Rancho Smoke and Stuff

Left and below are shots of Princess Abbie experimenting with a new fuzzer detection system. Seems she's stumbled upon a here-to-fore unknown ability to sense minute vibrations and tremors in the ground with her back so no fuzzers can sneak up on her from any direction! Looks like she is fine tuning that skill to perfection. Notice that she's making sure that she can detect movement even on concrete! Amazing. You just know that she wouldn't want to be derelict in her watchdog duties.

This is "Hank" (so far) the rooster who is obviously riding herd on "his" girls. He's doing a great job of keeping them "entertained" but methinks that another rooster is needed. His harem is just too large even for his huge ego.

Here's some of the girls taking a dirt bath with which to get...clean. Sorta makes you glad you aren't a chicken, eh?

This is a "just because" picture. We were visiting someone at Sierra View Hospital and noticed this view. It was just one of those gorgeous days that begged for a picture to be taken. I obliged.

The next few pics show the various stages of the recent fire and includes shots from different vantage points. This one is from our back yard. You can't see the mountains which are only a couple of miles distant. Lots of folks had stuffed up heads and watery eyes. Everyone's clothes smelled like smoke. Ugh.

From the Wal-Mart parking lot in Porterville (almost 20 miles distant).

Another shot from our back yard (same day).

Downtown Springville on the main drag and looking over the top of the old "Gibson's Texaco Station".

Also downtown but at Bridge and Hwy 190. The fire station is just off to the right a short ways. Looking north  (magnetic north not true north) .

Looking south on Hwy 190 just north of the Post Office.

Lots of smoke, eh?

Gifford's Market in the background.

Looking east from Hwy 190 at Lower Globe Road. Black Mountain is on fire. 











Black Mountain again from Hwy 190 at the Golf Course.

Rancho Report: the fire is contained! The “Pier Fire” has been contained. There’s bit of smoke from a few “hot spots” yet but all is well in them thar hills! It is with great pleasure that there have been no reports of serious injury or losses, too! It’s a good thing, too, because folks around these parts were tired of sneezing, having watery eyes, and stuffed up heads.

We did lose the Wishon Power Plant and that’s probably because it was at the point of origin of the fire. Most likely, the fire was already out of control and already burning the place down by the time it was reported. Not sure of any kind of time line as to when it may be returned to service. 

Our kudos and great thanks to the firefighters who waged a month-long battle against this monster and won. We cannot thank them enough. As the firefighters changed shift, the local folks and the entire elementary school turned out for a flag and sign waving session  to express the community's gratitude for their tireless and super-human efforts to protect us. The fire was limited to 35K acres and there were no major losses. 

We’re getting our duck in a row for the big yard sale that is just around the corner. It’s difficult for the old people who live here at the ranch to believe that the “Apple Festival” is bearing down upon us! There is a lot of prep that goes into the event but most of it seems to get done. Each year it seems as though there is less and less energy available with which to tote those barges and lift those bails (for all you Paul Robeson fans out there). Perhaps in a few years, we’ll only conduct half a yard sale. *SIGH*.

There may not be as many venders this year as some folks because their “git up and go” has done “got up and went”. It takes a lot (and do mean a lot) of work to haul stuff hither and yon. And then, if it doesn’t sell, haul it back to yon and hither.

In other words, all is moving along fairly well here at the happy homestead…..sorta. Seems that the feat of existing on planet earth is met with stiff resistance from time to time.

Thankfully, we have such comforting amenities as …butter. Yep; butter. We were in the local (read: Porterville since Springville isn’t a real town yet) “Grocery Outlet” the other day. When we got there, we were fairly certain that a few good deals would present themselves because they always do. My mother had advised us that butter was on sale but, at the price she quoted, it was unlikely that there would be so much as a smear of the stuff to put on a single colonel of popcorn by the time we got there.

My! Were we surprised when we walked back to the dairy section!! I can only suppose that there aren’t that many fans of real butter around because we stumbled into thirty pounds (no typo here!) of real butter all hunkered down and just ready to be tossed into a shopping cart! Oh, it wasn’t merely butter, it was “Land O’ Lakes” butter which happens to be the premier butter around these parts! What’s that you say? How much per pound? Thank you for asking! We got eight four-packs at FOUR POUNDS for 2.27 (about 57 cents per pound)! Yes!! It was one day from the expiration date! Guess what? We didn’t care because Connie the Canner is also “Connie the Freezer Lady”!! It just so happened that we had a hole in our freezer that just exactly accommodated the entire stack!

That also means that, in addition to burning a few extra bagels and English mufflers (sic) for breakfast , Ol’ Tinkerin’ Ran will try making some “ghee”! Ghee is not merely drawn butter. It is that, to be sure, but it is further kept hot (but not boiling) until all of the butterfat and such is completely removed. The result is a centuries-old style cooking oil that preserves well and which adds a distinct flavor to (usually) Indian cuisine. My recipe list is quivering in anticipation.

Got beans? Yep! We surely have those too! Like my old grand pappy used to say, “Man does not live by bread alone. He has to have a pot of beans, too!”. Ol’ Rancho Ran can live without a lot of things but frijoles is just not one of them.

It went like this: the other day the Ol’ Rancher was smitten with a yen for a pot of beans and bacon. Now, it’s probably well known to most that he is rather…ahem…convenience oriented… and loves to employ whatever “devices of efficiency” that may be available. In the case of beans, he has a remarkable tool with which to convert these hard legumes into a tender bowl of pure pleasure. That would be the “Power Pressure Cooker XL 10 Qt” (159.95 @ Amazon.com). Talk about a labor-saving device! It can turn a rocking chair into a noon lunch in only a couple of hours! Wheew!

Anyway, now that I’m finished bragging, I tossed in four cups of dried pintos (do rinse and sort them first unless you like pressure-cooked dirt clods for dinner), a half-pound of really good smoked bacon, and about a tablespoon of salt. Now, it just doesn’t get much simpler than that, neighbor! 

I thickened them by mashing some of the beans to help make a nice “bean liquor”.  Connie grabbed a big baked potato that we had on hand from the potluck at church the day prior, mashed it between two plates, then fried it up good! Oh, my! It just doesn't get much better than that! I dug in! To quote Uncle Jed Clampet, “Whooooo, doggies!” 

Unfortunately, there seems be a downside attached to certain upsides. In this case our culinary delight was encumbered by a steep downside: we are sometimes concerned about having to track our sheets down the next morning. In fact, our nightly prayers may include a request that their retrieval not include a ladder or an embarrassing trip to the neighbor’s house. Reckon that this batch tasty bites may have been defanged somewhere down the line since our bedclothes were found intact and in place the next morning. The next round will be soon.

Fuzzer Supression Update: well, they’re still here. The mangy varmints are laying siege to my ranch (and everyone else’s ranch within about 300 miles that I can tell). The war is afoot and it includes slinging a lot of lead.

The other day was a “TWO-FER” day. One critter was must have accidently gotten into the neighbor’s happy hemp farm and had lunch there (a bold and unfounded assertion on my part, to be sure). He arrogantly got so close that the error in my scope sighting wasn’t going to make a difference. And, it didn’t. Ol’ Ran lowered the boom with his Ruger “Critter Git’R” and that was all she wrote.

Much to my amazement, as I was getting ready to park the Ruger, I spotted another one up close and was able to make sure that he didn’t attend his next family renuion. Ruger Ran (has kind of a ring to it, eh?)  – 2;  Mocking fuzzers – 0

In all honesty, I must report that there have been a couple of occasions where it seemed that I could have done better had I just thrown the rifle at them. Not sure why I couldn’t hit the broad side of the barn but there are a few brown fuzzers that will have a free time of it until I can regain my sighting or senses…or both. I guess that, when winter besets us and there’s nothing else to do (oh…sure, Ran!), I’ll just sight the thing in again and return it to its tack driving self. I’ve regularly drilled fuzzers at 150 yards when it was sighted in. Hope reigns supreme.

Chickenin’ Report: Geepers! Creepers! Where’d you get those peepers ?! We’ve got peeping chicks! A few weeks ago, friend and brother, Brian Johnson, and his wife, Angel, gave us two new chicks. Then, just a few days ago, he gave us a cute little white pullet. And now, “something new has been added” (for all you “Old Gold” fans out there)!

Connie the Canner, who was manning the post of “Washer Woman” for the day (she later switched to the role of “Head Cook and Feeder Bowl Washer” that evening), was hangin’ out der vashin’ on a bright, sunny, and mild afternoon. She kept hearing chirping noises coming from somewhere. After a few minutes and a quick check around the back yard, she determined that they were coming from inside the cute chicken house that friend and brother, Rob Tyrrell and wife, Sharon, had given us (along with its three feathery occupants). Lo and behold! She discovered that one of the little brown hens had hatched some chicks!

That, of course, meant that she had to call the flock master in for some help and advice. A quick call on the Baofeng UV-5R handy talkie radio (affectionately called the “Flungdung 5") and Ol’ Rancho Ran, with no time to change into his “Chicken Man” costume (which would have been nice because it has such a really cool matching cape), was on the scene to take charge.

I had checked inside the little chicken hootch the day prior and saw the brown brooder sitting on perhaps ten eggs. As far as I was concerned, the little bird was probably wasting her time given that we hadn’t given the least thought to breeding chickens much less attempting to do so. Breeding chicken is a chore and we have ample sufficiency of those around here. So, it’ll be the usual chickenin’ for the time being.

But now, what before my pretty brown eyes (my wife says I have pretty brown eyes) should appear but four less-than-a-day-old darling itty bitty tiny chicks! They were hardly more than egg yolks with legs. They were skittering about as though I was a huge white ogre or something. But, I managed to out maneuver them and snatched them up so that no other huge white ogre would chick-nap them and so no small grey black-masked omnivore would scarf them up for lunch.

Leaving our chirp twerps and their mother without a protective cage in an environment filled with a plethora of quite hungry carnivores didn’t sit well with us. The consensus was that they needed to be protected and kept warm (the temps just dropped down to Autumn levels at night).

So, you know ‘zactly what we did….again. We hauled their tiny little fuzzy carcasses into Granny’s kitchen. They were immediately given residence in a tub next to the tub where the other two chicks are being raised. Can’t you just see that on the menu? “Tub O’ Chicken”.

Chickenin’ Lesson: chickens are remorseless gluttons. If you throw food, they will come a’runnin’ at flank speed. Not only that, they’ll chase you down if they if they so much as think you have one small grain of rice in your hand! They automatically switch into a DNA-programmed maniacal mode and will mug you for it while fighting off the rest of the flock of ravenous fowls who are trying to do the same thing! Half of the hens will end up looking like participants at a Filipino cock fight! What a free-for-all! Defending yourself against a dumb cluck is one thing; but, being in the middle of about 70 chickens who think they’re sharks is when things get….interesting. A guy has to watch his step around perennially -hungry chickens, don’tcha know.

And, they will not stop eating until the last chunk of cracked corn or stale bread has disappeared. In fact, if the last morsel has yet to disappear and there’s still a mound of scratch there, they will have a colonel in their beak when they squawk their last cluck as their crop explodes (“The rooster has exploded, madam”…for all you “Fresno the Miniseries” fans out there). For a lack of a better term, I call it “suicidal eating”.  I’ve heard of “stuffed chicken breasts” and such but this really takes the “Hot Wings Special”.

Anyway, I’ve narrowed down the names for “Rooster Doe” (who is just “Hank” for now) to just two. I’ll either call him “Joe Cockerel” or “Big Bad Benny Biddy Banger”. Both have a real ring to them. I’m a real sucker for alliteration so I’m leaning towards “Benny”. We’ll see. Most likely, Connie the Canner will invoke a here-to-fore unknown ordinance against being stupid in public and just whack me with something long, large, and not quite soft. I may have to settle for something less artistic like, “Fearless Freddie Flocker”…uh…no. How about, “LugNut Leghorn”?  I may have to just settle for something simple like, “Little White Stupid Chicken” or maybe, “Plucky Clucky”.

After all of the experience of the previous two years, I’m still not sure we have a handle on the arcane art of “chickening”. But, we’re certainly making progress. If nothing else, I will probably end up with an honorary degree in “Chicken Psychology”. Just what I always wanted. 

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.