RANCHO VENDO

 

Well…..the big annual “Rancho Relaxo Apple Festival Yard Sale” has been concluded. That’s all we can sells ….we can’t sells no more. Talk about a “smash hit”! There were 22 sellers this year and the place was alive and crawling with bargain hunters! We had cars lined up for quite a distance on both sides of the highway! Many people commented that we were the biggest thing happening at the entire festival! That’s interesting since we are three miles west of the actual “Apple Festival” in beautiful downtown Springville.

Connie asked one lady how she liked the “Apple Festival” and she replied, “I didn’t come to see the festival. I only came for your yard sale”! How cool is that?!

There was little that couldn’t be found here. We had furniture, car and pickup tires, miscellaneous hardware, bric-a-brac, tractor implements, a few tools, computer parts and pieces, home furnishings and pictures, collectibles of all kinds and categories, and enough clothing to fill a dump truck!

We ended up with two sets of above-ground swimming pool mounting stands. When assembled, they form a perfect 15' circle so Connie came up with the idea to set up the poles then hang clothes on them for the yard sale! It keeps the clothing up off the ground and nice and tidy and ready for selection. The lady is one sharp Ginzu steak knife, eh?

One couple, James and Fern Hill, had recently closed their consignment shop. They brought a ton of stuff to sell up here and did just that! They made out very well so are “cappy hampers”.

 Connie made sure that the troops were well fed, too! We started with hot coffee and banana muffins on Friday morning. For lunch, there was “Okie Style” beans and bacon with fresh cornbread muffins served with real butter! What a treat! She then served freshly baked cookies! Oh, my!

 On Saturday, we had hot gourmet coffee and donuts for the morning. At noon, she served nachos with cheese sauce and a friend brought a chicken casserole! That was a hit with our valiant vendors!

On Sunday morning (I had to be at church but was home by about 1PM), there was freshly ground coffee galore again and Connie’s home-built apple-pecan muffins. They were dreamy! She wasn't finished just yet, though. There was a hot crock pot full of pulled pork for sandwiches, home-made potato salad, and home-made pork and beans, plus home-made apple sauce for lunch! There wasn’t enough left to feed a starving gnat! Everyone licked their plates and the serving bowls clean! Heck! They were even tracking down the serving spoons!

The pork was spiced with a mix of “Pappy’s Seasoning” and “Kirkland” brand (Costco) “Sweet Mesquite” seasoning. It must have worked because they kept coming back for more until there was none left! Connie was the heroine of the festival! There was no way she was going to let our friends go without enough energy to endure the huge “Sell-o-rama” at “Rancho Relaxo”!

“Maggie the Wonder Dog” was in her element. She had a great time of greeting folks. All of that greeting must have taken a great toll on her because she would flop down on the concrete driveway in the middle of one of the aisles between the tables (we had 12 long tables that held just our stuff!) and take a nap right under foot (bless her lil’ darlin’ doggie heart). The good news is that there weren’t as many stuffed animals as last year. She would discover someone’s pile of stuffed toys within reach and would help herself to them. It was a hoot! She must have thought that the Lord was blessing her with a bunch of new play toys so she just hauled them off, baptized them in dirt, tore their eyes out, and made them her own. “Maggie the Klepto Dog”….yeah…that’s her.

It took a year to prepare for this event. Connie was packing, racking, and stacking stuff hither and yon but mostly in the designated “yard sale” section of our barn (what? You don’t have a designated “yard sale” section in your barn?! Silly you!). She carefully cleaned and priced each item (hundreds of them!) and packed them away for the "big day". It made me tired just watching her, don'tcha know! It took three days to set up, there were three days of selling, and it’ll take almost a week to do the cleanup work.

What we didn’t sell and folks didn’t want to hassle with will be sent to a local thrift store (similar to “Good Will” or “Salvation Army”). They come up here with a small truck and pick stuff up. It just works out really well that way.

One cool thing is that Connie and I get to browse through all of those left behind goodies and see if there’s anything that we want! We’ve seen a couple of things that we can probably post on “Craig’s List” and make a few bucks. You may recall that free money is our friend here at the ranch! On top of that, people stop by even when we’re closed and buy stuff! We made 18 bucks on the Monday after the event was ended. One lady said that she had tried to stop the day before but couldn’t find a place to park anywhere reasonably close so she just skipped it. We said, “No worries” and took her money. She was happy and ….we were too. Today, a lady came by and bought some stuff so we're more than 20 clams to the good with that. I hadn't even showered yet (I'm delaying that chore as long as I can get away with it).

We’re all tired (“beat” is a bit closer to what we are) but it’s what you could call a “good tired”. We all had a great time of selling (making a profit is fun!), food, and fellowship. Though we now have the calm after the storm, everyone is looking forward to next year when we can all get together and sell, sell, sell! There were a couple of new faces this year, too, so we now have a couple of new friends. Most likely, there will be a couple more new friends next year too as this event takes on a life of its own. That’ll be grand!

We had to greet the day at about 6 AM for the duration which, of course, precluded my getting to be “Captain Underpants” while I drank my coffee, checked my e-mail, and checked my eBay listings, and otherwise prepared for the day. Things are wonderfully back to normal so I can return to “un-lax” mode in the mornings. Can you imagine how difficult it would be for Ol’ Ran to have to suffer having to greet the day without properly preparing for it? Perish the thought! Comfort zones die hard here at the ranch.

So, y’all stay tuned to the next adventure sure to follow here at “Rancho Vendo”. We’ll be looking out the venders to see what we can see and looking forward to what Vender Ran and Vender Connie are up to next. I can’t help but vunder.

 

P. S. sorry for not posting pictures. I had planned on doing that but things were so hectic that it slipped my Teflon-coated noggin.

 

 

 

 

RANCHO FIXO

The feed line to the water heater had to come over the top instead of the wall like before.

Sooooo....that's what our kitchen sink looks like from behind!

 

 Above and to the right are the same picture of the exterior wall looking from the patio toward the kitchen. The garage is on the left.

Another shot from the patio.

This is one of the three solar powered attic fans that we had them install. If we had not installed them, the county (great oracles of wisdom and thievery) would have required us to install "eyebrow vents" with the new roof.

 The pair of vents. The windows on the left are where my office/sweat shop is.

The vent on the garage is a different brand and model. We weren't quite sure at the time if we were going to put a single vent on the house so we just ordered two. Later, our contractor advised that having two on the house would be a good way to go so we boogied over to "Lowe's" and picked this one up.

A close up of the garage vent.

All three vents.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well….the fix is in. We’ve finally got the new roof stuck on and the plumbing leak has been arrested (and charged with a misdemeanor). We’re officially back to square one….which seems to be a lot further away from my pocket book than I remembered.

Did you know that roofers and plumbers don’t work for free ….or peanuts? I think I may have missed my calling. You know….”Roofin’ Ran” sort of has a ring to it, eh? Maybe folks would call me “Ol’ Rufe” for short. I’m not trolling for votes at this time so….don’t. Besides, I don’t need no stinking hanging chads.

 Anyway, it’s nice to not have a bog or swamp in my back yard. Had we waited much longer I’m confident that we would have been alligator ranchers. Now, alligators do make great shoes and such but they really are tough to keep if for no other reason that they eat a lot….and….rather indiscriminately. I’m sure that we could explain away a few missing dogs and cats from the neighborhood but, after awhile, folks would, no doubt, encourage us to raise hogs instead (probably at the point of a gun).

 Maybe we could have raised guppies or minnows for fishing. After all, Lake Success is a mere 6 miles from here. At 3 bucks per bucket of 25 or so, I could make a bit of extra gas money for my boat (that hasn’t been wet yet). That, on the other hand, would have necessitated moving Connie’s clothesline to some other location. I didn’t ask her opinion about relocating it given that I knew what the answer would be. I was prepared to offer great evidence of how advantageous it would be to have another income source. But, I wasn’t prepared to see the scowl and grimace on her face even after presenting such compelling evidence. So, there was no way that the “Minnick Minnow Marketing and Management" maneuver was going to fly. We just fixed the dang leak. Part of the good news is that the water pressure is back up in the shower. No more having to run around in the shower to get wet. I hate that.

 We still have to have the contractor glue our siding back on for us. The plumber did a great job of not destroying the wall and siding but he’s a plumber and not a builder. We decided that it would be best to call the guy (now a good friend) who finished our barn and patio. Nice guy and quite competent (unlike Klepto The Clown who built the barn in the first place. We’re still smarting from his complete lack of concern for us and our project).  Though our wall looks like it barely survived the bombing of Berlin, it will look just fine.

 And, we won’t have to concern ourselves with rain drops falling on our head for about thirty years (the warranty on the new roof). The tradesmen (only one spoke English that I could tell and that was the contractor) did a great job and tidied up after themselves. They installed our three solar-powered attic fans for us too. That should help with the utility bill by a few percentage points. We stuck two on the house and one on the garage.

 The big “Springville Apple Festival 2013” yard sale extravaganza is almost upon us. It’s slated for Oct. 18-20 and Connie has been hustling around like a duck in a dry pond getting stuff (ours and others’) ready for the big sale. We will have around 20 sellers this year and could even tally more in the next week or so. Last year saw 22 vendors (I run Vendors 7 on my computer, yah sure!). It’s a lot of work but it’s also a lot of fun. We usually whip up a batch of stew and baked goods for everyone and just have at it. Everyone dips into their ice chests and grabs their goodies and away we go.  It works out great for us because there is a lot of stuff that doesn’t sell on eBay that we can sell and recoup our investment. To make matters even better, we often find a “free box” at random yard sales that we haul off. We may profit only a few bucks from it but, it’s FREE MONEY and free money is our friend. Also, it’s not all that rare that someone will simply give us their yard sale tailings because they have neither the time nor inclination to deal with them. No problemo. We have a solution that we can all live with. That’s why we have a nice 4’ x 8’ stake side trailer and, if that isn’t large enough, a really nice  6’ x 12’ covered trailer (aka “Heffalump”) with which to haul our booty.

Maggie the Wonder Dog will be in her element making sure that, after she sniffs and greets everyone, she'll be in their way. For reasons known only to her and God, she likes to flop down in the middle of the driveway where a hundred people are and insure that folks have to walk around her. *SIGH*.

 That’s what’s happening (for now) at “Camp Swampy”. Stay tuned for the further adventures of the Not-So-Dynamic Duo, Connie and Randy the Yard Sale Champions.