RANCHO SNAKE-O

 

Greetings and welcome to the "Rancho Relaxo" blog for May. We’re running late with the post this month, too. And, like last month, there are 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 quickly-drying-out rancho nestled in the quickly-browning foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Thanks for dropping in at the Rancho Relaxo global headquarters.

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Fuzzy is no longer a small puppy that can easily fit on your lap. He's a huge shaggy puppy that is hard pressed to fit in your pickup. It didn't take him long to grow from about Abbie's size to twice her size now!

                                                              

                                                                                                                                                        

 Above is Fuzzy letting Abbie know that she's his pal.                To the right: Some of the things I like about Fuzzy is his spunkiness and the fact that he's a cornball like me. He is always in the "Wanna see my tongue"  mode. He's a real hoot!

We have decided that our newest Coop de Ville III is our favorite of the three we've owned. I suspect it's the color. Not sure. But, we're delighted to have this beauty every time we get in it. The first van had 11k miles on it when I got it. The second had 83K on it and this one had 113k on the clock.  

Here are a few nature shots of our area. The one to the right is a pic taken from the Success Lake Viewpoint and looking north. 

This shot is taken from Highway 190 just below the lake and looking north. We have SNOW! In fact, we have 263% of normal snowpack. 

                                          

To the right, we see a picture of the Sierras                               taken from Pleasant Oak at the                                                  Montgomery Ranch area

This shot is from Hwy 190 in downtown Springville at "Bridge Road" and looking east. Immediately to the right just out of the picture is the fire station. Unfortunately, the green is fading so fast that you can see it change daily. In a few days from now, the hills will revert back to "California Gold". 

 This is the control panel for "Big Bertha" the new freeze drying machine. Connie the Dryer put this thing to work straightaway!

She's doing six long and wide trays at a time. It takes about 22-24 hours per batch. When finished, you simply defrost it, cool it down, and make the next run. Being easy to operate makes it an old people's friend! Connie the Canner has given it no rest since it was set up. The results are amazing!! I wish I would have gotten one of these ten years ago! 

This is Big Bertha just out of the shipping box. The largest box on top is the vacuum pump. The next largest is the Mylar bag sealer while the smallest is a box of Mylar bags. We're looking at about 250 pounds of stuff. 

This is Big Bertha's best photogenic side. She's not vain though and is a real workhorse. 

To the right and down below are the wiring and tools used to replace Dumbo the Trailer's wiring. Time and weather has rendered it useless so I replaced it. The hardware includes a new "four flat" colored trailer wiring connector, wire cutters, a flameless fire starter (for the shrink tubing), shrink tubing, crimping tool, and crimp-on butt connectors. 

This is the sight I saw when going into the coop to collect eggs the other day. This big boy had already "helped" with the egg collection! I mistook him for a rattler at first. However, though I hate to kill one of the good snakes (he's a gopher snake), I really can't have him helping himself to the fruit of my girls' labor. The good news is that, here at the ranch, we have options (options are our friends, too). The best option for this guy was a shot to the head using a 6 shot revolver loaded with .22LR shot shell. One shot, one kill. 

Here he is uncoiled. He measured right at five feet long. Notice in both pictures the egg he swallowed. What was ironic was that he swallowed one of the wooden mock eggs that we use to encourage the layers produce more and to lay where we want them too. That way, we don't have an Easter egg hunt all of the time. I should have fashioned him into a hat band. 

Well….it’s May. Doesn’t that just char your chicharrones? Only 224 days until Christmas! Where does the time go?! Moving along….

Be kind to your web-footed friends.

Things are moving along here at the rancho. We’re busy….really busy. It’s spring and we are shifting gears to cope with that. When you add the new “toy” (freeze dryer), things get …interesting around here. But, we are prospering and in health and it’s hard to beat that combination, eh?

 We haven’t started a garden yet. I need the Ranch Rhino (Ford 8N tractor) but our mechanic must have moved to Mars or another distant planet since he hasn’t returned (in 6 months) to finish installing the head gasket. It’ll be used to knock down the existing garden boxes then to level the dirt out and about the area.

 Some of the soil will be used to fill in the holes where FUZZY has allowed his inner back hoe to break loose and dig large deep holes in the yard (Fuzzy, I love you but we need to talk).

 Our wonderfully handy Honda FourTrax  ATV, “Hondo” (I like to refer to it by its Indian name, “Running Bear-ly”),  stopped working for some reason. It isn’t getting fuel. It’s likely that the issue is the cheap Chinese fuel petcock that was installed a few years ago. Not a big deal as they are only about twelve bucks or so. We’ll see. I just need a…day off…so I can get it fixed.

 After the previous huge, back-breaking, soul taxing yard sale last October, there were 50 or so boxes of stuff that we had to cover and try to preserve until we could haul it off. The time has come to do that.

At the time, there wasn’t any room in the barn because someone had just given us three trailer loads of really good stuff (no joke: really good stuff!) they didn’t want and had no room for. So, as for our bunch of boxes, we didn’t have time to haul it to the hangar so we just parked them under a few tarps until we could get to them. 

 The other day (when lots of things happen around here), there was enough time to haul about twenty-five percent of it off to a local guy who has a permanent (huge) yard sale about six miles down the hill from us. He’s a long-time friend so we’re just going to give everything to him. We’re glad to see it go. Sometime this week, we should be able to haul at least one more trailer load down there. Thankfully, after a rewiring job, Wooley Pulley is up to the task. 

 Snakes alive!! You just don’t know what is about to happen around the rancho. Sometimes you deal with a flood (either a man-made one or a natural one. At other times, you get to deal with a jungle for a front yard. On one day, you get to deal with a possum while on another, you get to deal with a raccoon (usually at night).  On another you can find yourself face to face with a reptile that loves chicken eggs. That’s the day that  we're going to address.

The practice is to gather the eggs from the boxes our ladies prefer to lay in. Then, since some of the gals are non-conformists and have other ideas rather than laying with the crowd, other boxes and areas in the coop need to be searched. It’s rather dim in the coop so the little flashlight that’s built into my lil’ trusty Baofeng BF-888 handy-talkie radio was brought to bear. Though it’s light is rather puny and hardly the great torch that my tactical flashlight is, it really didn’t take long to notice the large coiled mass in the lower corner laying box: a mass that looked menacingly like a rather large rattlesnake.

Well…I ain’t afraid o’ no ghosts and I ain’t afraid o’ no snakes, either. Besides, the unwelcomed intruder was snoozing away and not of a mind to be aggressive. Nevertheless, free siestas by egg nappers are not encouraged so something needed to be done.

Connie the Freeze Canner was decidedly in favor of using a cannon of maximum caliber to resolve the matter so that there wouldn't even be any evidence of a snake having been there. She’s a “no bugs ‘n snakes, m’lady” kinda gal so I understand. In fact, she doesn’t like spiders and snakes and other vermin and critters that will invade the farm and help themselves to our crops.

Reckon I’m a minimalist sort because I simply grabbed my western style six-shooter (you don’t have a six-shooter, pardner?! Don't let the Lone Ranger find out!) and loaded it with .22LR shot-shell rounds. Of course, I grabbed my ear protectors. I didn’t want to make my hearing aid have to work harder later on, don’tcha know.

By using .22LR shot-shell,  I accomplished at least two things. One is that the back wall of the coop will still be intact after killing the enemy. Using my 20GA Mossberg pump shotgun would have required a patch job, no doubt. The second thing is that we have a couple of sets of new neighbors who don’t yet know that I’m not on the FBI’s “Most Wanted” list. No need to let loose cannon fire and alert any skittish neighbors and compel them to call the Sheriff’s Office. Who knows; they may be “brush shooters”, too!

Anyway, to make a long story longer, the distance between the shooter and shootee was narrowed, aim at the head was taken, and the trigger was pulled. The invader was still moving too much for my liking (snakes will still move even with their head cut off) so I cranked another shot off. That reduced movement to the normal after-death squirming.

After all the movement was gone, he was hauled out for a photo op. Just another day at Rancho Relaxo.

Falling prices: Saving money at "Falling Prices" has about the same skill set as those who can flush a toilet. But, we like it and it’s cheap entertainment for the old people. We told ourselves that we would behave and not over do things last Saturday. Alas, that didn’t happen. We got so excited about all of the great deals that we actually set a personal record for purchasing stuff! 

After spending 64  dollars plus tax for 32 Target shopping bags (they must get a deal on them), we had to head home and unload and store everything. After a couple of days pondering this daunting matter, it dawned us that we were a couple of undisciplined and untrustworthy old people! We’ve considered grounding ourselves and taking our keys away for a couple of weeks. That would probably work well since we’re old and somewhat forgetful. It would take us awhile to find the keys. *SIGH*. 

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.