Rancho Composto

Well! Tickle my Elmo if it isn't February already! It slid into town like butter across a hotplate (only quieter). I was really getting used to January. I mean, after all; it's the month of my birth. Seems to me that a feller should get to spend at least a little while fellowshipping with an old friend, eh?

Moving along down the timeline.......Man!! It's green around here! The frogs in our ditch out front (which carries run off from around our side of the road) are croaking. The croaking is a mating cry to ensure more croakers next season. I mean...who would want to run out of croaking, eh? The problem is that the little buggers overrun our place like the Sioux vs Custer. One would think that that's not such a big deal, right? One would be wrong. Two would be even wrong'er. These critters crawl up the exterior walls and flood it with froggy doo. Isn't that just what we need? More crapola. *SIGH* It's rather unsightly and it drives Connie to distraction knowing that her preferred home of  peace and love is a house of frog feces. Maybe we can call Moses and get rid of this plague.

The gophers are goph-ing through the soft soil with ease now. They insure that Ol' Ran will have yet another chore to add to his list in having to fill in large holes that are a menace to those who prefer to walk on the ground without stepping into craters and wrecking their ankles. After the previous three years, I was expecting dried gopher pelts (who knows. There may be a market for them on eBay).  

Nevertheless, the place is alive again! It's almost....almost ....difficult to imagine the utterly arid condition we have had to endure (living in the Gobi Desert hasn't been much fun and the memories will be around for awhile). We lost a few of our trees and such but the losses were measurable and sustainable. I doubt if we will immediately notice the loss of a couple of orange trees. But, it could factor in later on down the turnpike. It is likely that a few new (orange and other) trees will soon be trying to suck up nourishment from our deficient soil. Anyway, it's not bad at all considering what others lost.

The compost pile is a beaut. Not long ago, I boarded the Ranch Rhino and mixed the pile up really well for its first time. I'll keep working on it until I have enough for the entire ranch. When the time comes, you can expect to see a disc behind the strong and healthy "Ranch Rino" and Ol' Ran the Tractor Dude tilling in some of that good stuff into our lacking soil.

There's river water in our irrigation ditch again. That means that my work has started for this next growing season. I love it but my body hates it. I'm working on a way to convince my body to cooperate or to just bribe it in some way so that I can get (the many) things done prior to spring (it's already going to be 70 degrees tomorrow!).

The sprinklers will all need to be overhauled or replaced (my body's first option). It may be surprising to note that the cheapest plastic WalMart sprinklers actually do the best job (in the long run). I was shocked to find that out but I can't come to any other conclusion. They work great for awhile then they break. When they do, you simply toss them and replace them; three bucks and you're done.

You would think that paying five times as much for a "quality" metal sprinkler would be the best route to go. That has not been my experience. All ...as in a-l-l of my expensive brass jobs have failed to meet the simplest of requirements (I make few demands of my sprinklers, don'tcha know). That requirement is: just keep working without making the Ol' Rancher spend all of his time tinkering and fooling with it to make it function properly (and failing usually).

My vines need to be dressed (I just hate nude vines, don't you?). Three apple trees need to be replaced. One plum and one nectarine tree need to be replanted. The huge burn pile needs to be....burned. I'm not sure what the hurry is given that it's been there for four years without molestation. After checking with the fire department for permission to use the burn permit (and a quick jump down turn around, a couple of passes through a few hoops, and doing the hokey pokey at least once), burning takes all day and requires pulling a couple of hoses into place as a safety measure. Safety measures are my friends but pulling hoses is not. Maybe if I up the ante to a half gallon of ice cream my flesh will yield its recalcitrance and follow me around for awhile whilst I do some pulling.

The "experts" (here....you can have a couple of grains of my "Morton" iodized salt) have forecast that "No amount of prayer can change the climate to end California's drought". Ah, yes. Real believers, I see. Assuming that they are correct (and presuming that people aren't going to pray and will believe them instead), the nation's breadbasket will be brought to its knees and America will be plunged into a food crisis of epic proportions. That's what "they" say. Should be...interesting, eh?

The prediction of catastrophe (more experts talking since I prefer not to "shoot from the hip") is actually far from being remote. The take-down of California has initiated a cascade of events that will hit the bottom of the hill with such momentum that it will be unstoppable and inescapable. It may be even more than dreadful than first thought and, if it happens, everything will be fundamentally changed. We will be a nation that is almost 100% dependant upon the federal government for its existence. No worries, though. The Delta Smelt are safe.

On the bright side: we here at the ranch....have "options" (have I mentioned that options are our friends?). We're preparing our garden boxes and will enliven them with some of our recently-acquired "organic nutrition". That, of course, is bountifully supplied by none other than the harmonious efforts of the occupants of the "Henhouse Hilton". That would be "the Girls" who labor diligently to supply us and our clients with fresh huevos and the Ol' Rancher with fresh fertilizer.  

Fresh fertilizer is our friend since it makes your "maters" grow like crazy. In fact, here at the ranch, we expect to call our maters, "Crazy Maters". All I have to do is make a sign and everyone in the area will flock to buy them. Uh-huh. 

The idea, of course, is to coerce the garden boxes into producing....produce. If I can get the color of my thumb to change from tan to at least light green, we (read: "Connie") should have a great canning season later on. 

Raising chickens is amazing; we toss in boxes of leafy vegetables, tons of chicken scratch, and more tons of high-protein lay pellets, and our feathery factory cranks out tons of crapola and a few eggs. It's a good thing we upgraded our shovel collection to include the big scoopers. I reckon I shouldn't complain, though, since, if we had no chicken doo, we'd have no doo at all.

How about an update on the "Princess of Wails"? She's doing great and is the life of the ranch what with her antics of barking and keeping the dog house from being empty. She's still our goofy pooch whom we love very much. One of her improvements is that she is learning not to jump up on you while you are wearing your clean jeans. We were getting tired of her pouncing on us and whacking our slacks with her dirty paws.

The other day, Connie noticed something peculiar about her. "Is she getting fat?", she asked. UH-OH!, says I. "YUP", says I again after analyzing Abbie's noticeably enlarged  belly for a moment. 

Now, the rest of the story: there was a transient white Australian heeler in the 'hood not long ago and he was awfully interested in our pooch. He wasn't the other heeler we called, "Blue" (his real name is "Gus". We found out he was not a stray but belonged to a neighbor). When we quickly realized that she was in first heat, it was too late (yes, I know. We should have heeded the urgings to take preemptive actions). So, she's now Miss Princess Preggy Pooch. Reckon we didn't expect our princess to lose her royal reputation quite so quickly so we just procrastinated.

The good news is that we already have homes for two of the new puppies. We are hoping, therefore, for a bit of mitigation from the well-earned-and-expected flogging from our dear neighbor, Joyce (the one who apprised us of the need to get Abbie fixed). Rumor has it is that she's a bit of an old softy and sometimes removes the glass and nails from her cat o' nine tails if she likes you. Anyway, I can hardly wait to see what a coon dog and heeler mix will look like. I think we'll just call them...."Coolers".

Yesterday was a real "work day" here at the ranch. We keep our coop as clean as possible and use a technique called "deep litter" to aid in that endeavor. That results in placing the old litter into trash barrels and hauling them off. Well...the last time I checked, there weren't all that many young and able "haulers" handy. So, guess who had to don his "Ran the Hauler" hat and git'r done?

It doesn't sound like work until you realize that these are 30 gal. barrels that are at least half filled with compostable stuff and that they weigh about 60-70 pounds or so each. They had to be hoisted into the back of "Tojo" (the ranch Toyota pickup) and then lifted out and emptied onto the compost pile. It's enough to scare Maynard G. Krebbs out of his scalp. The bad news is that only about a third of the material was hauled off in the half-ton pickup. Now you have it from an official doo hauler: chicken doo is heavy doo.

Included in that job description was the hauling off of the large pile of empty cardboard boxes in which the (chicken) produce comes. And, wait folks, there's more....there was the large (toooooo many large things stacked around here) pile of boxes containing heavy compost materials (i.e. stuff the b'gaaks won't/don't eat and organics we toss out). After being the head hauler for a couple of hours, I was totally thrashed and aching from places I had forgotten about. I didn't have the energy to suck the guts out of a "Fig Newton". It was "break time" so I converted the outdoor work attire for the indoor work attire (that would be my jammies. Jammies are my friends). After a handful of Ibuprofen, the rancho honcho did computer and other inside work for the duration (i.e until his body stopped screaming that it was going to assassinate him and sell all the body parts to the Gypsies). Then, everything was stuffed into bed for a mucho-needed night's rest.

Still no plans to float the boat or even fish from the shore. I just bought another bag of lures from WalMart (close-outs, don'tcha know) so I need to quit tricking folks into thinking that I do such things as take a day off.

I did get the SignaLink USB Soundcard modem and the 1:1 current balun/choke for the dipole I'm building. Most likely, I'll quick-build a 20M-15M-10M "fan dipole". Then, the next step is constructing the trapped/loaded 40Meter top wire for the antenna. By doing it this way, I can use the other bands while trying to find the ....time....to wind the inductors/traps (you tune out the capacitive antenna reactance with series inductance). This type of antenna is quick (I don't need a time-chewing project) and easy (easy is my friend) and doesn't take up a lot of space (which makes it Connie's friend). I call it my "Win-Win Antenna Project".

 Well, friends, neighbors, kith, and kin, that's the latest from Rancho Relaxo. Don't touch that URL; things around here are likely to get...interesting.