LET THERE BE TREES!

We’re doing well and moving along her at the ranch albeit with minor age-related glitches in the get-a-long.

One of those glitches is being overcome by the implementation of our newly discovered “green stuff”. I think Connie said it was “All Day Long Green”. It has so many ingredients in it that I’ve lost count. But, from what I can tell, it’s all good stuff. The parts and pieces range from wheat grass to what all. There is bee pollen, royal jelly, and the equivalent of a basketful of fruits and veggies.

 In any event, Connie and I can actually feel a difference (read: after trying a number of “We can make the old people feel better” products). There is more stamina during the day and we seem to sleep longer. And, I’m not as hungry as usual! I’ve stopped strip mining “Home Town Buffet” and other such places. We’ve only just started our “green regimen” but I’m still losing weight. I’m down to about 230 lbs. I need to get down to 195 or I’ll need to start flying twin engine airplanes from now on.

 You wouldn’t believe how busy we are! We have been “thinnin’ (as in, “I’ll do the thinnin’ around here, Baba!” – Quick Draw McGraw) on how to make the best use of our property. So, we decided to purchase a bunch of fruit trees and grapevine starts to add to our orange and tangerine trees. I think there are a couple of “quat” trees but I’m not sure which ones they are. They’re not loquat or kumquats so they must be sash-squats. Maybe not. Add that to our four 8’ x 8’ x 30” above ground garden boxes, and our honey bee revival program (I’ll explain), and you can understand how we can now call ourselves “ranchers”!

We now have orange, tangerine, plum, apricot, peach, apple and pomegranate trees. The apple trees are second in number to the oranges. There are about 22 orange trees and there are 9 apple trees (an arbitrary number since we can only stuff so many trees into so many holes around here). The others number 2 to 4 each.

 The grapes are planted on the west side of the lawn in front. They’ll make a nice fence (though we don’t really need a fence as such because we have good neighbors). Varieties are Black Manuko, Thompson, and a hybrid of some kind. The guy we purchased the starts from tinkers with them and comes up with his own home brewed varieties.

 The garden boxes are now productive. Until we got the water regimen dialed in, we were quite successful in the “Connie and Randy Tomato Plant Eradication Program”. We thought that we were over-watering. However, we misread the compost material and were actually under-watering. The damage was minimal losing three tomato, three or four squash, a watermelon, two okra, and cucumbers plants. The remainder of our well-babysat flora seems to be thriving.

 The tomatoes will be replanted as will the others. The best we can tell, we have the price of our tomatoes down to about 22 dollars each if the new plants produce 40 pounds of tomatoes each.

I found myself up at 5:15 AM the other day. After working until 11 AM as “Farmer Ran”, I was well toasted. After 5 hours of “dirt work”, there weren’t too many parts of my aching body that weren’t begging to be transferred to a less hostile place (like, maybe Afghanistan). It took three days to recover.

After we harvested a wonderful 30 lbs of honey, our bees packed up and left the ranch. They even took their honey! The best that we can tell, the rent was too high and we shouldn’t have tipped the bears where to get some free honey. Actually, we think that there was an insufficient supply of flowers on which they could dine. So, they headed for a more productive farm or ranch. I hope they packed a lunch ‘cause the only place that has flowers about now that I can tell is the flower beds around the Porterville Library, and Cayucos over at the coast.  Everything else is brown.

That also means that, one of our latest goals is to re-populate our bee hives then populate the area with perennial flowers so Rancho Relaxo will be more hospitable for the apian crowd. That way we can have an indefinite supply of honey. Honey is our friend.

Connie is trying out her huge 7 quart pressure canner. As of late, she has canned zucchini squash, green beans, and corn. She’s really getting the hang of this and is enjoying it immensely. When the garden starts producing she’ll put up some tomatoes, eggplant, more corn, and crook-neck squash. She also has a large canning pot for “hot bath canning” if she needs it.

If you are still not convinced that we are a real ranch, we are also now worm wranglers! Yep, pardner! We now have a herd of worms! We rustled up some “red wigglers”, made us up some compost bins, added some compost, shredded paper, blended food waste (veggies and such), and shoved a ton of worms in. They’ll digest that mess in a just a few days. After that, we’ll have a harvest of worm castings that make for a great fertilizer. When the worm population doubles in a couple of months, we’ll put some in the garden boxes.

The local jam session is about to start again. They suspended it for the month of July due to monetary concerns. Seems they wouldn’t make as much money if they let us play. It’s a lot of work but it’s also a lot of fun to jam with the local folks. It helps to keep the rust off the ol’ fingers, too. It’s a “BYO” affair and everyone does just that. Some bring a few brewskis while others bring wine. A few just bring a couple of ears. It’s not unusual for a family to bring their dinner and camp on a table and eat while listening to the music.

Recently, while on the way to a client’s house on Globe Road, we happened upon a small doe with twin fawns! They were contentedly dining in a large meadow and certainly unconcerned about the passing creatures in the Freestar van. Reckon they already knew that my freezer is full and I don’t need to refill it. From time to time we have seen a small herd of deer in these same parts. Globe Road is also a neat place to find several coveys of quail. They are quite thick in this area. A covey meanders across our back yard from time to time.

 A couple of years ago, Ol’ Dead Eye Ran bagged a quail with a .22 cal pump pellet rifle at a range of about 60’. It was a head shot, of all things! The instructions that came with him (you ain’t buyin’ that, right?) said to park him in the refrigerator for three days (undressed) then process him. I did that. However, I did forget to apprise Connie that there was “something” in her ice box. Accordingly, she waltzed into the kitchen, opened the fridge door and, when she saw two three-toed feet sticking up at her, she promptly experienced an episode of amazement. I had some ‘splainin’ to do.

Stay tuned for the continuing adventures of “Wranglin’ Ran” and his side cook, “Canning Connie”.