NOVEMBRE GLORIOSA

Greetings and welcome to the "Rancho Relaxo" blog for November. Lot's of things going on around here. So, the Ol' Rooster and Ol' Hen just wanted to share what's happening at our humble rancho nestled in the dry-as-toast foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Everything is still "California Gold" but we're entering our rainy season so there is an expectation of wetness. We've had an exquisite summer that even included rain so there are no complaints. The daily high temps are wonderfully and comfortably cool so autumn is here. Anyway, thanks for dropping in at the Rancho Relaxo global headquarters.
 

This is the Schwinn bike that we found alongside the road at the River Island Estates about a mile from the rancho. It was free. We sold it for 225.00 on Craig's List. That's called "free money" and free money is our FRIEND!

You may recall when Fuzzy, the effulgent ball of fur, fluff, and tangles Labradoodle, ventured over to the neighbor's yard to visit their Bulldog, Bella. It was sort of a "sticky" situation and was Fuzz Ball's coming-of-age event. I almost shuddered to think what would happen if Bella had pups because it wasn't imaginable as to what such a mix would look like. The best I could figure is that we might be able to give them away on another planet 100 light years from here (and maybe only for food, at that). Well, she did have pups and I was wrong. Here are four of the six pups who really are all pretty cute guys. Only one displays his shaggy daddy's DNA! Even then, it's only a hint of shag. You just never know.  

 

 

Here's some of our dirty birds who are no longer chicks but who are now our pretty pullets. They're busy doing what they do best: devouring anything in their path. They should be blessing us with a bountiful supply of huevos before too awfully long. 

Here are two cute Bantams. The little rooster is a real hoot. He has to dodge the other "real" roosters and sort of keeps to himself. There is another Bantam hen but it's not likely that we'll keep them. They're just ornamental for now. I don't know. I may keep them in case I'm on a diet and only eat small eggs, eh? Reckon we could start a Bantam ranch, too. NAW!

Connie the Canner found this new foldable step stool at a yard sale. It fit right in with our decor. It was about one third the price of retail! She's a smart shopper, that lady! 

For all you "Dukes of  Hazzard" fans out there.  

A word from our sponsor:

This issue of Rancho Relaxo is brought to you by "Shimmying Sheila’s Shiny Shaky Shower Shibbers”. " Now, these are the best Shiny Shaky Shower Shibbers that money can buy! You cannot...I say...you cannot get a better Shiny Shaky Shower Shibbers anywhere! And, they're made right here in the US of A. You can get your bountiful supply of "Shimmying Sheila’s Shiny Shaky Shower Shibbers” at the Wal-Mart, KMART, Speedy Mart, Rapid Mart, Quick Mart, and all those marts where those guys have them towels wrapped around their heads. Tell'em the Ol' Rancher sent you. You'll be glad you did!

 Well, kiss my grits and call me “Corn Pone” (thank you, Bugs Bunny!)! It’s November! It’s difficult enough trying to deal with how fast time is ripping by but it’s incomprehensibly rapid when we’re seeing Christmas decorations way before Thanksgiving!! There’s no need to hit the accelerator when everything’s already a blur, y’all! Movin’ along….

The weather here has been wonderful! We had a milder-than-usual summer and now a milder-than-usual fall. It's great! It would be nice to get some rain soon, though. There was an abundance of rain last season but we still need more. Certainly, the chill will hit by Thanksgiving but that's fine. 

Blitz Time or Now we’re cookin’: They’re have been some changes made here at the rancho. One really cool thing that we switched ISP’s. We’ve been with Springville Wireless for about 15 years and have had no complaints at all. However, their bandwidth tops out under 10mbs (that’s 10 megabits per second, not megabytes. There’s 8 bits to a byte). 

It's not that we couldn't keep up with Jones. It's that we couldn't even keep up with the rest of the Internet! For the previous several months there have been issues with uploading my teachings on webhost’s servers that couldn’t be resolved. I didn't know it at the time but the issue was that my Internet speed was too slow! So, it was time to look around for some options.

The ISP of choice was Charter/Spectrum who offered 300 mbs service for only ten dollars more per month than Springville Wireless. That’s at least (gulp!) 30 times the speed! Guess what? The upload issue was immediately resolved! That made for a really happy rancher, let me tell you! The main PC here is a hot dual core workbox that thinks it’s a quadcore machine so it’s easy to get more work done in a day. Ripping through pages of news is pleasure now. That’s nice.

 Chickening report: Chickens are funny critters. You just never know what makes them tick. As of late, and for reasons yet to be determined, our birdies are not laying. They’re just a bunch of hungry decorations.

Not that they aren’t well fed because they are. They get their layer pellet rations and whatever table scraps a couple of times per day. They even get stale donuts so life is good. So, they’re far from being an abstemious flock of dieting egg factories. In fact, they are a coop full of Shop Vacs who aren’t producing any huevos.  

We switched feed to see if it would make a difference and it seemed to for a few weeks. But, then, production fell precipitously. Thought was given maybe attributing the phenomenon to the weather. But, the weather has only just recently started to mellow with morning temps being lower than 50 degrees.

The next step will probably be switching brands of layer pellets. Word got around that feed from Tractor Supply was doctored in some way that diminished egg laying so we won’t use theirs. If all else fails, we may just feed them dry dog food for a few weeks and see what the does. Or, perhaps a mix of layer pellets and chicken scratch. We’ll see. In any case, it would be nice to have a regular supply of eggs. We’re spoiled!

Mystery flood or What’s with all the deep water in the shallow coop?: The other day (when lots of things happen around here), when it was time to feed the ravenous feathery cackle crowd, it was immediately noticed that, overnight, the coop had become deeply flooded. My lightning-fast mind noted that, that’s not good.

After the Ol’ Rancher donned the requisite waders, he tossed the chicken chow into the rear section of the coop where it was dry, it was time to track down the source of the flood.

The usual culprit is when the Ranch Honcho forgets to turn off the irrigation water in the back 40 (which is actually about .5 acres or so). That wasn’t the case. So, what was the case? After a couple of days, the water got so deep that it was affecting the neighbor’s yard. He wasn’t complaining about the free water or such but the mud was the problem. So, he started looking and helping to find the source of grief.

Frankly, I’m still not sure how it happened. But, somehow or another, the water hose in the coop was left on and it flooded the coop. It wasn’t discovered because the end of the hose was under water and couldn’t be noticed. However, the hose is only used to fill the chicken’s water barrel and then, to prevent a flood, it’s turned off. It’s impossible to accidently leave it on and not notice it. Strange. So, the water was turned off and the coop is drying out and returning to normal.

Watch your step or Living the balanced life: The other day, while ridding my plum tree of the pestilent bugs that make webs for a home (they look a little bit like a spider web but they aren’t spiders), guess who wasn’t watching his step and fell to the ground in an inglorious heap o’ pain? Yep. You got it. There was a bale of hay that sneaked up behind me when I was backing up and ran right into it. I was obedient to the laws of physics and fell at 32’ per second per second. The math works out to, “he fell in nothing flat”.

 It was as good thing that the Rancho Radio was on my hip because I needed to give Connie the Canner a call. She was quick to respond to the exigency and found the Ol’ Rancher sprawled on the ground out by the chicken coop. She got the attention of the next-door neighbor who happened to be outside and asked for his help.

After checking for fractures and such (no need for the ABC’s), the neighbor lent a hand up. It was determined that diagnosis was that Ol’ Ran was just stove-up a bit. You know how it is. Older bodies just don’t bounce as well as the younger ones. It thought it was right nice of Connie to not take pictures and try to get them to go viral on TikTok.

Ah, but this is Rancho Relaxo and you just never know what’s going to happen next. Two days later, I fell again at church! It was either a mic cord or a misstep but it was “away we go!” again! This tumble-and-sprawl only resulted in a bit of rug burn on the ol’ elbow and some a big gob of salve for the ego. Sometimes I think my super power is making myself look stupider than normal (yeah…that is a problem). Reckon you can say that it may take a little longer to over being stove-up.

 Ham it up: Since we’re experiencing a super-duper high “Schwabe sunspot cycle” (which causes ionization in the upper atmosphere which then makes for great radio wave propagation), the ham radio bands are buzzing with activity. That draws out the “hamster” part of Radio Ran’s soul. He’s been a ham radio operator since 1971 and, since it’ s a fun hobby, there’s no talking him out of getting on the air. Besides, practice and proficiency go hand-in-hand. No sense in being an imperfect ham operator, eh?

My ham shack is a mess and it will take a while to un-mess it. So, the idea is to convert the computer desk in the back corner of my 12’ x 15’ computer shop/office into a small tidy ham station (which could be...interesting...since the head operator isn't small and isn't all that tidy). However, I’m trying to not make my station look like it was wired by Chief Engineer “Scotty” from Star Trek but with too much help from Gilligan. Not being a true-blue fan of Star Trek (pray for the poor girl), Connie frowns on such things as an extra couple of miles of highly-visible wiring inside the house.

But, it appears that a 33’ dipole can be strung on the roof eave outside my office. That’s easy enough to do. I have a nice W2DU HF balun and plenty of 16 gauge stranded wire to work with. My soldering iron is bored so it’ll appreciate the workout. It’ll be cut to resonate on the 20 meter and then the MFJ-949E tuner will be used to make it resonant on the lower and higher frequencies. Most likely, it’ll tune to down 30 meters. There is a possibility that it’ll tune to 40 meters but we’ll see. There should be no problem tuning it up on 17 meters, 15 meters, 12 meters (this one may be iffy), and 10 meters. And, there's a dedicated 6 meter tuner if it's needed.

And, it’ll be cut for the middle of the 20 meter band which is by using the formula ½ wavelength (for a dipole) = 468/f. So, ½ wavelength = 468/14.200 L=33’ (32.9577’ to be exact but who’s counting?).

The transceiver is an older ICOM IC-706 MK II G. It’s a incredibly small yet high-performance HF (including 6 meters) -VHF-UHF rig. She’ll pump out 100 watts on HF, 50 watts on 2 meters and 20 watts on 440/70cm. It’s unlikely that I’ll opt for the full power mode since the radio may over heat. My preference is for low power anyway so it’ll be run at half-power or less.

5 watts is also an option and preferred if the bands are in. If the band is solid, I may even hook up the Yaesu FT-817 which is a dedicated QRP (low power) 5 watt transceiver. Or, I may just hook it up in the van in place of the 10 meter mono-band HTX-100 low power rig being used now. It belts out a solid 18 watts on SSB. I’ve talked (mobile) from Arizona to Europe with it.

The antenna used on the van is a Wilson 5000 CB antenna (usually used for 11 meters) tuned with an antenna tuner for 10 meters. Fun fact: the 11 meter CB band is the lower part of the ham radio band spectrum. It was sliced off in 1958 leaving the 10 meter (28-29 mhz) band for hams. The hams groused a bit but it all worked out. Some ham radios still had 11 meter capability clear into the late 1970’s. I have one of them. It’s a Yaesu FT-101EE. I haven’t had it on the air yet but I plan to.

Stay tuned for updates from WA6IXI.

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.