The phone rang one afternoon, and the man on the other end was stating “we heard about your family winery and horse ranch, and how your husband/wife team works together and would love to film you for an upcoming series on entrepreneurs who follow their dreams.”   As my husband and I do when any new opportunity presents itself…I found myself saying “sure, come on over”, and three weeks later, a film crew arrived to the Wine Tasting Room.  

The Actor Chris Field and his partners have developed a new show called “American Underdog” to highlight entrepreneurs who take their dreams and make it into a business.  His goal was to film us in the Wine Tasting Room, and in a vineyard that William planted, as well as our home and horse ranch, and hear the “secrets” of our success.  It was a lot of fun, with customers coming in, agreeing to be on the film and William and I answering questions on camera, while the host was just off the screen.  At the same time, we were serving wine in the Tasting room, running our newly opened Farmer’s Market in the plaza, and handling the details of taking care of the film crew’s needs and requests.  Most of the questions were easy, until they asked me, “so, how do you like working with your husband?”, and I answered…”do you mean today, or in general?” which had the director yell “Cut!”.

When they arrived at the ranch, it was fun taking these “city folk” around the ranch and to see the horses.  The host was hugging Princessa’s head…like a puppy, which is not generally how you handle a horse, but she was very good and patient.  Then William and I saddled the horses and rode toward the cameras at a fast clip to capture our love of Peruvian Paso horses!  The final scene was to be us in a Mercedes convertable with the top down and driving down the driveway…like it was the end of the show and we are driving away into the sunset.   Except the top wouldn’t go down…and then it wouldn’t go up…it was literally stuck halfway!!!  So much for our Hollywood debut!  

The show is to air in the fall and we are excited to see the film footage when it is complete.  Whenever we say yes to a new opportunity, we never know which way it will lead us, but that’s part of the adventure!