Rancho Mas Verde

Here's a few shots of the aftermath of the library fire. None of us old people were left untouched by this utterly unnecessary evil. Two young fools deliberately started a fire INSIDE the library. This was no childhood prank. This came from an evil heart that devises wicked imaginations. Two good men needlessly died because of this vile event.

 The new building that now stands in the place of the old "Porterville Hotel".

 Here is a shot of the almond trees in bloom just north of Hwy 190 and just west of Hwy 65.

 This is the highest I've flown the drone. Looking north from over my driveway.

Another shot of the front of the new building

To the right is the new "Fugazzi's" restaurant. They hope to open in a couple of weeks.

f

Garden boxes 1, 2, and 3. Looking east. They were recently refilled with fresh compost. A few starts have since been planted.

 To the right is Roo who is acting as some sort of supervisor. That or he's just checking me out and hoping I'll leave behind a bug or two.

f

This is the Tule River looking west from the Lower Globe Road bridge. After the previous flooding, there was a massive flow of sand and sediment in this area. It filled in one of the best fishing holes on the river. Two of the three largest trout that I've ever caught were from this hole. It used to be 2' to 6' or so feet deep. It's now just a shallow wading pool. 

Here's Tojo the little '85 Toyota pickup. We sold it to a local ministry that helps the homeless. We made them a very fair deal. Since we now have the Honda ATV with a trailer, we probably won't need the pickup. We'll see.

To the right: this picture was tossed in just in case you haven't see the guts of a Maytag dryer recently. It's actually fairly simple and straightforward to pull apart (especially if you are used to pulling laptops apart. Dryers are a piece of pie). You just have to pay attention.  The cycling thermostat needed to be replaced. All the other sensors and parts that were going to wear out anyway were replaced, as well. No old people were harmed in the process of fixing this dryer or the taking of this stupid picture.

Here's Abbie rounding up a genuine California Pocket Gopher. She doesn't quite know what to do other than try to dig him out. That won't work, of course. The gopher just goes deeper. But, it does keep her nose in shape.

Hey!! It’s March 2020!! Doesn’t that just over-torque the head bolts on your Ford “flatty” V-8, Granny?!! What’s up with the runaway calendar?!

Spring has just hit us like a 10 hp fly swatter! I’m not ready for spring yet! I have winter work to do to get ready for spring! This ain’t real! Grrrrr….moving along.

Raining: at least we’re going to be getting a bit of rain (a “bit” of rain is slightly more than “mad” rain where there are one hundred drops of rain equally distributed across the county and which make a mess of your car’s windshield). Getting a fresh rain is a good thing because, for some reason, we are terribly short on pluviculturists (people who try to make rain) in this region. Now, we are notoriously rain free most of the time so it’s a great wonder that the place isn’t crawling with them. Maybe they charge too much.

Rain update: we did get a nice “soaker” rain for part of a day but we need much more. Things got wet but we really need a couple of “frog stranglers” to get the ground ready for summer. Our orange and plum trees need a goodly sized drink of water.

Boxing: this rapidly budding trees thing has the Ol’ Rancher springing into action (sorry; couldn’t help myself) and getting his garden boxes ready for the new season. As usual, there just isn't enough energy to spread between chores around here. At this rate, I'll need to clone myself to get things done. *SIGH*. 

Oh, and what poor shape the poor boxes are in. Ugh. It’s not that they’ve been all that neglected. They just haven't been kept up to maximal standards. However, they are old and tired (I feel their pain) and needed an overhaul (yep). So, it was time to fire up “El Quatro” (“Quatro” for short), the Honda Recon ATV, and start hauling some compost.

We keep an ongoing compost pile out back near the orange trees. It gets added to and stirred from time to time (using the Ranch Rino). When it’s “ripe”, I use the compost to reload the garden boxes or what all. That is, if there is enough time and concurrent energy supply to complete the task.

Anyway, Qautro has a nice small trailer that hooks up to the ball hitch so I can haul quite a nice sized load of material to the boxes without having to use the wheel barrow. It takes about 4-5 trips with the wheel barrow to haul as much material that can be hauled with the ATV and trailer in one load. That thing is my friend! 

Of course, that stuff doesn’t just up and load itself then jump out of the trailer into the boxes. Someone…ahem…that would be me…has to grab the handle of a transfer shovel and get to gruntin’ (gruntin’ is not my friend). That means a lot of taxed muscles (meaning that my taxes are too high) which complain loudly by bed time (Ibuprofen is my friend).

As of this posting, 3 of the boxes are finished and the 4^th will likely have to wait until after the beautiful, wonderful, excellent, highly-anticipated rain clouds dump their liquid treasure upon us in a day or so. After everything dries out (and after a nap), the last of the boxes will get some attention. 

If last year was any indicator of things to come, the number one box will be our "green bean" and "green peas" box. I'm trying to sprout some Chinese snow peas so that I can make my stir-fry cooking adventures happier. Connie really digs the green beans and can’t wait for more to show up.

New items are some herbs and veggies, too. The herbs are rosemary and mint (planted in separate garden tubs) and the new veggies are the collard greens. Some seeds are bit old and may not germinate so the experiment is underway. The established oregano patch has shrunk somewhat but is still thriving. Spaghetti, anyone? 

Start me up: there are also a few starts. First, there is the use of a morning defibrillator so the Ol’ Rancher can get things off to a good start. That would be a nice hot (homemade) Starbucks coffee lattè. Then, the other starts; that would be red, orange, and green bell peppers, one Serrano type chili plant, a straight neck yellow summer squash, a zucchini plant, and 3 tomato plants to get things kicked off. These all came from “Lowes”. 

Seedlings are okra, crooked neck yellow squash, more zucchini squash, and zapolla squash (a Peruvian squash that is very nutritious and extremely versatile e.g. soups, stews, sautéd, steamed, and is even used in deserts) and Ol’ Ran, the planter, started those. The green beans and peas still need to be stuffed into the ground.

All we need to do is keep the chickens from raiding the boxes and cleaning up the seeds. It's likely we'll need to hang some netting of some sort to keep them out. They are indiscriminate and ravenous raptors without a conscience and can wreck a garden box in less time than Ali took Fraizer. They also taste great so they need to pay attention to the rules.    

Getting squashed: the zapolla are known to grow rather large (as in, if allowed to fully grow, it takes two men to carry one). We shall see. If they can be found, there are some seeds from the Japanese pumpkins that I remember saving, too. We grew some last year but didn’t really know what to do with them so they ended up in the compost pile. You use them like any other member of the squash family. 

Love me some collards!: my! But do I love collard greens! The hope is that there will be a nice large patch of them! It's difficult to find such a sumptuous mess of greens that are any simpler to prepare! Just toss in a ham hock of your choosing (we keep several to choose from here), however much bacon you like (we like bacon...a lot), or some salt pork, and cook the livin' daylights out them (about 3 hours) and you'll have a "mess" fit for royalty. Chase down a  big ol' pan of southern cornbread and a bowl of blackeyes, or pinto beans and you'll wind up being parked at the dinner table for a good long while. If your collards have been left out in the rain and hail at all, be sure and rinse the hail out of them before you eat'em. Otherwise, they'll be a tad gritty (and, nobody...nobody...likes gritty collards). 

Exhausted: for the past few months, we just couldn’t seem to make fixing Toyo’s exhaust noise issue a priority. Finally, the other day (when lots of things happen around here), we took it in and dropped it off at the muffler shop. The issue was that the flex connector that connects the manifold to the exhaust pipe was worn out. 60 bucks later, we were good to go. We can now drive with our heads sticking up high enough so people can recognize who’s driving the nice and quiet car. 

Goodbye, TOJO: after serving us very well for so many years, the little ’85 Toyota pickup is gonzo. We didn’t use it enough to warrant the upkeep on it. It’s been on “non-op” for a couple of years now and had sat forlornly for a few months awaiting a gas line repair. Now that we have “Hondo”, the ATV and trailer, I don’t need the picky-up truck to haul things around on the ranch. The little truck will be missed but I imagine that will fade when I get the big F250 Ford diesel truck that caught my fancy some months ago.

A local help-the-homeless ministry needed it so they got it. No doubt they will make good use of it. It runs fairly well but will needs some TLC since it has been sitting for awhile.

  

Abbie the Winner Dog: when we came home from church Sunday afternoon, my speedy, spunky, black and white, faithful, coon doggy failed to greet us as she usually does. Upon exiting the van, it became apparent that she was quite busy and utterly focused on her current hunting project at the next door neighbor’s house (a practice that is not encouraged by her non-speedy, non-spunky, rather slow, owner). It wasn't known how long she had been at it but her barking and baying was probably getting old to the other neighbors. Knowing that my coon dog’s nose knows what’s happening on her turf, I just had to find out what the ruckus was all about.   

It didn’t take long to discover that she had “treed” a critter of some sort as it took refuge in a 4” PVC pipe that acted as a front door drain of the neighbor’s home. I was pretty sure that it wasn't a bear or a bobcat so felt comfortable heading over for a closer look. Then, the high-pitched barking of a ground squirrel filled the air. This was a “no brainer”; a fuzzer was in trouble. 

Abbie was really jacked up and it was sure that she wasn’t going to be un-jacked any time soon. What to do? Hmmmm. Ah! There just happened to be a charged hose with a jet nozzle on it sitting within reach of the center of activity. You can imagine that it was hard to wait and see what was going to happen when a high pressure stream of water was introduced into the opposite end of the pipe that was harboring the little brown hole miner and land destroyer.  

With a quick pull of the handle on the nozzle, the brown bane rocketed out the far end of the pipe and directly into the waiting maw of a rodent-hating, ready-for-action, coon hound. The furry bugger didn’t know what hit him! With a “BAM!” and a shake, it was all over within a split second. Abbie – 1; Critter – 0. Go, Abbie! Peace and quiet returned to the hood as Abbie pranced off with her new trophy.

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 sun-dried bed sheets and fresh compost: where things can get...interesting: where it’s all news to me: and, where...you just never know.