Rancho Se Vende! Se Vende! Se Vende!

 Here's some of the folks setting up there stuff for the sale. Notice the clothing ring. That's the skeleton of the old above-ground pool we had. It makes a great clothing rack! We have two of them! A few years ago, Connie just happened to see a set in a small dumpster in Porterville so we tossed it into the back of the "Coop de Ville".

Lots of stuff! This year was the largest for us. We had 23 tables set up! That also means that 23 tables had to be taken down. All is not fun and games at a yard sale but it's worth it.

It takes awhile to set up, too. We hauled load after load after load from the hangar, the garage, and the barn.

This area will soon be stuffed with shoppers looking for stuff. Since the place was stuffed with stuff, they found lots of stuff and bought lots of stuff. We just kept stuffing green stuff into our money box! Stuff is our friend.

This is where "Sooz" (as in "Soozie Singer") sets up every year. She's the talented lady with "Duggin's Citrus Express Band". I play bass guitar with them from time to time. Sooz is another hard working consummate "sale'er" and does well every year.

Setting up the ring. Connie didn't count the clothes but they were packed solidly together when she finished hanging them. Only about 20% remained at the end of the sale.

Sooz setting up shop.

A small portion of the goodies we had for sale. It took us 5 days to set up and we still felt we should have taken another day to do so.                                                                                                           




                                                                     This is Connie and "Aunt Joyce” (Abbie's aunty) taking a break from all the setting up. Joyce is a dear neighbor who is a "dog person" who we and Abbie adopted and she adopted us. She likes to spoil Abbie a bit and Abbie loves to be spoiled at least two bits.

                                                                         
                                                               
         

We're done! This is a week-and-a-half after the sale and we were still packing up and getting rid of stuff. Talk about a couple of tired old people!

The end of the trail. We sold some of the tailings to a friend who wants to start one of two yard sales that are allowed by the county per  year. He used to operate full-time but the county put an end to it since they couldn't get their cut of the deal.




 Here we are post hurricane. Well, sorta. It's almost as though a big blow came in and wrecked the place like it did a few years ago. Lots of tired and achy muscles later, things were back to normal...kind of. Rancho Relaxo is never quite "normal".

 The party's over. Thank goodness!

Cleaning up. We still had to haul a few things back to the hangar for....next year. We're really re-thinking if the old folks are going to be up to another one of these brutal sessions of fun poisoning. We'll see. If you were wondering why there are no pictures of the hordes of shoppers, Ol' Ran couldn't find the bloody pictures! He only used the cell phone and the Nikon "Cool Pix" camera so it wasn't rocket science. Curses! Foiled again!



Well….it’s November already! Doesn’t that just prang your Prius?

That also means that the big “Rancho Yard Sale” is behind us. Boy! Talk about a couple of tired old people! When this gig was finished, our tires were flat, our axles were draggin’, and most of our muscles were in full rebellion. Ugh.

Every year, during the local “Springville Apple Festival”, held on the third weekend of Oct., we conduct a huge multi-family yard sale. This year, we had eighteen sellers and we all had a blast!

This year’s sellers included long-time “sale’er”, Susan ("Sooz") Newsome (with us from the beginning), Jim and Betty Bailey, Duke and Jan Snyder (several events), Courtney and Melody Gillespie (second time), Leann Chapman (long-time “sale’er” with us from the beginning), and several others who have manned a push-up canopy and tables over the years.

Big events like this don’t just spontaneously happen. There is a lot of planning some of which invariably goes wrong or which is derailed by unforeseen and last-minute issues or changes. That’s where event planner, Connie the Seller, comes in.

As usual, she did a bang up job of it. It took a lot of teeth grinding and hair pulling but she was a real trooper. I’m confident that I couldn’t coordinate an event this big but she pulled it off like a pro.

I think the heavy money till helped to assuage some of her grief, though. Because of the prosperous muscle and soul-wrenching event, this will be a comfortably affordable vacation and, hopefully, the woes and aches of the matter will be swallowed up in enjoyment of the time off.

One of the highlights of the sale is the great food! This year’s menu included the usual pulled pork. Ol’ Rancho Ran mustered his “Power Pressure Cooker” and his big “CrockPot” (sort of like a crack pot using a CrockPot) out for service. We had a huge bag of "Smart and Final" hamburger buns on hand, too. Someone brought potato salad and Connie had baked beans to go with it. Add chips and we feasted like kings!

Some of the ladies also brought baked goods and there were donuts to help kick-start the day. That, of course, meant that we had to have coffee on tap. The Ol’ Rancher had this 40 cupper fired up and he used the expensive eye-talian “La Vazza” coffee. It’s ten bucks for a 12 oz. can but you just know that Ol’ Ran isn’t about pay that much for it. No, sirree. It was a clearance item (“Clarence” is my friend) and he bought an armload of them for a buck a throw. The good sellers drank a full pot each day (with you-know-who helping as best he could).

You can’t imagine how we really needed to get rid of a lot of our goods and stores. Sometimes it’s beyond us how we actually accumulate all that we do. It’s not like we’re out trolling the streets looking for stuff to park on the property so we can start a dust collection. I think the stuff is breeding when we’re not looking. *SIGH*. 

You may also be shocked at just how much didn't get put out for sale! We had hoped to clear out the goodies in the barn and make room for enough space to at least walk around in. It just didn't happen this time. Maybe next year. 

There was a ton of goods of all shapes, sizes, and kinds. We had bric-a-brac, electronics, computer stuff, wires (or "waars" as in "Whatcha gonna do with all them waars"), hardware, tools, pictures, clothing, antiques, collectibles, and you name it. We had it all (just like Bogie and Bacall). 

Some of our personal assets for sale even included “Heffalump”, the big 6’ x 12’ covered cargo trailer. I let a lot of computer hardware go, too. Those things are not cheap but we had no room for it and no time to babysit it. It had to go bye-bye.

I sort of hated to see that big white cargo trailer leave the ranch but it’s not practical for now. The hope was to have a big ol’ picky-up truck with which to haul it. The van can haul it just fine as long as we’re on level ground. So, it’s OK for making trips to the hangar but we don’t make trips to the hangar all that often. It's great for hauling things to Sacramento but we don't go to Sacramento. When we do go to the hangar, most things can be hauled in “Wooly Pully” or “Dumbo”. So, down the road it went.

It was sold to a roofer who came all the way down from Fresno to claim it. He saw it posted on “Craig’s List” and the price was right (we actually sold it for what we paid for it 6 years ago). His wiring harness was a bit corroded so it took a while to troubleshoot the thing and get the lights working. After calling in ace mechanic, Rudy Payne, he was up and running down the road with the big beautiful trailer behind him.  

As we shut down on Sunday evening, there we two really, really, really tired old people ready to call it a day and hit the hay. After a week of setting up and three very long days of selling, we could hardly move; we were exhausted to the max. But, we were there to sell and sell we did and soldiered through without retreating. In fact, you could say that we up and plumb sold our assets off.

Will there be a sale next year? Yeah....I'm pretty sure that there will be another big event next year. Will Connie and Randy bust their fannies again and take six months to recover? Probably not. It is likely we will be coordinators and cooks. But, I doubt (at least for now) that we'll purposely expend three month's energy in three weeks again. 

Chickenin' Report: no mas pollos. That's Spanish for "no more chickens". Since we only had five cluckers, we decided that it just wasn't worth having to deal with chicken sitting and such. Friend and neighbor, Gary Ocsenas, offered to chicken sit but we decided to just give the chickens to another friend and neighbor, Leann Chapman (a long-time friend and long-time yard sale'er).  She had been wanting to take the plunge of being a "cluckster" for awhile so we jump started the matter for her. They'll have  good home and we'll have a good vacation.

Connie the Egg Lady has a five gallon bucket of stored eggs so we won't suffer much (for now) from "free range egg withdrawal". Hopefully, by the time our egg supply runs out, we'll have a few more layers on hand. Once you have incredibly delicious free range eggs you are spoiled beyond redemption and for life.

The rented Mitzubishi "Outlander" SUV is pretty much loaded and ready to help us on our vacation venture. After church tomorrow, it'll be pointed north on Highway 99 on cruise control right at the speed limit ("legal beagle" here. No ticket in more than 30 years). We decided to rent a car instead of putting the "Coop de Ville" through a grueling 2,500 mile trial. Though our faithful van runs like a top, she just clocked over the 200K mile mark. Renting the SUV seemed to be the reasonable alternative to stressing our hoopie.

I'm already in love with it! It's as wide as the van and has all the new fangled gadgets and equipment that modern cars allow including, and especially, the touch screen on the dash! When I backed up to the door so we could load the big black beauty, a rear camera showed the area on the dashboard screen! Zowie! It should live up to the expected MPG ratings, too. The van gets 22 MPG on the highway and this one gets at least 5 MPG better. Works for me!
It rides like a cloud and steers like a dream. Is it time to trade in the old '06 Coop de Ville? What a tempting thought!

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) and Connie the Canner (world's greatest side-cook): where the air smells like freshly baked zucchini bread: where things can get...interesting and where...you just never know.