Welcome to the "Rancho Relaxo" blog for February. Well...this month's edition is pretty much on time...sorta. It's been somewhat settled down around here and things are only frenetic; glad to slow down some.
Part of the regression to sub-sonic speed is related to Connie's recovery from the nasty fall she experienced just prior to Christmas. For a couple of weeks, it was almost impossible for her to crawl out of bed. She's up and about and only has to take a few breaks during the day when her back gets stressed.
Winter has, for all intents and purposes, ended. We still haven't had to break out the heavy jackets yet. The “La Nina” whether phenomenon has crept in and has deprived us of our seasonal rains. This also means that we have warmer weather along with far less rain. We only get 10” of rain for the entire season so, it there’s hardly any rain, we suffer accordingly. There’s no worrying about frozen water pipes and frosty chickens but….hey…..rain is our friend and we hate being without such pals.
There is still the possibility of a freak temp drop where we'll have to wear a heavy jacket but we're not holding our breath. We've been experiencing mid-40's for lows and mid-60's for highs and both temps are steadily rising each new day. A friend of ours already has a flourishing garden that he planted more than three weeks ago! No frost on the pumpkin this year but no snow pack, either. That's not a good thing in these parts.
There still is an inconvenience to deal with regarding our coop, though. It's the man-eating bog that lurks in there waiting for any fool human to get within reach. That's because It takes a long while to dry since the temperature still isn't warm enough to hasten the evaporation. That makes the Henhouse Hilton about as useful as tackle box at a poker game. That's why we made some changes to our chicken program around here: no mas pollos (see report below). The problem is that the Ol' Rancher has to slog through there to be able to feed Piglet and Squealer, the two newest ravenous additions to our zoo. Thankfully, the rear section of the coop is just barely dry enough so that the hog chow (boxes of veggies) doesn't get muddy.
Anyway, the Ol' Rooster and Ol' Hen just wanted to share what's happening here at our humble rancho (which doesn’t even come close to meeting modern industrial standards) nestled in the beautiful and almost Irish green foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Thanks for stopping in at Dirty Bird Central, the chicken ranch being run by two old turkeys.
Click on pictures to enlarge
Wanna see my rooster? This is one of our handsome roosters that we hope to rehome soon. He's the head of our "cock-a-doodle-do" choir that awaits us in the early dawn. He's a pretty boy and he knows it! We're downsizing and need to be without "farming incumbrances" including our feathery alarm clock. That is to say, we need a break from our green acres. If we somehow have a desire to have a few more birds in the future, we know the drill. For now, no mas papagallos and our pretty papagallo has to go.
Tip Of The Day:
"A giant on the ground is just a rug" (anonymous)
And, now a word from our sponsor:
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Well, I'll be dipped in hog lard! It’s February…again! It that doesn’t just blow your
wig in the creek, it’s only 323 days until Christmas! If time goes by any faster, I'll need to buy an anchor! Moving along.....
Hot-not-hot or I'm not warming up to this
The other day (when lots of things happen around here), all of the guts of our big beautiful Maytag dryer had been overhauled or replaced. Everything had been buttoned up and all was well. But, this is Rancho Relaxo where...you just never know.
All of the items on the repair protocol list had been accomplished save one. It was a small factor that had been addressed....or so it seemed. This is to say that the dryer vent had been checked for clogging and then carefully reinstalled. So, the dryer was fixed: except the dryer had no heat after the first couple of loads. This was a head-scratching mystery since all (as in all) of the sensors had been replaced and all repair protocols followed. There’s really no reason for this dryer not to dry; but, it wasn’t. Great.
Connie the Washer Woman had had enough of the rebellious appliance and its “tude” towards her. She had laundry to do and was now ready to haul the thing to the nearest high cliff and shove it off and shoot at it on the way down. She almost had her coat on and would have been heading to Lowe's to buy another one but I pleaded for mercy for the stupid thing. It was a good thing she wasn’t near the gun safe or we would have had to give the blamed thing a decent burial.
Though it didn't make any sense that the dryer wasn't drying properly, only one item on the protocol list did require a re-think: clogging. Though the rear vent had been checked for obstruction, the blower itself had not because it required taking off the blower cover at the bottom. The odds were extremely high that it wasn't clogged. And, checking it required work which El Mecánico had deemed to be unnecessary at the time (and we just know how "convenience oriented" the Ol' Rancher is). No matter the thinking, there was only one option to save the big Maytag from great bodily harm: pull the front off and remove the vital organs….again (big groan).
Peruano beans or New beans are our new friends
The other day (when lots of things happen around here), a nice big bunch of Peruano beans showed up at the rancho. The Ol’ Rancher is a big fan of legumes that go “bang!” in the night. So, since Peruanos have never been on the menu here, it was decided to have a go at taste testing the tiny time bombs. They have been on store shelves for years and years but there had been no real reason to buy them. But, they showed up here so it was high time to fire them up.
Since these bonnie beanie babies (smooth off-white surface) are from south of the US, it was also decided to not use bacon, ham, or ham hocks for protein like what's normally used for pinto beans. Instead, an on-hand tube of Mexican chorizo was selected. Chorizo is a staple but it hadn't been used as an ingredient for beans before (chorizo is my friend!). So it was, off with the tube and into the pot with the lingering legumes.
After a couple of hours of simmering, it was time for a taste test. Results? WOW! They're great (thank you, Tony the Tiger)! They have really wonderful mouth feel and, when paired with the chorizo, the result was impressive! After eating my fill, they were stowed for the night. This recipe will be etched into Rancho Relaxo's list of great things to eat! Next time, a different meat will be used and there is no doubt that it will be great!
Black beans and Rice or Beans are our Friends and Rice is
nice
It must have been "gas week" at the rancho because the hankering for more frijoles hadn't gone away. Being the son of a “CIO” (a “California improved Okie”, in case you hadn’t heard), my genes must have kicked in because, at about the time the Peruanos were gone, the hunger for more beans was unabated. The very thought of ladling up more beans also evoked a strong yen for fried taters with a ton of onions mixed in. Since we just happened to have a huge supply of onions at the time, the game was afoot.
At first, the Ol' Rancher was a bit hesitant about the spicing and ingredient mix. Along with the taters, the menu included Caribbean "frijoles negros" (black beans) that use cumin for spicing; they weren't the usual pintos. After remembering pairing potatoes (pappas) with cumin in Mexican cooking, and that cumin is used in chili beans, everything was just fine with the mental processing. White rice was also added so the meal would be complete.
You would have thought that corn tortillas would have been unpacked, warmed, and handed out. Not this time. It was discovered that Caribbean cuisine doesn't normally use tortillas per se but rather a "roti" like flat bread. Using a tortilla would have aided the fusion cuisine attempt but I passed on it this time. Instead of tortillas, plain white bread and real butter were used (margarine is not allowed in the house since it isn't real food. Not even flies will touch it!). For those in the know, this makes for a delightful treat called a "fried tater sandwich". Oh, my! Was it ever delightful! This treat, with or without the black or pinto beans, will soon return to the menu! Make this note: Okie food and Caribbean food mix well.
Our steps outside the culinary box were successful but, due to the Ol' Rancher being a Luddite with strict menus and recipes, that may be the extent of our "fusion cooking" around here for a while. But, this is Rancho Relaxo where....you just never know.
Chickening Report or No mas pollos
Let’s take a running start on this. The Henhouse Hilton has
been flooded for a couple of months. Not good…very not good. It is a place of
constant hazard due to the deep thick mud and large lingering water puddles. This is because the temps are too cool to dry out the coop (even after two months!). This means
that our bird herd would have to endure wet muddy feet all of the time when they are in the
coop. That also means that they are subject to serious foot issues and who knows what else. The only option
we had we had was to let them free range. Not only that, merely being in the coop is hazardous to whomever has to feed the birds and piggies (that would be moi). Entering the coop is kept to a minimum lest there be one butt short in the pews when church starts. It ain't safe in there.
OK…let’s talk about free ranging. We love to let our birds out to free range for a number of reasons. It’s healthy for them since they can get more exercise than just being cooped up and it also increases their protein intake (which makes for luscious eggs!). Yet, there are some real downsides to the matter. One is predation. In the previous ten years, we've lost nearly one hundred birds (I didn't stutter) due to predation.
Once was when we lost almost seventy at one time when a couple of the neighbor's Rottweilers got loose. They rounded up our birds and killed almost all of them for sport. Another time, coyotes took out a dozen in one week and a few now and again. Another reason is that they love to camp out on our back porch. Uh....if you know anything at all about inconsiderate, indiscriminate, indiscrete, unscrupulous, uncaring, and totally selfish chickens, you know that you don't want forty chickens anywhere near your house and much less on your back patio. The mess is indescribable. So, we are hesitant to allow our birds to free range. But, we were forced to do it because of the coop and because of the fact that there are pigs in the coop now.
The piggies had to be placed in the far back part of the coop where the layer boxes are because the rest of the coop is filled with mud and water. It's still wet back there but it's not as muddy and their food doesn't get contaminated. But, the layers can't get to their boxes so, you guessed it, we no longer have fresh eggs on hand.
Our options were limited so a friend and brother, Scott, who has a ranch up in Yokhol Valley (ten miles north of us), when apprised of the matter, agreed to take the birds off our hands. He already has a bird herd so they'll be in good hands up there. We still have a a few roosters but they're now listed on "Craig's List" and "Next Door" so should be gone soon. A few hens managed to escape the purge so we'll see what happens with them. If the coop dries out, we can always find a way to shoo them in after we rehome the piglets. Perhaps we'll have a few fresh eggs after all. In any case, I'm no longer the Duke of Cluckingham.
iPhone, you phone, we all phone home Or Bye bye old phone
Our old model 7S iPhone has been operating nominally since day one. The motto around here is, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". However, the old communicator wasn't broken; it was worn out. The charging port/data port simply wore out and cables weren't making contact with. So, it wouldn't charge and you couldn't retrieve pictures and such. So, it was time to head to "Amazon" to order a new one.
Amazon was chosen because the have a warranty and because the sell a tested product. The old phone was, in fact, purchased from Amazon. After a lot of hunting and tracking, a really nice iPhone 13 was selected. Even though it was a bit older, it was the highest performance iPhone of its time. The price? The price really was a tad higher than I wanted to pay but, all in all, I chipped for it.
The bloody thing has a learning curve and old people hate learning curves. That means the old folks around here are swiping their....fingers off with a "swipe swipe here and a swipe swipe there". They are swiping everywhere! They should be expert swipers in no time (is this a good thing?!). The slightly larger screen is appreciated as is the larger data storage (128GB vs 32GB).
The coolest part about the entire matter is that you set the two phones next to each other, touch a couple of buttons, and the new phone sucks the guts out of the other phone and self-installs it in only a few minutes!! That's impressive! It didn't have a scratch on it when it arrived. In only a week, it looks like it had been drug through a swamp then dried with a hammer! A case was ordered; it came today. The old folks are looking forward to a long and happy relationship with this high performance rig.
Fun fact: today's cell phones are far more powerful than the computers that ran NASA's space program until about the year 2000.
