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.
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.
