Rancho Marzo Bloomo

Getting ready for the Valentine's gig at Mission Bell in Porterville. 

Here's the "Bass Station". It's where Ol' Bro. Ran thumps his vintage Fender Precision bass guitar. The high-back stool is a real blessing since it means that the bass thumper doesn't have to stand up all the time. That's why my nickname is "Chief Sitting Bum".

My turn at the mic. I used to play for my supper all the time. Nowadays, I sometimes get to play for donuts and coffee and an occasional pot-luck. I love it, though, because of all the fellowship and good food! Food is my friend! It helps in keeping in practice, too. 

Here's the partial band. The drummer, Hank, and the steel guitar player, Jack, are taking a break. So, Randy, Sooz, and Jim are doing a three piece for a bit. 

You can tell it's been a long long day for Ol' Rancho Ran. When we kicked off, I was already at the end of a really hard and tiresome day. Thankfully, the gig was only a couple of hours long or they would have had to grab the Stokes. 

Here's the rest of the group except for the steel player , Jack Guthrie, who is off to the right side of the picture. 

Well! Would you look at the date! It’s March! MARCH! Doesn’t that just crack your dilithium crystals, Scotty?!! I suppose that I should caution y’all to “beware the Ides”. But, hey; Que sera sera (1956, for all you Doris Day fans…who doesn’t love Doris Day?!). It’s amazing how the unseen propulsion unit of time is so intricately woven into the Persian rug of life so that it hurls it forward at almost transonic speed. *SIGH*.

It’s that time again; time for the “Rancho Relaxo” update (or, as my dear friend and brother, Don Knight, says so succinctly, “Rancho Costa Mucho”). There’s always something going on around here. I want to say that there’s rarely a dull moment around this place. When the dull moments happen, they are greatly welcomed. We call those moments “days off” though they usually don’t last much longer than a good nap (naps are our friends). That’s not really a complaint. The complaint is that there isn’t enough time to get everything done in a timely manner (including naps). 

And, sometimes the elements are non-compliant in our attempts for peace.  It is the storm season, eh?

For instance, a fierce wind recently decided to add our carport to NASA’s High Altitude Research Program. We heard the wind howling that night and knew that things were going to change. We just didn’t know how large a change that would be. Given that this is “Rancho Relaxo”, we did know that things would be….interesting.

The next morning, we discovered that our carport had been lifted up (concrete anchors [8 x 30 lbs], 40 lbs of tubing, 40 lbs of covering, and all), flung against the basketball backboard (12’ high in case you want to know), and broke the backboard in half. Swell. Then, having soared over the top of the stuff that was parked under it, it was piled into a twisted heap onto the driveway. The previous October, we had just rebuilt the thing and put a new covering over it. Methinks that we’re going to just build one instead of trying to keep a flimsy one (read: “kite”) in place.

Not having a “tent”, of course, meant that the hammering rains had full access to the goods in storage. Two “swells” (with the second “swell” being larger than the first). Not much you can do with “dry things” that have been as well watered as a garden in Oregon. Time to clean up on aisle 4.

It took several days to be able to start heaving stuff into Wooly Pulley. That’s because it was already full of broken down cardboard boxes and ready for the dump run. So, after loading up more boxes to insure a full load, off to the dump we go. That took some real heaving as well. The good news is that cardboard is a “freebie” at the transfer station; otherwise it’s 20 bucks (freebies are our friends).

Now, I’m really not into heaving things even if it’s only light stuff (like, your beets). I prefer to leave them to professional heavers or young heavers who need a few bucks to be able to afford a new PS4 game station. Ah, but there weren’t any such creatures available…again (why do young people always disappear when someone mentions “work”?!) That left Ol’ Rancho Ran with yet another chore to do (I’m about ready to change the name of this place to “Rancho Sweato”…sheese).

To those of you who live in a real town, you may not know that our community dump (“transfer station”, actually), is only open on Fridays and Saturdays. Another “swell!”, anyone? That means that the mess couldn’t be hauled off for a few more days.

We got started loading but the haul had to be postponed prior to filling the trailer. Cousin Monty called from “Kaweah Delta Hospital” and needed us to come over. Given his near death experience, our priority was immediately shifted to “now!” and the half-filled trailer was moved to “later”. He’ll be fine for now but the ugly pile of soaked junk out front is very much an eyesore for another week (I’m running out of “swells”). If this mess doesn’t get cleaned up soon, the neighbors will think I’ve been lying about where I came from and ship me off on a pre-paid one-way trip to the Appalachian Mountains.

The trees are all in bloom now. My vines are not dressed (hope the neighbors are not prudes) and the trees are not pruned. Guess we’ll let nature take its course until next season. Not sure what we’re going to plant this season. Other than perhaps squash, it’s unlikely that it will be goodies that we have grown before. There should be ample sufficiency of tomatoes for now but a couple of plants may be warranted. Okra is my friend but we seem to have run out of the need to fry stuff around here. And, no one recalls the last time we made a soup or stew. Is there a synonym for “sigh”?

Princess Abby report: our slauffenhund is doing well after being “fixed” the other day. It was only ten bucks and a trip to town. Uh…but the appointment was at 6:45 AM, that is. 6:45 AM is fine in my tome except when you have to be someplace at that time. That means that, when you live in Springville (a small town that’s 15 miles from a not-quite real town which is 35 miles from the nearest real town), you have to greet the day at a double yawn-evoking 5 AM. 5 AM does not have a ring to it. 5 AM is not my friend.

Anyway…we packed the dog carrier into the back of the Coop deVille then packed Abby into the carrier. She hadn’t been off the property since we fetched her from Visalia (a real town) 2 years ago. I must say that I was a bit surprised that our little headstrong hund took to the trip as well as she did. I truly expected her to be a handful and thought she’d make it a grand event of barking practice and trying to jerk my arm off or the leash out of my hand. That was not the case. She was quite the lady that day….you just know I’m not telling the rest of the story yet, don’t you? You know that she is a little furry princess snot that changes the rules everywhere she goes; right?

Well….all was well when we first got there. Despite the line of pooches with their parents, Abby did little outside of putting her huntin’ instincts to work and sniffing the place out. She didn’t bark at all. That was a good thing. Good things are our friends but Princess Abby seemed to not remember that.

OK…first a bit of background info: the doggie patients all have to fast the previous 12 hours or so prior to the operation. We did that. Repeating….we did that. We made sure that our little love dog was in full compliance with the requirements of NPO. This is so there will be no messes of any kind after the surgery.

Moving along…..we hadn’t been in line more than a few minutes until I noticed a huge…huge…pile of steaming pooch pucky almost under my feet. That meant that the nearest dog was the culprit and we just know who that was, now, don’t we? I hadn’t seen a molten pile that big since she unloaded one on the stairs when she first got to Rancho Relaxo (this is a great place to park a “sigh” but I think I’m out of them). 

By the way, that was what led to her being an “outside” dog and not an “inside” dog. She refused to be tidy so we had options. I was hoping that the line would move along so that someone else’s doggie could take the blame. Dear Abby….we really need to talk.

We left our little coon-treeing pathway-defiling canine in the capable hands of the vet and his nice assistants (all “animal people”, of course) and headed for the nearest cup of coffee. After that, we had some shopping and chores to attend to for couple of hours while waiting for a call from the vet. They called us later and we were happy to return for her.

“That’s that”, as they say. We won’t be waking up to a preggie pooch again. Puppies (“poopies”, to be more accurate) are cute and cuddly but having them around all the time isn’t my cup of lapsang souchong.  Our princess was restricted to her cable for a week and we kept an eye on her for any post-surgery problems that could have arisen. But, no worries; she came through with flying colors. We no longer dread her blind dates. To quote my old friend, Tigger, “Fantastical!”.

Connie the Canner Report: what can you say when you have a wife that knows how to can and has made the transition to “farm wife” with aplomb (and with a plum)? She’s so good at it now that I bet she can can a ’57 Chevy. 

No; we don’t have garden stuff to can at the moment. But, she’s “oven canning” some things like flour, corn meal, oats, rice, pinto/navy beans et. al., and other such dry products like powdered milk. We hadn’t heard of this practice before but it’s turning out to be a really good thing and Connie is already a pro at it.

We had run into the issue of dry products like flour and powdered milk spoiling after only a year or so. After a year or so of storage, even pinto beans get dark and hard to the degree that they can’t be softened in a pressure cooker! So, after you lose large sacks of stuff, you start pondering ways to avoid such spoilage. Dry canning is one way to accomplish that.

We’re planning on obtaining a freeze drying unit when the money tree we planted bears much fruit. Those bloody things are expensive but they are incomparable for food preservation.

Chickening Report: great news! Our girls are ramping up production. They’re not quite up to prior standards but are working on it. They are faring well and get lots of greens, lots of scratch, and lots of lay pellets/crumble. They have been encouraged to enhance their production these past couple of months (I lied to them and told them that I was holding negotiations with the “Campbell Soup Company”).  The idea is to carefully balance the difficult task of being the Flock Master verses being the Flock Monster. So, far it seems to be working.

We lost another older hen that we’d had for a couple of years. She was already “elderly” when we got her. Not sure why we didn’t just plop her in a pot back then. Reckon it’s because it’s too much of a chore to deal with when you can buy an entire cleaned chicken for about four bucks.

It’s not the chore itself that’s an issue. It’s the time element. There’s simply not enough time to deal with readying a single chicken for dinner. One of these days I hope to have the time to do such things (meaning I need a flaming day off - I’d even settle for a non-flaming day off).

One reason I don’t mind cleaning a bird is that chicken guts make for great catfish bait. You simply park them in a jar and let them “season” for a week or so. You don’t want to let them rot; you merely want them to “ripen”. My….hold your nose, though! Wheeeeew! Channel cats and flathead cats think it’s Christmas when you toss a wad of ripe chicken guts their way! But, use with caution as you may have fewer neighbors as friends if you’re not mindful of how to handle such powerful bait.

And, that necessitates setting time aside to go fishing, eh? Think that’s going to happen any time soon? Me either. Then, we must consider that the cost of a pair of fishing licenses is approaching the hundred dollar mark ($94.02 – I remember when they were 7 dollars each!). So, I’m rather dissuaded from spending that much and only going fishing once or twice per year. That’s also probably why my boat has yet to see water. To quote my old friend Heap Big Chief Puking Buffalo, “UGH” (I think this was the other younger brother of Indian brave, “Soaring Eagle”, and older sister squaw, “Running Deer”, eh, Bill W. ?).

Spring time means “spring cleaning” for the coops (and that’s about as exciting as a strolling nude through a cactus patch). They’re in the process of being cleaned anyway due to the flood and such. But, a “deep cleaning” has become imperative and unavoidable. The cluck muck has to be hauled off and new deep litter has to be spread. The “Cluck Muck Squad” (of one….moi) will be busy for awhile.

 What is one to do when he has a henhouse full of chicken droppings? Well, my lightning-fast mind thought that we could just come up with a way to weaponize this stuff and sell it to the military. I’d be rich! I mean, what enemy wouldn’t run for the hills if a fleet of Lockheed C-130’s started unloading hundreds of tons of chicken squat on them?

It didn’t take long to realize that that thought had been carved from a large chuck of stupid. The logistics are bit formidable and I have such a small herd of hens that I doubt if I could fill just the front six feet of a Herky Bird. And, it would probably cost less to just shoot a cruise missile instead. So, out to the compost pile it goes where it will soon become a functioning component of the garden growth cycle.  

Being a chicken wrangler also means you’re a highly efficient adsorbent (a material that attracts things and collects them on its surface) to anything and everything ….everything….in a hen house. Rare is the day that, after chickening, I don’t look I’ve been hauled through a marsh bog. Connie can’t quite figure out just how a guy can get so dirty in such a short time! I suggested that she check with our lead layer, Clara Cluckenspiel, who would explain the matter at length (I also suggested that, if she’d quit laughing so loudly, she could hear my explanation a lot better).  I get my clothes washed a lot.

There you have it; the latest from one of the most interesting places within a few acres of normal. If you don’t touch that doohickey thingy that changes channels, you’ll be sure to get the next episode of “Rancho Relaxo”, the place where….you just never know. 

Rancho Mud Boggo

We have a slightly more than normal snow pack on them thar hills. This shot was taken at the intersection of Scranton and Newcomb out by the P'ville Municipal Airport and looking NE. We had just departed the airport where we had met with some friends at our hangar.

If you promise to read the intro to the previous ten editions of Rancho Relaxo, I promise not to use the next five minutes of your time complaining about how fast time flies or how busy I am…though I’m tempted to do so anyway…really tempted…really, really, really tempted…….It’s FEBRUARY already!! 8.33333333 percent of the year is already gone and I haven't finished January's work! AAAAUGH! Sorry.…couldn’t help myself. Reckon I should be elated that I’m so busy rather than having so much time on my hands that I could make soy sauce from scratch.

Now that the loud noises have subsided….here’s the Rancho Roundup:  it’s February and all is well here at the ranch. Well…sort of. We're still waiting for that blessed state of "normality" around here. That could require some patience. I suppose that having to wade out to the hen hootch to insure that the egg factory doesn’t die of starvation could be counted as a plaint of some sort. But, not so much for the Ol’ PMA Rancher who, despite the ankle-deep mud and flooded coop, looks for the positive in all things Sometimes it’s a chore but he's hopeful and has few complaints (though they seem to be loud ones when he does). 

After all, the aquatic event wasn’t like a hurricane had hit; it was just a lot of rain dumped in one particularly low spot (and due, of course, to the genius who built the coop on the lowest place on the property). Had we had to rebuild the place I would probably have squawked a bit.

One thing that came to light during the mess was the need to re-secure the chicken wire and other mesh wire that is supposed to protect the base area from rat intrusion. I’ll need to get a man right on that….whenever he has a day off.

Rancho “to do” list: muck out the chicken coop. To his great relief, snowbird, Maynard G. Krebbs, is out of town until at least spring and can’t help; prune trees and vines (shouldn’t take longer than few hundred days to do that); prep garden boxes by adding about 12” of new compost. A nice front loader would help but a couple of young dudes needing some money will have to suffice (until the money tree I planted bears fruit); purge the irrigation lines, prep the sprinklers, and ready them for summer use; ready the burn pile that has been ignored for the previous three years…or ignore it for at least one more year (If I don’t procrastinate, I can immediately put it off until later); the huge load of yard sale tailings stored in the carport has to be hauled off…anywhere...the dump...Kansas…Iraq...just so it’s gone; pick the oranges or have them picked (I vote for the latter); service farm vehicles for spring including battery charging; start all small motors and prep for use this summer; fix the only-used-once 3.5KW portable generator so that it starts (otherwise, it’s an 85 lb door stop….I already have plenty of those); prep the 850W generator for emergency use; prep and start the wood chipper; prep weed eaters for spring use (one is almost new and fails to start…it’s a “weed watcher” now. *SIGH*). Prep the 14’ aluminum fishing boat….for another year of storage; practice eye closing so I can ignore the barn for another year and hope that the Gypsies sneak it and clear the place out; find more free range chickens so that we won’t run out of chicken poop to step in. That’ll probably hold me for awhile and make sure that my…day off… doesn’t arrive any too soon.

Princess Abbie report: my, oh, my. Our beloved coon hound is really making a name for herself. I was sort of hoping that that name would be a favorable one. However, our handsome hyper hound seems to be rather easily led astray.

The other day she, gleefully and with open paws, welcomed the neighbor’s two dogs, a whippet and an Australian heeler. She usually does that anyway. But, in her wonderlust, she totally abandoned her responsibilities regarding her guard duties. She was plumb lost in cavorting with her friends; for our coon dog, that isn’t a good thing.

It began one morning when the Ol’ Wrangler Ran let his birds out for a splendid day of free ranging. He pulled that trick off without considering that there just may be a threat in the area (and smartly proving that he really wasn’t a quart low of stupid). Within a short time, Gus, the heeler, crossed the street and forgot that he was heeler and he became a chaser! In no time flat, Gus killed at least three of our birds. I have reason to believe that Abbie, presumed to be a dog that favors coons and not chickens, joined the fray and killed one of the birds. We had hens….e v e r y w h e r e….it was raining feathers.

Ordinarily, she just rousts the birds thinking that they’re tennis balls sent from God so she can have a rollicking good time of fetching them for us. Reckon being a “chicken keeper” is beneath a princess’ calling.  So, it was lockdown time for “Camp Leghorn” and time for Abbie to spend the rest of the day on the chain gang.

We happened to know Gus’ owner who just happened to live next door to his father-in-law who just happened to be the husband of the lady who owns the local “Hamburger Stand” (we call folks who own a burger stand, “good neighbors” and you know that we’re going to get to know them). The owner wasn’t home and neither was the father-in-law. But, we had the number of the lady at “The Hamburger Stand” (in beautiful downtown Springville) and called her up. She sent her husband and nice neighbor, Bill, right over.

Come to find out, he had recently dealt with Gus assassinating several of his free range chickens. So, he was rather sympathetic. In fact, he actually paid us for the dead birds and advised that Gus was probably going to be moving out of the neighborhood…soon. See ya, Gus!

We still intend on allowing the chickens more free range time. However, Abbie will have all temptation for feather fetching removed by being tethered to her palatial doggy house. That will leave our pretend layers to free range without being jacked up.

When it was all over, and despite the restriction, she still had that special bounce in her step and that “let’s all play!” look in her eyes. Not today, Abbie. It took three days to gather up all of our “missing in action birds” and aren’t really sure we aren’t still missing one or more.

Chickening report: well…as stated, it’s mighty wet out there. The front (newest) run was totally flooded while the second run was a bog. The coop itself was merely wet. It was the mud mush that made things…interesting. I have to wear my galoshes each trip out or risk having Connie call the fire department to unstick me from the mess. All of that mud also creates a bit of a hazard for the birds. I was concerned that, with so much of it, I’d step on one of my hens and not see her again until springtime. And, wait, folks; there’s more: we’re supposed to get more rain next week. So, Captain Cluck will have to spend more time chuckin’ cluck muck into his truck…YUK.

One of the casualties of the aforementioned feather wreck was our beloved free range rooster, Harvy Henbanger. He was the last of the four feral fowls that we got from a friend. He would faithfully stand watch all day long over the coop and wait until his girls were let out for awhile at dusk. That was his call to action and he was most diligent in his duty. He was a hoot to watch and was at least half the reason we watched "Chicken TV". He will be sorely missed. Connie will likely be cruising through “Craig’s List” to find some replacements (that would be free replacements, of course).

My friend, Eddie (KE6PK - from whom we got the previous batch), has more feral birds and needs fewer of them. When the weather warms up a bit, it’s likely that we’ll raid his place for more bug and grub getters.  

Due to the warmer weather, the lack of predation, the fact that I dropped the hint about really needing some "chicken noodle soup", or for whatever reason, some of our ladies have remembered that they are layers and not roosters. Egg production has increased back up to the two dozen or more per day (we got 30 today!). We’re not back up to the more than four dozen goal yet but we are hoping to re-attain that previous standard. They really need to start earning their scratch or we may be canning more chicken around here.

Connie the Canner report: as usual, her canning pots have yet to cool down. Those canning vessels are as hot as a space ship's rocket tubes that just landed on Mars (for all of you "X Minus One" fans out there). She just advised that she canned enough carrots to keep Bugs Bunny alive for a century. Carrots are our friends! I think we have more glass invested in canning jars than Schuller has in the “Crystal Cathedral”. But, the Minnicks will never go hungry, eh, Doc?

She was finally able to get all of the Christmas stuff stored in the barn from whence it came. It’ll be “Valentine’s Day” soon so there will be new decorations going up. Rancho Relaxo will once again be a bright and happy place to celebrate the holiday.

Since spring is right around the corner (have I mentioned how fast time flies?), I need to assemble her Schwinn Meridian trike so we can both go motoring around the place. My Meridian (aka the “Ranch Rocket”) is up and running great but needs to have the cobwebs blown out once in awhile so that it doesn’t get a severe case of ignor-itus and just up and rot. I suppose removing the inch-deep covering of “Springville insulation” would help, too.

There you have it: the latest from “Rancho Relaxo” where life is good (in between the “life is interesting” part), all the men  (that would be me) are strong (I created my own dictionary), and all the women (that would be Connie the Canner) are sweet (yes…I do listen to “Prairie Home Companion”), and all the children are above average (that would, of course, be the grandkiddies). Don’t touch that thing-a-ma-jig that changes the e-mail settings; things could get…even more interesting.