Rancho Mucho Stuffo

Hey, all you villains (Porter-villains, that is), this is the newly overhauled Douglass A-4 Skyhawk that sits at the entrance of the Porterville Municipal Airport. She surely looks great after they spiffed her up!

Stuff is starting to pile up little by little. This is just the beginning but we can expect a flood of things and soon at that. This is looking north from the driveway. Springville is directly on the other side of the hill in the background. It's a 3.5 mile drive to get there.

This nice grassy area will be covered with people in only a few days! You can see the vines to the left in the picture. We got a lot of really tasty grapes this year! Grapes are our friends!

This is the front of the rancho. It, too, will soon be a beehive of activity. Love our shade trees! We'll prune them back in a couple of days to folks don't whack their noggins on the limbs.

This is the Coop de Ville and Wooly Pully bringing in the last load from the hangar. We've had the hangar stuffed with yard sale goods for almost a year. Next year's yard sale will start the day after this year's yard sale ends, don'tcha know.

This is a couple of days after the pics above. We now have a real pile of stuff. That's not all there is! More is on the way!

Now, just where do we stuff this stuff? The tables are not set up yet in the pic but they are now here and most are set up and ready to go.

One of our regular vendors, Leanne Chapman, has already started unloading things and getting ready. Her goodies will take up most of the entire "island" you see there and almost to the road. She's good at it!

Well, it’s October…2019. Doesn’t that just make you wanna hock your genuine “Wham-O” Hula Hoop?!  Sure, it’s a beloved keepsake from 1958. But, who needs a trip to the ER, eh? Oh, and that comes from …1958.  *SIGH*.

Just when you get comfortable with one month, another one comes along and takes its place. It’s like we’re ripping through time with the same irresistible force as a mile-long brake-less Union Pacific locomotive hurtling down “Cajon Pass” into San Bernardino. Moving along.....

Lots and lots of great stuff is happening at the ol’ rancho. We’ve had folks loading us up with blessing after blessing after blessing! Add to that the many great deals we’ve run into at yard sales and we just have to stand back and marvel! Here's the news on some of the latest happenings. 

Rancho Blesso: not long ago (when lots of things happen around here), two of our clients passed away. Their widows called and asked if we would come over a pick up some stuff that had belonged to their late husband. That amounted to at least four trailer loads of goods with the back of the van loaded too.

Then, recently, a neighbor over on Lower Globe Drive advised that he is moving to Sacramento. He knew about us through another acquaintance and asked if we would come pick up some of his stuff that he wasn’t going to be able to take with him.

Well, as per our usual modus operandi, when folks throw blessings at us, we don’t duck! So, we headed over to his house and loaded up the trailer and the van with all kinds of goodies! Then, he called us a couple of days later and said there was more! More is our friend! We headed back over and picked up another trailer and van load which included a nice saddle, three horse blankets (I didn’t know that they made designer horse blankets, did you?!), a 4-saddle saddle tree, misc bric-a-brac, and a gorgeous like-new “Mr. Coffee” programmable  thermal coffee maker. That’ll come in handy, no doubt.

Well, a few days later and after he and his wife discussed the matter, it was decided that he needed to get rid of yet more goods! He called and we went back over and loaded up again!

Then, a lady we don’t really know but who knew about us, dropped off a large box of like-knew set of “Taste of Home Annual Recipes” and some other really nice stuff! Stuff is our friend!

Rancho Quatro: not long after our client gave us a ton of stuff, she also gave yours truly a 250cc Honda Quad ATV! It starts at the first touch of the starter button and doesn’t miss a beat! It may not seem like a big deal but it has enabled me to get quite a bit more work done and in less time! It has a hitch on the back that can support either a 1 7/8” or a 2” ball so I can haul both of my trailers as I please! Zowie! Its new rancho name is “Quatro”…of course.

Sale on!: we're getting ready for the BIG yard sale during the Apple Festival. It's one big cloud of dust with a pile of two old people at the end of the day! You can believe me when I say that, before, during, and after the sale, Ol’ Rancho Ran and Connie the Canner are a couple of too-pooped-to-pop old folks!

There is stuff stored  in the hangar at the airport, stuff stored in the pole barn, stuff stored in the barn, and stuff stored on the back porch. Most of it is ready but there's a lot more that has to be cleaned and priced and ready for the big event. 

We had about 20 tables last year and I thought it looked like we’ll have 20 this year! If that doesn’t that just sift your “White Lily” self-rising flour, Connie just advised that we will probably need a few more tables than that!

Wooly Pully is our main hauler for now. We’ve been loading and unloading the trailer for days. It gets tugged around by Quatro (which arrived at just the right time to be a huge blessing!) and then gets hauled back and forth from the hangar by the Coop de Ville. The trailer, the Honda, and the Coop are handy gadgets to have around!

Then, some stuff has to be pressure washed while others can be hosed down. Connie cleans then prices stuff then boxes it or stacks it somewhere (and there’s no room to stack anything by now…ugh).

We’ll set up on the Wednesday prior Friday, the “kick day”. That’ll take all day to move stuff into place and coordinate with the (expected) 20 or so vendors so they can get set up.

Boxes, tables, and stuff are starting to accumulate all over and all along the driveway. It’s going to be a big deal again this year! That means that we will have the resources to head out for Texas. But,  we won’t being going on our annual vacation in November this year. The funds will be available next spring when we do go. We decided that we’re just too tired to enjoy the time off. Our new practice now is to never start a vacation when you are exhausted (or you’ll return wrecked and in need of a vacation).

Lay one on me: we have an “eggs-citing” news report! We just harvested our first dozen eggs and are now getting a regular supply of farm fresh, organic, free range, eggs! Our girls are now pros! Sure; they were a bit small on size but they were huge on flavor! I guess we can call them “practice eggs”. Nevertheless, they were delicious especially since we added bacon, steak bits, and crispy hash brown potatoes! Not only will we not have an egg shortage, the eggs will always be the best you can get anywhere! Whoooo,doggies!

Connie the Washer Woman was outside hanging clothes and heard one of the girls loudly proclaiming the “I just laid an egg” cackle. From experience, we know that she was saying that she was really proud and was letting everyone know just how great she was at it!” After dealing with chickens for a while, you get to understand what the clucks are clucking about. I call it “understanding Chickenese” but who knows. Just as long as no one refers to me as the “Chicken Mumbler” my feathers won’t be ruffled.

There you have it: another short episode of the long happenings 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 dirty work jeans, hot coffee latte’, and freshly washed sheets: where things can get...interesting, and where...you just never know.