On The Way To Town Today...

This is what we saw in our normally dry, desert canyon.
(don't miss the two videos!)

Yard Work

The front yard of our house is like an oasis in this desert of ours. When we moved in, we nurtured green grass, planted a little tree, and surrounded the yard with our boxed garden. As H-Bomb began to crawl around and explore on his own, we decided to erect a fence. Just to give an idea of enclosure, and it worked well for a long time. He knew his boundaries, and stayed within them for the most part. At least he never crawled out into the road!


Huge shade trees encircle our yard, providing relief from the summer sun. We've had many fabulous parties in our little space.


Now that H-Bomb and Sawed Off are older and uncontainable, and our house is bigger, our little oasis seems smaller, and out of proportion to the house. And the weeds on the outside of the fence seem more uncontrollable than the boys. Frankly I'm tired of pulling them.


Number One suggested we move the fence out, farther into the driveway, which widens in front of our house anyway. We decided to stake our claim and do it. We took the rails off the fence, and Number One dug post holes with the tractor. He knew, it being a driveway, it would be too difficult to dig by hand. We decided where to put the poles, and Number One dug the holes.


The boys are always tempted by holes and dirt. They practically filled one hole in before we made them stop. Luckily it wasn't too hard to dig back out with a shovel.


In the midst of our project, something on the tractor tire started leaking, and the tire went flat. We'll be able to finish with the backhoe, but we didn't get it done last night.


I can't wait to show you our new and improved yard. Now I just hope there'll be enough water in the reservoir to grow grass!

We have lots of other big yard projects in the works, planting our garden, more perennial flowers, bulbs, adding some rocks, etc. Soon I'll be able to show you!

Winter Projects

The thing I like about winter around the ranch, is that Number One doesn't have to work so hard. Once all the cattle are in their various winter ranges where they belong, and once they finally decide they ought to stay in their various winter ranges, the work slows down and we're free to work on other projects. It also gives us more family time, and the boys and I love having their dad around more!

For me, I still have to take H-Bomb to school, but I do get some relief since Number One is able to keep Sawed Off home with him sometimes, or takes both boys to school and I get to stay home sometimes. So I get to catch up on projects too!

I thought it would be fun to show you what we're all working on. I always have a list of projects that I'm "working" on, but this winter I have actually made some progress!

Back in June, our dear friends in Wyoming had their first baby, a sweet little girl. I decided to make a quilt for her, among other things. Once I sat down to it, I got the quilt top finished:


I will show you a picture when the entire quilt is completed, which should be this week. If I buckle down. When it's done, it will be the same style as this quilt I made last spring, but more girly, of course! It's hard to see in the picture, but the floral squares have gorgeous sage green leaves, so the back and the yarn will be a matching sage green. It is going to be very sweet. I have to check and see if I really bought the batting and yarn already, since last time I was at the store they were OUT of crib batting. I hope I already have some, it would make things much more convenient.

I have also been working on a pet project, just for me. The thrift store in town receives TONS of blue jeans, and many of those are not fit for wearing, in the store owner's opinion. So she collects the castoffs in garbage bags, then gives them away for FREE. I have gotten several bags from her, and have also been saving all Number One's raggedy old jeans, with the plan to someday make a denim rag rug.

But in the meantime, I sorted the thrift store bags out in various shades of denim. (I also found several pairs for me and the boys to wear...on a ranch, it takes a lot of damage before jeans are considered "not fit for wearing.")

For this project, I chose the lightest jeans, and cut them into squares. I used pockets, seams, belt loops, etc. I found a sweet little floral fabric by Moda, and alternated it with the jean squares. I decided that even if the belt loops overlapped onto the floral, I would just leave them on and tack them down, to make it unique (and kind of quirky). After several sewing machine needles, I finally have the quilt top for this completed. (the picture below shows a few more rows that aren't attached, but trust me, it's all together now!)


Below is a detail of one of the functioning pockets, and an overlapping belt loop!


There are many pockets, from the backs and fronts of jeans, skirts, shorts, etc. The seams and detailing (rivets, stitching, etc) add so much interest. I am in love! I am going to back it with a cozy red flannel, and I cannot wait to snuggle up in this cute quilt! I think it will even be large enough for our double bed in town, if I choose to use it there.

I can't wait to work on more of these jean quilts, with different fabrics, but I think I will stay with the quirky pockets and belt loops style! I think this style would even be cute for a crib blanket, don't you?

I am also on an organizing mission this New Year. There are rumors of work on our addition, in which case we'll have to Move and Downsize to fit into the bunkhouse for an unknown length of time.

I got so tired of hunting down cords and chargers for this phone or that camera, sometimes having no idea where they were and no idea where else to look. I finally got this shoe organizer, and hung it on the back of the laundry room door. I can't remember where I saw this idea, probably Real Simple Magazine or somewhere, but it is a good one that stuck with me!


I sorted everything out, and labeled each pocket that has something in it. I do need to come up with a nicer and more permanent, more attractive, yet still flexible labeling system, but for now the paper-clipped sticky notes are doing just fine. And there are plenty more pockets to be filled! I'm very happy with this strategy. I just wish other things were so easily organized!


Do you have any ingenious organizing systems that are inexpensive, that have worked for you? Please share!

Also, I decided I will elaborate on the cool projects Number One is working on, in between fixing our water situation every day, and also Ranch Hand's projects in another upcoming post.

Stay Tuned!

Ranch Chores

The alternate title for this post: We Do Things Differently Around Here.

As we continue on our winter's adventure on the ranch, I thought I would share a few things that make our daily life somewhat...different.

Nearly every morning, we wake up to no water in our house. Not a drop. We make a pot of coffee using water from a gallon jug we stash every night. Then Number One goes out to the well and turns on the heater to thaw the frozen water pipes and/or jostle the water pressure switch. Anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour after that, we can resume our usual watery activities like flushing the toilet and doing dishes.

Every day, sometimes more than once, I am tasked with feeding the lizard. The lizard has a fancy wooden cage/home that RanchHand and Number One made, complete with a big rock and sunlamp, a large branch for climbing, and his own water dish. This, however, is a wild lizard, and a very particular one. He only eats live food, and his food of choice is grasshoppers. There is a shortage of live grasshoppers in these snowy and frozen parts, and the occasional live cricket we find isn't enough to sustain the lizard. We have a remote-controlled feeding dish that would theoretically make the freeze-dried insects "jump" but it doesn't fit in the lizard's home. So I had to come up with a way to feed the poor creature.

Every day, I loop a strand of nylon thread around the head of a freeze-dried cricket. (the dried grasshoppers needed to be refrigerated--who knew?--and I had to throw them away). I dangle the cricket into the cage, and make it jump, crawl and hop around to attract the lizard's attention. Sometimes I just dangle it in the cage and he comes and grabs it. (Today he ate three in a row this way). Sometimes he's just not interested, and I suspend it so it hangs through the wire screen of the cage, and later I come back to find he's eaten it while I wasn't looking. Thank goodness. Sometimes I worry about that poor guy's eating habits.

Our oven no longer just "turns on." We can't just turn the knob, set the temperature, and start baking. There is something wrong with it (thank god it happened after our Thanksgiving feast!). Now, every time I want to bake something, I turn on the knob, and nothing happens. Number One has to come in with some sort of flame and light the oven burner thingie. I don't know exactly, but sometimes there is banging and cursing involved that seems to help with the process. And then the oven heats up and I can commence with my muffins or what-have-you.

We have been looking at these ovens...but are a bit frightened that prices aren't listed on the website! Perhaps someday I'll have you all help me choose a color...we'll start saving our pennies.

Taking care of Woody and Jessie used to be on our list of daily chores. Sadly, they are no longer on our list. It pains me to throw away banana peels (their favorite), crackers and miscellaneous vegetable scraps. It feels wasteful. As does the brand-new stake they received for Christmas.

It feels like there are more weird daily chores around here. When they come to mind, I'll add them. Until then, I've got to go find Number One so I can make some more muffins.

Intermittent Water

It seems like ever since we switched from our contaminated well to CG's secondary well for our water supply, we've had nothing but problems. Along with an intermittent water supply. CG's secondary well was never used before in the winter, so it's not well-equipped to handle the freezing temperatures we've been having. Luckily it hasn't been something we've had to wait days to get fixed; usually the problems are resolved in a matter of hours.

As a result, more often than not, we wake up to not having water in the morning. The pressure switch sometimes doesn't function as it should, which results in no water. The cellar door got opened somehow, and the water pipes in there froze. Luckily they didn't break, and after Number One put a small heater in there for a few hours, we had water again. The pipes have now been freezing up near the well, where they are housed in some kind of hole along with the pressure switch, accessible from above and topped with a wood-framed piece of tin, but not insulated. Number One put a heater in there, and that helps on that end, but he can't leave it running without fear of catching wood parts on fire.

Oh, and if CG unplugs a cord in her laundry room attached to her sprinkler system? Guess what. It is attached to "our" well somehow, and we have no water. Isn't this fun?

We've taken to filling a gallon jug at night, before we go to bed, so we can have coffee in the morning before Number One has to face the freezing cold and figure out which part of the pipeline needs fixing. Last night, we forgot to fill the gallon jug. This morning when we awoke to no water, it also meant no coffee. This is a tragedy.

But as I type, I can hear the toilet refilling, which is the signal that Number One has figured everything out and got water flowing again. For the time being. We need to make a trip to the building supply store and get some proper insulation to stuff down in the pressure switch hole.

Number One reports that one of the problems is that the hole in the ground was enlarged this fall, to roughly five feet square, instead of a 2 1/2 feet hole (which possibly wouldn't need to be insulated because the surrounding ground would keep it warmer). As it is now, the ground isn't close enough to provide any insulation, plus it's a huge hole to try to fill with anything, and a huge heavy wood and tin cover. Number One needs to do some work on this set-up.

And now I need to make some coffee...

We Have The Power!

Okay, I just couldn't resist. Sorry. If you're anywhere near my age, you remember exactly how He-Man used to say this, back in the 80's.

Anyway, our favorite electrician (who happens to share the name of an 80's pop singer! How fun! Exact same spelling, even!) came down to the ranch on Saturday. And found the problem with the electric line in about 10 minutes. Can you imagine. We've been without power in half of our house for Almost Eight (8) WEEKS. That is almost two months, people, of living with an extension cord trailing down the hall to a lamp in the bathroom, then moving the lamp-with-extension-cord into H-Bomb's room for story time, and unplugging lamp from same extension cord in order to attach it to the microwave oven. (and hoping no one has to go to the bathroom in the two minutes it takes to nuke a burrito or what-have-you). No lights whatsoever in the bathroom, living room or playroom. Almost TWO MONTHS.

>>>Here is an aside. Why did we only have the one extension cord? Well, I did try to buy one for the microwave, but I got it home and it wasn't a three-prong cord, so it wouldn't work. We didn't want to overload the circuits we still had with a bunch of extension cords. We needed the long cord to reach from the kitchen to the bathroom, so we just made do--we just dragged it back over to the microwave when we needed it, fairly infrequently. When you live down here for an extended period of time, you just learn to make do with things for a while, until they can get fixed. It seems like it is always something. Some people don't understand this.<<<

So the electrician, whom I suggested we call, oh about two months ago, located the problem in ten minutes: evidently one of the electrical wires running from the generator had gotten nicked, who knows when or how. But likely Wifey's obsessive over-watering this summer (there is still standing water, less than a foot underground, and we live in the freaking desert. Obsessive, I say firmly. Too much!) exacerbated the problem, said the electrician. Likely sped up the corrosion process. The wire completely corroded until it no longer made the connection, which is why we lost half our power. Here is part of the offending wire:


The electrician had the problem completely fixed in less than two hours. It would have saved so much if we had been allowed to call him in the first place. Now there are holes everywhere along the electrical line, dug by CG's brothers, that Number One must fill. Luckily we lost only one lamp when someone tripped over the extension cord, and no one cut their little foot on light bulb fragments.

So anyway. We have power now, everywhere we need it. Just in time for Thanksgiving. Wahoo!

And incidentally, the electrician commented that the contractor (small town!) had given him the plans for our addition, but he didn't realize it was for our addition. So electrician said he would get on the bid for the electrical portion, since the job is for us! Power and Progress too!

Plumbing Problems

The reason I was able to spend the day cleaning the barn loft? Number One just returned from the mountain yesterday, and the boys and I got back from spending the night in town. And for some unknown reason there was no water coming out of the kitchen faucet. And I had left a sink full of dishes when I left Thursday morning. I got some hot water out of the bathtub and washed a few pots and knives to feel better about the sad state of my kitchen.

Today, he spent the morning fixing the faucet, but then the pea trap broke as well. He was going to run in and get a new one, but CG just happened to have one lying around. She was headed to town, and said to send a text message if he needed anything else.

The pea trap she gave him didn't work. We immediately sent a very simple text message:
"Plumbing.
- metal pea trap
- flexible pipe 1-1/2" (about 1 foot long)
- teflon tape
- thread-sealing paste stuff"

And then we waited and waited and waited for her to return. I decided to clean the loft, and Number One took care of the boys. They've been missing him anyway, so they needed a day with Daddy.

CG got back from town and drove right on by. "How much do you want to bet she didn't get the parts?" I asked Number One. "A whole lot of money," he replied. We both knew it: she hadn't gotten the parts. "Didn't get the message." Although we sent it well before she got home, we had no parts. And it was too late for us to drive to town to get any.

So anyway. She went home and dug around, scrounging all the plumbing parts she could find. Including a Master lock. Who knows. Unfortunately, none of them worked. Now we have to wait until Monday before we will be able to use our kitchen sink...

But this means that Number One can time his trip to town to coincide with taking H-Bomb to Kindergarten, so we can all go! It'll be fun to ride our bikes together and drop him off. Maybe he'll even pull the bike trailer uphill all the way to school!

Water, Tentatively

So, our water was switched over again yesterday. That means, the three houses down here are currently receiving water from CG's secondary well, approximately 1/10 mile up the road, near her house.

The cold water seems to be better. After an initial faucet running/clearing out, it didn't smell like glue or fuel or anything, and had just a few grains of sand in it. That's a big improvement from what we've been experiencing.

The hot water still has a smell, a residue of plumbing glue, an eau d' fuel. After talking with Uncle Fred, we think we are going to have to drain the hot water heater with a hose and see if that helps. If it doesn't, we may need a new hot water heater. However, we're not jumping to, ahem, conclusions, until we drain the heater.

I took a shower at CG's again today. I was sooo looking forward to showering at our house this morning. But no. We still made coffee with bottled water. We'll just wait and see.

Things are looking up, however slightly. Unfortunately this doesn't bode well for the environment, as it appears our well water may indeed be contaminated. Again, we'll wait and see. And of course keep you all posted.

Light in a Waterless World

What's that saying? "Water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink?" Something like that.

In an attempt to provide us with potable water, CG hired plumbers to run a line down from her secondary well to our houses. It is all finished, and we switched over the water last night. Imagine our dismay when the water not only smelled like plumbing glue (nasty chemicals) but also had sand in it. Number One and RH decided to try to flush out the system using garden hoses. (And I wonder if the plumber didn't get mad at me when I asked him to not drive so fast down here and drop a glob of glue inside the pipes before they buried it)

This morning, when we awoke, we had no water whatsoever. There is something wrong with something (wiring? I forget) with CG's well, that will have to be fixed. So in the meantime, we are back to mystery-petroleum product-smelling water. I do think it might be getting better.

And we've heard that an environmental consulting firm may show down here in the near future. I just hope they focus on the root of the problem, i.e. start with the well, before jumping to conclusions. I believe I've said this before.

So, with all this in mind, I'm attempting to find some positives. Since we're back on the old well, I can continue to catch up on laundry (it doesn't smell after it comes out of the dryer, so that's good). Whee.

Incidentally, we've been dying to have people over for dinner, but have been avoiding it because we have no water. In case you're wondering. We may just go ahead and invite people down anyway, as there seems to be no end in sight to our nasty water dilemma.

Oh, I can't wait until I can get a glass of water out of the tap, wash the pots and pans without heating "good" water out of jugs to do so, and take a shower any time I like in my own house! I wonder if Culligan would come down here...oh, and it would be just awesome if my computer would stop crashing. Is all that too much to ask?

On a positive note, I took some pictures with my cell phone yesterday, to show you how well my beautiful plants are doing in the town house. My geranium LOVES the sun room, it has been in beautiful bloom all winter long. The succulents I got in Santa Barbara are loving it there too:

ABEG Just Blew Us Off.

Number One and I have been trying to find out the results of our water test by any means necessary. In other words, we have asked anyone we could think of who might have seen them.

RH and Wifey didn't see them. CG said she sent her only copy to ABEG. CG's bookkeeper didn't keep a copy, but thought the water was only tested for e. coli and other bacteria. Well, that's not what we are smelling in the water, obviously. If that's the case, we definitely need more testing. We emailed ABEG and asked that they email us the results. First, ABEG said they hadn't received them.

Today, water results in hand, ABEG emailed us this response:

"I sent it back to CG so that she can show it you and discuss it with you. We are in the process of hiring an environmental consultant firm to handle the matter, so please coordinate any issues, concerns, or actions with CG who will coordinate with me.

I don't know what to say about this. It's great about the environmental consultant firm, as long as they start at the very beginning: The Well Pump. The Plumbing. Instead of jumping to the Environmental Disaster Conclusion.

But people around these parts don't seem to be very good at "coordinating." You know how it goes, A tells B and B tells C and before you know it, it's all twisted around and not at all what A originally said. And we don't like being kept out of the loop. Especially when it's our family, our boys, indeed our future, that could be most impacted.

Don't blow us off, ABEG. It doesn't suit you.

This Is Not The Time...

...to write a blog, perhaps. But I've been meaning to. So here goes.

We've been having issues with our well for a good week now. In a nutshell, the water smelled like fuel. You know, like some random petroleum product. Some people thought it smelled like diesel. I honestly didn't smell it that closely to be able to distinguish, but I knew the water started tasting bad, because I'd been drinking it. Thinking, huh, that's odd, where is that fuel smell coming from? I wish I were joking, but honestly, Number One does stuff with fuel everyday, so I just kind of thought the smell was coming from his laundry. Or something. But then I made him smell the water, and taste it, and it was gross. We decided.

So for a few days, there were ponderings about diesel contamination that didn't make sense:

No recent diesel spills; this has never happened before; CG's well water did not seem to smell (although it did not get tested); no recent rains (to raise the water table to reach the historical diesel spills, see how much we've been thinking about this); no big thaw yet this spring (see above). We were kind of freaking out, anticipating some sort of ABEG/State raid on our property to determine the Source of Contamination.

We sent off a water sample, which came back "clear" and added to our puzzlement. It just wasn't making sense. At our house, we've been using bottled water for everything, i.e. the kettle of water that we heat for making oatmeal then gets used to wet washcloths for washing faces. The only thing we do with our well water is flush the toilet.

Finally, I googled "water smells like fuel." And I found some things that indicated that perhaps it was a problem with our well pump. Pumps have some kind of oil in them (mineral or something that wouldn't show up as a contaminant) and if the pump started to leak oil, it would affect the water. And definitely, when we all stopped using water for 24 hours, the smell lessened. But when we ran a bunch of water to "leach" the system or whatever? Of course it got worse. So CG has gone off to buy a new well pump, hopefully to return today. We couldn't locate an internet source that would overnight a pump. WTF? Don't they understand there is kind of some urgency to this situation? Anyway, we could possibly have clean water by tomorrow! Or perhaps Friday? At any rate, we are hopeful.

However, if it's not one thing...

It Is Another. The plumbers came down to put in a new septic tank for one of the houses. Currently, their septic line (which has a nice break in the pipe, by the way) runs directly underneath our house. Trust me, it's bad enough when your own septic line has issues, but when you discover that it's someone else's septic line that is leaking someone else's sewage into your crawlspace? That is just a whole different kind of nasty. (that happened a few years ago. The current break is just a small hole, and thankfully it is outside of our house).

So anyway, the plumbers came down. I guess there was no other way around it, they tore out a cute little stand of young trees to put in their line. I'm upset about it.


And then, of course, the backhoe hit several power lines. Which now need to be fixed. The other day, in addition to being without potable water, we were also without power when Number One had to run and turn the generator off until they could figure out where the line came from, where it went, etc. The broken line has been taped up until we can get splicers and what-have-you to fix it properly. Whee.

And Now, Another! Our darn computer has been shutting down for no apparent reason, out of the blue. If that weren't annoying enough, last night it did it so much that we lost all of our bookmarks, web history, cache, and other things I don't even know to tell you. I'm trying to figure out how to fix it, but haven't had any luck yet. In the meantime, I have to a) try to remember web addresses for everything or b) Google everything I can't remember. Talk about a hassle! I couldn't access the "Live Chat" last night, and this morning I find out they aren't even available until 1:PM PST!!!

I can handle having no water and having to shower at CG's house and having to heat water in a pan on the stove to do dishes. I can handle eating off paper plates and bowls and using plastic cups and utensils (so I can use a smaller pan for dishwater). I can even handle being without electricity for a few hours every now and then. But having computer troubles that aren't an easy fix? That is when I have a problem.


Post Script: I have gotten most of the browser issues fixed. Still have to address the crashing problem itself. But I'm hopeful.