RANCHO SOGGO BOGGO

 

Greetings and welcome to the "Rancho Relaxo" blog for April. We’re running quite late with the post this month. Lots of reasons for that but you will be spared most of them. In any case, the Ol' Rooster and Ol' Hen just wanted to share what's happening here at our humble-but-boggy rancho nestled in the still-soggy foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Thanks for dropping in!

Don't forget that you can click on the pics to enlarge them.

Note: some of the pictures are mine but some are not. They were resourced from FB and other places. 

This how Success Lake/Shafer Dam looked just prior to the flooding. It's east of Porterville, CA. We live about 5 miles east of the lake. Looking west from Hwy 190

This is Success Lake after the flood.

There was an incalculable amount of flotsam deposited in the lake after the big flood. Thankfully, much of it was gone in a couple of weeks. 

This is the spillway and taken from the new road that has yet to be opened. Looking north. The 190 bridge is at the upper center in the background.

This is the bridge at Upper Globe Road just south of Springville proper. Looking east from 190. Just below this picture is a before and after picture of the same road and bridge. 

 
                  Bartlett Park under water. Looking SE. Hwy 190 is in the background.

West Olive Bridge - looking SE

          This is the "Rez Road" washout. The Casino is closed and will be for a while.

This is a shot of the River Island Golf Course just one mile west of us. 

This is the "J Street" bridge over the Tule River in Porterville. This is after the biggest part of the flood was over but when they were still letting water out of the dam. Looking east. You can see just a sliver of the new "Harbor Freight" parking lot to the far right. 

This is the floor of my chicken coop. Swamp City!! My girls almost had to identify as ducks! B-GAAAK!

Here's dear Abbie laughing her little coon doggie head off watching us get the Coop de Ville unstuck. I should have known better than to try to traverse our mud lands prior to it drying out. 

Here's Fuzzy bowing in obeisance and acknowledging that Abbie is the princess in charge. After this, he bounced completely over her a couple of times like she was a toy. 

                            Abbie and Fuzzy howling a duet for me. Ain't they                               sweet? 

How low can you go with the snow? Well... pretty low. The snow got down to our place but it didn't stick. Because of the global cooling, we have been having more snow down low more often than I ever recall having. 

This is our "new" NuWave air fryer oven. I say "new" because we haven't used it yet though we've had it for about three years. We kept forgetting we had it. *SIGH*. Anyway, we're going to fire it up and have some fun with it soon. 

This is our third Freestar van and we love this thing! We really appreciated the SE and Limited models but this SEL is the one we like the best. It's has been completely serviced (including the transmission) and it has new Michelin tires, a new ignition power pack, plugs, and wires as well as the brake pressure switch. The sticky driver's window is fixed, too. All three had the same issues so we just up and fixed this van, too. It only has 113,000 miles on it so we'll have it around for a long time to come. 

Wisdom for the month: Stupidity should never be used as a as force multiplier.

Man! Here we go again using the highballing steam powered atomic clock! We’re screaming uncontrollably into this year and I could swear that it just got here! It’s like someone pushed the clock over the edge of the Grand Canyon and its hands are flailing at the speed of gravity (which is 32 feet per second squared). YIKES! And, there are only 252 days until Christmas (“Get your shopping shoes on, Mildred!!)!! *SIGH* Moving along……

Snow broth: As quickly and brutally as the rains came and pounded our rock hard ground into slush and mud, the calm has now pounced upon us. “Lake Constance” in the back yard has vanished so we are just now getting to walk around outside without our galoshes on. That’s nice. Having to wade through the muck to reach the Palacio de Pollo and the barn gets really old and quickly at that.

That doesn’t mean that we (regionally) are out of the woods by any means, though. When the warmer weather hits (and it will hit hard), the wonderful record breaking snow pack will lose its grip on the Sierra Nevada Mountains and will start to slide into the Valley at an uncontrollable rate. There is a lot of discomfort with the water managers in these parts as to how to deal with all of the “snow broth” (runoff) that will fill our rivers, streams, and lakes again. This will certainly concern many people but will not directly affect Rancho Relaxo since we aren’t riparian dwellers (at least not until the next big earthquake, I suppose).

Tulare Lake, once the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi, is reappearing (out of the dry farmlands and to the chagrin of J. G. Boswell's boys) and it looks as though it will be around for quite a while. I’ve seen it from the air back in ’68 when flying some friends around but hadn’t thought about it until it started reclaiming its heritage. It can only increase in size when the runoff arrives on time. We can probably expect the price of cotton and sugar beets to rise by a bit due to the concomitant shortages. 

Tulare Lake aside, there is still a feeling that, since much of the damage has been done by previous torrents, little else will be in harm’s way. Nevertheless, the matter may be exacerbated if the water levels are higher than the previous ones. If I were the Tulare County road maintenance folks, I'd probably wait for awhile prior to rebuilding the washed out bridges. 

For now, we are rejoicing in the change of weather and probably won’t expect “April showers” since the flowers are already in full bloom around here. This also to say that it rarely rains in April anyway.

How cool is that?! Instead of gales and blusters, a cool breeze greets us when we head outside. Our mornings are a “How sweet it is!” moment since only couple of weeks ago, we were in bog heaven.  

It’s also mating season for the many doves here and there is no end of their mourning and cooing. It’s a real sight to hear. We had one momma dove spend three brooding season here at the ranch. We called her “Lovey Dovey” and watched her hatch and feed her excruciatingly cute brood (check back issues for pictures). Once was on top of the steel rack at the back door! We moved slowly around her so as to not spook her. The old folks at the ranch are still amazed to this day!

And, the blood sucking forced air heater is back to hibernating for the season. You can imagine that the old people will be dancing in the living room for an hour when the next gas bill comes in when it will only show a calming two-digit number instead of a mind-boggling soul-hammering three-digit blow to the pocket book. We were rather fortunate in that our indoor temps never got below about 63 degrees due to our home being well insulated. That meant that we only had the heater on for a short time in the mornings to break the chill. Still, it caused trepidation when opening the gas bill during the winter months. Some folks are still reeling!

Henhouse Hilton:  The floor of the coop has transitioned from a monstrously, massive, mucky, mire into having a firm-but-still-moist floor. Thankfully, our dirty birdies no longer have a need to transition to ducks so they are starting to look and act normally. 

It would be great to allow them to free range again. The problem is twofold. One issue that it’s coyote breeding season. That means that they are looking for chicken dinners for their pups. Since we’ve already done our part to support their cause, we’ve decided to no longer be active participants of the game. The birds are locked up in the coop. 

The second issue is that our new neighbors have a couple of pooches. One is a small white guy that I think my roosters can take in a fair fight. The other dog is a shy bulldog. So far, it looks and acts friendly. The problem is that Missy, the husky, was friendly all the way up to and including the time she ate half of our chickens (Missy no longer lives here). Chickening goes on. 

Frolicking Fuzzy: I just have to say that this is the first time I've ever owned a 45 pound puppy. You know...the kind that loves you and wants to pounce on you and attack you from behind to let you know how much he wants your attention: the kind that waits for you to exit the house with your Sunday-go-to-meetin' clothes on and plants his paws of approval on them. You get the picture. 

I keep feeding him and he just keeps growing and growing! I started with a Golden Doodle but it looks like I'm going to end up with a Yeti-Doodle! My concern is that he'll try to track down Bigfoot and bring him home with him 'cause the chow's good!

He's also a bit naughty. He seems to think that tipping over the trash barrels and getting into some of my stored boxes is a real treat. It wouldn't be a real concern except that he shreds expensive stuff, too. And, there's the clean up. After cleaning up the third of fourth set of trash can entrails, you start wondering if maybe you can swap your dog for a good used pickup. 

Abbie is still my sweet natured love dog. About her only vice is that she is a hunting dog and hunting dogs like to...,hunt. We'll....she's pretty well hunted our ranch to the furthest furlong so, guess what she wants to do? Yep. She wants to haul her fur down to someone else's furlongs and hunt there. That's a problem because 150' in front of our ranch is where State Route 190 is located. I've only seen her on the opposite side of the road one time and it was the last time that will be allowed.

So, she's now on "lock down" with our four-legged flying fuzz ball. We use the "PetSafe" wireless fence shock collars on both doggies. We give them plenty of room to romp and stomp but they are not allowed near the highway (which has claimed more than its share of pets). I'm proud of her, though. She has settled in to being the one of the two best dogs I've ever had (the other one being "Maggie the Wonder Dog" (we always wondered what she was thinking because she was so much like "Mighty Manfred, the Wonder Dog" - think Captain Kangaroo 1957). 

Let it freeze, let it freeze, let it freeze: The weather outside really isn't frightful and it doesn't look like snow. However, we now have the ability to freeze things like never before. I'm alluding to our new freeze dryer. Connie the Canner is now going to be known as Connie the Freezer, if things work out the way we hope they will (not sure she's going to cotton to the new moniker or not. We'll see). 

For sometime now, we seen a lot of good produce go to waste because we don't have enough canning jars and freezer space to deal with it. Waste is something quite abhorrent to us so we decide to take a drastic step towards alleviating that issue. 

We had long ago heard about freeze drying and had pondered and puttered the matter of getting one. The company we purchased it from had a big sale on their freeze drying kits so we were interested. However, this time, "things" dropped in place all at the same time and we were able to send some cold cash to get  our freeze dryer. 

It's a good bet that all slow-moving fruit, veggies, meats, and such will be incorporated into our cryogenic preservation experiments. After freezing, everything will be vacuum sealed in regular and mylar bags with our big stainless steel sucking machine. No wasting from here on out! 

From what we can tell, it isn't complicated and seems simple enough to use. There's no two inch thick manual so it shouldn't be confusing to the old people who work here. There aren't any pictures yet but, as soon as we are up and in business, we'll post some in the next issue of RRR. 

  Well....there you have it: another short episode of the long happenings at Rancho Relaxo: home of Rancho Ran, the world's least-most greatest authority: home of the Yo-Yo  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 and where there are no slaves to fashion: where the eggs are always mostly fresh: where things can get...interesting: where it's all news to me and where...you just never know.