I haven't posted on here for quite some time. I know this is not a reason to awaken Walter Cronkite from his forever resting place, my contributions to this blog could be generously described as sparse. 

    That is not how I intended it to be as I created and recreated and re-recreated it over the years. Each blog iteration enjoying a burst of activity and then a slide to obscurity in my daily mental cycle.

    I must say that this time has been the strangest as there are tails that I really truly believe I had written and posted that are conspicuous by their absence in the list of stories.

    We've been living here at the Windsock Ranch for very nearly a year. We intend to celebrate the anniversary on January 2nd 2022 as the day we got the keys and dropped our first load of belongings in the house. That's four days from now. 

    There are lots of stories that happened in the past year.  Underground water pipes bursting, our 22 acres of desert greening in the first rain after a 3 year drought, my eldest son came to live with us on the ranch permanently, new flooring in several rooms of the house, electrical repairs, door repairs, and roofing adventures not unexpected in a 30 plus year old adobe house in the Sonoran desert.

    Many of these were documented and supposed to end up in videos on our ranch YouTube channel. That too did not happen.   

    The biggest story has yet to be documented in words or videos just came to a conclusion last week. Its a story that will get its own entry here. The next entry. It through our entire household into disarray.

    But today is a marker of its own. Today is the one year anniversary of the start of our move into the house and the naming of the "Windsock Ranch Arizona."

    And we're awfully glad we're here.

 

 

 

"One good rain makes up for 1000 sprinklings"

Dry Dry Dry

Our pecan orchard has had a hard life. Originally planted as a project for a youth farming group by the previous owner when she was very young, I'm told that there was some sixty trees at one time. 

Sadly, the project ended and over the years the trees were neglected and about 30 have been removed.  The family did not care about the pecans that were produced and allowed the neighbors to come in and pick their fill.

I talked with the former renter and he did not irrigate the trees at all during the driest year on record last year. 

As I said about 30 trees still remain. With a lot of work, my son and I have repairs the old PVC pipe buries about 24 inches under the dry desert soil and most of the trees leafed up to show that they were still alive. Even the grass was very sparse.

But no amount of irrigation was going to bring them all back. Welcome June and July. By my measurement (using a Walmart rain gauge) we received about 5 1/4 inches of rain. Nearly 2 inches of that was during a single storm.

As the photo below illustrates, the trees and the grass are now thriving. I'm planning to discourage any fruit (nuts) this season and perhaps the next. The trees need to get hearty before we can expect a harvest. Even a small one.

 

 

 

Orchard in the rain

 

But everything is growing. So much so we had no choice but to go out and buy a riding lawn mower. Trimming weeds and grass which had previously taken me just an hour or two with a weed wacker before, now takes 2-3 hours with a 46 inch riding mower.  But now we are cutting about 4 acres in the orchard and around the house keeping the desert at bay.  A full 50 feet away from any structures.

 We know that this rain will eventually come to an end, and all that green will turn brown.  We are in the desert after all, and in the late summer and fall deserts tend to dry and burn. Keeping all that green in check will keep the house, workshops, and orchard safe.

As for the rest of the 22 acres, that is a different story.

Be Well.

Pecans by the bushel, some day...

 

 

  When we bought our property, now referred to as Windsock Ranch Arizona ( I actually had to register the name) it came with a little orchard.  28 trees are standing, but they have not all produced leaves as yet.

Pecan trees.

I was never much for Pecans. Not on cakes or in candy, and in very rare situations pie. Pecan pie.  A southern dish as sweet as any candy I have ever tasted. 

How do you care for 28 pecan trees? I don't know.  

How much water? Not a clue. 

How much and what kind of fertilizer? At a complete loss. 

How do you keep bugs off organically, birds away, keep the gophers out? I don't know.. shotguns?

As a farmer with an orchard, I'm a good woodworker.

I can tell you that they don't even bud leaves without water much less nuts.  So the orchard needs irrigation of some kind. The orchard came with no instructions. None for the care of the trees, and none for the plumbing.  

 Little things like: Where are the pipes? How do they work? How old are they? 

These things are important to the operation of an orchard, I would guess. I don't see myself watering an orchard, even one with only 28 trees, with a garden hose.

Up until 3 weeks ago, the orchard lay bare. not a leaf nor even a bud to be found. We've had no appreciable rain in the four months that we have lived here.  Snow? Yup, about a 1/8th of an inch. Hail? Lots of that too, but you would be surprised at how little water there is in a coating of hail. Rain? Officially about .04 of an inch.

Now there is one other pecan tree that is the last of an orchard that was on the other side of the house. Its current neighbors are some version of mulberry trees. The mulberry trees, I was used too as I had four of a slightly different variety in Phoenix, needed water. So I bought a couple hundred feet of drip hose and gave them a soaking. The pecan tree, as well as two other mystery trees nearby got watered by virtue of their close proximity to the mulberry trees.

A week after the first water application, everything had leaves and buds. Including the pecan tree. This worried me for the still naked orchard. So I took what I thought would be an afternoon and seriously investigated the orchard irrigation system. I found the main valve in the orchard and two branch valves. One had froze the past winter and shattered. The other seemed to be working.

So I turned on the main.  The broken valve sprayed all over bu I managed to get it under control temporarily. The secondary valve to the east trees opened and sent water to the two eastern rows of trees.  

As I walked the rows I found that there was a 3/4 inch feed line that led to a "bubbler" head at the base of each tree.  About half worked, some of the rest did not until I messed with them a bit.  Two others were small geyzers shooting water up a for or so. The water ran about an hour while I took stock of the parts I thought I needed. But after that first water run, those first two rows were budding.

All toll, the four rows of trees cost about $300 in 3/4 and 1/2 inch PVC parts and almost week with me digging up burst pipes and replacing "bubbler" heads. The earth in the orchard, like most of the ranch, is very clay heavy. Muddy and sticky to dig once wet. Tools and parts are quickly caked in clay slowing daily progress and as the pressure increased from repaired pipes, new leaks appeared. But except for the last leak, its done. Late in the season, now all four rows have leaves.  Not all the trees, but most.

I know the system I fixed is wrong for trees. I know I'll have to make changes this fall when the trees go dormant again. And I'm pretty sure that there will be few if any pecans this fall due to the late start.

But next year we're going to have to have a plan for a couple of bushels of pecans.

Be well.

 

Not the weather I was expecting

 

 

When we moved from Phoenix to southern Arizona, we knew that there was a difference in elevation of a couple of thousand feet but it was southern Arizona, not Nevada.

The video above is of the THIRD hail storm in one day, each larger stones than the one before and thunder to boot.

No Sir, not what I expected.

Be Well

They don't go "Meep!, Meep!"

Elmer

 After we arrived at Windsock Ranch, that first day with our dreams and our trucks full of stuff packed over the course of two years or more, we dismounted and had a look around.

I soon realized that this was the first time I was really looking at the property. The trip from Phoenix was all of five hours. If you believe the computer driven maps of any brand, you will note, that depending on the time of day they report any where from 3 hours and 15 minutes to 3 hours and 45 minutes trip time.

I am here to tell you that the machine making such a prediction is not driving a bouncy 26 foot truck and is not controlled by a 66 year old set of kidneys and bladder.  

Its five hours. Trust me.

The trips we made down here prior to our purchase were pretty rushed on the ranch. We came with lists of things to ask about, see, test, photograph, and measure. But more than 2-1/2 hours on the ground and it quickly became a test of mine and my wife's driving fortitude with a 15+ hour round trip day.

So this was my first time with less pressure. The sun was going down soon and we would spend our first night in a relatively empty house, unpack the truck in the morning, and head back for another load tomorrow.

I was walking about the main house when I spotted this fellow. This is Elmer. He is , based on distant observation, a grown roadrunner. A Greater Road Runner, specifically. I assumed a male as I believe no self respecting female would choose such a ridiculous perch. He is actually perched five feet off the ground with his butt pressed up to the glass window, tail pointing to the sky.

My son, my wife and I found this a curious, but fascinating posture and let him be for the night. He seemed to take no notice of us what so ever.

The previous owner, nor the tenant had any knowledge of the bird and he was gone by daylight.

We continued our trips north and south several more times and each time, just before sundown our little roadrunner would be on the window ledge. Always the same window and never seen coming or going. He never so much as turned his head to watch us scurrying about with armloads of boxes and bags in the dwindling sunlight.

And so it went on. Weeks into months, sundown until sunup, our little good luck omen (as my son called him) stood his nightly vigil at our window. 

Even though no one observed his arrival nor departure, I began to admire his choice of windows. That particular window is exposed to sunlight from dawn to dusk. It is completely surrounded by burnt adobe brick, warmed all day by his arrival, and his corner is most often on the lee side of the wind. The glass on the exterior is perforated with a hole the size of a BB and so the double pane insulation has escaped allowing the heat from the house to warm the outer glass. I don't know how he discovered this particular spot, but as window seats go; this was a gem.

I came to calling him Elmer, much to my wife's amusement, for no particular reason. I would pass him with armloads of trash headed for the dumpster nearly every sundown. And I became accustomed to addressing him, "Hello Elmer" As I passed. He remained as stoic as ever, never acknowledging my greeting nor my passing.  He never even blinked when one night I pulled out my phone and snapped this picture of him crouching against the wind.

One of the chores remaining for the previous owner was to replace the septic drainage field. The work was to be completed before we moved in, but was delayed due to weather. I didn't mind much because that put me here to observe the project.

For Elmer on the other hand, it was the last straw.  One evening it would have been time for him to arrive and the driveway was filled with pump trucks, crews milling around, and a backhoe still digging noisily in the yard until dark. This was obviously too much. After months of putting up with our comings and goings at all hours of the day and night, he did not occupy his spot at the window that night.

Nor has he returned. If I would have guessed my time with him was limited, I would have put more effort into acquiring a professional like portrait of our first boarder.

The ranch has many such daily and nightly guests. We're getting to know them all. The two pair of jack rabbits, two pair of white winged doves, several pairs of cactus wrens, a complete city of gophers, loggerhead strikes, an owl or two that hoot all night long, and a hive of honey bees under one of the storage sheds- which have been very passive, but have to go. 

All of these and more greet me in the morning and evening coming oddly close at times for wild critters.

But I miss Elmer and his aloof but watchful eye outside my window as I slept at night.

Goodnight Elmer

Be Well.

My World is Changing

 

 

This last year, 2020, has been a rampage of changes for everyone on the planet. But mine has also changed in a different way.

 It all started two years ago September, or three years ago this coming September, if you prefer. I was standing in the Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport awaiting the arrival of my high school sweetheart. My palms were sweaty, I had infringed on a stranger to use my phone to video the meeting with my phone, and I stood at the top of the landing with a cup of her favorite coffee, and a tiny ring.

Then, forty-eight years after we met, the following March we made it official

Now it's a year and a half later (give or take) and we're making another big move.

We've sold our house in Phoenix and bought a 22 acre ranch in Southern Arizona.

 

 

Together, my wife Sue, myself, my eldest son, resident deer, road runners, and javelina - soon to be joined by an unknown commodity of dogs, cats, chickens, milking goats, honey bees and perhaps a donkey named "Kevin", will share this little property in southern Arizona to be known, from this day forward, as 

'Windsock Ranch." 

This will also change this Blog to "Tales from Windsock Ranch."

Afraid of Socialism? You already live with it!

 I have marveled at the recent wave of fear of the radical left "introducing" the threat of socialistic programs into the United States. This has come to a head with talk of the "one payer health initiative" or "Medicare For All" or socialized healthcare.

Whatever you choose to call it, it is the proposal of a government run healthcare system. Leaving aside the fact that Medicare and Medicaid have been around for years and you're paying into them with every paycheck.

I don't understand the new implicit fear surrounding the word socialism.  The United State has utilized socialistic programs for years, perhaps since before the actual beginning of the United States.

Anti-socialistic commenters seem to feel that socialism is automatically tied to communism or Marxism, which I suppose it could be if we chose to do that, but like I said socialism has been at work in the United States happily co-existing with democracy and capitalism since the beginning.

Perhaps the place to start is the actual definition of socialism;

The Google definition reads:

"so·cial·ism

/ˈsōSHəˌlizəm/

noun

1. a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole."

1.   In a second definition it goes on to describe the Marxist version of socialism. Which everyone appears to be afraid of. But every definition of a word does not apply to every use of that word.

   
   

   Take the word "BOMB" for example.  It is defined as a container filled with explosives constructed to do damage. (The bomb detonated and destroyed the building). But it also means a bad movie or show. (That film bombed at the box office). But it also means an outstanding person or thing. (She is really the bomb).
   

    

   You could not mix or confuse those definitions without completely changing the subject or perhaps causing harm or injury. If she was the BOMB did she see a bad movie and blowup the theater?
   

    

   The idea that social medicine would lead to the end of choice or the end of democracy itself is just as ridiculous. The United States is one of the few modern countries that has not embraced the idea of socialized medicine.  Right now the UK leader Boris Johnson is trying to introduce the United States version of medical treatment such as private heath insurance to replace the National Health Service (NHS) because of issues involving BREXIT, and the British people are up in arms. 

   
   

   If you think that socialism is a concept that should be used "never in America", I have a shock for you:

   
   

   The Public School system; Some 130,930 elementary and secondary schools in the United States, paid for by taxes by all to be affordable and usable by all at little or no cost (the latter because some Charter schools do charge for some services).
   

    

    Public roadways and bridges; Paid for by taxes by all all to serve the uses by all. The alternate would be paid for use otherwise known as privately owned "TOLL" roads.  Imagine if the ownership of roads changed every mile or so. Come to the end of your street and pitch a quarter into the basket. Then do it again every mile or so along your morning commute.

   
   

   Police and fire departments; Again paid for by taxes and not subscriptions.  There was a time that if you did not subscribe to a particular fire service, they would arrive and watch your house burn to the ground and sometimes even interfere with your subscription fire service because they were the competition.  (And yes that actually happened).

   
   

   All public systems and buildings; City Halls, Court Houses, Museums, parks, sports stadiums, theaters, roads, bridges, schools, street lights, sewers, clean water, all the things that you enjoy that receive local, state and federal tax dollars collected from everyone and spent for everyone. 
   

   
   

   That's Socialism. The group providing for the welfare of the group. Sharing the cost, sharing the benefits.
   

   
   

   Lawmakers have started to reverse some of these social costs calling them tax saving measures.  Federal parks and forest areas which used to be free for everyone to enjoy, now carry fees and even memberships to pay the shortfall due to reduced tax support. And those fees are rising. 

    

   And you may not remember, but public and "community" colleges used to be free except for your personal supplies. Now they are only the beginning of your student debt.

   
   Imagine all of these public works projects and systems now pay for use at full cost and your problems if you don't have the cash.

    

   That's capitalism. You use it, I don't, you pay for it. Every private business works that way. The price you pay includes the entire overhead, salaries, and profits of that company.
   

   
   

   I'm not a crazy communistic socialist. There are lots of things that need to be run on capitalism rather than by the state and we pay for the use.

   
   

   But I don't think healthcare is one.  Any system that can charge you over a thousand dollars a month for health insurance that doesn't kick in until you've paid out $4 -5000.00 in deductibles can hardly be called efficient or even functionally sustainable.

   
   

   And that brings me to cost. The popular argument seems to be that everyone's taxes will go up to pay for Medicare for all. That is right. They will. But you will no longer be paying the health insurance company premiums. That's the trade off. 

   
   

   I paid into Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid for the entire 54 years of my working life. I retired from my city job at age 60 to move back to a private sector job and my health insurance ran me $900.00 per month. That's just covering me.

   
   

   When I turned 65 I was eligible for Medicare and my rates are now less than $300.00 a month, and for much better coverage. But that still only covers me. I paid in, but the money was used for someone else. Now someone else is paying in for me. Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security all work like this already.
   

   
   

   There are plenty of examples in the world where Socialized Medicine is working, affordably, medically sound, clean, and free for all.  In Canada, you are covered in an emergency even if you are just visiting from another country and never paid a dime into the system.

   
   

   There are a lot of arguments about how the system would or should work, and most of them are outside the scope of my tirade here, but don't let the politicians use the word Socialism to scare you out of the conversation. Remember some of their biggest donors are heath companies that like the rates you are paying now.
   

   
   

   Socialism is just a word, and you are surrounded by it and enjoying the benefits of it already. 

   
   

   And the next time you chip in for that pizza with your pals? Your being a socialist!