we worked on this project for 24 years, 6-7 days a week – I am not kidding! We had about 7-8 guys and a few gals that worked full time, mostly 6 days a week to build the ranch and keep the special events and horse facilities going.

Most of the workers lived on the farm with their respective families. So, we probably had 12 people living on the ranch at any given time. Since we had a good set of minds at the ranch, we never really had to go outside of ourselves to create anything. If we did not know how to do something we all learned as we went along, one day at a time.

Watch this short 2 min video showing some of the grounds at Rancho De Las Palmas

The best masonry workers we had found consistently were from Mexico because they do most of their building with concrete in their country. The most qualified guys we found to work with the horses were from the central Mexico area, and were super familiar with horses.

My loyal and best friend was the ranch foreman Pedro Abrego. Pedro has been working with me since 1988 from the beginning, until he passed away a few years ago. He was working with me for over 35 years. He was in charge of all levels of construction, masonry, landscaping and responsible to check on all of the other workers duties and work. Pedro was from El Salvador.

He will always be cherished, missed and never forgotten.

The landscapers we had were a family from Guatemala, and they were experts with agriculture and arborists. So, this is how I had the chance to learn over the years to speak Spanish fluently.

We also had several carpenters and electricians I found from patients I met at my Doctor’s Chiropractic office in Moorpark.

We did all of the work and creative projects ourselves without the use of outside contractors or professionals. In other words we did all of the work ourselves without any prior experience.

Since my brother bought the ranch in late 2011 he has completely, beautifully upgraded the main house, added many water features around the lake and currently rents the 5 bed house out for vacation rentals, and also can be used as the wedding suite. The house can sleep up to 12 people on this one of a kind property.

If you live in the southern California area, Moorpark area, you may be interested in having your wedding or any type of special event there.

Here is the link to see some wedding photos from the ranch: Rancho De Las Palmas Wedding Pictures.

One of the reasons doing this video is to show that a dream of your reality can come true with perseverance, discipline and inspiration – over time.

Watch more on TikTok!

Hope you enjoy this “Reminiscing The Past 35 Years; My 2nd House, 1988” Video 🙂

Dr. Robert

To become an Earther Member Click Here!
or Login to see the Private Videos.