This is Miss Moira who fits handily in the cargo bin. She's are real basket case, eh?
The Howden clan. I keep telling their mother that, "If you keep feeding them, they'll just keep growing!"
"What's up, Doc? Haven't you ever seen a golden laced wing Wyandotte chick before?" This is a week after the kids departed.
Here's the entire hen herd. This is their first day in the cage. The cage is actually in the coop. We'll keep them in there for a couple of weeks or so until the weather gets a tad warmer.
Here's garden box #1 with #2 in the background (the squash have consumed it!). #3 is hidden behind #2. These are a special green bean of some sort that Connie
wanted to try so she could can
a bunch of them. Works for me.
On the other half of this box is
where the eggplant are hiding.
Well! Plant
the okra and water my ‘maters! It’s May…..2019! If that doesn’t just make you want to dig out
your “Dick and Dee Dee”, “Paul and Paula”, and “Peaches and Herb” collections,
I don’t know what will!
Just where is the time going (he ponders for the
zillionth time)?! Oh, well; no sense dwelling on things like, “Why do steam
rollers always go straight to the bottom when crossing a pond?”. You just can’t change some things.
Moving along: here’s the latest from ROR and it’s
still…interesting around here.
Got grand kiddies?: yep! Sure do! In fact, we had
seven grand kiddies come up to see us! Connie’s daughter, Trixie, and her
young’uns came up for a three day visit.
Trixie’s husband, Dan, is being transferred to Houston from Torrance. That
means, of course, that they will be 1,722 miles away (25 driving hours) instead
of 189 miles (3 hours driving time). So, we all wanted to get together prior to
the big move.
It was a really grand time! Some of the fun centered
around the young ladies helping their grandmother with the cooking. Granny had
much of the itinerary planned and prepped so the gals all joined in and made a
great spread! We had food!!
That’s not all, though. They had all been used to
getting to play with our bird herd when here. Since there hadn’t been any
chickens around for a while, it was determined that the old folks needed to
have at least a few hens on hand for fresh eggs (which is exactly our thinking
four years ago i.e. no plans for a huge hoard of hens).
So, to make things interesting, we hauled the kids
down to a couple of feed stores and let them pick out a couple of birds each.
They couldn’t have been happier! They each got to hold and pet their day-old
puff ball and name it.
5 year old Warner Philip (obviously a comedian in the
making) named his, “Randy”. He gave specific directions on how to take care of his baby birdie buddy while
he was away.
An excited 6 year old, Moira, came and grabbed Connie and
pointed to her bird (who was hunkering down to take a nap). “She’s laying an
egg!”, she exclaimed. Connie was hard pressed to keep herself from rolling on the
floor laughing. “Honey”, she said, “She’s a baby bird and a couple of days ago,
she was an egg!”. Reckon we’ll have
to get back to Moira at a later date and explain more about ranching.
The pressure’s on! : not long ago (when lots of
things happen around here), we were employing our “Power Pressure Cooker” when
it decided to release its grip on the lid locking pin. “Oh, swell!”, lamented the
long-suffering chef in charge of high-pressure food maceration. “Looks like we won’t be taking
beans to the pot-luck!”. “Well, praise the Lord!”, Connie the Sous Chef
gleefully proclaimed (reckon beans are not her friends).
Anyway, after making sure that I wasn’t offended by
her “Menu B” substitution, she recommended that it was time to call the company
and tell them that we had a busticated pot.
I have to hand it to the good folks that vend these big
babies; they stand by their big steaming chunks of metal with both feet. A quick explanation
of the issue was given to the agent and then she was asked how to get a
replacement lid or such.
After explaining that we had the ten quart model,
the nice lady on the phone got our full name and address and advised that they
would be shipping us new unit! Zowie! I
was thinking that it would cost us thirty bucks for a new lid and twenty more
for shipping! In only about a week, we had our new bean nuker and were back to “Menu
A” for the next pot luck!
There was more good news! It was an entirely
different cooker! This one was beefier, had a stainless steel pot (the other
was Teflon which scratched up) , and it has one more cooking selection than the
old one; it has sous vide!
I’ve wanted to tinker with sous vide for a long time.
But, the Ol’ Rancher wasn’t about to pop
for another appliance around here that was likely going to be used only a couple
of times per year. This new highfalutin pot will likely change my thinking by
quite a bit!
There’s rain in them thar foothills!: yep! We got
our seasonal rains and a bunch more! The rivers, creeks, canals, and ponds are
all full! The crabs and the fishes are doing the be-bop-be (thank you, Hank Williams - "My Bucket's Got a Hole In It")! After 5 years of meager precipitation (the clouds were being squeezed
so hard they were moaning!), we are rejoicing in our wonderful spring bloom! Seems
that Rancho Relaxo will no longer look like it belongs in Lake Havasu City! We’re
green!
What’s the latest buzz?: the bees are prospering what
with the grand bloom. We have two hives now so we’ll be checking on the honey
production soon. There hasn’t been a honey harvest in four years so we won’t
feel guilty for robbing the boxes. However, we may just pass on this year’s
harvest since we already have an abundance of honey on tap and in storage.
A gardening we shall go!: the four garden boxes did
get planted this year. Box 1 has a special green bean that Connie the Canner
ran across. She wants to can a bunch of them for this next winter. In the same
box, egg plants are to be found. That was Rancho Ran’s idea because he’s armed
with a bunch of recipes (but doesn’t know how to use them yet). There were a
couple of extra tomato plants so they were stuffed in with the other boxes with
the greens (making a total of eight tomato plants).
In Box 2, there are both zucchini and summer squash and four tomato plants.
These are the largest most prosperous squash plants that we’ve yet seen (rain
and water are our friends!). Their huge leaves form a beautiful canopy over the
entire box and are crowding the 'maters! So far, there are several small squash sprouting out. In a couple
of weeks, we’ll be serving up fresh summer squash!
The old folks at the ranch can’t get enough squash.
When it’s squash season, we have loads of soups, stews, and sautéed zukes (of
the “gad” variety, no doubt) around here. Of course, without giving away a ton
of them, we wouldn’t have room to turn around in the kitchen. So, friends, relatives, and neighbors
will get enough of them to be tired of them by late summer.
Box 3 is a mix of green bell peppers, tomatoes, and zucchini,
all of which still allow room for a small patch of oregano. The oregano started
out as a mark down at a grocery store. So, the Ol’ bargain hunter shelled out a
buck for some fresh oregano that still had roots. He then plopped it into the
garden box and watered it and, before he knew what happened, he had a nice
patch of ready-to-pick oregano. Spaghetti, anyone?
Box 4 is also a mix. It sports green onions,
potatoes, asparagus, and a gopher. The last item is the unwelcomed one, don’tcha know. The green onions were also mark downs but from “Lowe’s”. We got a big
batch of them and planted them but didn't much care if they grew or not. They
did grow and are ready to harvest. I had a handful of them a couple of weeks
ago with dinner.
The asparagus was planted almost as a total lark.
They were closeouts and cost almost nothing so we picked up a couple of them.
Just about everything you can do to kill an asparagus plant was done but the
two small lonely bunches survived. They’re there mostly for decoration since
they look so weird.
On the other hand, the spuds were a total lark. We
had a lot of them going to seed so they were whacked up and planted. Lo and
behold if they didn’t immediately prosper! Alas, one of the local gophers had
just commenced a “potatoes only” diet and began noshing and feasting with all alacrity through the fifteen or so plants. According to the assessed
damage, we’re now looking for a twenty pound gopher who is stuck in a tunnel in
the garden bed.
Hamming it up: the ham shack is coming along (albeit
at a pace that’s comparable to trying to suck a golf ball through a water hose).
One issue is location (as in “location, location, location”); Rancho Relaxo is
surrounded by hills. This is not a good thing if you’re a ham operator.
For the electronically disinclined, radio signals
don’t really bore holes in hills. They need the hole to already be there or
need someone to move the mountain out of the way. One way to surmount the
issue is to use a repeater. Well, that works for VHF/UHF but not for HF which
is an important part of long distance communication .VHF/UHF is “line of sight”
transmissions and confined to local use (or roughly a 20 mile radius in most cases). Using a repeater (without linking) gives a
larger radius of about 50-100 miles (depending upon a number of factors
like antenna height and repeater output power).
A 35’ “Slinky”
style horizontal dipole project was finally completed for HF /low bands use. In the beginning, it
appeared that it would load up and work on most ham bands. However, the tuning
was all done when the weather was rainy which made the grounding aspect of the
station much more efficient. After things dried out, the antenna just wouldn’t
load properly.
The dipole was selected for two main reasons. One
was that it was easy to build (the Ol’ Hamster has built a number of them in
the past) and it was inexpensive to build (El Cheapo at your service). The
other reason is that the dipole has a much higher radiation pattern than a
vertical antenna.
Being located in a “bowl” necessitates a higher radiation
pattern. “NVIS” (near vertical incidence sky wave”) is the recommended approach
for that environment and the recommended antenna is the dipole.
However, since the dipole wouldn’t load, and since
it would take a while to rebuild the thing so that it does load correctly, it
was time to try another direction.
A couple of years ago, an old 11 Meter CB antenna was
acquired at a yard sale. It was a standard 5/8 wavelength vertical with four
radials. It was in dire need of an overhaul (hey…it was…cheap!). Fortunately,
said overhaul only took about an hour to complete and only required a cutoff
wheel grinder, a wire brush wheel, small sheet metal and machine screws, and some elbow
grease.
It was mounted on a tripod about 5 feet off the
ground. This isn’t all that optimal but it’s still usable if you have radials
and decent grounding. An extension cable was run out to the area behind the
barn where the worktable was and my ham gear was established there. The rig was an ICOM IC-735 transceiver with the matching power supply, an MFJ-949E tuner, the stock ICOM mic, and a fully automatic CW/Morse Code keyer. I like noise so I hooked up the auxiliary speaker.
There was no doubt that the 21.5’ vertical would
tune the 10 meter ham band because there's only a one meter difference between the bands (11M CB is 26.965 mhz to 27.405 mhz and 10M ham is 28.0 MHZ to 29.00 MHZ). That had been done before using a CB mobile antenna
which was mounted on my Chrysler during the road trip in ’03. A 25 watt Realistic HTX-100 mono-band 10M transceiver was run to a Mobile CB antenna by tuning it with an antenna tuner. Piece of pie.
Did it tune to the 12 meter ham band? Nope. It didn’t. But, that wasn’t a big letdown since most commercial verticals have an issue with that band, too (I’ve never operated on that band anyway).
Did it tune to the 12 meter ham band? Nope. It didn’t. But, that wasn’t a big letdown since most commercial verticals have an issue with that band, too (I’ve never operated on that band anyway).
How about 15 meters? Yep. In fact, it
tuned with an absolutely flat SWR (standing wave ratio). OK, but how about 20
meters which is the band that is usually open and used by most hams? YEP! That
one too! 20M also tuned with a flat
(1:1) SWR. What was surprising was that it also tuned down to the 30M band (10.100
mhz - 10.150 mhz) and with a perfectly acceptable 1.5:1 SWR. Love it.
Ah, but would it get out of the bowl? A sweep of the
20M band found a net controller on 14. 300 mhz. He was in Missouri and was the
eastern part of the net (the other part being in Torrance, CA). I checked into the
net with no problem and was tickled that our signal strength reports were the
same! That’s called “getting out”!
So, using the vertical will work for now for the
upper HF bands. However, there’s a brand new 100’ off-center fed G5RV dipole
that is waiting to be mounted out back. That will be a reference for the lower
HF bands which are 40M, 80M, and even 160M (if it will tune that low).
It will be mounted 7’ off the ground with three slightly-longer-than
100’ ground radials running 6’ apart and parallel to
the antenna (acting as a reflector). This should also reflect much of the signal upward and, hopefully, will take advantage of the NVIS principle.
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 a giant hot loaf of bread (when there aren't any dead
chickens lying around): where things can get...interesting, and where...you
just never know.
