Rancho Julio Melto

The gazebo in "Centennial Park" across the street from City Hall here in Hooterville. We're setting up for a gig there. It's the next week after the one on Main Street. 

It's still a bit early so we're still hauling stuff in. 

City Hall across the street from the park. We all had a nice time. 

The "Fourth of July" gig at "Mission Bell". This is the same place we play on the second Monday of every month. We also played there a few days later at the regular pot luck. 

Here we see the onset of the "Schaeffer Fire". It's about 17 miles north of Kernville and on the east side of the Kern River. The pic was taken eastbound on Hwy 190 just as you get to "Eagle's Nest" campground (old KOA). No charge for the mashed bugs on the windshield.

 "Lake Express Market" that has been a local phenomenon for ages. It had gone out of business a year or so ago. The guy who leased it was a gent from India by the name of "Alex". He and his wife were both pleasant folks (I should suppose, that is, if you weren't working for him). He was one of my computer clients. 

"Lake Express Market" after the devastating fire a few days ago. The place is a total loss. Nothing was salvageable. You can click on the images and they will enlarge. 

  "Wooly Pulley" with the new CB vertical antenna. The long pole is the push-up while the antenna itself is along side but almost invisible. The four ground plane radials are drooped over everything and, they too, seem to be hard to see. 

Garden box #3 where our tomatoes are usually parked. For now, there is a vine "thing" covering the box. It's pretty but, sooner or later, it'll have to go. 

  It'll be a great year for grapes! We have grapes! I paid extra attention (read: added more work) to the vines and hit them with a good shot of fertilizer and lots and lots of water (which we now have). 

This little guy is the newly-appointed cock o' the walk. He's already practicing being a real "service man" so I have high hopes that he'll pick up where Kenny Leghorn left off. I'm open for suggestions but I think I may just call him Henry (for no apparent reason).

Here's Ol' Swampy after having a new water pump installed. It has been earning its salt lately! When it's operating nominally, it is a real performer and keeps us comfortable until the temps top 100 degrees or so. 

The gaping mouth of the "Glory Hole". I order stuff from eBay and, in only a few days, my goodies all magically appear in here! As my friend, Little Rascal Dickie Hutchins, says. "Remarkable!". 






Well….mash my maters and kiss my grits! It’s July!! It’s the middle of the year which just happens to be the time when triple digit temps are the norm!! People are sweating off five pounds just while they shop for fans. Ain’t that just a bucket of week-old hog’s liver?

Hey, kids! What time is it (no! It’s not “Howdy Doody Time”….you old people crack me up)? It’s time for the “Rancho Relaxo” report! 

Things are moving along rapidly around here (he says with his usual penchant for understatement). If things move any more swiftly, we’ll need to contact “Ripley’s Believe it or Not” or “Guinness”. Sheeeese. If it’s not one thing taxing our time, then it’s another thing sucking the life out of our clock.

Other than the front lawn (which was purposely drowned for a week) and the grapes (ditto), the place is still pretty dry. Just as the summer water regimen was being enacted, we lost water pressure. That means that all watering had to be either “drip irrigation” or “flood irrigation”. Neither of these is desirable as drip requires a constant moving of the hoses and the flow can’t always be directed to the desired plants (due to differences in the terrain and/or hose length). The Ol’ Rancher contacted the ditch company who got two men right on it the next day. But (I hate buts), the pressure is still too low to run my sprinklers.

Normally, there is enough head pressure to run at least five impulse sprinklers. Not so now; there’s not enough for even one. That results in an unwelcomed increase in the work load (and you just know that Maynard isn’t going to be there to help, eh?). Swell. Soooooo…..Hi ho! Hi ho! It’s off to work I go….trying to ferret out the issues with the irrigation system. That will be all the while directing hoses to thirsty orange and plum trees. That sort of work needs to start at 5 AM. Yessireee….it surely does….Uh-huh….Yep. …Yah, buddy…. Soitenly…. 10-4…. Roger dodger…. Need to get a man right on it…. Car 54, where are you?

The good news is that we didn’t plant much of a garden so there’s not much time involved there. We’re getting a few tomatoes from a “volunteer” in one box but there’ll be no other harvest other than (hopefully) a few strawberries in a couple of months. That is, of course, the “fuzzers” and the birds don’t whack them first. About four summers ago, we had to cover our strawberries with a mesh net. That helped a lot so we got a nice harvest. But, it was a lot of extra….work. *SIGH*.

Ol’ Swampy lost a pump motor so we just picked up a new one at “Lowes”. An evaporative cooler is great here in the Valley when the temps are below about 100 degrees or so. We try to run it as much as possible since it’s only running a one horse power blower motor. Running the A/C compressor and fan is much more expensive so we try to only run it when Ol’ Swampy is overwhelmed or ailing. So, until about noon or so, it earns its keep big time. After that, we bite the bullet and stay comfortable using the big and wonderfully effective A/C and fans and then modulate the usage thereof.

I really don’t mind calling the place “The No Sweat Ranch”. I’m of the opinion that old people have used and abused their sweat glands by the age of 65 and there’s not much sweat to be had. Therefore, there’s no reason not to live in an ice palace during the summer thereby rescuing us from a certain terrible demise of our hope of cool comfort for the old folks. Do I hear a big “Amen” on that one?

The “Farm” report….the “antenna farm”, that is. That’s what Hams call the place where there’s a guy who has a lot of antennas sprouting up on his property. What with all of the antennas piling up around here, it’s hard not to tag Rancho Relaxo with that title.

The first antenna is my homebuilt wire dipole. Wire antennas are and always will be my friends. Then, there are all of my mobile antennas for ham, CB, FRS, GMRS, MURS, and such. Those are relatively small and range from about 7” (for UHF) up to about 5’-7' or so for Chicken Band radios (an old handle used by some wags for the Class D Citizen’s Band which is no longer licensed or regulated for the most part) and ham bands. 

A few years ago, I ordered a nice roof-mounted  "Disc-cone" scanner antenna to go with my big Kenwood VHF/UHF Receiver. I haven't mounted it yet but it's part of the farm. And, recently, we brought home a nice 65’ crank up tower that included a large Tri-Bander beam antenna (the planting of which is a project in the making) and which also sports a 10’ VHF 2M Yagi beam antenna.

Lo and behold, the other day we stopped at a moving sale (like, uh, that’s news or something). My eagle eye spotted an aging 5/8 wavelength vertical CB antenna parked at the back of their house. Because of the “capacitance hat” on the top, I knew that it was a vintage “Super Mag” antenna. She was still a beaut!

After asking about it, the nice lady conducting the sale advised that they wanted 30 dollars for it. But, not that I’m cheap or anything, after figuring the sweat that it was going to take to pull it down and haul it home, I asked if she would take 25 dollars for it. “Yes”, she replied; we were just going to leave it behind anyway. Bingo. Done deal. Nice ladies are our friends! We paid her and advised that we would return the next day to haul it off.

When we got there, it was midday. Great. The temp was about 102 degrees with the sun fully blazing. Then came the stunning realization that Superman had failed to show up to rescue me by leaping up on the roof and pulling this thing down in nothing flat. That left Ol’ Non-Superman Ran to do the job. Swell.

After about 90 minutes of searing heat, being soaked in sweat, temptations to curse the sun for being so bloody hot and myself for being stupid enough to do this in the afternoon, a couple of small blisters, and being at least one small drop of blood shy of a full supply (pay attention, Ran), the vertical was down and partially disassembled.

You should have seen the stash of metal we hauled home in the trailer! What a hoot! Some of the tubing and such came apart with only minimal effort but most did not. That which didn’t had to be carefully placed in the trailer then secured (with all kinds of ropes) for the trip home. We even got to take the 20’ push-up pole with us too! Ziggity!

The base mounting bracket for the antenna is badly rusted but not so much that it can’t be reconditioned. It just needs a wire wheel and some elbow grease applied. The vertical tubing is straight and sound but will need some polishing since that will make it more efficient (radio waves travel on the surface of the antenna [i.e. “surface effect”] so, if the thing is clean, it will fling the RF signal very nicely). The ground radials are in need of alignment but that’s fairly simple. You just carefully bend them back in shape. They’re steel and not aluminum so you can bend them without being concerned about breaking them as you do with aluminum. The old coax cable will be tossed. There’s never a good reason to use old coax.

When we got home, we parked the van and trailer, took a shower, and simply crashed. Talk about beat! I could hardly move and looked like a boiled lobster! I told Connie, if I ever got another loony idea like that, just knock me out and wake me up in October when the weather is cooler. If the “good deal” is still there, fine. If not, stiff cheese. She slathered my face with our supply of aloe vera so I wouldn't die of sunburn. 

Chickenin’ Report: the neighbors (bless their hearts) decided to give their thirsty back yard a big drink of water the other day…. and then the day after…. and again the day after. That decision was made just in time to flood our coop with about 4” of agua mushy. It was “mess city” and not looking good at all. Good thing I had my genuine wader boots available or it could have been much uglier.

It’s not a great idea to flood a chicken coop because it softens things on the ground and that, in turn, attracts flies….lots and lots of flies….Waaaaay too many flies. Flies are not our friends. And, prior to it drying out, it adds unnecessary stink to the equation. Stink is not our friend. With standing water that is contaminated to the max and chickens too stupid to drink from their clean water supply, the entire scenario conjures up all kinds of dreadful thoughts regarding sanitation and potential disease for the birds.

It could have been far worse had the front run had its new litter installed. All of the new litter would have had to have been mucked out and replaced. That is a chore that doesn’t need to be added to the list around here. Thankfully, the lazy litter installation crew (of one) hadn’t gotten around to it so the only thing that got wet was the ground and a few chicken feet. That’s because we only had four sets of feathers in there in the first place.

Two of the birds were “crackers” who were quarantined until further notice. They eat the fruit of other bird’s labors and that isn’t allowed in my coop. If they don’t straighten up and fly right, they’ll get gone or get deep fried (an option that we have yet to use but they ought not to push their luck). They are still laying or they would have already been on the menu. 

The other two are young birds that were given to us and that needed to be kept from the others for awhile until they are big enough to survive the pecking order upon their introduction to the others. We will introduce them in due season and at night time. But, they still need to be larger birds or the others will certainly mercilessly hound them until they are shell shocked, missing a bunch of feathers, or dead. The three little birdies that Chicken Granny, Connie, was tending are in there too but in the large separate cage above the muck.

Feeding time is always a hoot in the coop. Most of the time, when we serve up the chickens’ vittles, they “get with the program” of pecking to pieces all the goodies that are brought in. They get down on it faster than a chicken can clean a bowl of spaghetti….which is exactly what part of their dinner was tonight. You can’t even believe how fast and how many hens invited themselves to the pile of noodles! I thought that some of them had been shot from a cannon lest they be late for the feast! One Rhode Island Red grabbed a long chunk and headed for the hills with it while three others gave chase while trying to mug her for her dinner! The only thing left in the plastic container in which the noodles had been served was dents on the bottom.

Good news!! After hearing of my near tragedy in the coop (previous issue of RR), dear friend, neighbor, and client, Dorothy Wagy (herself an excellent and witty writer), being concerned for my wellbeing (we’re all good neighbors here in Springville), has submitted a bill to Congress that there should be no more evil and treacherous “Slickem” allowed in the country. I shant have to deal with that slippery dangerous substance ever again. Isn’t that super?!  You just know that I’m looking for any immunity from such actions that hinder my body parts from being in close proximity to one another! Everyone needs such thoughtful neighbors! Given the current state of affairs and politics, it shouldn’t take more than a few decades for the bill to pass. But, there is hope for our posterity so they may avoid such an inglorious pitfall.

There you have it: another episode of what’s happening at Rancho Relaxo, home of Rancho Ran, the world's foremost authority (the previous one died), Connie the Canner (world's greatest side-cook), where things can get…interesting, and where… you just never know.