This is looking north on Main from Oak during the "Iris Festival" event. You can see vendors setting up but no people because it's 8:30 AM.
"Duggins Citrus Express" band setting up for the 9:30 AM gig. This is the same location we were in last year.
The festival sponsors supplied the sound and the stage. We supplied the noise.
Well! Bless my heart and all my vital organs! It’s May! Doesn’t that just chase the bats right out of your cave?! Man! April went by with only a little teeny tiny bit of it not having our footprints stomped on it! About the only time it wasn’t being trod on was during a few naps at the ranch (naps are our friends).
Spring has sprung and it’s gorgeous
around these parts. Our green is still lingering and we even have a small
splash of rain for a day or two to help keep it that way. However, that old
summer brown is starting to creep in as usual. Still, the weather is beautiful
and mild. Heck….. I may even break out a chunk of steak or a dead chicken and
fire up Ol’ Smokie and celebrate a bit with a feast of some kind.
As usual, there’s at least as much do
this month as was done around here in the previous month. The way things are
working out, I’d guestimate that we’ll have accomplished all tasks by the year
2525 (f man is still alive, don’tcha know).
Rancho Relaxo Report: things are
moving along here and, thankfully, with only a few speed bumps with which to contend.
Those that do appear seem to be flattened out rather quickly and without any
ensuing body rattles. Overcoming hurdles is a part of life; I just wish that I
could pick and choose a few of the lower ones.
Tojo, the ranch hauler, is being
repaired by our newly-wedded ace mechanic, friend, brother, and neighbor, Rudy
Paine. We’re looking forward to getting to know more about our new neighbor,
Lettie. We can already tell that she is such a very very special lady! She’s
genuine good neighbor material and we welcome her with open arms! Rudy must
have read in the Bible that, “It is not good for man to be alone”.
After the fuel pump-fuel line issue is
resolved, we’ll address the catalytic converter matter in due season. I’m no
expert but I think we can just whack one off of a late-model wreck-mobile and slap
it on the picky-up-truck and go from there. That should represent about a 50%
savings along the way. With the addition of a new right front tire (and
probably the left front and right rear as well given that they are the same age
as the other balloons), Tojo should once again be ready to cart stuff to the
dump (which, thankfully, is only 1.5 miles from us).
In the meantime, one of our hens has
taken up brooding in the passenger side floorboard. After all, it wasn’t being
used for anything else, eh? She’s sitting on a dozen eggs and we’re hoping that
at least some of them are fertile. There’s no reason to think that our two
randy roosters have been lying down on the job so we check regularly and listen
for tiny peeps coming from beneath her feathers.
Computer Report: this certainly
qualifies for placement in the “interesting” department. As reported in the
previous posting, the Computer Dude’s big Dell had two failed hard drives. I’ve
since concluded that small 350GB drive (used for booting to another operating
system) failed and took down the new drive. In fact, it appears that the
overall dynamic took down the motherboard as well. That’s not good news given
my adoration of the big beautiful XPS420 and its outstanding performance. After
all, she’s running a quad-core CPU and 8 Giggles of Ram with Win 10 as the OS.
That’s not mind boggling hardware but it certainly is a race horse and it got a
lot of work done. She’ll be missed.
So, what is one to do? Well, one has
to have a backup plan in place. Have I mentioned that the Computer Dude is “Joe
Backup” and a good Boy Sprout and that “Be Prepared” is still his motto? Ah,
yes; there was a backup plan. But, as usual, things got… interesting… in that
dynamic, too.
When the ‘puter started presenting
signs of failure, Ol’ Dude commenced making a backup to his 2TB external drive.
That began well but the drive was failing rapidly (most hard drive failures are
not catastrophic) so a full backup wasn’t completed. Yet, a lot of important
stuff was safely onboard the 2TB drive. Or……was it? Nope. The big external
drive somehow lost its formatting and reverted itself to an “unallocated”
storage volume! Nothing could be found on an otherwise healthy drive. Almost 2
terra bytes of important stuff vanished. *SIGH*. That’s three hard drives taken
down in no time. Two *SIGHS*. There is some recovery software that I will be
using to see if I can salvage at least some of the data. To be sure, there will
be a new backup drive onto which the recovered data, if any, will be placed.
There was a computer backup plan too.
I’ve had a high performance box that has been rebuilt and was ready to go when
the feathers hit the fan. It’s a sweet home run hitter with a quad-core
processor and….get this…16 gigs of RAM! But, wait, neighbors! There’s more! It
has a muscular video card with 1GB of RAM! Using it is like using a magic wand.
Things happen instantaneously when you click on something! Whooo doggies! I can
actually get more work done in less time with this big baby! The three inkjet
and two laserjet printers are installed as is some of the more important
software like Microsoft Office and such. Some older backups are being
installed, too. Work is happening!
All the other proprietary software of
the other box still has to be installed, of course, and that will take a while.
But, it will carry the ball even better than before. I won’t dual boot this
time, though. Instead, I will probably just park a large 4TB or even 6TB
storage volume in it. If I’m in the
mood, I may just mount both since it has room for it in the chassis and two
SATA controllers are avaiable. Seems a computer dude can’t have too much
storage space.
Believe it or not, the little XP box
came in quite handy, too. It was also hooked into the big monitor so all that
needed to be done was switch inputs and it had access. It was used as much as
the backup HP 23 all-in-one to get things done until now.
It was difficult to believe it was an
XP machine given the performance. But, you just know that my XP box isn’t
stock, eh? It boasts 2GB of RAM which is a lot for XP (which was designed to
run on 64MB of RAM and with at least a 333mhz Pent II processor). However, the
real punch came from the non-stock high performance video card. It was so fast that most of the time I
thought I was using a Win 7 or Win 10 box! That’s with a single core 1.8 mhz
Pent 4 processor and 2 gigs of RAM!
We don’t have blisteringly fast
Internet way out here in Dirty Coat Junction (the founders were really
disappointed when they found out that there was already a Petticoat Junction).
But, even with the 3-5 mbps speeds, the little box was a real trooper.
As a side note, as recently as three
years ago, I was still working on computers that had dial-up Internet access!
Our little corner of the world lags a decade or so behind the other real
places. I’m surprised that we aren’t still using smoke signals, drums, and cans
and strings.
Garden Update: the Ol’ Rancher used
the Ranch Rino to (finally) drag the compost pile up to the garden boxes (drag
scrapers are our friends). That only took three years. That was easy enough
since he didn’t have to use a wheelbarrow. Once the good ground was hauled into
place, the shovel work commenced.
This is the part where Maynard G.
Krebbs and I agree: “WORK!” is not meant for humans to endure (at least not the
back breaking sweat wrenching variety). Alas, no one could be found to rescue
me from the dreaded shovel handle; the imminent strenuous use of muscles (most
of which have long since retired) had pounced upon the frangible frail farmer
(any tears yet, y’all?). Therefore, with shovel in hand, Ol’ Ran started
heaving soil and replenishing two of his garden boxes (though, on different
days, natch). That’s two down and two to go…..or two to wait until next spring.
We’ll see. We’re already late getting started so we could be harvesting
tomatoes in December. Who knows.
The key word is “replenished”. What it
means is that the top 6” or so of soil needed to be replaced. It wasn’t like a
ton of compost needed to be added to each box. That wouldn’t happen unless
yours truly was the supervisor of a crew of several men or he was in the saddle
of some dirt-hauling equipment (front loaders are also our friends).
Since the entire compost pile was
hauled up, it had to be re-started lest I wanted to start another heap o’ decay
next to the chicken coop. The temptation was there to do just that because it
would have saved a lot of “WORK!” But, that, dearies, isn’t about to happen on
Connie the Canner’s watch.
So, three barrels of composting
material (that would be the really heavy ones) from the coop were hauled by
dolly down to the original site at the far end of the property. Then, the small
residue from the previous pile and some other nearby dirt was mixed in with the
compost. We’ll be overhauling the coop soon (well….that’s the hope) and a lot
more compost will be added in. In a couple of years, the pile should be ripe
and ready.
Chickenin’ Report: our girls are
hangin’ in there with the egg production. Since we started keeping them in the
coop until mid-afternoon, they’ve gotten the message that they are to lay their
eggs there instead of under every tarp, overhang, bush, behind or in the
compost barrels, or in my pickup. Our regular customers are quite happy to see
the return of such excellent eggs!
We’ve lost a few birds due to (I
should think) normal attrition. Birds get old, birds get sick, birds eat things
that attenuate their lifespan, and birds do stupid things and get themselves
killed. Since a large supply of eggs is now a normal part of our program around
here, it may be that a new batch of pullets will be brought on board as
replacements. The dog and pony show must go on, eh?
Depending upon the breed and age of
the bird, you can usually get pullets for about 8 bucks a bird. The last batch
of laying fowls were a bit older so cost 13 dollars per beak. There were 30 of them.
This time, the thought was to bring in maybe 20 pullets. Right now, there are
63 chickens including roosters so that would bring the production level up a
bit so that all of our clients can be happy and not left hanging as to when
they can get our great eggs.
Another thought was to get pullets but
also to get a batch of “straight run” chicks. Those are unsexed and are a bit cheaper.
The idea is to have meat birds that we harvest once per year. There would be a
few more roosters, too. That’s good since you should have more roosters for our
size flock of hens.
As great an idea as that is, it may be
put on hold simply because we’re not sure if we can keep up with another
project. Besides, you can get whole chickens on sale for about 89 cents per
pound. And, though they certainly are processed and are not free range, you
only have to wash your hands before eating them and after eating them (have I
mentioned that I’m convenience oriented?).
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.
