RANCHO DECEMBRE FRIO (OR, BABY, IT'S COLD OUTSIDE)

 

This is a sunset shot of the dam at "Lake Success" about 6 miles from our place. I love this view and have a number of pictures of it during all times of the day and through the different seasons. Looking SW. If you look up Lake Success or Springville, CA on Google Maps, use the little yellow guy in the corner and drag him out to the view point for the lake (it's on the east side and on Highway 190). Drop him on one of the two blue dots and you'll have a nice view of the lake during the day time.

Looky what showed up at our humble airport! This is a gorgeous ICON A5 light sport amphibian airplane. She's a beaut!

This is Speck! Look how big she has grown! She's a pullet now and should start laying eggs soon. We're open for a new name since Speck is rather inglorious and unspecific. It was cute while she was smaller than a wad of pocket lint but she's due for a change.

To the left and below: This is some of the remains of the yard sale. You can see how these things have been expertly arranged. So, as soon as an expert comes along, we can get it all cleaned up and things will be put back together and place will look decent again. I hate having an indecent yard. 

 

 

Man! It’s only 19 days until Christmas! Didn’t we just celebrate it a few weeks ago?! To quote my old TV pal, Perry White (Clark Kent’s boss), “Great Caesar’s Ghost!”. *SIGH*.

In fact, time is racing at such a velocity that the Ol’ Rancher is now on the drop edge of getting another year older! Just what I need! I get to lose one more pound of muscle mass. Reckon I’ll need to go to the gym on my next day off! One minute I’m staring the speedily-oncoming “Big Five-Oh” in the face and the next, I’m dragging the bigger “Seven-O” behind me and hurtling toward higher numbers! What’s with that (mutterings heard in the background some of which may be cursing in several known languages)?!

I think that, when you cross the big (waaaay too big) Seven-O, you drop into the “Twilight Zone” where Rod Serling is narrating your life: “Imagine, if you will, a total nobody old dude who calls himself ‘The Ol’ Rancher’ who lives in a humble abode called ‘Rancho Relaxo’ where there’s almost never a moment of rest. It’s a two-acre patch of barely fertile ground just outside of the average stone-age community of Springville.

It’s there where we find a tale full of sound and bluster (sorry, William. We don’t do fury here): one that includes chickens, dogs, gophers, ground squirrels, and a zoo-load of other wild critters that trespass in the darkness of night. He is frequently encompassed by a personal cloud of dust and wears muck covered galoshes while driving his small Ford tractor and while getting kicked out of the kitchen for tracking mud inside”.  Thanks, Rod. *SIGH*. Moving along….. Anyone seen my chicharones?

Actually, it’s been almost Christmas since…before Thanksgiving! I don’t quite get it. I mean, sure; there’s marketing and such. It’s difficult to handle the payments on your new Maybach if you don’t get stuff hauled down the bitumen. 50% or more of a company’s profit may come from Christmas sales (which start the day after Thanksgiving). OK. I’m good with that. But, don’t you think we should wait at least until the day time temperatures are in the mid-40’s before we start sucking on candy canes and donning our goofy Santa hats?

What I’m concerned about is the diminution of why we have Thanksgiving. It’s a special holiday for a reason so we need to remain thankful that we live in the greatest country on the planet. Why else would everyone on the planet try to immigrate here (except for ex-pats who emigrate because of all the illegal immigration and oppressive taxation?). 

Likewise, Christmas is truly a special standalone holiday and there’s a very special reason for the season. Christmas, alone, is a good enough reason to have a day of thanksgiving.

But, what happens if we start seeing Santa Claus dressed in an Indian war bonnet and his sleigh loaded with pumpkins and frozen turkeys?!! It doesn’t seem right when little elves are helping to fix Thanksgiving dinner! Leave that chore to grandma! My, oh my!

So, y’all know what to do if that happens. Dial BR-549 and do it quickly. Ask for Junior!

Wake up and add the RAM, Ran or What a difference the giggles make: Since the work box crashed some time back, the stand-in backup computer box has been carrying the load. But, lately, it’s been pulling the ol’ computer dude’s teeth. It’s not really a dog but it’s not a blitz box, either. It a nice dual-core machine running a modest 1.7ghz CPU and touts 6 giggles of RAM. The OS is Win 10. So, why is it so slow? Something had to be done.

However, after a deep tune-up and such, the box was still dragging its stirrups in the mud: time for “Plan B”. Out came the box of RAM, off came the back of the 23” all-in-one computer, and its 2 giggle-byte RAM chip was swapped for a 4 giggle-byte chip. That made 8 giggles altogether.

Though moving along a lot better, Win 10 was still making things difficult. So, most of the things that make Win 10 slow (it is notorious for that, if you hadn’t noticed) have been addressed but the box was still too slow for what I am used to. Then, I discovered that my “Opera” browser is a notorious resource hog. Great. Just what I need: a hoggy browser. Until I get my big quad-core box with 32gb of RAM rebuilt, I’ll need to remember to only open a few browser tabs at time. I can do that.

The Party’s Over or Ain’t No More Free Chicken Dinners: I truly love the new pooch in the hooch. She’s as sweet as Abbie and at least as intelligent. She also truly loves free chicken dinners. Unfortunately for her, we don’t have enough chickens to supply her daily dietary delights.

The birds are used to Abbie running around and not bothering them (that dynamic took a while to accomplish but she finally got the messages that chickens are not gifts from God just for her). So, they took no thought about another doggie in the yard and weren’t paying attention. That didn’t end well.

Missy, who is capable of almost lightning speeds, had no problems snatching a slow-moving chicken and ending its egg production days on earth. Since she’s still a pup, someone (on his day off) will need to start training her so that she will be a good “chicken dog” who faithfully watches over her wards instead of snacking on them.

All dogs loved to be loved on and Missy is no exception. She’s as sweet as a freshly baked key lime pie and loves to share her love. It didn’t take long to calm her down and teach her to sit so that she could get her ration of love for the day when “love the doggies time” came around. She found that, if she would sit and not bounce, she would get a lot of great attention. So, now, our new girl dog is really getting’ into this love program. She digs the attention and soaks it up like a pro.

Turkey Doggie Dinners: While the chicken dinners are no longer free, there are still turkeys. After T-Day, there were a lot of trimmings, fat, parts, and pieces with which to feed the guard dog crew. When we finished carving the turkey, we bagged and froze the leftovers. That still left us with a lot of trimmings including skin, giblets, and the ubiquitous “Pope’s nose” to deal with.

Just about all but the “Pope’s nose” was boiled in a large pot for making turkey stock which was then canned for later. That particular delicacy went to our princess pooch as an appreciative gift for her service in keeping us safe from ogres and other evil (we haven’t seen a single ogre around here!).

Well, sort of. She probably should have only gotten half of the chuck since she only provides half the required services. The remainder of her time is used for sleeping during the day so she can stay up all night barking at spooks and cats. *SIGH*. Love covers a multitude of sins and barks.

Anyway, after picking the carcass clean, we ended up with a large zip-lock bag full of good stuff for the doggies to add to the other raw trimmings. That meant that, for breakfast the next few mornings, they each got a big serving of turkey trimmings. Boy! You should have seen them chow down! They were happier than a hillbilly at a potluck!

Hamming it up: Speaking of hungry hounds: we thawed a large ham some time ago (but longer than the other day) and left it in the spare fridge in the barn. Someone forgot about it and it had been sitting there aging every day for months. It was one of those closeout deals we couldn’t pass up so we bought three or four of them (at .39 lb, how could we not?!!). It had been in the freezer but when the freezer up and died, it forced us to scramble wildly to redistribute its continents then cook and store the rest (dead freezers are not our friends!). This particular ham was parked in the adjacent fridge (its freezer was already full) then promptly forgotten.

When finally discovered, it was time to see what condition it's condition was in (thank you, Kenny Rogers!). It was hauled to the kitchen sink where the plastic skin was peeled off. You may not believe it but the ham appeared to be just fine! After thinking about it for a minute, it dawned on me that hams like these are pumped full of a saline solution which basically makes them “forever hams” (think: SPAM).

A chunk was cut off for a taste test and, sure enough, it was fine. However, Connie the Canner looked at me askance (which was much better than being looked at with her evil eye) and, with much doubt in her voice, said, “I don’t think so”.

She continued her argument by pointing out how long it had been sitting there and that it wasn’t going to gain her approval any time soon. Since I only had a taste test to work with, I had to admit that her logic wasn’t flawed at all. Besides, at .39 per pound, it's about the price of dog food, anyway. So, guess who got a nice big chunk of ham for breakfast all the next week? You bet! My turkey-fed doggies are now my ham-fed pooches. They were up to the task!

Monday, Monday: Monday’s are supposed to be what we call a “stay home day”. In other words, it's sort of a day off where we have the discretion whether or not to choose an overwhelming task to grapple. It’s like: “To task or not to task; that is the question”. It’s supposed to be a day where the Ol’ Rancher gets to lounge around in his genuine cheap blue plaid bed pants (oh, the comfort), a T-shirt with no pocket on it, and his hand-crafted house slippers (a gift from Connie the Sewer).

And, I really don’t want to change out of them unless I have to because we may need to go to Wal-Mart, don’tcha know. I would hate to be accused of being a fashion snob, eh?!  

On the other hand, you just never know what can happen around this place. Sometimes a client will call for help and the bed pants will need to be parked until later. Other times, there’s some farm exigency that can’t be delayed until the next day and one which requires blue jeans and work boots. 

Hint for the day: never drive a tractor in your bed pants. Make the tractor take'em off first (I love grammar and Groucho. Don’t you?).

What’s nice is a day when there’s “in-shop” computer work. That’s when the guy with the golden screwdriver can take his time and work on ‘puters and radios at his leisure. What’s even nicer is to have nothing on the plate at all so  easy stuff like writing and blogging can be accomplished all day rather than piecemeal. It doesn’t happen very often. But, when it does, it’s a day that is greatly appreciated and it's a day for the dust and smoke to settle around here so I can (sorta) relax and just be the resident cabbage head, you know?

NUTS! Things are always a bit nutty around the ranch but, the other day (when lots of things happen), friend and brother, Gary Laird, brought us 12 gallons of walnuts! Whoo hoo! The entire crop had not been harvested (long story) so the owners gave him permission to help himself. He did that and shared the bounty with us!

Because they had been sitting a bit longer than usual in the field, Connie the Canner decided that they needed to be dried. That made sense because the commercial operators do that anyway. She spread them on a cookie sheet and popped them in the oven for a couple of hours.

After their time in the oven, they were dry but we learned something else; they were wonderfully roasted! We could hardly put the nutcracker down! She tried a few other oven settings so we now know that you can dry them and/or roast them. So far, we prefer them dark-roasted. What a treat!

Cracking them all will be a cinch because friend and brother, Courtney Gillespie, lent us his hand-cranked walnut cracker! It zips through a 5 gallon bucket of nuts in not time!

Red Tail Hawk:  We live in a rural area so we aren’t strangers to the sorted wildlife at all. We’ve had deer, ‘possums, coons, and such in both the front and back yards. But, when some of the other wildlife comes to you up close and personally, it can be a magnificent event.

The morning chores include releasing the chickens and feeding the doggies. In the summertime, it also involves checking the garden and doing a bit of harvesting if the produce is ripe. Can you imagine such a mundane morning routine being disrupted by a huge red tail hawk parked on one of your garden boxes?! What beauty! What majesty! What the heck is he looking at?! The first thought was that he may be sitting there checking out my birds to see which one he wanted to invite for lunch.

Out of nowhere, my lightning-fast mind wanted to name him “Henry” and to start talking to him: “Son! I say, Son! You’ve got much better things to do than to hawk my scrawny bad-tasting chickens!”. Well, that excursion into fantasy land with a Foghorn Leghorn impression didn’t last long. Even my concrete laden brain knew why that big birdy got big; it was because he ate a lot! There was a serious concern for Speck since she’s still a smaller easy-to-fly-off-with pullet.

After being sidetracked with my comedy routine, I reached for my cell phone which I always carry. It was time for a super picture! Ah, but this is Rancho Relaxo where anything can happen. It would have been a great shot except for the fact that this was one of the very few times that it got left inside. To quote my old pal, Charlie Brown: “Rats!”.

The huge bird seemed to laugh as he spread his wings and departed for other hunting grounds. The hope was that he was after smaller game. And, it was hoped that he wasn’t going to park on a nearby telephone pole (like many of the smaller hawks do) and patiently wait for a meal to stroll into view.

Handy Dandy Radio Randy: radios are indispensable here at RR. The little handy-talkies are about the best thing to happen around here since sliced bagels. No matter where I am on the ranch I am accessible. Even in the house, having comm radios is great because I work upstairs a lot. We tried an intercom system but it just didn’t work out well at all.

For a while, we tried the littlel FRS (Family Radio Service) radios. I’ve lost count of how many of those we bought and tried to use. They were fragile junk that we got tired of messing with. Even the nicest ones (a pair of which are still here in the shop but which are only used as back-ups to the back-ups) are iffy.

That was a few years ago before the inexpensive Chinese radios were available. When those babies hit the market, it was a sure sale for us. Ol’ Radio Ran is in his element when there are radios involved. So, it so it was fun to assemble them then program them with the programming software. 

You can leave them programmed with the stock frequencies, of course. But, that’s just too simple for me. Our UHF HT’s (handy-talkies) are programmed alike with some FRS channels but are also programmed with the local Sheriff’s and Porterville PD’s radio frequencies as well as a local 70cm ham radio repeater frequency. In other words, they are comm radios and scanners. Nifty!

The dual-band VHF/UHF HT’s are programmed with the same UHF channels/frequencies as the other ones but also have all of the VHF ham and public services frequencies. Fun stuff! All of the radios are set up to connect to the mag mount antennas on the van when I need to. The plan is to build a nice discrete vertical antenna to used for a base station that can service the entire neighborhood. 

“Git off my porch!”: our dirty birdies have more than 30 laying boxes in their coop. Yet, they seem to delight in making an Easter egg hunt our priority around here (as if we didn’t have anything else to do but track down eggs). One of their favorite places to lay eggs is on the front and back porch. No telling what that’s all about.

In any event, they excavate an area in the chosen planter box then lay away. It doesn’t matter whether it’s in the front planter boxes or in those on the back porch railing; it doesn’t even matter that there’s no protection at all from predators. That’s not the case in the coop where there’s lots of protection and privacy. Goofy birds! That leaves Connie the Canner doubling as “Connie the Chicken Shoosher” who every trying to keep the dirt-flinging planter-wrecking birds from destroying any more of her pretty planters around the house (they’ve destroyed about a dozen so far).  

Thankfully, as of late, most of them have gravitated back to using the preferred boxes in the coop. Most likely it was due to the change in the weather. We shall see.

Well....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): home of the Yo-Yo Twins, home of a retarded duck, home of Connie the Canner (world's greatest side-kook): where the air smells, where alliteration reigns supreme, where being modern is optional, where there are no slaves to fashion, where the eggs are always fresh, where things can get...interesting, where it’s all news to me, and where...you just never know.

 

 

 

 

RANCHO SE VENDE! SE VENDE! SE VENDE!

 

Abbie had one job and that was to keep the chickens off the back porch. She's asleep at the wheel and totally oblivious to the feathery trespasser. 

Here's Abbie guarding one of our tables

during our big clean up project after the 

mega yard sale

To the right, we see Abbie guarding our stuff. Well....sort of. 

It looks like Abbie stayed in one place too long and almost got herself sold! 

Here's Abbie again but she's shifted her beat over to where the large clothes rack is. 

To the right, Abbie is guarding the rear porch while testing her newly commandeered couch pillow. I tossed her blanket over it to make it more comfortable. 

We've seen Abbie using her "ear to the ground" guarding method before. But, this time she pulled an old lounge chair pad over and is employing it to help her man her post for longer periods of time while on duty. What a good guard dog. 

Here's dear Abbie guarding our trailer while we load things into it so we can haul it back to the hangar. She's always on duty. 

Some of our stuff the prior to the grand opening on Friday morning. We had 20 or so boxes that we didn't even get to unbox and display. 

To the right is more stuff....we had lots ands lots of stuff. 

We had stuff stuffed everywhere. Some of it is still in the same place until we can get the spizz to haul it back to the hangar. 

Here's our Camry after the "happy rain". It's all nice and clean again. The little car has 216K miles on her  but she's as mechanically solid as can be. I would trust her to take us anywhere in the country at a moment's notice and wouldn't even blink even if I had accidently left our "AAA" card at home. 

To the right is what the front of the rancho is 

supposed to look like. The canopy that had been hiding the entire front has been hewn back by the ol' lumber-jerk himself. That whack job took about four days to recover from. 

Here's Missy, the new doggie on the block. I think she's part border collie and part huskie. I really don't know. I just know that she disassembled my bales of hay. When was the last time you saw a pup do that?!

To the right is a shot of the driveway as we were in the process of setting up our tables. 

More tables. We actually only had half as many tables as were needed. We needed 15 more. 

Everything is tidy and ready for the big job of setting up for the sale. 

Well….things are moving along here at “Brown Acres” (the place I love to be). The problem is that they’re moving far too quickly for my slow mind and personal liking. It’s November, for Pete’s sake (whoever Pete is)! It’s only 48 days until Christmas and we’re not even quite ready for autumn yet! HECK! We’re not even ready for last autumn! Anyway, the key’s in the mailbox; come on in.

Yard sale. Big sale, big ache:  It takes a week to set up for the big event. It’s a full week of hauling stuff from our hangar at the airport (16 miles from home) and then everything has to be sorted, priced, and tabled (some of it was already priced). If you have several boxes of stuff, it’s no biggy. But, when you have 15-20 tables of goodies (i.e. trailer loads) and a huge rack of clothing, setting up is pretty rough on the old folks (especially loading and unloading those heavy long tables).

The Wednesday and Thursday prior to the opening on Friday is particularly brutal because all the rest of the event has to be prepared for, too. The pulled-pork and side dishes need to be prepped and all of the fixin’s and such need to be set out (crock pots are our friends!). Whatever other food for lunches has to be prepared and staged, and stuff that hasn’t already been priced must be priced at the last minute. And, coordinating the placement of the other sellers and addressing their needs is always a pressing matter. In all of that, “stuff” happens that tries to distract us from the goal of not having a lousy sale.

When the big day kicks off at 8:00 AM, there are three brutal 16-18 hour days of selling and babysitting stuff while continuing to set more stuff out. It’s a constant hustle and bustle from 5:30-6:00 AM until midnight. At the end of the day (about 9PM), you then have to try to accomplish the normal day’s needs and deeds prior to hitting the hay (e.g. house cleaning [after many folks have been coming in and out all day], washing dishes, checking the mail, answering voice mail, keeping up with business, prepping for the next day) and then (finally) showering and retiring. We usually don’t even remember our heads hitting the pillow. However, it’s not hard to remember trying to extricate ourselves from the sack the next morning (or even later in the morning if you get to bed after midnight).

When Sunday evening rolls around, we’re almost unable to function. On Monday morning, we can’t function at all until noon and even then it’s only to take care of immediate needs. You can bet that those needs get taken care of really slowly (“I’ll flip you to see who gets to crawl over to answer the phone”…you laugh). It’s a good thing the house didn’t catch fire because it would have taken three hours just to prepare to leave.

Then, there’s a week of teardown which is racking, packing, stacking, and stowing stuff and hauling it back to the hangar or to the Salvation Army. It’s exhausting by any means but how much mores so for the old people who are already wrecked? UGH. At least we can now afford a year’s supply of “Icy Hot” and “Ben Gay”.

This year has been quite different in that it’s been three weeks since the sale and we’re not even half way cleaned up. Between the rain, normal business and ministry, and being physically depleted, we just can’t get to it. What we’ll do is work at it a little at a time until it’s finished. It isn’t going anywhere and we aren’t either.

 “Oh, no! Don’t let the rain come down!” or “Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain”: It’s not that my roof has a hole in it and I might drown. In fact, thanks to a tornado that almost touched down next door to us (yes, we have tornadoes in CA), we had a new roof put on a few years ago and haven’t even had a leak. In fact number two, the entire region has been praying for rain during for our drought-plagued land. So, what’s all the hubbub, bub?

The big deal is that there are hundreds of unprotected items that will be destroyed if it rains. That means that we had to have large tarps at the ready or risk having a really lousy and mushy sales event. The good news was that there was no rain in the forecast. And, we all know that we can trust Leonard the Weather Dude, right? Not exactly. After a hard day of setting up and checking the weather report (with no chance of rain), and while getting ready to escape from our “work clothes” and get into our “comfies”, we got a text at 9:30 PM that would change everything to “Emergency Plan B”.

The text was from a neighbor advising that it was going to rain at about midnight. It was almost unbelievable! You can imagine the incredulous look we gave one another upon digesting that bit of news!

The two exhausted old sale’ers had to shift into higher gears (you could hear them grinding, believe you me) and hastened to grab the tarps and bungee cords. In hardly any time, we got with the program of tying everything down. Thankfully, due to the fact that Connie the Sale’r had plastic covers and tarps at the ready, it didn’t take but about 40 minutes to batten down the hatches. You probably don’t need much convincing to believe me when I tell you that we were moving slower than a three-legged turtle on a freshly waxed floor when the clock struck 12AM.

The next morning found everything wet but with most things protected. We didn’t lose anything important. About 6 or 7 years ago, we had a big wind blow through and take out two of our big pop-up canopies. This time wasn’t nearly as costly. C’est la vie.

The good news is that it was a “happy rain”. Usually, we get a “mad rain” which is just enough rain to make your car a rolling mud hole. This time, there was enough rain to actually wash the dirt off the van and make it look clean again. Happy rain!

There’s a mouse in the house! Or I scream for ice cream!: Fortunately, our mouse is Mickey Mouse (I learned to spell “M-i-c-k-e-y M-o-u-s-e” from watching the “Mickey Mouse Club” in 1958) which means that there’s no real vermin issue (other than outside where the fuzzers and gophers seem to rule).

We had recently picked up several Micky Mouse cookies and cream ice cream sandwiches from “Grocery Outlet”. They were three for a dollar and we got’em all! Lots of mice is nice! They’re the big ol’ fat ones, too! Since they are made by “Nestle’”, you just know that they’re scrump-dilly-umptious!

Since I own this joint, and since I’m the Grand Exhausted Poobah (and my momma ain’t lookin’), I took it upon myself as a very experienced ice cream eater to take one of these big babies for a test drive.  I started with the ears, of course, and worked my way down. My, but they were good!

 Speaking of eating:

The dog ate my homework…and my Crocs…and my hose nozzle…and my plastic garbage can…and…my patio blinds… and… my hay bales… and… the doggie pad in the doghouse and….she’s a “digger”…and…she seems to think that this is normal. Grrrrrrrr.

“Misty” is a beautiful name for a sweet-natured, pretty and intelligent, part Husky and part Border Collie pooch (at least that’s my opinion so far. I’m far from sure what she is). However, whereas, “Conan the Barbarian” and “Lara Croft Tomb Raider” have a nice ring to them, “Misty the Destroyer” …does not. It just has the wrong ring.  

To be able to cope with this lively, playful, cute, planet destroyer (I think she used to belong to Darth Vader), I have to rely on a couple of things (remembering that this is costly matter that needs to be resolved soon). One is that she’s a pup. Pups have a lot of spunk wandering around inside them and it’s always trying to find a way out. That she’s as boisterous as a small buoy during a big ocean squall is irrelevant; that’s understandable. A peppy puppy dog is a high-spirited dog that needs to do something….anything…to entertain itself or to campaign for attention. Abbie was much the same way until she grew out of it (or maybe it was at the threat of being swapped for a good sharp hunting knife: not sure).

The other thing is that this pooch is one sharp cookie. Though high-spirited like Abbie, this doggie doesn’t have the rebellious ‘tude that Abbie does. So, it appears that, if one is patient, she’ll be easy to train. She seems to be more than willing to take commands and that’s a good thing (or I will end up with a good sharp hunting knife).

Of course, it truly helps that she is soooo sweeeeet and just loves to soak up lovin’ of any kind and at any time. It’s unlikely that this lil’ doggy could get any sweeter even if you soaked her in a dump truck load of “C&H” pure cane sugar from Hawaii. She’s well worth the effort to patiently train her. I’m sure the rewards will be great.

Are we green yet, Abbie?: What with a new “baby” in the house, you always have to wonder just how the first child will react. Well, guess no more. Abbie is handling things fairly well but her jealousy isn’t hidden at all. On the one hand, she is very protective of me and heads Missy off at the pass if she tries to get too close to me. She is firm but not aggressive or hostile and ends up using whatever physical effort needed to direct Missy away from me. And, if I do start showing Missy attention, Abbie either barks and barks or sits and stares until she can’t stand it and pulls Missy away (which actually could be a presentation of jealousy, come to think about it).

Not to be outsmarted by a dog (I usually leave that to the chickens), I just lock Abbie on the back porch for a while and give Missy the attention she needs. She’s been in trouble no few times and has received the back porch confinement before. Though not happy, she just patiently settles in for the duration and waits it out.

Ally Cat? or We don’t need  no stinking big cat and we ain’t lion!: We don’t have an ally behind us be we do have lots of space for critters to wander through. That means that you just never know what’s gonna traipse through the back 40 until it gets your attention.

We’ve had coons, ‘possums, deer, coyotes, ground squirrels (aka fuzzers), gophers, stray cats, stray dogs, snakes, toads, and what all trespass on our property. But, sometimes some very interesting animals make their way here.

Some time ago (but longer than a blue moon), we had a bear meander into the next door neighbor’s yard. The next door neighbor to the west of them had a mountain lion snatch one of their goats. Well, a few nights ago, the cry of a mountain lion was heard out back. That truly got our attention. It’s one thing to hear the coyotes yip but to hear a big cat cry out is another.

For a couple of nights, until we were fairly sure that the big cat was gone, we made sure that our doggies were hooked up close to the house and that the chickens were all safely in the coop. After that, we turned them loose again to roam about as they pleased. But, you can bet that the trusty 5 shot 20GA Mossburg pump shotgun is handy (no real need for the artillery for now).   

 

Fixing a leak so you can take one or When it leaks, it pours:  

Drama never sleeps for long at the rancho. Thankfully, we’re not talkin’ about a body count but things do get…interesting around this place. 

The other day (when lots of things happen around here), there up and sprung a leak in the upstairs loo. Great. We’re still aching and haven’t even finished cleaning up after the yard sale and a major plumbing issue bulldozes its way into our otherwise only crazy busy work day. 

So, when any toilet has an issue around the ranch, there’s only one man to call: “Thunder Bucket Specialist First Class, Randy L. Minnick”. He’s up to the task seeing that he’s gone through this drill whole bunches of no few times. “Randy! Randy! He’s our man! If he can’t fix it, no one can!” Yeah.

After checking with Capt. Backup (my pal who has lots of parts and pieces for lots of things around here), all of the parts (lots of them) for a complete T-bucket rebuild were corralled and installed. Clink, clink, clack, clack, bend, bow, groan, twist, tighten, and flush. Check for leaks and we’re good to go. Thunder bucket Specialist: 1 - Thunder bucket: 0;

Ah, but you just know there’s more to this story. This is “Rancho Relax” where the curve balls just keep on comin’. The leak was larger and lasted longer than we had first thought. As you can imagine, it was very much a sucker punch when the ceiling of the first floor restroom started to sag over the top of the shower! Connie the Mopper was rather amazed (and not amused at all) when she watched the big bulge burst open and water gushed down.

Thankfully, all of the water was confined to the shower stall. However, the sheetrock on the ceiling and on one wall was a mess. Great. That part probably won’t be too big of a deal. The Ol’ Rancher has spent no little time in construction so, after grabbing a slice of sheetrock, some mud, and some tape, paint, and spray can texture, the place will look like new again.

The upstairs bathroom is a different gig because the vinyl flooring will need to come up, the floor will need to be thoroughly dried, and new flooring lain. There’s nothing complicated about the matter at all because all of it has been practiced prior to this small adventure.

However, the main man in charge of this project has made the decision that his days working so close to the ground or floor on his knees are pretty much over with. New tile panels will be purchased and an expert will be hired to finish up the project. Life goes on.

Well....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): home of the Yo-Yo Twins, home of a retarded duck, home of Connie the Canner (world's greatest side-kook): where the air smells, where alliteration reigns supreme, where being modern is optional, where there are no slaves to fashion, where things can get...interesting, where it’s all news to me, and where...you just never know.

RANCHO NO BUENOS AIRES

   The formatting this month is terrible. I can't get it to do hardly anything that I want it to do. As usual, you may click on the pictures to enlarge them.

 

Above is the new addition to our ranch.
She’s an Australian Shephard and
her name is "Missy" (which really suits 
her to a tee). She is such a sweet and tame
pup that it's difficult to believe. She came
to us courtesy of a post on "Next Door". 
They said that she was a stray but I really
think that someone dumped her. It's hard 
to believe that someone would do that but 
certainly not to such a beautiful intelligent 
dog as this.  

Below, we see a shot looking east from Rancho Relaxo. On a good day, you can see "Black Mountain". It's 3 miles distant. The visibility on this day was about 1 mile. It has been worse. 

  

This is a shot of Schafer Dam/Success Lake taken from the viewpoint on Hwy 190.

This is a shot taken from the curve on 190 just east of "Success Market" and looking due north towards the dam. You cannot see it or the mountains. 

 

               Here's  a pretty pair. This is Speck and momma, 

               Wynona Wyandotte. She's growing like a weed!

Here's one of Connie the Canner's helpers. It's a big ol' 22 quart

pressure canner. If she needs something canned, this is the "go to" tool. Strangely, this thing doesn't have a name yet. 

Another really handy gadget to have around is her Vita-Mix mixer. There's just about nothing that this big baby can't handle. It can even make soup for you!  I think I'll whip up some Veeta-Vita-Vegge-Min! 

Well….it’s October. Doesn’t that just make you want to blow the sackbut for joy? It almost seems like Christmas is already here! I think I can prove it because, when we went to “Lowe’s” the other day, there were more Christmas items on display than spooky Halloween stuff. It’s difficult enough trying to handle the high velocity of time without them doing that to the old people! Enough already! It’s probably just as well that we move along lest my shrieking plaints escalate to the level that only dogs can hear. Today we BBQ; tomorrow we fry.

Hot doggies! My, but they’re good! – It’s a good bet that everyone’s favorite hot dogs are the ones cooked on an open grill on a sunny day (oh, pleeeeease don’t e-mail me to tell me that you think that those mooshy floppy boiled ones are your delight! I will lose hope in mankind!). That and apple pies are clear-cut “all American” items that we can all agree on. Sure: the ones at “Costco” are worth fighting a band of well-armed Hittites for. Of course, at my age, I’d prefer that they were armed with rubber band guns and club-shaped marshmallows. In any case, for this red, white, and blue California native, the hot-off-the-grill doggie is the top dog.

So, when the urge hit for a “dog fest”, and not wanting to wait for the “Brinkman” briquette burner to come to life, the ol’ griller dude headed for the big forlorn “Weber” propane cooker. I say forlorn because it had last been used sometime in the spring when the weather finally turned nice. The polite metal cooker sat quietly in the corner of the patio  hiding under a dust cover.

But, there was a problem. When the cover was removed, it was a sight to behold. After months of not being used (and noting that someone had forgotten to clean it after the previous use), it was an unqualified mess. Great. It immediately became apparent that lunch was going to be a bit late that day. The time card was punched and it was off to work we go. 

Every removable part was pulled, every swinging part opened, and the cleaning process began. It was not a pretty sight. It took a second to realize that the grill hadn’t been cleaned for a long time prior to its last use. Swell. Reckon the rancho ramrod will need to be confronted about such laziness.

The heavy artillery had to be fetched so the grease and grime could be blown off. Weapons included 409, Cinch, and SOS pads; a water hose was at the ready. The grill plates weren’t horrid, though: just terrible. But, the interior of the wondrous cooking device was yuckier than had ever been seen so the war was on.

 After flinging and flailing and scrubbing and rubbing, the stainless steel “Weber” was sparkling clean again but the ol’ g’rilla was a mess! I looked like I had just overhauled the 425 hp “Cat” engine from a 379 “Peterbilt”.

It was time for a test drive so the propane tank was turned on and the fires were lit. After a few minutes to let the grill get hot, the patiently waiting all beef franks were tossed on the barbie. After they plumped up and were sizzling, they were mated with fresh buns and condiments and to town we went! My, but they were good!

Eggplant city: My eggplants finally made it to harvest. It’s about time. The original eggplant starts were planted in March. Of the original two, only one remains and it has yet to produce anything but large pretty flowers. Five more were planted but only four bloomed and only one has produce fruit so far. There were only two medium sized eggplants at first but two more came along a week later. There are 6 more remaining on the other plants that are catching up and they should ripen in a couple of weeks. The weather will be fine for growing for another month or so. The Parmesan cheese is ready as is the Persian/Iranian eggplant stew recipe.

Estate Sale or Treasures R Us: It’s difficult for some folks to believe just how many treasures the old “sale’ers” are finding.  We went to another estate sale a couple of weeks ago and made out like bandits! It really isn’t boasting or bragging since we can hardly believe it, either! We went to the same sale on Saturday and Sunday and hauled home two van loads of really good nice stuff for…30 dollars...total. If I’m-a lyin’, I’m-a dyin’! Connie sorted her loot which contained all kinds of fabric and “home things” while my trove was all “guy stuff”.

One item was a vintage "Heathkit" Condenser Checker. The item was spruced up a bit and posted on eBay. It sold a week later for 50 bucks!  Another was a vintage "Hallicrafters" electronic code keyer. It sold a week later for 20 bucks! We haven’t had time to do anything with any of the other  goodies but we are already way ahead of the game!

The Big Annual Yard sale!: Our huge October yard sale is just around the corner. It is a monumental sale which requires monumental effort. All of the effort doesn’t necessarily equate to a monumental return on the investment, though. Nevertheless, we are looking forward to the camaraderie with our fellow “sale’ers” who always help to make it a great affair.

The three day event always has us enjoying a pulled pork lunch on one or more of the days and a large pot of chili or such on the last day. Someone usually brings an extra pot of this or that and we’ve even had grilled hot links! Connie the side kook usually has a potato salad on the side, too. No one…no one… leaves hungry. Stay tuned for updates. Some of the updates may appear on FB. 

Connie the Flour Girl: the other day (when lots of things happen around here), we stumbled into another “deal of the day” closeout at a local food mart. They had several 5lb bags of flour for .99 cents. We grabbed most of them and rejoiced at our find. Then, a week later, the remainder of the bags were marked down to .67! So, we got all of them. That's a lot of flour (80lbs)!

So, just what do you do with that much white stuff? You can’t just bake a hundred loaves of bread unless you are going to open a new bakery in town. You could, I suppose, fire up the griddle and make a thousand tortillas and sell them from the back of your van at the Wal-Mart parking lot (I think tamales are better sellers, though). Leave it to Connie the Canner to know exactly what to do. You  simply “dry can” it.

Dry canning is a bit different than regular canning and it’s also easier. You fill your quart jars with flour then, without the lid, you cook them in the oven for an hour. After an hour, you pull them out, put the lid on and wait for the lids to “pop”. However, with this many bags to contend with, she stored them in food grade 5 gallon buckets with oxygen absorbers on top. If times get rough, we will likely never run out of biscuits, pancakes, bread, cakes, or cookies. That'll work for me!

Buttering Up: But, she wasn’t quite done with the caning duties by any means. We stumbled into another “dancing in the aisle” closeout right after the other great deal. “Grocery Outlet” had butter on sale/closeout for…get this…1.49lb! In only a few minutes, they didn’t have to worry about what to do with any leftover butter because we had it all!

This is where Connie the Canner shines. She knows how to can butter, too!! Yep! It’s actually fairly simple and not all that time consuming. The idea is to melt the butter slowly and let it almost simmer for a while. The next step is to scrape the schmutz off the top. Afterwards, you pour it into a jar and heat it in the oven. When hot, you remove them and screw the lids on. After they cool, you store them. When you open them for use, you shake or stir the jar to mix the milk solids with the oil (e-mail her for the details: connieminnick@springvillewireless.com).

You may note that this is similar to making Indian “ghee”. However, the difference is that, with ghee, you actually remove the milk solids. It will remain good for long periods of time that way.

If you think that she’s through canning, guess again. We found yet another super deal at “Grocery Outlet”! They closed out a bunch of cylindrical boxes of “McCanne’s” imported Irish style steel cut oat meal. At .67 per box, this was a deal that was just too good to pass up. So, wearing our best happy faces, we gathered all that they had and hauled them home, too. The back end of the Coop de Ville was riding low that day!

Same question: what do you with all that oatmeal? Sure, it’s great for breakfast but not for 365 consecutive days. I love the stuff but, at some point, you’ll need to toss Ol’ Ran a real bacon and eggs breakfast or his ‘mood minder mechanism’ would likely break (you wouldn’t want that to happen, now, would you?). Answer: you make oat flour, that’s what.

So, Connie made oat flour with her genuine Model 3600 “Vita-Mix” mixer (sorry. It’s not for sale). That is one useful and powerful gadget, if you ask me! There’s not much that hefty stainless steel brute can’t do and it’ll do it with aplomb and without breakin’ a sweat! She made quick work of the several boxes of oats but left one box for us for breakfast cereal (bless her darlin’ heart).

For storage, a couple of 5 gallon buckets were employed and using the same procedure as she had done with the wheat flour. She can now add oat flour to her wheat flour and get creative with her bread making. Sounds good to me! Show me the buns!

She’s known for being a great canner but she is also Connie the Baker and is fabulous in that area, too! When she bakes bread or other goodies (her cookies are outrageously good), you can’t help but wonder if the baking fairy has slipped in and helped her!

Ash Wed…Thurs...Fri…Sat…Sun: We’ve been hammered by the smoke from two local fires in the nearby Sierra Nevada Mountains. One is the “Windy” fire (at about 10 miles SE) which has encroached upon the “Sequoia National Forest” and which has burned about 40 giant Sequoia trees. The other is the “KNP Complex” (at about 23 miles NNE and in the “Kings Canyon National Forest” which is the home of the nationally renowned “General Sherman” and “General Grant” giant Sequoias). Depending upon which way the wind blows, we get the fire and ash from one or the other forest fires (and can even get it from both!). It’s almost depressing to walk out to an ash-covered car and watch as more ash falls on it.

Breathing the smoke and having ash fall all over the place gets old rather quickly. Folks with existing respiratory issues are suffering greatly. The good news is that we have a 60% chance of rain this Friday (tomorrow). Yes…folks have been praying for rain. Thank you ALL!

Abbie the blunder dog: Given her track record, we can come to no other conclusion than that our high-spirited love doggie is not a guard dog; she is a watch dog. One of the simple chores she’s been tasked with is keeping the hens off the back porch. It’s not a lot to ask but she doesn’t seem to take the matter seriously. A couple of the working girls take delight in laying eggs in Connie’s planter boxes (why should they lay their huevos in one of the 36 discrete boxes in the coop?). Much to our chagrin, she will park on her doggie pad on the back patio and just watch while the girls wander about looking for a place to make a mess prior to laying their egg. If she wasn't such a good dog otherwise, I'd hock her doggie treats. 

New dog on the block (on the back porch, actually): A neighbor down the way (but not as far as an axel greasin’) recently posted a picture of a pretty black and white female Australian Shephard stray. She related that the dog was about a year and a half old and really sweet but that it needed a home since their family had a full share of pets. I advised the nice lady that, if she didn’t hear from anyone soon, call or text me and I would be glad to have the dog.

A couple of days later, she called and said that I could come get the dog. We were there in about 15 minutes because we were coming back from P’ville and were almost home. Sure enough, the pup was as sweet as a bucket of “Ho Ho’s”! You couldn’t help but fall in love with this pooch in a nanosecond. I did just that.

Amazingly, whereas Abbie won’t go near a car, when we put this little cutie in the Camry, she made herself at home! She remained quiet the short ride home and never so much as complained as we began the integration process into her new digs.

What with her being so obviously sweet, we figured that she would be the “beta female” and Abbie would be the “alpha female”. That was the case, indeed. The two met and did their “meet the new doggie thing” for a while (you don’t really want me to go into details, right?) and played around a bit and got used to each other. All was well. In no time, and after a good meal, our new girl dog made herself at home.

Ah, but wouldn’t you know; she commandeered Abbie’s well-broken in patio pad. Abbie was only a little short of being beside herself to see that her highness’ nap pad had been hijacked by a newbie. She danced around and about and barked for a while as the intruder rested comfortably and being almost unaware of her exceptions. Thankfully, nothing became of the matter. It didn’t take long until they were both enjoying some romping in the back yard and the matter was forgotten.

While all of this was transpiring, the two old ranchers were pondering what to name our nameless newcomer. The goofy names I came up with just didn’t have a ring to them (it’s difficult being an old Luddite). However, Connie nailed it within a short time: “Missy”. Yep! That’s old fashioned enough for around the old folks home and will fit nicely with our other love dog, “Abbie”. So, Missy it is.

It’ll take a while to train her to be a “chicken dog”. In fact, we just found out the hard way that we need to make it a priority. She slipped her collar and began an investigative tour of the ranch. It didn’t take long for her to bump into some of those feathered “playthings” we have free ranging here. In no time flat, and just like Abbie when she was a pup, Missy had a mouthful of feathers. Thankfully, a friend was working on his truck right next to the event and stopped the dog’s playtime. The  traumatized hen disappeared for a while but was discovered doing well at the nightly hen count. All feathers were present and accounted for.

To confirm our suspicions that she's an Australian Shephard, she not only looks like one, she has  heterochromia. One eye is blue and the other is brown and that's a common trait for them. Want to know a secret? I've wanted an Australian Shephard for many years after finding out how smart they are. They're a pretty doggie, too!  

12.30 or It’s in the bag: One of the benefits of traveling out of town is getting to eat at a new restaurant or at least find a place that we haven’t been to in a while. That’s what happened the other day when we went back to Fresno for a follow up appointment concerning Connie’s wrecked wrist (she’s healing up well).

After the appointment and after not really coming to a consensus as to which eatery we should bless with our money, we decided to just do what we did the previous time: wander about until something struck our fancy. That’s exactly what happened.

As we drove southbound on Blackstone, we stumbled right into an “Arbies”. Bingo! Our previous encounter with “Arbies” was a couple of years ago when we were travelling back from Bakersfield. It sits quietly on the 2600 block of N. BuckOwens Blvd and awaits folks like us who don’t get to satisfy their beef sandwich cravings very often (or often enough).

Wouldn’t you know they had a “two-fer” sale! After paying the $12.30 tab, we ate ours there then hauled a couple of others home to another “Arbies” fan in Porterville, my mother. She was delighted to see them despite the fact that we got home later than expected and too late for dinner that evening. So, after lavishing them with “horsey sauce”, she savored them the next day (microwave ovens are our friends!).

Well....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): home of the Yo-Yo Twins, home of a retarded duck, home of Connie the Canner (world's greatest side-kook): where the air smells, where alliteration reigns supreme, where being modern is optional, where there are no slaves to fashion, where things can get...interesting, where it’s all news to me, and where...you just never know.