Anyway, the Ol' Rooster and Ol' Hen just wanted to share
what's happening here at our humble rancho nestled in the finally-sort-of-green
foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. This is our rainy season but someone
forgot to tell Mother Nature. We've had about enough rain to keep the rivers from
drying out but, that's about all (1.59” since July 1, 2024). We still have hope that El Niño will
intervene and dump some agua viva on us. Two “atmospheric rivers” hit the west
coast but we didn't get enough rain to fill a small creek. At least the aloe vera plants
aren’t complaining. Anyway, thanks for dropping in at the Rancho Relaxo happy
huevos industrial complex.
Click on pics to enlarge
Speaking of huevos, we were pretty much floored when we saw the price of eggs at a local store. $7.98 for a dozen eggs. Four years ago, you could get a flat of 36 for that price (or less!)! This isn't even the most expensive place in town! The most expensive was at "Save-mart" where they were priced at over 9.00! If this keeps up, eggs prices will be like they were in the early gold mining towns where a single fresh egg was selling for the equivalent of a day's wage!
Truly, we are quite pleased that we have our own egg supply out back. After taking into account that it's winter time (the hens lay fewer eggs in the winter) and the great amount of wrangling the birds and other ancillary costs, our eggs probably are only slightly less in cost. But, they are fresh, they are organic, they are without hormones et. al., and they are vastly superior in taste and quality than the store-bought ones. Farm fresh eggs are our friends!
I just had to share a picture of this little cutie pullet. She's one of several mixed breed birdies that are simply gorgeous. We have a couple of gray pullets that are also very pretty little critters.
We had a local pump outfit check our well pump and system. We needed them to see if they could help us regain access to all that nice water in the ground that we just love so much. The great news was that, after being here less than an hour, they had us up and running again! A controller box of some sort had to be replaced. The tradesman's name was Art. The guy was quite good and quite personable, and quite professional. He is our hero for the year! They'll send a bill so we can know how many sheckles to toss at them.
The plumbing in the front is where one of our filters was placed while using the river water. It's been disassembled so that I can clean it/replace it (not sure which yet). In the upper left is the "pitcher pump". If we loose electricity (not likely since we have a back up residential generator), we can always pump water like our great-grandparents did (geee...that sounds like fun).
Tip O' the day:
Never trust an electrician with no eyebrows
And now a word from our sponsor:
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Holy crab salad, Batman! It's January! And, it's already two weeks past Christmas! Doesn't that just tangle your tutu?! I really don't think Superman can keep up with how fast time flies! Movin' along...
Things are sailing along fairly smoothly here at the ol' rancho. We're taking things as the come though we didn't expect so many things to come so quickly. The good news is that we're still prospering and in good health. That's' a plus. Nothing major to deal with that I can think of (I don't think the failure of our well pump to be a major issue). I wonder if a whole lot of non-major issues equals one major issue? Naw.
Christmas: We had a nice unremarkable Christmas this year. We just stayed home, rested, and counted gift cards (gift cards...are our friends). It was comfortable day of getting anything that I needed to get done while wearing my bed pants (my coveralls helped with that when I had to tend the chickens). There were a couple of days of minimal activity which included the massacre of a couple of our gift cards. Hey; you can't celebrate Christmas on an empty stomach, eh? It was "que sera sera" for a couple of days then we had to get back in the saddle and try to keep Rancho Relaxo from free falling (close call).
Happy New Years and Happy Birthday:
The new year brought another birthday to the forefront for the Ol' Rancher. That makes for 76 circuits around the sun. Heap many moons, too. It was a nice birthday with a bit of time off (I was hoping for at least two bits). Then, it was back to the salt mine.
One of our dear friends who has the same birthday, invited us to participate in her birthday party on New Year's Eve. It was being held concurrently with the annul NYE bash at the Veteran's Memorial Hall on W. Olive Avenue in P'ville. I hadn't been out there in quite awhile. I had actually been part of the same band on this same exact occasion several years ago.
I was invited to sit in with the band and got to play a couple of numbers. I was deeply humbled to get to play with them. For one thing, I was really rusty: so rusty that I was afraid that I would be getting rust dust all over everybody. That wasn't what happened but it was a close call. We all had a good time!
Hamming it up: During that day of trying to rest, the Ol' Rancher had the opportunity to tinker with his Ham Radio toys. Not much operating was accomplished but it was fun to construct a couple of "Tiger Tails". "Tiger Tails" are counterpoises used for making your HT (handy talkie) more efficient. HT's usually have a "rubber ducky" antenna. But, it's only a quarter wave resonator. By adding the "Tiger Tail, you make your antenna (electrically) a half-wave dipole/resonator.
I recall being in Longview, WA and testing my HT to see if it could break the 2 Meter (VHF) repeater 42 miles away in Astoria, OR. In fact, it would not reach that far. However, after adding the "Tiger Tail", it did a good job of making contact with the repeater. So, I'm a big fan of "Tiger Tails".
So, the ol' hamster cut and soldered a few of them for his Ham and FRS/GMRS HT's (walkie squawkies).
Chickening Report: There are a lot of positives about wrangling inordinately stupid, dirty, messy, impolite, sometimes aggressive, indiscrete, and ravenously hungry (even after being fed). "Chicken TV" is one of those positives. You get to see chickens going all kinds of crazy things like deciding to pick a fight for no good reason.
They can be funny as a barrel of monkeys but particularly so when they can free range. Connie the Canner and I would just sit outside and watch the bird herd at the end of the day as they made their way towards the coop. Barney Fife wasn't as hilarious as our birdies! Sadly, we learned the hard and costly way that that dynamic couldn't be allowed due to the large number of predators.
One of the funny things is watching the cockerels learning to crow. These birds come up with the most hilarious renditions of crowing that you can imagine. You can tell that they're trying to mimic Henry Hen Banger II who definitely has his crowing act together. It sort of like teaching your 2 year old how to say "refrigerator". It's close but no "ceegar". They're a hoot!
But, for all the upsides, there are downsides. One of them concerns how and what to feed them (especially since the price of chicken feed doubled in the previous four years). We have been favored and blessed to have a local supermarket (whose owner is a friend and with whom I went to high school) give us the trimmings from their produce department. Can you say "green leafy things"? We get as many as 17 large boxes twice a week! That makes for happy healthy layers!
Here's a downside: do the math. Let's say that we only get 8 boxes twice per week. That's 16 boxes per week. Just how long does it take to have your back yard filled with boxes? Answer: not long. What happens if you are unable to haul all the boxes off in a timely fashion (remembering that it does get rather busy around here)? Yeah....it gets crowded and messy.
Part of that is because not all of the boxes are empty. The birds can't eat citrus items, peppers, onions, potatoes, yams, hard squash, (there are lots of them), and other produce that's impossible to peck. "Somebody" has to break down all of the boxes (dozens of them), load them up, then haul them to the local transfer station/dump. That's a lot of work that can't be always be done because the trailer is in use or because our schedule won't allow the time it takes. If that isn't enough to overbake your brownies, our dump is only open two days per week. Swell. On the bright side, things look great around here when that "someone" cleans all of that up, rakes, and spiffs up the place.
Booting up: booting up is supposed to be simple: you sit down, pull your house shoes off, and pull your boots on. But, what happens if you're old and not paying attention (I call it "focus interuptus")? Let me 'splain that to you.
Guess who didn't notice that he had left his galoshes standing up in their regular "galoshes place"? Yeah. You got it. And, just who was it that forgot to notice that it had rained a little bit the night before. Yeah. You got it. Well, can you guess what happened when the Ol' Rancher pulled his boot on that morning so he could slop the chickens? His foot was met with what seemed like a gallon of cold water! Great.
When it's 6:30 AM and there's chores to do, you can't just wait for you boots and socks to dry (especially since it's 42 degrees outside). So, the boots were dumped over and freed from their load of water and "Mr. Wet Socks" (maybe I can start my own Saturday morning kiddy show since I took lessons from "Captain Kangaroo") plodded into the cold morning with less than a sparkling attitude. Note to self: pay attention, Ran.
Freeze it again, Ran! Not long ago (but longer than the other day), I had to pull one of ice boxes apart because the lower section wasn't getting cold. That entailed pulling all the stuff out and getting to work to restore its functionality. The channel between the top and bottom had frozen over so it had to be thawed out again.
The ice quickly gave way to the searing heat but much caution had to be employed. At the last second, it was noticed that the channels leading from the top to the lower box were insulated with shaped plastic foam (the same stuff which is used in making those cheapie ice chests). That stuff will melt almost as quickly as the ice if one is not mindful. After only singeing the foam, the ice was thoroughly gone.
After some quick re-stuffing of frozen goodies, the tools were stored and the ice box repairman took a break.
Burger, fries, and a coke combo.
The other day (when lots of things happen around here), we stopped at "Burger Kings" for lunch. The local store takes expired coupons so we're sure to get a good deal when we have to feed the old folks. Get this....even with the significant coupon discount, the "two-fer" Whopper combo meal deal was right up against 20 bucks (25 without the coupon).
We also went to another burger place in town that we hadn't been to in a few years. Again, we ordered the burger combo meal. I suppose we shouldn't have suffered "sticker shock" when the tab was within easy reach of 30 dollars!! This messes with the minds of the old folks who easily remember purchasing a burger combo meal for less than a dollar! It was a good thing that we didn't order anything fancy (with cheese or such).
If the mounting isn't too difficult, the plan is to mount my 40' mast to our 10' tall 4" pipe mounted near the front driveway. It was mount for a basketball hoop at one time but it never got used to I took it down. It appears that the mast will slide down inside the pipe with a snug fit. That'll help in keeping it vertical. There's still the matter of guying it down properly so it doesn't wake us up in the middle of the night during a windstorm of some kind.
Because of the current radio wave propagation dynamic being on the "high cycle", the HF (high frequency) bands are "open" and are facilitating what some folks call "skip". This is really great at any time but it's really super when you are (purposely) running a low powered transceiver. Even transceivers with just a few watts of output can reach out for great distances.
My low-powered rig is a Yeasu FT-817 with 5 watts output. That's roughly the equivalent in performance to a CB radio. Nothing fancy here. The antenna for now is a 19' CB vertical tuned with an MFJ-949E antenna tuner.
So, it was really neat when I made a contact with a ham operator in Kansas City, KS who had a mobile ham rig in his pickup truck. A few days later I made a contact in the Solomon Islands 6,100 miles from here and using 5W output (about the same power output as a stock CB radio which is 4W)! That's the marvel of the 10 Meter ham band when it's open for business.
Well....there you have it: another short episode of the long happenings at Rancho Relaxo (aka “Dos Acres”): home of Rancho Ran, the world's least-most greatest authority: home of the Yo-Yo twins and three ducks that we try to keep in a row (one of which is retarded): 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.
