Above is the new "Springville Yacht"At right is the recently ovehauled
small trailer. What a handy gadget to have
around!
Below is a shot of the well house,
barn, above ground garden boxes,
and part of the back yard. You can see
Heffalump in the background at center left
(looking southwest)
I am appalled at how fast the time is elapsing! We’re almost
through another year and I’ve hardly gotten used to this one! Connie and I have
gotten many things done that we had planned to do for the homestead but are far
from finished. We were sure that we would be done by…October at the latest. It
didn’t happen.
Some of the things we did accomplish was the finishing the barn project. It was to be a three month or so deal but ended up being a year and a half ordeal! Finally, though, we have all of the loose ended tidied up. That last bit of touch up paint and securing of some insulation upstairs was completed.
Connie has been getting the shop area straightened up and in
order. I now know where most of my tools are and many of my big shop tools are
in place. There is a nice industrial drill press, 10” Craftsman table saw, Craftsman
band saw, and Craftsman radial saw on one wall. On the other is my 33 gal. Craftsman air
compressor, sand/bead blaster, 3.5KW generator, 800W generator, two Craftsman
tools chests, storage racks, and two storage cabinets. The smaller power tools
are on the shelf under the two nice big 4’ x 8’ work tables that are stationed
in the middle of the floor. There is much stuff yet to be brought in from
outside where it had to be hauled so we could get organized. The rainy season
is upon us so we’ll have to crack the whip to get it done. I’ll do the whip
crackin’ and let someone else do the work, of course. I make a great
supervisor.
Upstairs in the barn is where Connie has stored tons of
stuff including the goodies for the huge yard sale being conducted on the third
week of this month. This will be the third year where there have been several
participants. Last year there were 16 venders with tents, awnings, and tables
all over the place (Yes. We do have a
huge front yard). We had a great time (tell that to our sore aching bodies and
they’ll punch you out)! Guess who spent a hundred bucks shopping for all the
goodies at the venders’ tables prior to the opening? Hey, I ain’t no fool. When
you don’t have to go yard sale’ing and someone brings them to you, it’s time to
shop!
We also have a bunch of kerosene lamps/lanterns, 50 or so
fishing rods and reels, gobs of fishing tackle, clothes that don’t fit because
they shrank, a kerosene heater for the barn, and just about everything else you
can imagine stuffed into every nook and cranny. We had shelving built in between
the trusses so we have lots of room…er…had lots of room. We need a bigger barn!
ACK!
At the south end of the upstairs is where my smallish 8’ x
10’ radio shack/com room and utility room is. I have yet to set up my ham radio
station but am looking forward to getting back on the airwaves again. I don’t
have a lot of ham gear but do have a lot of short wave, scanner, GMRS/FMRS, and
CB stuff. So far, other than a few mobile CB antennas, I only have one nice
soon-to-be-mounted roof-mounted “Disk Cone” scanner antenna. It can actually be
used for 2 meter and 70 cm ham transceivers as well. The hope is to build a few wire
ham antennas like I used to do. They work well, are easy to build, and they are
cheap too! “El Cheapo”, they call me.
The garden was AWFUL this year. Despite our most earnest
attention and our fervent TLI (tender loving irrigation), we only managed to
coax a very few veggies from the garden. The only effort we didn't expend on trying to get these plants to produce was begging and pleading. Out of twelve tomato plants we will probably get
12 tomatoes. We figure that each tomato will have cost us no more than 12
dollars each.
The zucchinis were hardly better. From six plants we
garnered 4 zukes. Okra? Well, just let me tell you that story, Mildred. Our Okra, which everyone knows will pretty much grown
on concrete with or without attention, has been in the ground for 4 months.
Wanna guess how tall the plants are? No? How about less than a foot tall! I kid
thee negative! And, most of that has been in the previous 2 weeks after I
angrily and aggressively tried to drown them to death in one day! "Vile plants that have mocked me daily....I will soak you 'til your roots rot". I guess that thought I meant business!
We recently planted a dozen new apple trees and about that
many others like plum, pomegranate, apricot, peach, and nectarine. So far I’ve
managed to only kill a few of them so we should have some fruit in a couple of
years. Add to that, 15 new grapevines were planted and only three of those
didn’t make it so far. Reckon I have the black thumb of doom.
This now brings me to another aspect of the ranch, weed
killing. There are many ways with which do dispatch weeds. One method is to use a "Weed Eater" on them. Then, you can always use the old "Hula Hoe". Yet another way is to just pull them up by the roots with your hands. My favorite is to use
“Roundup” weed getter. The weeds never knew what hit them! Besides, I get to be
“Roundup Ran”. Kinda has a ring to it, don’tcha think?
These things take a lot of babysitting and work and all work and no play makes Rancho Ran a dull steak knife. It may not
happen soon but I’d like to do a bit of R&R by going fishing in our new “Springville Yacht”.
Well, it isn’t exactly a yacht but you know how easy it is to overly appraise something that's new to you. It’s more like “Rancho Rafto” with a
Kitchen Aide mixer on the back for power. It’s hard to believe but it is
painted exactly the same color and
trim as our recently overhauled 4’ x 8’ open pull trailer! If I’m a lyin’, I’m
a dyin’.…you cannot tell but what the same guy with the same paint brush
painted the two items from the same bucket of paint! Wild!
Anyway, the little cutie is a 14’ aluminum fishing boat with
a 6-7 hp Johnson outboard motor to push her down the creek. Ah, and on the
pointy end is an almost new Minn Kota trolling motor wired to a big deep cycle
battery. I think “Minn Kota” is an old Sioux word meaning something like,
“Chief catch’um fish or squaw lose’um weight”.
Das boot also came with a really nice white trailer too (you
don’t really think I was going to park it on top of the van, eh?). I was pleased to note that it also has new
tires on it. For some reason there are no oars. Don’t know if they ended up in
a different yard sale or what. That reminds me of the time I was in a small boat and
lost an oar. I called out to a nearby boat to see if I could borrow one of his.
Turns out the guy was Cockney. “These ain’t ‘ores, he yells back. This is me wife and
me mother-in-law”. I try to always bring an extra now.
Connie has been canning away with her huge canning pressure cooker. I think she could can most of an elephant at one time in that thing. I try to say far from it because it's always angry and hissing at me. She has put up 85 lbs of spuds, 30 pints of corn, 4 pints of okra (someone gave that to us), 80 lbs of pears, and 10 quarts of zucchini (also a gift. It's a good thing we have fiendly neighbors with gardens that actually produce)! When the local apple crop ripens soon, she is going to buy most of it and can it. We have an apple press so she wants to squeeze some juice to go along with the canned apples and apple sauce. Excellent! The current experiment is the canning of ten pounds of chicken breasts. So far it looks and tastes great so we'll likely get some more before the sale ends. We're running out of room to park all of this good stuff but I think that's a really good "problem". Knowing her, she'll take stuff from the garage and put it upstairs in the barn so she can have her stored goods near her kitchen. When I grow up I hope to be as sharp as she is.
In less than two weeks I’ll be journeying to Ghana West
Africa for missionary work. I was invited to go several years ago but the timing wasn’t right. It
is time now to go. The African pastor recently showed up on my Yahoo Messenger
after not having been in contact with him after so long. One thing led to
another and I now have my shots, passport, passage aboard a KLM 747, and am
awaiting the visa approval. I think they still allow white folks to visit Africa.
The total flight time is 16 hours. The first leg is 10 hours
non-stop from LAX to Amsterdam Accra ,
Ghana
The "Ranch Rino"a drag scraper on the back
