Rancho Seco Seco Seco

 

I'm thinking about making this little guy the Rancho Relaxo mascot. Any ideas what we should name him? 

Here's "Hondo", the beloved ranch workhorse ATV. It was recently worked on and actually runs as good as new! It has a small trailer hooked to it. It came in handy the other day when a ton of tree trimmings had to be hauled to the wood pile in the back 40. That's Ruby Dooby (nee Speck) pecking away in the background. 

This is one of our "severe clear" days here at the rancho. On days like this, you can see for miles and miles and miles. In the aviation circles, it's called "CAVU" (ceiling and visibility unlimited). 

 Here's our new juvenile Americana rooster. A local lady bought some "straight run" chicks and didn't need the males. He's learning to crow but needs to practice a bit more until he dials it in. This little guy was free. Free is our friend! The other bird is Feral Fawcett.

Miss Abbie, the princess pooch, ran out of coons, wabbits, and ground squirrels so is sharpening her skills on a gopher. Abbie -1; Gopher - 0.

Some of y'all may remember the old TB hospital in Springville. I became the "Sequoia Dawn" low-cost housing facility. Apparently, it has changed hands because they are giving the place a complete overhaul. Even the ugly landscaping has been removed. The paint scheme (not seen in this shot) is quite modern and looks great! Whoever it is that is doing it is serious about the matter.

We love our big fruitless mulberry trees out front. The provide a huge amount of shade which helps to ameliorate the searing summer sun's attempt to fry the occupants of Rancho Relaxo. On some evenings, if there is a nice breeze, Connie the Canner and the Ol' Rancher can sit on the porch swing and listen to the wind chimes. Otherwise, we can only hear the traffic noise on CA-190. 

This is "Zorba's" burger place in Oildale. It has been a favorite of many folks (including Rancho Ran and Connie the Canner) for many years. I was introduced to it in the late '90's by Don and Shirley Gerber who are the head of the "Cedar Grove Bluegrass Band". We would stop in here as often as we could. Recently, we went to the Bakersfield's "Meadows Field" airport to pick up a friend. Naturally, we stopped here first to get their burger combo meal for lunch. It's still the great place it has always been. In fact, it edges out the competition for the "Number One Burger" spot on my list. I couldn't help but text this picture to Don and Shirley. It was a "blast from the past" for them! They live in Apple Valley now or I would have hauled a bag of these big babies over to them.   

Our 15 vines are prospering. It should be a good crop this year.

I couldn't help but include this item. It's a new-in-the-box Linksys router. It retails for about 29.95. I got it for ONE DOLLAR at a yards sale. Not sure what the deal was but I didn't need to know. Reckon they just wanted it gone. I was obliged to help them with their pressing issue. 

Well, I just had to brag on my dog again. Notice that this fine specimen of a guard dog appears to be sound asleep on the job. However, she has perfected a new strategy that leaves the enemy totally confused and off guard. She is pretending to be asleep while focusing intently on every single little sound and movement within at least a hundred yards! Amazing! She doesn't move an inch but stays stoically still without even flinching! Even as I took this picture, she totally ignored me as though I wasn't there and faithfully continued with her duty to guard our ranch with all alacrity. She did this even after an entire night of barking and scaring off spirits, spookss, hares, haints, goons, and gouls. Good girl, Abbie!!

Well, it’s June already! Half the year has slid by and it only took a few months to do it! Doesn’t that just make you want to hock your hammock? I'm not sure that NASA's hypersonic research aircraft are traveling as fast as our calendar is! OK..OK...I'll put a sock in it. 

It could be a long day. I ran out of “Veeta-Vita-Vegemin”.

Rancho Happenings: It’s time for a report on our estival happenings. As usual, lots of things have been happening around here. But, on the whole, it has been a good month (proving that even crazy months can be good months). We’re settling in for the duration, as it were. The government has promised us poverty, sickness, and lack but we’re not paying any attention to them. We’re still prospering and in health despite their evil machinations.

One thing (of no good report) is that it’s dry around here. We’re under siege by California’s worst drought in 1,200 years. This is also to say that we’re already in the 6^th year of a drought when we found this “interesting” bit of information was tacked on to the weather report.

 It’s bad enough to live in a “California Gold” environment where everything is dry and brown. It’s another thing to be dry and no longer have a snow pack or full lakes to rely on for irrigation. That also means that the local Tule River is, once again, at “zero flow”. It’s going to turn from brown to toasted soon (envision a piece of Wonder Bread that’s been left in the toaster until you see smoke). This won’t be good.

The “Pleasant Valley Canal Company” (from whom we buy water for our trees, grass, and garden...what's left of it, anyway) has gave us warning that they may need to ration and even stop our water usage. Oh, swell. I noticed right away that nothing was said about proportionately rationing or stopping our tri-monthly payment. We still have well water but you can imagine the electric bill after using SCE’s precious electricity to pump water to a dry and thirsty land. A daunting thought, to be sure. 

We’ve already lost some of our orange trees and others are extremely stressed. The pomegranate trees refuse to die so that helps. Two new lemon trees will need to be baby sat until they get their deep roots or we will lose them. The Nectarine tree almost committed hara-kiri when its main large branch broke under the weight of a huge batch of ripe fruit. It’s now half the size but it did survive. The plumb trees are doing fairly well but one of them has had a grand mal seizure and almost stopped producing.

That’s a mystery that has yet to be solved given that it was the most productive tree that we have. It was faithfully producing an abundance of fruit until now. It had sufficient water but it may have something to do with the nasty bug infection a couple of years ago. The bugs took quite a toll on all of our trees. We’ll see.

No Va: The vacation trip ain't happening. We had to cancel the trip back east. The timing was off and we were up against a hard clock. There was no way we could fit our schedule in to make things work. It's a bit of a disappointment because we won't get to see the families back east for a while yet. 

Then good news is that the Minnicks are coming from Abilene to show off the new bride! Yep! Jeff and Sandra are coming with Randall and new bride, Hannah, to see the kith and kin here in California! They'll be here at the house for a couple of nights. That will be time enough to visit and get acquainted with our new family member. 

Grand Reunion: Part of the trip was to pick up friend and brother, Gene Sales, from Vienna, IL. Since we simply couldn't be there, we made sure that he caught a flight from St. Louis to Bakersfield. We picked him up at the airport at about 9:50PM on Friday the 10th and headed home.

What a grand time we had! We're still rejoicing in having our brother back home. He'll be here at the rancho for a while until he can get re-established in this area. We'll be talking about old times for days and days!! 

The trip to Bakersfield also allowed us to knock over "Zorbs's" which is one of our favorite burger places. We almost always get the Burger Combo ( I sometimes get the hot pastrami sandwich). We love this place! 

Hold the Hoe: No garden this year. The garden soil is tainted with fungus so the Ol’ Rancher (on his next day off) will tear down the four garden boxes and new ones will be built and filled with fresh clean soil. The old dirt will be dragged around the front and back yards. 

This should be an easy chore because “Ranch Rino”, the Ford 8N tractor, will be ready and willing to help. It's down for a short time while it is having a new head gasket put on it. As soon as it's fixed, it'll be back to doing some of the heavy lifting around here. A good friend and neighbor recently tuned this handy gadget up so it’ll be as good as new once he gets the head gasket glued on. 

We’ll use the drag scraper to haul the garden dirt around the house and fill in the gopher holes and such. The holes are actually dangerous because you can step in them and twist and/or break an ankle. We here at the ranch are keen on avoiding such injuries. Old people are like that, don'tcha know. 

Hondo, the ATV: The same good friend and neighbor overhauled our badly-needed ATV. He replaced the carburetor, changed the oil, and tuned it up. It’s a “one kick, one start” tractor now! It needed a new battery so starting is now “kick-less”. It was immediately put to work hauling limbs that had been whacked of the mulberry trees in front and back.

Merrily we mow along: After a new battery and new starter, the rancho riding mower, "Cabrito", is running nominally. But, it still has an issue with the power-take-off-clutch which, after being used for a while, will not re-engage if shut off. It’s still usable enough to get the job done. In a worse-case scenario, I just leave it alone for an hour until it cools down then start it back up again.

Chickening Report: we still have two layers but we have a new rooster added to the flock. We checked with “Next Door” (which is a "stay in touch" website that lets you keep up with the neighborhood) and some of the locals had an Americana rooster that needed a new home. The great news was that he was a juvenile with lots of life left in him. And, he was free!  Free is our friend!!

We hung a new moniker on him and are calling him, “RooToo”. He’s named after, “Roo”, the previous Rhode Island Red rooster who became lunch for a really sweet, high-spirited, sled dog that loves chicken dinners. *SIGH*. Anyway, we hope to find a new home for the sled dog so that we can keep our chickens. We’d keep her if she laid eggs.

RooToo and Feral Fawcett are now safe in the coop but we still need to capture Ruby Dooby. She’s granting us an egg every couple of days but we can’t seem to catch her in the act. So, she’s still alive and free ranging about (in a very hostile environment).

Go Go Gopher: The gopher’s gotta go! “The gopher’s gotta go!  Hi, ho, the marry oh! The gopher’s gotta go!” -

The other day (when lots of things happen around here) a large fresh mound of dirt was piled upon my pathway as I headed to the mailbox. This was the same dirt that, the day prior, had been washed back down the hole of a quite proud California Pocket Gopher (no doubt named largely after their being small enough to fit in your trouser pocket while still being able to excavate a huge mountain of dirt).

This critter had devastated our front yard and turned it into a large display for his dirt mounds (it was almost like he was advertising dirt mounds for sale). So, I really wanted to rain down thousands of pounds worth of hate and destruction on him by borrowing a couple of 1,000 pound iron bombs from the USAF. That would have been worth at least a big triumphant grin. But, a few seconds later, I was struck by the reality that I would have had to rebuild the entire front yard because of my excavation extravaganza. So, it was “Plan B” for me.

The new plan started with returning the dirt mound to its original location beneath the grass. I grabbed the hose and started began slipstreaming hands full of dirt into the stream of water that was being swallowed by the deep hole. It was working well and lots of dirt was being returned home.

Imagine my surprise when a small, nearly-drowned, worthless, angry, squinting, sent-by-Satan, Pocket Gopher squirmed to the surface in search of air! It was time for the black and white “big gun”; “Abbie! Git’em!”.

Abbie, the fearless we-wonder-what-she’s-doing dog, sprang into action and quickly dispatched the brown bane. Our little huntin’ dawg was quite proud of her prowess. She kept her trophy from being molested by anyone until she had tired of carrying it around and showing it off. 

Well....there you have it: another short episode of the long happenings at Rancho Relaxo: home of Rancho Ran, the world's least-most authority: home of the Yo-You  twins and home of a retarded duck: home of Connie the Canner, the world's greatest side-kook and CEE (Chief of Everything Else): where the air smells and where alliteration reigns supreme: where being modern is optional: where the eggs are always mostly fresh: where things can get...interesting: where it's all news to me and where...we just never know.