Rancho Para Siempre Primavera

                                                                

                                                                    

Every 20 years or so, it snows in this region. I recall the previous two times even though it was 40 years between them. 

This shot is looking NW from my driveway. 

(click on pics to enlarge them)

We had cold mail that day.

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Looking north out back towards the garden boxes and pump house. The tree on the left is an orange tree and the corner of garden box #1 is on the right.

Even our small chicken coop got snowed on! 

Rancho Relaxo taken from the top of the driveway by the mailbox. 

Coop deVille II getting its first dose of snow in awhile. It came from Boise so it's no stranger to white stuff. 

These are zapolla squash. The one on the right is bigger than a basket ball and weighs about 40lbs. Connie the Canner put up 10 quarts and called it quits with plenty left over. 

Princess Abbie does a great job of greeting her master when he comes home. The truth be told, she's campaigning for one of her (usually undeserved) treats. I have her number. 

Yes....we are Luddites, thank you. Usually, though, we only use the wall phone to answer calls because it's convenient (have I mentioned that we are rather convenience oriented around here?). We then quickly switch to the wireless jobs. Those are handy gadgets. 

We have really interesting grocery stores around here. At least they believe in "truth in advertising". 

This is real, wild, genuine, authentic, really dead opossum. He made the mistake of letting Abbie corner him which then woke up you know who at midnight. Being the good neighbor that he is, Ol' Ran quickly took control of the matter and resolved things to peace. It was cornered in an area that my coon doggie couldn't reach but which I could see. I just grabbed the .22 revolver and put it to work a couple of times and we were back to having a peaceful neighborhood. Can't think of a better          way to break in the new neighbors to country          life.

This is probably suppose to be Rudolf but I think I'll just change that to "goofy looking wooden reindeer". Reckon he is kinda cute.

This is a smattering of the Ol' Hamster's equipment. It's actually in transition from my work shop to the larger quarters (known as "The Ham Shack") in the top of the barn. 

The largest box at the bottom is a Short Wave receiver and not a transceiver. I'm into SWL once in awhile and like to check skywave propagation. I strap a 40M mobile whip on it and tune it with the antenna tuner that's sitting on top of it. The top box is a VHF antenna tuner that's not hooked up but only awaiting the move. 

In back are two more tuners (6M and UHF) and a few SWR/Power meters. In the charging docks are my Baofeng GT-1 UHF handy talkies (Connie and I use them for daily communication around the ranch) and a couple of Baofeng UV5-R VHF/UHF ham handy talkies. There's also a 10A power supply with a monoband 10M ham mobile transceiver on top of it. The "big rigs" (Yaesu FT-101EE, ICOM IC-706MKIIG, ICOM IC-706, ICOM IC-730, ICOM IC-735) are all out in the barn with the big antenna tuners (Dentron, Dentron Junior, Drake MN-4). There's probably a CB radio back in there somewhere, too. 

"The hole". This is where I'm building the concrete base for the ham tower. I started cutting the concrete forms and am ready to get the rebar cage built. Once the tower is erected, I'll find a brave soul to climb it and help mount the antennas I have planned for it. One antenna will be a 250' 160M dipole. I may make it a "fan dipole" with four or five other bands: not sure yet.

Connie the Canner's canned zapolla squash. 

A beautiful spring day shot taken from Mustang Drive and looking north. Springville is sure pretty in the spring! 

This handsome pair is "Roo" (background) and his offspring, "Roo Joo" (Roo Junior).Both are Rhode Island Reds. I thought at first that junior was going to be a mix with a Wyndotte but that's not the case. He's up for sale because I only need on rooster and Roo already does a great job at it. 

    We always know which way the wind is blowing at Rancho Relaxo. 

Our plum trees are blooming! 

After several years of use, the wall on garden box #1 is in need of repair. Instead of simply rebuilding with the same materials, we're going to use concrete blocks with premade slats for 10" board walls. They're only a few bucks each and will likely last much longer. We'll see. Abbie is guarding the fort to make sure that the ground squirrels don't interfere. 

This is not exactly a "music room" but I do play music here. There isn't enough room for most of my gear so I only keep out what I use. Well...sort of. I don't have any other place to store the bass so it has a permanent home for now (it's for sale so perhaps it won't be there much longer). 

The Fender Tele is on the left, the vintage Fender Precision bass in the middle, and the 1971-72 Yamaha FG-150 is on the right (my! What a sweet guitar!). That's a Special Edition 1987 Martin D-16M in the back behind the Yamaha. It's waiting for me to pack it up and ship it to the Martin factory for a bridge overhaul. It can't be fixed locally so I contacted them and they gave me a work order number. It's too sweet of a guitar to not fix. 

After five years of not harvesting any honey (due to the drought), professional beekeeper, Dave Kruse, advised that it was time to harvest some. So, we suited up and did just that. We got several pints of "orange honey" out of the deal. That was no mystery because the hives are sitting in the middle of our orange trees. It tasted great! This pic is of yours truly and you can bee-lieve me when I say that wearing a bee suit is very inconvenient and  nothing to be desired (even for a photo op). Note that Abbie is admiring her master for whom she has the highest regard. That and she can't wait to get her treats. 

There's a new grill in town! And, boy! Am I glad to hear that! I'm not sure how they do it but they have fabulous burgers, pastrami, tri-tip, and chicken sandwiches (with super fries) so they have me as regular customer! "Big Boss Grill" is Porterville's new “weapon of mass nutrition”

For all of you "Portervillains" out there, this is located at W. Olive and Locust and was the old A&W drive in. It has seen several incarnations in the previous 40 years. It has even been an airbrush shop. The previous store was "Smokin' Subs" and was similar to "Subway" but had various spicy subs as well.

Hey! It’s January….uh…I mean it’s Febru….er….I mean…..it’s MARCH….Yes! MARCH 2021… already?! Isn’t that enough to make you want to hock your Roy Rogers Cap Gun Collection?! How’d that happen! I’ve never seen so much time fly by with so little progress being made around the rancho! It’s enough to make me up and heave clods! Lots’ to get caught up on so let’s get moving along with this vernal update….

Rancho Relaxo Update: well, yet again, we’ve spent (and have been abused by) another perfectly good year. It’s getting really hard to believe how fast the time flies. When I was young, the years were borne on biplane wings. Then, they were borne on a jet’s wings. Now, they are being transported at warp speed by the Starship Enterprise! Something is wrong with this picture?!  It’s like the lyrics of Tanya Tucker’s song, “Bring My Flowers While I’m Livin’”: “The days are long but the years are lightning” (no kidding!).

Lots of things have happened this previous 365+ days. Some days were good, some were gooder, and some were not so hot. Know what? It was a pretty good year, on the whole and we’re happy to still be here.

For all y’all COVID dodgers who are patiently awaiting the sanity retrieval programs to begin, many of our marbles should be recovered by summer (at least that’s the hope). Big Brother is rethinking this mess and may actually allow a return to "normal" for some aspects of our lives. We’ll see.

In our case, our governor has decided that the peasants of California are coming for him so he made the beneficent decision to open up our restaurants. How swell. It’ll be the first time in over a year that we’ve had a “sit down” meal in a restaurant here. We’re not sure which restaurant we will choose for our first meal. It will likely be “Big Bear”. Other options are “RJ’s” and “El Tapatio” or “El Nuevo Mexicali”.

On the whole, our program hasn’t changed much nor did we allow the circumstances to force us to change. We’re just chasin' chickens and such....."stayin' alive" as usual. The garden boxes are finished (at least as much as I'm willing to mess with for now). We'll have a ton of green beans (one entire 8’ x 8’ box), 6 Roma tomato plants, 1 tomatillo plant (for salsa, don'tcha know), and a ton of the various squashies. There had to be at least 1 eggplant and a couple of strawberries so those are in, too. I'm taking a chance on the zapolla squash again this year but only planted one of those since they are so prolific. One zapolla plant can produce 60-70lbs of squash! Can't live without okra so a bunch of those were stuffed into the ground. We should be really really busy come September, eh?

 Heated granny fanny: Connie the Canner was pleasantly surprised to find that our Limited version of the Freestar van had heated seats! Seems she likes to get the blood flowing to all parts of her body as simultaneously as possible. Can’t say that I blame her but I don’t think about it because I don’t get cold until the temp hits the lower 40’s. I may put on a long sleeve shirt or maybe a light jacket and even then there may not be an under shirt involved. 

Abbie 0 - wabbit 1 (for awhile): Abbie is a good dog and is a handy gadget to have around the rancho. But, it appears that she can be easily fooled. The other day (when lots of things happen around here), she managed to catch my attention with her “Come see what I cornered!!” non-stop baying. Of course, the fact that it was still day time (and no neighbors to disturb) was also a very good reason to just leave her be and let her bark until she was hoarse. But, I gave in. 

As it turned out, she had up and caught a juvenile wabbit. She brought it to us out back and was announcing her victory. As it was lying nice and still, she was barking her prowess like any proud hunter. However, she seems to still not have caught on to the fact that ‘possums are not the only critters that play ‘possum.

She wandered a few feet from the “dead” rabbit which then decided to make a break for it. The race was on! The bunny hit high gear and made for the back 40 like lightning with Abbie in a dead run after it. Since I’m not into chasing rabbits and dogs, I headed to the house to attend to more important matters. Wabbit – 1 Abbie – 0.

Later that day, I noticed that she had actually caught and killed the thing again and brought it back to prove that she was the winner. Good girl, Abbie!

4-wheelin’: “Rancho Quatro” is having a problem staying started. It starts on the first crank and runs smoothly as could be. But, after it warms up and you try to give the gas, it stalls and stops. That’s the classic “fuel starvation’ symptom. You can imagine how pleasing it was to have a simple matter to deal with and that it wasn’t some hard-to-diagnose issue (though some 4-wheeler problems are caused by a loose nut connecting the handlebars and the seat!).

The first thing to deal with is the fuel filter. On many vehicles, fuel filters are easy to get to but on the Honda FourTrak 250, it’s located at the bottom of the fuel pump housing. Great. The fuel pump is mounted down in the guts of the thing. That means the fenders, gas tank, and carrying racks have to be dismounted. So, that’s now work in process with much of the disassembly work completed. Next is the fuel pump. It rained so things are on hold for now.

Gallinaceous Guys and Gals Report (or, a clucking we shall go, a clucking we shall go…..) : our dirty birds are all happy and healthy and we are never short of delicious home-grown huevos. 

Because of being the rather rowdy rangers they are, a bird net had to be installed over our garden boxes to protect them. Otherwise, our friendly fowls deconstruct the garden boxes altogether. They even eat the tender green shoots of our various crops and strip-mine others. The frame is just 1/2" PVC pipe with connectors with custom fitted bird netting draped over it. The Ol' Rancher built the frame and Connie the Sewer custom made the netting). 

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 a retarded duck; home of Connie the Canner (world's greatest side-kook): where the air smells like freshly-canned zapolla squash:  where alliteration reigns supreme: where things can get...interesting: where it’s all news to me: and, where...you just never know.