Ridgetop - our place and how we muddle along

[Mini Horses]

Hope a safe trip!

 

[SageHill]

Yeah - the mountains up there were gorgeous yesterday. Went up to Huntington Beach and back - sooo pretty, I ~almost snapped a pic - but I was on the 405. It rained on the way up - 4 accidents but no backups. Rain stopped for the drive back - easy drive.
Have a safe trip.

 

[Baymule]

Baymule reporting; On call for sheep!

 

[Bruce]

My sister and her kidults live in Huntington Beach. Dad lives in Fullerton, he said they got about 2" of heavy rain. That is a good percentage of their normal annual total of about 13"!

 

[farmerjan]

I keep hearing about the unexpected huge amount of snow that fell in parts of Ca. that never gets snow....

 

[Larsen Poultry Ranch]

We got snow/hail on Thursday but it didn't stick. Seems like it's been raining forever. One oak tree went down, blocking my path to the chicken pen but didn't hit anything. A large branch came off another oak into the driveway. Poor trees got confused by the warmer weather before this weather system hit, and a bunch are trying to put out blossoms and leaf buds.

 

[SageHill]

My sister and her kidults live in Huntington Beach. Dad lives in Fullerton, he said they got about 2" of heavy rain. That is a good percentage of their normal annual total of about 13"!

Yeah - it poured on Saturday morning. The HOV lanes were flooded and there was a lot of hydroplaning going on. People just not slowing down at all -, thank goodness the rain stopped mid-morning and my drive back down was easy.

 

[SageHill]

I keep hearing about the unexpected huge amount of snow that fell in parts of Ca. that never gets snow....

We do have snow!!! Even down this far - but at elevation - the local mountains are covered in white. I haven't seen that much white in many years. Pretty white topped mountains framed in palm trees.

 

[Ridgetop]

Well, we are back after our short trip to Texas.

Got the Texas 5 delivered - Baymule has reported on that. Got the trailer unloaded, talked with Vikki and Larry (ranch tenants) about an hour or so, and drove straight to Leander to stay for 2 nights. Went to see our puppy in the morning and she is adorable, also beautiful and has great instincts. She is not as overly friendly as the one that Erick is keeping but he says that ours has a personality like Rika - The Perfect LGD - so I am thrilled. I actually preferred her conformation and Erick agreed that she is a better built pup than the one that he is keeping. His puppy s also beautiful and has dark feet, dark eyebrows, and a black tail tip. She also has some black tipping to her hair coat. Ours has light feet, a white tip to her tail, light eyebrows, and no black tipping. He chose her specially for us a the best one since we are planning to breed her in 3 years to a male of his choice. He chose his puppy because she was the first one born and had a hard time starting to breathe but fought so hard to live he fell in love with her. His girl is friendlier than our puppy, but Erick likes the way ours does not immediately come up to ask for petting. Instead, she watched to make sure about us before coming up. Not timid, just watchful. I really like that.

The black on her paws is mud. She is really beautiful. We did not bring her home with us since we will be travelling back and forth to TX for a few months. Erick said he would keep her and train her for a while longer until we are able to be in one place for a while. Having Erick train her for an extra couple of months is excellent, although I really wanted to bring her home with us now. Although we were sad not to be able to bring her home, we both agreed that leaving her at home in California while we spend several weeks at a time in Texas and on the road would interfere with her training. And bringing her back and forth with us would be bad for her.

Her mother is an excellent mother. Erick was feeding the puppies 4 times a day, but they were not eating their food, then he realized that the mother was still feeding them by regurgitating the food. So he is still feeding the mother 4-5 giant meals of kibble and raw chicken. LOL All the puppies are sold and gone except for the one he kept and ours. I accused him of wanting to keep our puppy and he laughed and guiltily admitted he really wanted to keep her because he really liked her LGD attitude. LOL Erick is feeling much better after his back surgery last year and his doctor realizing that some of his medications were causing his symptoms and making him sicker. He is looking forward to breeding another litter this year and may decide to repeat this breeding since it produced such excellent results. And she is such a wonderful mother.

Next we drove to Athens and met up with the family for the wedding. We saw DH's sister, BIL, and the nieces. The youngest niece has a 2 year old girl. We recognized her right off since she has her mother's upturned nose, and white blonde hair - both niece Emily and DS1 were towheads. It was lovely seeing the family again - we hadn't been together for a while. Just wish DSIL1, DD2, DSIL2, DGS1, DGS@, and DGDs 2 & 3 could have been with us. The wedding was lovely. The reception had pulled pork, ribs, and BBQ chicken. DH and i danced and were one of the longest married couples left on the floor. At 51 years we beat DG's sister and husband by 1 year, but were beat out by the groom's grandparent by 4 or 5 years. Net day, after the wedding, we all drove up to Yantis and the kids got to see the ranch as did Marv's sister and BIL. The grand kids had a wonderful time trying to catch pollywogs in the pond. They swore they saw fish in the pond and also some turtles. The grandkids did not have to worry about the cows or the bull when they ran out to the pond. Cody hasn't brought his cattle back yet since the weather has been so wet, alternating with ice. He is dry lotting all his cattle at his home place while he is feeding hay. It is easier for him to feed them all at one place. He will bring them back when the grass gets going again. Then the family took off for D/FW, stopping at Buckee's on the way. DGSs 3 and 4 had been there before but DGD1 got her first look at the place and fell in love! LOL We headed to the motel in Sulphur Springs for 4 nights while we took care of some business. We also went to Atwoods and TSC where I registered my new tax-exempt farm number, and we bought fly spray for the sprayers. It is getting hard to come by in California. I have had those Country Vet automatic sprayers for 35 years ever since we started with the dairy goats. The spray is food safe, excellent for controlling house flies, and the sprayers run on batteries. The spray can lasts for 30 days and we can tell when it gets empty because the flies start to appear. The spray is mostly pyrethrins and labeled safe for dairies restaurants and food prep areas. Good stuff. We got the forms for a post office box, the got the information on the electric and water companies, as well as the trash pick-up and internet service. We also found a good all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet in Sulphur Springs. For a while we thought we would have to drive an hour to Lindale to the Eastern Buffet! LOL
Our tenants are still in the house for another month. They keep getting held up by bad weather from being able to finish the building. They are almost finished though. We brought in some of the stuff that we didn't want to leave in the sheds - some books, kitchen stuff and plastic bins of linens and towels and stored it in one of the bedrooms. I also was able to measure the interior room dimensions so I can draw up a scale floorplan.

We met with the electrician that is supposed to do some electrical work in the attic (bare wire connections twisted together without wire nuts or tape!) and I was horrified to hear that DH had apparently told him we wanted to rewire the entire house! He was not sure but thought it might cost about $18,000! The worst part was when he said that he was waiting to do the work until the tenants were out so he could "tear into the walls"!
WHAT?!
He said that since the house was paneled instead of drywall there would probably be fire blocks in the walls which meant he couldn't just drop the wiring down through the walls. Apparently, John was under the impression that we were going to "gut and remodel" the house. I informed him that I was not planning to rip down the paneling but was planning to paint it. I did not have $18,000-20,000 budgeted for a complete rewire! Let alone the additional amount of money it would cost to re-drywall all the rooms. The rewiring cost was bad enough, but having to re-drywall the house was a big NO-NO. The house may have been built in 1972, but we did not do a complete rewire on the house in which we are currently living and it was built in 1954. We did a partial rewire using conduit on the 4 rooms we gutted, but not on the entire house.

DH then made a major mistake by jokingly telling John that I could easily do the drywall. Very bad move on his part as I reminded him that I had done most of the drywall on the 3 of the rooms in the house since he had been working a lot of overtime. I also taped and mudded them, as well as several rooms in the apartment and MJ's house. I pointed out that he mostly did some of the sanding. I did not plan to re-drywall a house nor would zi agree to spend that much money on the house! Just as the steam began to reach overload out of my ears and my eyeballs began to revolve in my head, he realized his danger and said he was joking. HA HA HA So funny. NOT. DH then told John that the living room fan was too low and asked if he could put in one that would be higher. OMG! I nipped that in the bud and said we would take care of all the fan and light fixture replacements ourselves. What was he thinking? I silently began to consider having him committed. I suddenly realized DH has no sense of self-preservation!

On the way to the motel DH and I had a spirited discussion about the rewiring business until DS1 stepped in and said we could have John just do the attic rewire to make the wiring safe. Probably using junction boxes. Then we could remove some of the paneling and see what the wiring in the walls looked like after moving in. If the walls were open, without fire blocks, we could drop/pull the new wiring through the walls. In his defense DH was not happy about the complete rewiring cost either. He had not realized that John planned to rewire the entire house. We had both been under the impression that John was just going to do the attic wiring repairs and maybe run wiring to the pump, tool shed, and barn. We had already had him do some wiring to ground the electrical to the water heaters which were apparently dangerous. The inspection we had done on the house had not turned up any "complete rewiring" issues so I was rather peeved. The drive back to the motel was tense.

My little orchard looked good. Jeremy had out a hot wire around it which was not working at the time since the cows were not on the property. He will hook it up when Cody brings back the cattle. According to Jeremy we don't have much trouble with deer since there are not a lot of woods around. Jeremy will be mowing the lawn and doing some hedge trimming for us on a monthly basis. His oldest boy is 14 so we can probably have him do feeding if DS1, DH and I want to come to California for Christmas or a visit all together. We will have to get someone to trim some of the trees and maybe take at least one out since a couple are in bad shape around the house.

The evening before the wedding we met up with the family and had all gone to Applebee's. DH thought he got food poisoning although the rest of us were fine. We went to Walmart and got him some stuff but it lasted for about 4 days during which he could not eat anything. He lost more weight which was the only thing good about it. At least he recovered before having to drive back to California!

Today I finished unpacking all the suitcases. They can go out to the sheds tomorrow. I need to do a load of laundry tomorrow too. We are also supposed to get another bad rainstorm coming in tomorrow. We got birthday gifts for the babies and a few other things, so I bought some large plastic bins to bring the stuff home in. Since we left when it was really cold and rainy, we had a lot of extra stuff in the truck cab too which I put into the bins to transport home. We checked on alfalfa in AZ but like I thought it is still too early to cut due to the cold wet weather. However, we will be able to order and pick up some on the way back from our next trip. We will be going back the first of May IF WE EVER GET OUR TRUCK BACK!!!

We will be bringing back the tractor, some more fencing panels, and some stuff to be able to stay in the house. The tenant has bought new pillows and sheets for the king size beds she is leaving in the house. She is so sweet. She and Larry said they will come by and check the house when they go to their PO Box in Yantis. They said they want to stay in touch and look at us as friends. Larry has extended an open invitation to our sons to fish with him. We had hoped to get back in April, but we have a full calendar of doctor appointments, birthdays, a baptism, and Easter. We need to go up to Nipomo and pick up the tractor - but can't do anything with the gooseneck trailer until we have our brown truck back since DS2's truck doesn't have a gooseneck or 5th wheel hitch. We did get almost all of the stuff I planned to take back in the trailer and truck, but we still have a good bit of stuff to bring back from the barns, connex, and milk shed. We can also fit the 12' corral panels in the stock trailer as well as packing the truck bed.

MY crazy sister called me yesterday to ask if I still wanted the white furniture that was my grandmother's. It is very good quality stuff, about 60 years old, made of maple and ash, with dovetailed drawers. I told her I did, and she said she "might" have it ready to go "this summer". OK, whatever. we can come and get it on the way back from a Texas trip with the stock trailer. There are 2 dressers, a high boy, a couple of nightstands, mirrors, a king size headboard as well as a double bed head and foot board. The triple dresser has a glass top if it didn't get broken at CC's house. All the pieces probably need refinishing, but the quality is worth it. We'll see if I get the pieces or not. Not holding my breath though. LOL

 

[Baymule]

I’m glad y’all are back home from your trip. It was a flying, fast trip, packed with things to do, family and the wedding. And let’s not forget that beautiful puppy! She is beautiful! Have y’all named her yet?

Sounds like your family liked the ranch and the grandkids enjoyed the pond. Better get a handle on that electrician or else you’ll come back to bare 2x4 walls! April will be busy, y’all will be on the run. Get your truck from the clutches of that dealership!