Rancho Smoke and Stuff

Left and below are shots of Princess Abbie experimenting with a new fuzzer detection system. Seems she's stumbled upon a here-to-fore unknown ability to sense minute vibrations and tremors in the ground with her back so no fuzzers can sneak up on her from any direction! Looks like she is fine tuning that skill to perfection. Notice that she's making sure that she can detect movement even on concrete! Amazing. You just know that she wouldn't want to be derelict in her watchdog duties.

This is "Hank" (so far) the rooster who is obviously riding herd on "his" girls. He's doing a great job of keeping them "entertained" but methinks that another rooster is needed. His harem is just too large even for his huge ego.

Here's some of the girls taking a dirt bath with which to get...clean. Sorta makes you glad you aren't a chicken, eh?

This is a "just because" picture. We were visiting someone at Sierra View Hospital and noticed this view. It was just one of those gorgeous days that begged for a picture to be taken. I obliged.

The next few pics show the various stages of the recent fire and includes shots from different vantage points. This one is from our back yard. You can't see the mountains which are only a couple of miles distant. Lots of folks had stuffed up heads and watery eyes. Everyone's clothes smelled like smoke. Ugh.

From the Wal-Mart parking lot in Porterville (almost 20 miles distant).

Another shot from our back yard (same day).

Downtown Springville on the main drag and looking over the top of the old "Gibson's Texaco Station".

Also downtown but at Bridge and Hwy 190. The fire station is just off to the right a short ways. Looking north  (magnetic north not true north) .

Looking south on Hwy 190 just north of the Post Office.

Lots of smoke, eh?

Gifford's Market in the background.

Looking east from Hwy 190 at Lower Globe Road. Black Mountain is on fire. 











Black Mountain again from Hwy 190 at the Golf Course.

Rancho Report: the fire is contained! The “Pier Fire” has been contained. There’s bit of smoke from a few “hot spots” yet but all is well in them thar hills! It is with great pleasure that there have been no reports of serious injury or losses, too! It’s a good thing, too, because folks around these parts were tired of sneezing, having watery eyes, and stuffed up heads.

We did lose the Wishon Power Plant and that’s probably because it was at the point of origin of the fire. Most likely, the fire was already out of control and already burning the place down by the time it was reported. Not sure of any kind of time line as to when it may be returned to service. 

Our kudos and great thanks to the firefighters who waged a month-long battle against this monster and won. We cannot thank them enough. As the firefighters changed shift, the local folks and the entire elementary school turned out for a flag and sign waving session  to express the community's gratitude for their tireless and super-human efforts to protect us. The fire was limited to 35K acres and there were no major losses. 

We’re getting our duck in a row for the big yard sale that is just around the corner. It’s difficult for the old people who live here at the ranch to believe that the “Apple Festival” is bearing down upon us! There is a lot of prep that goes into the event but most of it seems to get done. Each year it seems as though there is less and less energy available with which to tote those barges and lift those bails (for all you Paul Robeson fans out there). Perhaps in a few years, we’ll only conduct half a yard sale. *SIGH*.

There may not be as many venders this year as some folks because their “git up and go” has done “got up and went”. It takes a lot (and do mean a lot) of work to haul stuff hither and yon. And then, if it doesn’t sell, haul it back to yon and hither.

In other words, all is moving along fairly well here at the happy homestead…..sorta. Seems that the feat of existing on planet earth is met with stiff resistance from time to time.

Thankfully, we have such comforting amenities as …butter. Yep; butter. We were in the local (read: Porterville since Springville isn’t a real town yet) “Grocery Outlet” the other day. When we got there, we were fairly certain that a few good deals would present themselves because they always do. My mother had advised us that butter was on sale but, at the price she quoted, it was unlikely that there would be so much as a smear of the stuff to put on a single colonel of popcorn by the time we got there.

My! Were we surprised when we walked back to the dairy section!! I can only suppose that there aren’t that many fans of real butter around because we stumbled into thirty pounds (no typo here!) of real butter all hunkered down and just ready to be tossed into a shopping cart! Oh, it wasn’t merely butter, it was “Land O’ Lakes” butter which happens to be the premier butter around these parts! What’s that you say? How much per pound? Thank you for asking! We got eight four-packs at FOUR POUNDS for 2.27 (about 57 cents per pound)! Yes!! It was one day from the expiration date! Guess what? We didn’t care because Connie the Canner is also “Connie the Freezer Lady”!! It just so happened that we had a hole in our freezer that just exactly accommodated the entire stack!

That also means that, in addition to burning a few extra bagels and English mufflers (sic) for breakfast , Ol’ Tinkerin’ Ran will try making some “ghee”! Ghee is not merely drawn butter. It is that, to be sure, but it is further kept hot (but not boiling) until all of the butterfat and such is completely removed. The result is a centuries-old style cooking oil that preserves well and which adds a distinct flavor to (usually) Indian cuisine. My recipe list is quivering in anticipation.

Got beans? Yep! We surely have those too! Like my old grand pappy used to say, “Man does not live by bread alone. He has to have a pot of beans, too!”. Ol’ Rancho Ran can live without a lot of things but frijoles is just not one of them.

It went like this: the other day the Ol’ Rancher was smitten with a yen for a pot of beans and bacon. Now, it’s probably well known to most that he is rather…ahem…convenience oriented… and loves to employ whatever “devices of efficiency” that may be available. In the case of beans, he has a remarkable tool with which to convert these hard legumes into a tender bowl of pure pleasure. That would be the “Power Pressure Cooker XL 10 Qt” (159.95 @ Amazon.com). Talk about a labor-saving device! It can turn a rocking chair into a noon lunch in only a couple of hours! Wheew!

Anyway, now that I’m finished bragging, I tossed in four cups of dried pintos (do rinse and sort them first unless you like pressure-cooked dirt clods for dinner), a half-pound of really good smoked bacon, and about a tablespoon of salt. Now, it just doesn’t get much simpler than that, neighbor! 

I thickened them by mashing some of the beans to help make a nice “bean liquor”.  Connie grabbed a big baked potato that we had on hand from the potluck at church the day prior, mashed it between two plates, then fried it up good! Oh, my! It just doesn't get much better than that! I dug in! To quote Uncle Jed Clampet, “Whooooo, doggies!” 

Unfortunately, there seems be a downside attached to certain upsides. In this case our culinary delight was encumbered by a steep downside: we are sometimes concerned about having to track our sheets down the next morning. In fact, our nightly prayers may include a request that their retrieval not include a ladder or an embarrassing trip to the neighbor’s house. Reckon that this batch tasty bites may have been defanged somewhere down the line since our bedclothes were found intact and in place the next morning. The next round will be soon.

Fuzzer Supression Update: well, they’re still here. The mangy varmints are laying siege to my ranch (and everyone else’s ranch within about 300 miles that I can tell). The war is afoot and it includes slinging a lot of lead.

The other day was a “TWO-FER” day. One critter was must have accidently gotten into the neighbor’s happy hemp farm and had lunch there (a bold and unfounded assertion on my part, to be sure). He arrogantly got so close that the error in my scope sighting wasn’t going to make a difference. And, it didn’t. Ol’ Ran lowered the boom with his Ruger “Critter Git’R” and that was all she wrote.

Much to my amazement, as I was getting ready to park the Ruger, I spotted another one up close and was able to make sure that he didn’t attend his next family renuion. Ruger Ran (has kind of a ring to it, eh?)  – 2;  Mocking fuzzers – 0

In all honesty, I must report that there have been a couple of occasions where it seemed that I could have done better had I just thrown the rifle at them. Not sure why I couldn’t hit the broad side of the barn but there are a few brown fuzzers that will have a free time of it until I can regain my sighting or senses…or both. I guess that, when winter besets us and there’s nothing else to do (oh…sure, Ran!), I’ll just sight the thing in again and return it to its tack driving self. I’ve regularly drilled fuzzers at 150 yards when it was sighted in. Hope reigns supreme.

Chickenin’ Report: Geepers! Creepers! Where’d you get those peepers ?! We’ve got peeping chicks! A few weeks ago, friend and brother, Brian Johnson, and his wife, Angel, gave us two new chicks. Then, just a few days ago, he gave us a cute little white pullet. And now, “something new has been added” (for all you “Old Gold” fans out there)!

Connie the Canner, who was manning the post of “Washer Woman” for the day (she later switched to the role of “Head Cook and Feeder Bowl Washer” that evening), was hangin’ out der vashin’ on a bright, sunny, and mild afternoon. She kept hearing chirping noises coming from somewhere. After a few minutes and a quick check around the back yard, she determined that they were coming from inside the cute chicken house that friend and brother, Rob Tyrrell and wife, Sharon, had given us (along with its three feathery occupants). Lo and behold! She discovered that one of the little brown hens had hatched some chicks!

That, of course, meant that she had to call the flock master in for some help and advice. A quick call on the Baofeng UV-5R handy talkie radio (affectionately called the “Flungdung 5") and Ol’ Rancho Ran, with no time to change into his “Chicken Man” costume (which would have been nice because it has such a really cool matching cape), was on the scene to take charge.

I had checked inside the little chicken hootch the day prior and saw the brown brooder sitting on perhaps ten eggs. As far as I was concerned, the little bird was probably wasting her time given that we hadn’t given the least thought to breeding chickens much less attempting to do so. Breeding chicken is a chore and we have ample sufficiency of those around here. So, it’ll be the usual chickenin’ for the time being.

But now, what before my pretty brown eyes (my wife says I have pretty brown eyes) should appear but four less-than-a-day-old darling itty bitty tiny chicks! They were hardly more than egg yolks with legs. They were skittering about as though I was a huge white ogre or something. But, I managed to out maneuver them and snatched them up so that no other huge white ogre would chick-nap them and so no small grey black-masked omnivore would scarf them up for lunch.

Leaving our chirp twerps and their mother without a protective cage in an environment filled with a plethora of quite hungry carnivores didn’t sit well with us. The consensus was that they needed to be protected and kept warm (the temps just dropped down to Autumn levels at night).

So, you know ‘zactly what we did….again. We hauled their tiny little fuzzy carcasses into Granny’s kitchen. They were immediately given residence in a tub next to the tub where the other two chicks are being raised. Can’t you just see that on the menu? “Tub O’ Chicken”.

Chickenin’ Lesson: chickens are remorseless gluttons. If you throw food, they will come a’runnin’ at flank speed. Not only that, they’ll chase you down if they if they so much as think you have one small grain of rice in your hand! They automatically switch into a DNA-programmed maniacal mode and will mug you for it while fighting off the rest of the flock of ravenous fowls who are trying to do the same thing! Half of the hens will end up looking like participants at a Filipino cock fight! What a free-for-all! Defending yourself against a dumb cluck is one thing; but, being in the middle of about 70 chickens who think they’re sharks is when things get….interesting. A guy has to watch his step around perennially -hungry chickens, don’tcha know.

And, they will not stop eating until the last chunk of cracked corn or stale bread has disappeared. In fact, if the last morsel has yet to disappear and there’s still a mound of scratch there, they will have a colonel in their beak when they squawk their last cluck as their crop explodes (“The rooster has exploded, madam”…for all you “Fresno the Miniseries” fans out there). For a lack of a better term, I call it “suicidal eating”.  I’ve heard of “stuffed chicken breasts” and such but this really takes the “Hot Wings Special”.

Anyway, I’ve narrowed down the names for “Rooster Doe” (who is just “Hank” for now) to just two. I’ll either call him “Joe Cockerel” or “Big Bad Benny Biddy Banger”. Both have a real ring to them. I’m a real sucker for alliteration so I’m leaning towards “Benny”. We’ll see. Most likely, Connie the Canner will invoke a here-to-fore unknown ordinance against being stupid in public and just whack me with something long, large, and not quite soft. I may have to settle for something less artistic like, “Fearless Freddie Flocker”…uh…no. How about, “LugNut Leghorn”?  I may have to just settle for something simple like, “Little White Stupid Chicken” or maybe, “Plucky Clucky”.

After all of the experience of the previous two years, I’m still not sure we have a handle on the arcane art of “chickening”. But, we’re certainly making progress. If nothing else, I will probably end up with an honorary degree in “Chicken Psychology”. Just what I always wanted. 

There you have it: another episode of what’s happening at Rancho Relaxo, home of Rancho Ran, the world's foremost authority (the previous one died), Connie the Canner (world's greatest side-cook), where things can get…interesting, and where… you just never know.

Rancho Tierra Del Fuego!

There are a couple of pictures that I came by that are from
Cal Fire and this is one of them. No exact location given.

This is the second of the pictures from Cal Fire.

 This shot was taken last Tuesday and from approx. Road 256 and Ave 194 (east of Strathmore).

Same shot same time but out in the open.

 Second day of the fire taken from Rancho Relaxo.

Eastbound on Hwy 190 at the River Island Golf Course. Black Mountain is dead ahead but you can't see it for the smoke.

We're almost back at the ranch (large white mailbox on the left). Black Mountain is dead ahead.

You can see the fire at the top of Black Mountain. The pic was taken while stopped in front of the rodeo grounds.

This is looking north from Sequoia Dawn. The sun is having a difficult time making it through the smoke.

Same shot as above only zoomed in.

This is Black Mountain seen from eastbound on Hwy 190 approaching the golf course. Much of the area smoke has lifted and now you can see the fire on top.

It’s September!!! If that doesn’t just hose your begonias! If not, I bet it makes you Cuckoo for Coco Puffs. Anyway, let’s get on with this posting before another month passes from all the bellyaching.

Wildfire report: you know things are going to be…interesting…when you are on your way home and you can see flames at the top of the mountains a few miles east! From what we can tell, a couple of hooligans stole a car, set it on fire, then pushed it off a cliff a few miles above Springville. That little stunt seems to be the newest craze in outdoing other stupid criminals. It occurred at 2:30AM and started a fire on Highway 190 where there is an abundance of both cliffs and bone dry dead shrubs and trees that had perished in the recent three year drought. Not sure how long it took to be noticed but, given the light traffic at that time of the morning that far up the hill, I suspect that it didn’t give our fire fighters much of a chance at containment at all.  

Smoke: at first there was smoke and it was annoying. The next day, however, the wind seemed to keep it at bay so things weren’t too bad but still weren’t optimal.  We could see the smoke cloud in the distance but took no thought about the fact that it could actually head our direction.  After all, Cal Fire was on duty and hard at it. The next day was worse but still manageable. Today, the fire is ZERO contained (update: 10% containment) and is not only over the mountain, the smoke is horrendous! We can hardly see across the street for the smoke!! We had wondered why the big air attack tankers weren’t flying then it became obvious: you can’t fly in a mountainous area when you can’t see the mountains (I catch on really quickly, eh?).

The fire has quickly gone uphill (east) but it has not forgotten to head south and west (where we are).  The folks within a couple of miles of us probably need not worry but you can bet that no one will be caught napping any time soon. Here’s the latest from Cal-Fire:

https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/5548/

There are mandatory evacuations from Balch Park Road at Highway 190 (at the north edge of Springville) and from Highway 190 eastward (again, from the edge of Springville). The evacuation included Bear Creek Road as well. A dear friend of mine lives there and had to evacuate and it caused her to miss the class reunion that we just had.

The air tankers and helicopters have been flying when they can. Methinks that Cal Fire’s resources are stretched, though, since there is another fire south of us and others in the LA area and then at the north end of the state. We did have a heavy hauling C-130 here but it seems that the big jet air tanker was pulled from our job to fight elsewhere. Oh, well.

Check with the above link for updates. I’d love to maintain updates but am so far behind I’ll likely not be through until Christmas (*SIGH*).

Chickenin’ Report: Hey! Hey! Hey! We have tres nuevo pollo peepers! Friend and Brother, Brian Johnson, once again managed to snag three new one or two day old chicks for us! We made haste over there to get them and now have them…in the kitchen. Ah, yes. That would be the same kitchen that  Connie the Canner advised that there would be no more chickening in her kitchen. Silly her. Just like the last time Brian gave us those cute, cuddly, peeping poopers, she just couldn’t help herself. Her mothering (chickening?) instincts kicked in and she embraced the little fuzzy critters and adopted them as her own. The long haul in raising chicks to hen-dom is upon us.

The Ol’ Flock Master had to have a long talk with his girls the other day. The huevos harvest has been far too modest as of late; it’s almost as though someone has ripped off most of my hens and replaced them with roosters.

Now, honestly, my “Cluck Speak” isn’t really dialed in. And, I’m guessing that most of you have yet to download the “Star Trek Universal Translator” software from “Amazon.com” (it’s a bit spendy so I understand). So, I’ll just translate the best that I can so you can get the gist of the pep talk.

It went something like this: “Ladies, you have my heart-felt thanks for your not-so-recent four-dozen-per-day egg production. But, girls, girls, girls, our numbers have dropped so low that a kindergartner has fingers left over after counting all the eggs! However, though the temperature is hot enough to fry chicken….OOPS!! Sorry, girls!! ….hot enough to reduce your motivation somewhat, something is wrong here. Production has dropped off like someone has welded your tubes shut! There are a whole lot of you and a hole where a lot of eggs need to be. Are you dealing on the side? I mean, just how hard is this gig, anyway?

Plus, you get plenty of fresh clean water, the best of scratch, crumble, tons of greens, and you even get to free range! When it’s a real scorcher out there, I even turn on the misters for you. And, don’t you remember the serenades in the evening times? OK! OK! I know I didn’t bring my guitar; sorry about that. But, I am…I am… trying! So, how about some help here, ladies! This is as close to Chicken Nirvana as I can get it for now!” If there is any compassion in a chicken’s DNA, that should work.

Sure hope I don’t have to resort to contacting the Kool Klucks Klan chicken rock band for entertainment.  Perhaps dancing chickens produce more eggs. I dunno. Maybe I could paint the coop in mod colors and such and they would think they are in Hawaii or Cabo San Lucas. All that stuff could get expensive and the efficacy thereof is in question. Or, perhaps I could get a deal from Colonel Sanders. Naw. I would just give them away. Reckon I’m just an old softy. Some folks are brave hearts. Me? I’m just a big ol’ puff heart. My side cook thinks I can be callous at times, though (especially when it comes to fuzzers), and calls me “Captain Hoof Hearted”. Oh, well.

What happens when you mix grandkids with chickens? Well…you just never know. The second week of the month, the Howden family (six of the eight of them) came over for a visit. Of course, when you are from the LA area, seeing a ranch is part of the wonderment of life for young’uns and that day was no exception. The highlight was our pecking crew who were out free ranging in the back. So, out back we went to watch “Chicken TV”. They all had a great time of chickenin’ and watching the feathery flocking friends foraging for goodies. 

Some of the braver ones wanted to hold one of the pullets so I grabbed one from the pullet pen where we keep our three latest layers-to-be. Of course, the chicken wiggled and when a chicken wiggles when it is being held by a four year old, the child thinks he's being attacked by a grizzly and flings it far from him. That was OK with the chicken who wanted to practice free ranging anyway. After being passed around between kids and being daintily mauled, we put our little pullet back in her cage. She won't remember a thing. 

All the kiddies and oldies had a great time. Then it was “huggies all around” and away they went back to the big city. I have little doubt that they'll be back for more chickening. 

You may want to note that we recently re-introduced a rooster into the fleet of three-toed fertilizer spreaders. He is proving that he is a real “take charge” sort of rooster. Though quite young, he seems to have his vocation dialed in and makes for a super peace keeper amongst the rowdy Rhode Island Reds. I’ve yet to hang a moniker on him but it shouldn’t take long.

I wish I hadn’t gotten rid of Kenny Leghorn but, c’est la vie. Likewise, our feral roosters were doing a great job until Gus, the Australian Heeler, played fetch with them. Lessons learned.

Abbie the Princess Coon Dog: yep…she done did it again; she treed yet another coon! On Tuesday night, at about 10:30 PM (thankfully, not at 12:30 AM), we heard our semi-precious (too many time outs) precocious pooch giving her baying instincts a workout. Thanks to her highly refined “CDNDS” (“Coon Dog Nasal Detection System”), we knew that she was on high alert. Out comes the big tactical flashlight (why did I almost write testicle flashlight?) and out the back door the Ol’ Rancher went with his torch ablaze.

Our coon doggie was at the base of the goodly sized Mulberry tree in the back by the barn and whatever was up there was sure getting a good bawling out! A quick flash with my night light that can light up an entire neighborhood and bingo! There was a real live masked bandit parked in our tree. Now, I don’t about you but, it’s been awhile since I’ve needed a new coonskin cap (and they probably aren’t selling too well on eBay right now anyway). Plus, you can’t be a good neighbor if you are firing your .30 cal hunting rifle at that time of night. Since I do want to be a good neighbor, and since I don’t need a cap, and since the coon was smaller and not a “keeper”, I decided to just let Abbie wear herself out and let the coon go. That’s probably what happened since the coon was gone the next day and Abbie napped a lot.

Fuzzer Report: as learned in the previous episode, the fuzzers around here are gettin’ mighty brave. The other day one of them took a bet that he couldn’t sneak up to within about 25 yards of the house. Little did the mangy varmint know that I was waiting with my Ruger Model 10-22 “Critter Git’er”; it was locked and loaded. Ol’ Dead Eye nailed the varmint on the first go around. .22 cal bullets are only about 3 cents each but I’m sorta frugal, don’tcha know. I truly hope that he had pre-paid the bet because it will help pay for his funeral expenses.

In only a few minutes, another fat fuzzer sat preening himself at about 50 yards out. Obviously, he had no fear of sitting still out in the open: silly him. It took a second quick shot but the total funeral bill was doubled rather quickly. The colony would do well to opt for some life insurance because there’s a new varmint hating attitude in town and it belongs to me. Fuzzer Fury Ran – 2 – Mangy Varmints – 0.

If that doesn’t just make you do the “Truffle Shuffle” (all you “Goonies” fans out there….FYI: I met the guy that owned that house. My neighbor was his girlfriend when I lived in Longview, WA), a few days later, two rather brave brown buggers entered the kill zone of my back yard. They had hoped to cop a meal with our chickens who have been tasked with keeping the back yard free of food (and, boy! Are they good at it!). Brown muncher number one creeped over to a large patch of fresh greens that I had tossed out for my girls. Lo and behold if he didn’t present himself fully lengthwise (the largest target area available). Slowly I turned….step by step….and raised the Ruger “Fuzzer Buster” to bear; in only a moment, the fuzzer buffet was closed. The Ol’ Rancher was mighty proud of himself but was he about to get a pleasant surprise.

After a few minutes of collating pictures for the recent class reunion, it was time for another break. Hey! I’m not working for the union. I can break when I please! Besides, in the old days I was concerned about how big my boogaloo was (after all; Wolfman Jack was always asking us that question). Nowadays, I’m concerned about the size of my bladder. Break time! So, there!

Moving along….it just so happens that, on my way to the elimination station, I glanced out the window only find a second really stupid furry glutton grazing on my hens’ greens. The “Fuzzer Buster” was at hand (as always) so….slowly I turned….step by step….I plumb snuck up on the little thief and took aim: no more unwelcomed guests at the buffet. Wheeew! Two pelts in one day! It’s a dadgum shame that there isn’t a bounty on these things. I could make a lot of gas money in my spare time……oh.

Connie the Canner and the Ol’ Rancher attended his 50^th class reunion on the 2^nd of this month. I must say that it was a nice time and was a very enjoyable experience. Can’t say that that’s what I expected. I guess I really didn’t know what to expect other than trying to figure out who all the old people were. Come to find out, that’s what everyone else thought too.

It was great getting to see the old gang again. There wasn’t enough time to really sit and visit and get caught up on everything with everybody. So, everyone settled for hitting the highlights and latest updates on things. I took lots of pictures but may not get many posted for now. That may have to wait until the next posting. Not….enough….time.

Everything else is…moving along…and on an even keel. We do have an issue with flooding in the coop but, so far, it’s manageable. The neighbors seem to think that flooding their back yard will make their rocks grow or something. They have a few woodsy trees and shrubs but nothing that warrants two days of flood irrigation. Ugh. I keep my wading boots on all of the time when outside.

There you have it: another episode of what’s happening at Rancho Relaxo, home of Rancho Ran, the world's foremost authority (the previous one died), Connie the Canner (world's greatest side-cook), where things can get…interesting, and where… you just never know.

Rancho Sin Huevos

 This is the big fire we had recently. It burned from "P Hill" to Reservation Road and a bit beyond. 

Here's another shot from the roundabout at Reservation Road and Hwy 190. Looking SW. 

Here's one the big birdies that came to fight our recent fires including the big "Shaffer" forest fire about 12 miles north of Kernville. 
This is the Lockheed C-130 and she's a heavy lifter. It's empty weight is about 74,000 lbs and she'll carry 72,000 lbs! That's about 9,000 gallons of water. 

We had to stop by the hangar the other day which is why there are a couple of shots from there. Our hangar is the second one to the right. It looks smaller than the front one but they are both the same size. 

Here's Princess Abbie doing a great impression of a worthless, lazy, uncaring, day-sleeping, bum dog. Actually, I think she just had a rough night scaring 'possums away. 

Blimey! I should really, rather, very much, quite say! Here we are dragging more of 2017 than pushing it! That’s just about on the drop edge of almost as much as I hope to commence to complain about that matter at this time.

Rancho Relaxo Report: we’re feeling the heat here, as usual. The good news is that we’re not frying our eggs on the concrete driveway….yet. If this is the normal August, then we can expect only a few days where some of our steel fence posts will sag but it should pass fairly quickly. The gooder news is that we have water with which to suppress the “brown plague” of the previous three really long years of searing drought.

Ruh-roh! Rats!! Our vermin issue is a major one. That’s a real “bummer dude” because, though we knew we had rats, we didn’t know that someone had routed LA’s sewer pipes through our back yard! We’re now ramping up (though I could really use some new rampers) for a war on rats (which of course, will delay my…day off).

I just don’t need a bloody war around here but the battle plans are being drawn. There was no choice but to go full out against these black ravenous critters who have a pronounced proclivity for introducing pathogens into their environment (“Black Plague”, anyone?) and which are pitiless omnivores.

Not only are they spooking our chickens but they are also doubling their size by gorging themselves on chicken feed! When I realized that, I immediately recalled the WW2 documentary where, early on in WW2, England was losing as much as 20% of their grain harvest to rodents!! I guess I should have been awarded the “Bright LED Award” sooner so I would have been bright enough to connect the dots (it makes you feel downright dim when there are only two of them). So, war it shall be with all of its inglorious details, expenditure for war materials, and syphoning of time and energy (enough of which already seems scarcely available at any given time).

Then, there is the second front: the fuzzers have made a large colony under the pole barn. That’s not a good thing. I’ll need to wage war against them, too. It will entail clearing out one end of the barn (my, but that’s fun)…on my day off, then taking actions to end the destructive colony’s ambitions to conquer our ranch. 

Likewise, a new colony is being constructed under the pump house and that will not be permitted either. There may be another attempt at colonizing my 2300 gallon water reserve tank (for fire suppression). So far, it’s merely a zweifrontenkrieg.

The other day, one of the buggers was parked out in front of the pole barn. It may have been just me, but I really think he was mocking me. Usually, when they see me they bolt for the mother hole and hide until I’m gone. Not this time. It just so happened I had my Ruger model 10-22 at hand and decided to make his or my day.

The Ruger’s scope isn’t quite dialed in yet (and you know exactly when I'll get around to that) so I wasn’t sure if it would hold still long enough for me to use him as target practice until I ran out of bullets. I should have snatched the 17HMR which has a better scope but that would have required an extra LED and I’m still short a couple of those.

Anyway, the scope must have been about right for the 30 yards or so range involved because it was “one shot, one kill’. One less mocking varmint. Rancher – 1; garden glutton – 0.

Princess Abbie report: as of late, the fuzzers around here have been mighty bold. They’re just getting far too close to the ranch house. In times past, they’ve been seen filching our veggies from the garden boxes and even hauling fruit off from the plum trees. Occasionally, one or two would come a bit closer but not by much. Ah, but it’s a new day.

The other day, Abbie “treed” again so the Ol’ Rancher went out back to see what he could see (which is far better than being a bear what had to go plumb over a mountain to do that). She had our patio refrigerator corned (which wasn’t hard to do seeing that it was over in the corner) and was baying away. “Ah, ha!” says I. “She’s treed a mouse…. or a rat….or a lizard (we got a million of’em)…..or a thing….or two”. Anyway, I pulled the planting pots off the top and gave the big fridge a pull away from the wall.

Boy! Howdy! Quicker than you can snap into a “Slim Jim”, Abbie darted behind the box and snatched a juvenile fuzzer and was gone with it! She took out that varmint with all of the warmth of a WW2 Russian sniper. Abbie – 1 Fuzzer – 0. Love it!

Not long ago, her electric fence collar didn’t seem to be working. She wasn’t feeling the shock when she trespassed her usual boundaries. That’s not a good thing! For instance, we found her out on Highway 190 out front and that’s really not a good thing at all! The previous neighbor across the highway lost three of her dogs that way (I didn’t ask her IQ but I think we can all guess). So, Ol’ Ran had to do something ASAP.

The something was to tighten her collar a notch and that worked. She got bit a couple of times but she’s toeing the line now. But (have I mentioned how much I hate buts?), the prongs on the shocking device managed to wear a big sore spot on her neck. Oh, great. That matter was immediately taken care of by jerking off the collar and hookin’ her up until the wound healed up (“Triple Antibiotic” works wonders). Now, I use the collar during the day and hook her up at night. I don’t like having her vulnerable like that because black bears are not unknown to these parts. I keep an ear open and a .357 Magnum nearby at night.

The next angle of approach will be to cut the fur from her neck with our doggy clippers and then not tighten the collar as much. I’m thinkin’ that that bright idea ought to at least qualify me for another “Bright LED Award”. Given enough time, I’ll earn my way up from there ‘cause I’m tired of being in the dark all the time, don’t’cha know.

Computer Dude  update: it looks like the big quad-core main workhorse computer is back in service and operating nominally. That was a real pain to have to reload the operating system after having rebuilt it only a month prior. It isn’t a technical challenge at all. It’s just that reinstalling all of the backups takes a huge amount of time (at least when you have as much to back up as I do). But, the big bruiser is purring along and earning its keep.

Wanna know what a computer dude does if he has a few minutes to deal with while he’s downloading drivers and such? He waxes nostalgic and overhauls an XP box, that’s what. Friend and brother, Rick Hardt, hauled some of his computers from his old office over to the ranch and gave them to me!

One of them was of a high enough performance that I immediately upgraded it to a Win 10 box. Another was a really nice dual-core computer with lots of RAM (RAM is our friend!) and already running XP. That spawned an idea in no time. I tweaked and personalized it and sat it next to my big bad brute Dell box.

I added an HDMI video card so it could be hooked to the 39” monitor. After that, I added a bunch of neat software in case I need (another) back up box. It’ll actually be a secondary back up since my immediate back up machine is one that’s already been used for that purpose and has most of the same software and such as the main computer.

The big HP 23” all-in-one box got conscripted as the primary backup rig when the big box took a dive. So, in the exigency, I flooded it with all the necessary stuff to keep my digital boat afloat. She’s a bone fide beaut! The specs are not spectacular when compared to the big Dell. But, she’s no slouch due to the solid dual-core processor with a healthy dose of 6 GB of RAM. The OS is Win 10, of course. It came with Win 7 but Win 10 was a free upgrade (until June of this year). It’ll make the grade any day I need it.

What makes it so cool is that I just need to add a mouse and keyboard and I’m ready to rock! Those are a wireless set so, with no hookup required, I basically just pull it out from its hiding place and turn it one. Quick and easy (Mr. Quick and Mr. Easy are two of my favorite friends).

Before the big crash, I had the option to dual-boot to XP or Windows 10 by using two hard drives. For some reason, I elected to dual-boot to Windows 7 (I really do like Windows 7).  But, I guess I missed XP. That sounds about right since I used it as the main operating system for about eight years. It’s like an old friend and difficult to leave behind.

Now I have a super-nice and super-fast little XP box that I can tinker with. A lightly loaded XP with a single core Pentium 4 processor can run wonderfully fast on 256 MB of RAM. A lightly loaded XP box with a dual-core processor with 3 GB of RAM (which is the maximum amount that XP can “see”) is a screamer! The Firefox browser actually keeps the machine Internet capable, too. It’s silly but lends a tad of fun to the ol’ Computer Dude’s day.

 Chickening Report: One of the first things about “chickening” that you learn is that the weather affects egg production. If it’s too hot or too cold, the production goes down. Hint: it's hot here so we have pitifully few eggs. 

But, it doesn't end there; if the Big Bad Biddy Committee doesn’t like your beautiful nesting boxes, production goes down (unless, of course, the hens are happier laying their soon-to-be-omelets in the ….trash barrel....I kid thee negative). If the chicken is having a bad waddle day, the production goes down. If the chickens don’t like you, the production goes down (which is why the Ol’ Rancher pampers his producers).

Another reason is if they are frightened. Now, there are uncountable sources that can spook a dumb cluck but “predators” is one of the main ones. For instance, you’d be frightened too if you saw your BBBFL (best biddy buddy for life) have her head snatched right off her plump feathery body by a long armed raccoon (oh, yeah. It does happen).

It’s not that coons have a “thing” for chicken heads; it’s just that that’s the only part of the chicken that will make it through a hole in the coop. The coon has high hopes that the hole will enlarge so the rest of the feathery meal-to-be could quickly follow. It never happens so he settles for waddle, beak, gizzard, and eyeballs for dinner. Chickens don't have a brain so there's not much meat in the rest of the head. 

The egg heads around here have recently discovered a new and better way to feed our (hopefully) temporary roosters. Connie the Chicken Canner (Rancho Relaxo’s lead factotum and bottle washer), found a website that declared that fermenting your scratch and crumble releases more protein because it makes it more digestible (I bet a lot of y’all overlooked that when you studied “Chickening 101”,eh). It made sense to me especially since we have three younger boids that aren’t on the ground to get their grit yet.

So, Connie the Braumeister (she wears so many hats that there’s no room in the closet to hang them all) hauled out her two five gallon buckets and set up shop. Into one bucket went the scratch and into the other went the crumble.

Since our modest-but-unique ranch always has an abundance of some sort of odor (the coop when wet), fume (paint, gasoline, solvents, et. al.), vile vapor (“Pass the beans and ham hocks, please”….and, if you don’t pass the cornbread with that, you will die!”), smoke (BBQ), or such emanations, we figured no one would notice the prominent smell of….fermenting corn mash. 

Now, corn mash is the main ingredient for making moonshine (but, all you bootleggers knew that already). Naw….there’s no temptation to build a still but if we ever need to come up with some alcohol …for medicinal purposes, of course…we can do that (hey, you just never know).

By the end of the next day, we saw the buckets full and “working”. …and smelling. For a moment, I thought I was in the backwoods of Arkansas at Big Bubba Buddy Rub’s moonshine still. Wheew! We’re also hoping that the “Revenuers” won’t come tracking us down and bust up our works. “Hey, Feds! We pay our taxes!!”.  So far, so good.

Connie’s efforts paid off! The mash is a hit with the beak brigade and even the little guys are chowing down on it. They almost knock each other out of the way to get to this stuff. It must be good stuff because they stagger around for an hour or so after loading up and then come back for more (and you just know I’m funnin’ you).

The crumble mash is being consumed too but not with the same alacrity. It has the consistency of a bowl of cold Cream of Wheat (when was the last time you saw that?!). We’ll keep feeding them and if it starts being left over, we’ll revert to dry crumble and stay with the fermented scratch.  There’s also supposed to be a savings in feed costs as well because the scratch swells when it ferments and takes up more space in the chicken’s crop (while providing more protein so there’s a net gain).

So, you can imagine that the pair of ranchers are delighted to be informed about and are ready for the promised increase in the taste of our eggs, too! That was one of the claims made about fermented scratch. A more desirable product means more product sold and a more savory breakfast. We just need to get our girls to understand that simple dynamic and ….start laying.

There you have it: another episode of what’s happening at Rancho Relaxo, home of Rancho Ran, the world's foremost authority (the previous one died), Connie the Canner (world's greatest side-cook), where things can get…interesting, and where… you just never know. 

Rancho Julio Melto

The gazebo in "Centennial Park" across the street from City Hall here in Hooterville. We're setting up for a gig there. It's the next week after the one on Main Street. 

It's still a bit early so we're still hauling stuff in. 

City Hall across the street from the park. We all had a nice time. 

The "Fourth of July" gig at "Mission Bell". This is the same place we play on the second Monday of every month. We also played there a few days later at the regular pot luck. 

Here we see the onset of the "Schaeffer Fire". It's about 17 miles north of Kernville and on the east side of the Kern River. The pic was taken eastbound on Hwy 190 just as you get to "Eagle's Nest" campground (old KOA). No charge for the mashed bugs on the windshield.

 "Lake Express Market" that has been a local phenomenon for ages. It had gone out of business a year or so ago. The guy who leased it was a gent from India by the name of "Alex". He and his wife were both pleasant folks (I should suppose, that is, if you weren't working for him). He was one of my computer clients. 

"Lake Express Market" after the devastating fire a few days ago. The place is a total loss. Nothing was salvageable. You can click on the images and they will enlarge. 

  "Wooly Pulley" with the new CB vertical antenna. The long pole is the push-up while the antenna itself is along side but almost invisible. The four ground plane radials are drooped over everything and, they too, seem to be hard to see. 

Garden box #3 where our tomatoes are usually parked. For now, there is a vine "thing" covering the box. It's pretty but, sooner or later, it'll have to go. 

  It'll be a great year for grapes! We have grapes! I paid extra attention (read: added more work) to the vines and hit them with a good shot of fertilizer and lots and lots of water (which we now have). 

This little guy is the newly-appointed cock o' the walk. He's already practicing being a real "service man" so I have high hopes that he'll pick up where Kenny Leghorn left off. I'm open for suggestions but I think I may just call him Henry (for no apparent reason).

Here's Ol' Swampy after having a new water pump installed. It has been earning its salt lately! When it's operating nominally, it is a real performer and keeps us comfortable until the temps top 100 degrees or so. 

The gaping mouth of the "Glory Hole". I order stuff from eBay and, in only a few days, my goodies all magically appear in here! As my friend, Little Rascal Dickie Hutchins, says. "Remarkable!". 






Well….mash my maters and kiss my grits! It’s July!! It’s the middle of the year which just happens to be the time when triple digit temps are the norm!! People are sweating off five pounds just while they shop for fans. Ain’t that just a bucket of week-old hog’s liver?

Hey, kids! What time is it (no! It’s not “Howdy Doody Time”….you old people crack me up)? It’s time for the “Rancho Relaxo” report! 

Things are moving along rapidly around here (he says with his usual penchant for understatement). If things move any more swiftly, we’ll need to contact “Ripley’s Believe it or Not” or “Guinness”. Sheeeese. If it’s not one thing taxing our time, then it’s another thing sucking the life out of our clock.

Other than the front lawn (which was purposely drowned for a week) and the grapes (ditto), the place is still pretty dry. Just as the summer water regimen was being enacted, we lost water pressure. That means that all watering had to be either “drip irrigation” or “flood irrigation”. Neither of these is desirable as drip requires a constant moving of the hoses and the flow can’t always be directed to the desired plants (due to differences in the terrain and/or hose length). The Ol’ Rancher contacted the ditch company who got two men right on it the next day. But (I hate buts), the pressure is still too low to run my sprinklers.

Normally, there is enough head pressure to run at least five impulse sprinklers. Not so now; there’s not enough for even one. That results in an unwelcomed increase in the work load (and you just know that Maynard isn’t going to be there to help, eh?). Swell. Soooooo…..Hi ho! Hi ho! It’s off to work I go….trying to ferret out the issues with the irrigation system. That will be all the while directing hoses to thirsty orange and plum trees. That sort of work needs to start at 5 AM. Yessireee….it surely does….Uh-huh….Yep. …Yah, buddy…. Soitenly…. 10-4…. Roger dodger…. Need to get a man right on it…. Car 54, where are you?

The good news is that we didn’t plant much of a garden so there’s not much time involved there. We’re getting a few tomatoes from a “volunteer” in one box but there’ll be no other harvest other than (hopefully) a few strawberries in a couple of months. That is, of course, the “fuzzers” and the birds don’t whack them first. About four summers ago, we had to cover our strawberries with a mesh net. That helped a lot so we got a nice harvest. But, it was a lot of extra….work. *SIGH*.

Ol’ Swampy lost a pump motor so we just picked up a new one at “Lowes”. An evaporative cooler is great here in the Valley when the temps are below about 100 degrees or so. We try to run it as much as possible since it’s only running a one horse power blower motor. Running the A/C compressor and fan is much more expensive so we try to only run it when Ol’ Swampy is overwhelmed or ailing. So, until about noon or so, it earns its keep big time. After that, we bite the bullet and stay comfortable using the big and wonderfully effective A/C and fans and then modulate the usage thereof.

I really don’t mind calling the place “The No Sweat Ranch”. I’m of the opinion that old people have used and abused their sweat glands by the age of 65 and there’s not much sweat to be had. Therefore, there’s no reason not to live in an ice palace during the summer thereby rescuing us from a certain terrible demise of our hope of cool comfort for the old folks. Do I hear a big “Amen” on that one?

The “Farm” report….the “antenna farm”, that is. That’s what Hams call the place where there’s a guy who has a lot of antennas sprouting up on his property. What with all of the antennas piling up around here, it’s hard not to tag Rancho Relaxo with that title.

The first antenna is my homebuilt wire dipole. Wire antennas are and always will be my friends. Then, there are all of my mobile antennas for ham, CB, FRS, GMRS, MURS, and such. Those are relatively small and range from about 7” (for UHF) up to about 5’-7' or so for Chicken Band radios (an old handle used by some wags for the Class D Citizen’s Band which is no longer licensed or regulated for the most part) and ham bands. 

A few years ago, I ordered a nice roof-mounted  "Disc-cone" scanner antenna to go with my big Kenwood VHF/UHF Receiver. I haven't mounted it yet but it's part of the farm. And, recently, we brought home a nice 65’ crank up tower that included a large Tri-Bander beam antenna (the planting of which is a project in the making) and which also sports a 10’ VHF 2M Yagi beam antenna.

Lo and behold, the other day we stopped at a moving sale (like, uh, that’s news or something). My eagle eye spotted an aging 5/8 wavelength vertical CB antenna parked at the back of their house. Because of the “capacitance hat” on the top, I knew that it was a vintage “Super Mag” antenna. She was still a beaut!

After asking about it, the nice lady conducting the sale advised that they wanted 30 dollars for it. But, not that I’m cheap or anything, after figuring the sweat that it was going to take to pull it down and haul it home, I asked if she would take 25 dollars for it. “Yes”, she replied; we were just going to leave it behind anyway. Bingo. Done deal. Nice ladies are our friends! We paid her and advised that we would return the next day to haul it off.

When we got there, it was midday. Great. The temp was about 102 degrees with the sun fully blazing. Then came the stunning realization that Superman had failed to show up to rescue me by leaping up on the roof and pulling this thing down in nothing flat. That left Ol’ Non-Superman Ran to do the job. Swell.

After about 90 minutes of searing heat, being soaked in sweat, temptations to curse the sun for being so bloody hot and myself for being stupid enough to do this in the afternoon, a couple of small blisters, and being at least one small drop of blood shy of a full supply (pay attention, Ran), the vertical was down and partially disassembled.

You should have seen the stash of metal we hauled home in the trailer! What a hoot! Some of the tubing and such came apart with only minimal effort but most did not. That which didn’t had to be carefully placed in the trailer then secured (with all kinds of ropes) for the trip home. We even got to take the 20’ push-up pole with us too! Ziggity!

The base mounting bracket for the antenna is badly rusted but not so much that it can’t be reconditioned. It just needs a wire wheel and some elbow grease applied. The vertical tubing is straight and sound but will need some polishing since that will make it more efficient (radio waves travel on the surface of the antenna [i.e. “surface effect”] so, if the thing is clean, it will fling the RF signal very nicely). The ground radials are in need of alignment but that’s fairly simple. You just carefully bend them back in shape. They’re steel and not aluminum so you can bend them without being concerned about breaking them as you do with aluminum. The old coax cable will be tossed. There’s never a good reason to use old coax.

When we got home, we parked the van and trailer, took a shower, and simply crashed. Talk about beat! I could hardly move and looked like a boiled lobster! I told Connie, if I ever got another loony idea like that, just knock me out and wake me up in October when the weather is cooler. If the “good deal” is still there, fine. If not, stiff cheese. She slathered my face with our supply of aloe vera so I wouldn't die of sunburn. 

Chickenin’ Report: the neighbors (bless their hearts) decided to give their thirsty back yard a big drink of water the other day…. and then the day after…. and again the day after. That decision was made just in time to flood our coop with about 4” of agua mushy. It was “mess city” and not looking good at all. Good thing I had my genuine wader boots available or it could have been much uglier.

It’s not a great idea to flood a chicken coop because it softens things on the ground and that, in turn, attracts flies….lots and lots of flies….Waaaaay too many flies. Flies are not our friends. And, prior to it drying out, it adds unnecessary stink to the equation. Stink is not our friend. With standing water that is contaminated to the max and chickens too stupid to drink from their clean water supply, the entire scenario conjures up all kinds of dreadful thoughts regarding sanitation and potential disease for the birds.

It could have been far worse had the front run had its new litter installed. All of the new litter would have had to have been mucked out and replaced. That is a chore that doesn’t need to be added to the list around here. Thankfully, the lazy litter installation crew (of one) hadn’t gotten around to it so the only thing that got wet was the ground and a few chicken feet. That’s because we only had four sets of feathers in there in the first place.

Two of the birds were “crackers” who were quarantined until further notice. They eat the fruit of other bird’s labors and that isn’t allowed in my coop. If they don’t straighten up and fly right, they’ll get gone or get deep fried (an option that we have yet to use but they ought not to push their luck). They are still laying or they would have already been on the menu. 

The other two are young birds that were given to us and that needed to be kept from the others for awhile until they are big enough to survive the pecking order upon their introduction to the others. We will introduce them in due season and at night time. But, they still need to be larger birds or the others will certainly mercilessly hound them until they are shell shocked, missing a bunch of feathers, or dead. The three little birdies that Chicken Granny, Connie, was tending are in there too but in the large separate cage above the muck.

Feeding time is always a hoot in the coop. Most of the time, when we serve up the chickens’ vittles, they “get with the program” of pecking to pieces all the goodies that are brought in. They get down on it faster than a chicken can clean a bowl of spaghetti….which is exactly what part of their dinner was tonight. You can’t even believe how fast and how many hens invited themselves to the pile of noodles! I thought that some of them had been shot from a cannon lest they be late for the feast! One Rhode Island Red grabbed a long chunk and headed for the hills with it while three others gave chase while trying to mug her for her dinner! The only thing left in the plastic container in which the noodles had been served was dents on the bottom.

Good news!! After hearing of my near tragedy in the coop (previous issue of RR), dear friend, neighbor, and client, Dorothy Wagy (herself an excellent and witty writer), being concerned for my wellbeing (we’re all good neighbors here in Springville), has submitted a bill to Congress that there should be no more evil and treacherous “Slickem” allowed in the country. I shant have to deal with that slippery dangerous substance ever again. Isn’t that super?!  You just know that I’m looking for any immunity from such actions that hinder my body parts from being in close proximity to one another! Everyone needs such thoughtful neighbors! Given the current state of affairs and politics, it shouldn’t take more than a few decades for the bill to pass. But, there is hope for our posterity so they may avoid such an inglorious pitfall.

There you have it: another episode of what’s happening at Rancho Relaxo, home of Rancho Ran, the world's foremost authority (the previous one died), Connie the Canner (world's greatest side-cook), where things can get…interesting, and where… you just never know.