Ridgetop - our place and how we muddle along

[Ridgetop]

Well, we get very hot here, just not humid. But we have almost no rain, and when we do get rain it comes like tropical storms - all at a time - from Mexico. Also, because of no water, we can't irrigate or water landscaping. New plan by governor is for 55 gallon per person allocation daily. This is for household water which includes drinking, cooking, washing, cleaning, laundry, etc. Then the plan is to reduce the amount little by little. This is to "encourage" water savings by residential customers. Since we don't have separate meters for household and outside irrigation how are they going to decide how much water we can use? Oh, I know! The water companies will have to install additional meters for which we will probably be charged a fee. We already do not water anything on our property except the livestock. I haven't planted a garden in the past year and won't be able to with the water rationing.

One good reason to move is WATER. Wherever we go we need a good pure unlimited water source. Seasonal rains also help with pasture and gardens.

Practicing my Texas drawl right now. Check out Rosetta Stone . . . . ?

 

[RollingAcres]

Practicing my Texas drawl right now. Check out Rosetta Stone . . . . ?

Since you're practicing. Please also get yourself familiarize with @Baymule 's "advice" on moving to Texas
https://www.backyardherds.com/threads/herd-humor.34271/page-24#post-566212

 

[Wehner Homestead]

Make sure you learn how to say fahr ant!!

 

[Baymule]

You'll get the hang of it in no time. Texas are friendly people!

 

[RollingAcres]

that is pronounced Fahr Aints Speak slowly and drag out the FAHHHHR

Make sure you learn how to say fahr ant!!

Funny thing is, when I saw Bay's post about how to pronounced it correctly, I actually said it out loud... Fahr Aints

 

[Baymule]

I'm hit with a double whammy. I have both the Southern accent and the slow Texas drawl. If I cross the state lines, I get nailed as a Texan real fast. Ain't no hiding it! I write with good grammar, but I speak with slang and dropping the "g" on words with ing ending. Writing makes me sound intelligent--speakin' makes me sound ignert.

 

[Wehner Homestead]

I can only imagine! When I get tired, I talk more Southern and it cracks DH up!

 

[RollingAcres]

@Wehner Homestead but Indiana isn't that Southern. Were you originally from a Southern state?

 

[Wehner Homestead]

Nope! Born a little north of here but Hoosier born and raised. (Side note: not a Hoosier fan! Lol! Boiler Up!!!!)

 

[Ridgetop]

Just realized I have been posting our activities elsewhere. Got caught up in other posts.

So to catch up, DH is packing for Texas as I write this. He would have finished his packing, but he can't find the suitcases. He is furious with some of the California propositions on our ballot. Particularly #10 which establishes 539 new "Rental Boards" which will have large staffs of state employees earning large state salaries. These "Rental Boards", which are touted to make housing affordable, come out and inspect your house if you decide to rent it, then tell you how much you can rent your home for. No matter what the going rate is, or what your home is worth, the rent is set by these RBs and can not go higher than what they determine. In addition, when a tenant moves out, you cannot raise the rent to whatever is current, because the RB will not allow any rent increases. For this, you must pay a fee to the RB (state), they will send tenants to you. When you want your house back to move back in or sell it, there is another fee to remove your property from the "for rent" status of the RB. This is touted as making homes more affordable for renters, and as making property more affordable for buyers because it will lower the value of your property. On the other hand, there will be no corresponding lowering of property taxes! Rent control in many cities has resulted in rents being held artificially low which has prevented some landlords from doing upgrades or improvements.

Luckily we no longer have rental property in California, having sold it and relocated our assets to Texas !
However, since we are thinking seriously of moving to Texas and renting our property, this would affect us negatively. On the other hand, DD and SIL still are in a rental so they could rent from us without notifying any Rental Board since it would be family living there. They are interested - of course, I did not mention that DS1 and DD@ would also be sharing the house with them.

Anyway, I started cleaning the barn stall that we used extensively 2 years ago during the rainy season. Our rainy season (when it comes) consists of tropical storms from the South Pacific and Mexico. We don't get pleasant rain, it is like someone upended a bucket over us. The ground can't soak it in fast enough and there is a lot of flooding, especially in burned hillside areas. We can't clean out the stalls in this type of rain, since the barn tends to flood so we keep adding straw to the stall, layered with Dri Stall, and lime between kidding/lambing. The layers in this stall had been there 2 years, had dried in stratified layers, and were 14" higher than the rest of the barn floor. Last year DS2 started digging it ut but didn't get very far. The stall floor was still kind of wet, and the manure layers were extreme heavy. We could only fill the barrels halfway. He got about 2' of the 12' stall done. Now he is off working in northern California. I took the mattock and started working at the layers. It actually was pretty easy since I stood on the high layer and dug the blade between the layers and under the bottom layer. Then I had to pick up the dried layers. I think it must be like the old buffalo chips, layers of flattened manure with dried grass in it. Probably could use it for fuel it the smell didn't kill us! LOL I filled 3 huge trash barrels before I went inside and collapsed. I have apparently gotten weaker in my "late middle age". the next day DS1 found me hacking at the layers ad took away my mattock. He dug out more and I filled the rest of the barrels - 7 of them. Now we were out of barrels. We had only done one third of the stall. I suggested to DH and DS1 that we just chuck it all over the edge of the gully but they insisted on loading it in the truck for the garbage pickup. The truck will only hold 8 full barrels. They had to lift the barrels into the bed, make 2 trips done the hill half a mile to the street and unload all the barrels. Then 2 trips tomorrow to bring the empty barrels home. DS1 refused to consider dumping it into the gully saying that it would "cause dust". We live on 6 acres of dirt, the sheep have eaten everything that did not burn, and we are surrounded by another 100+ acres of burned over dry hillsides. Our neighbors have horses. But dumping the equivalent of 20 wheelbarrows of dry manure into the gully would "cause dust". If I had suggested that we dump it into the front loader of the tractor, DH would have been thrilled to drive it 100 feet and dump it off the edge. Go figure.

However, now DH and DS1 are on board with cleaning out the barn so I can order my new Sydell lambing pens in time for lambing season in November. I typed up a list of all the storage areas we needed to clean out. TWELVE OF THEM! 4 are 10' x 20', 2 are lofts in those buildings, and the rest are smaller sheds about 8' x 8'. After 3 hours of discussion (loud arguing) THE MEN decided on a sequence of the work . . . .

First, we would finish cleaning the barn. The rest of the manure stratae would be dug out with the mattock, and the barrels filled again. The other 3 stalls which just have sheep berries and straw will be cleaned. This sequence will take 2 weeks because the trash and manure barrels only go down once a week. After the first stll is dug out, DS1 will take apart and remove the 2 pipe corral stalls. First I have to cut all the wood and wire panels loose from the pipe panels that have been attached to keep the sheep and lambs from escaping through the bars. Once the stalls are removed a more thorough cleaning of the barn floor can be done, ready to set up the lambing pens.

While waiting for the weekly garbage pick up of the manure and barn cleanings, we will move out attention to the old milking shed. This is a 10' x 20' block walled building that is now used for storage. Most of the junk is old building supplies that are unusable, heavy, and need to go to the dump. DH said he will hitch the utility trailer and park it on the driveway so we can drag all the junk up 2 short flights of steps and put it in the trailer for a trip to the dump. So far so good. There are also some large pieces of furniture in the back of the shed. DD2's boyfriend is moving into an apartment soon so he can help remove the furniture up the stairs, and take them to his new place. Some of the stuff is DD2's large bins of "important stuff" which will be moved out to one of the other storage units. The remaining stuff - lots of it - is rabbitry carrying cages, new cages never assembled, cage parts, water system parts, electric fencing chargers, wire, set offs, etc., and miscellaneous horse waterers, tank floats, etc. All of that needs to be sorted into plastic bins for storage. The final step for the old milking shed is to water proof the walls, put in commercial style shelving units, then the shed will be used for current building materials (not many), the rabbitry equipment, hot wire stuff, and other livestock equipment large and small.
I am hoping to get the barn emptied by the time I have to have my surgery, and have a good start on clearing out the milking shed, and sorting the equipment.

Whether we move to Texas or not, this needs to be done. If we move to Texas we will have a start clearing out our junk and packing up the livestock equipment we will bring with us. I will be starting on the milking shed tomorrow since we will not have any available barrels until tomorrow night.

The ewes look like they are pregnant. I have checked my calendar and taking the last date they each marked I will calculate the lambing dates for them. Two of them are the new Dorper yearling ewes and I am excited to see their lambs. The 2 Dorset ewes I kept were bred to the Dorper ram and hopefully will deliver nice meaty lambs. I chose the ream based on his evaluations scores so am hoping for good stuff. I bid on a couple ewes at the on line sale yesterday. I was outbid which was ok. There will be another on line sale early May and the following weekend there is a show and sale in Modesto. DH and I are tentatively planning on going to the Modesto sale just for fun. I really need to learn to read the NSIP evaluation records better. They are confusing. I prefer the evaluation scale used by Wes Patton 1-2-3 low to high, and the order is frame size, shed, and pigment. I also learned my way round the sale catalog better this time so next season I will be able to really choose some good stock. Too bad I already have 2 good rams for my tiny flock since there were some fantastic rams that went for $700 with excellent evaluations scores out of South African import bucks. I won't need another buck for at least a year and there will be more good ones coming up . . . I only have 5 ewes now, since one Dorset ewe lamb died, I lost another Dorset ewe last year and I sold 3 Dorset ewes over the summer. I really like the temperament of these Dorper sheep. The ones I have are slightly smaller framed than the Dorset ewes, but that is probably because they are yearlings compared to mature ewes. Also the Dorsets are growing wool again while the Dorpers are still fairly slick. I plan to sell the Dorper X Dorset lambs for meat and keep the Dorper ewe lambs (if any ) in the flock. With 2 rams I can breed back and forth for a few years, then keep the best ram, sell the other and buy another better ram. I really want to upgrade the quality of the flock breeding for meat, weaning weight, complete shed and maternal traits. The Dorsets were really good and I really loved them but I just can't do the shearing myself anymore, and at $40-50 a head, I don't want to pay for it.

Greybeard told me a 2 years ago to look into Dorpers, so I hope he reads this. Better late than never!

I haven't finished writing more of the adventures of the Ridgetop gang, but plan to finish more tales of our crazy lives soon. Meanwhile, I am till laughing about the wild adventures of the rest of you, and enjoying everyone's activities. Life is good, keep laughing.