Ridgetop - our place and how we muddle along

[farmerjan]

@Ridgetop , I didn't know about Vit B for the plants.... maybe should give some to the piece of rose that I transplanted.... How much ???? Maybe the peach trees too ????
Sure hope that all goes good with the escrow on Yelm.... I know you have got to be READY to be DONE.....

 

[Baymule]

Congrats on Yelm!! I might have missed it, but where in Texas are you looking/moving? The Bay area?

I wish I could write like you and others on BYH. I get a reply out and I run out of words... Been lurking here for over 4 years now and keep telling myself I should start a journal at some point... Really like your @Ridgetop

Start your journal! I bet you have more to say than you think. We all live scattered across the country, in different parts of the world. What may be mundane to you, is intensely interesting to someone else. For instance, ground squirrels-I don’t have those pests, reading about @Ridgetop’s battle makes me glad I don’t have that problem. I say go for it!

 

[Ridgetop]

Thanks folks!

But the real reason for these long posts is that I have what one uncle described as diarrhea of the mouth. All the Ridgetop family have it - family conversation get louder and louder as we all talk at once! I am surprised we don't get complaints for noise pollution at family get togethers! Because I was a legal secretary for years before DS1 was born I also type very very fast -100 wpm. So now I have diarrhea of the fingers. I often think I have typed too much but figure that most people just stop reading half way through anyway so . . . .

Farmerjan: I have also had problems with suddenly losing a lot of text. Unlike Word there is no way to recapture the lost text by going back. Same on regular emails. On long posts, for a while, I was typing them on Word then cutting and pasting them onto this site. This was particularly so if I was trying to give information that was long or intricate.

 

[Ridgetop]

Definitely Vitamin B1 might help. When starting cuttings my mother also told me to use Rootone which is a powder with growth stuff in it. (Hormones?) It encourages root growth. Maybe that would have been good for the rose cutting. I don't know whether you can find a Vitamin B1 solution. Last time I looked I couldn't find the old brand. I was at Lowes, not a nursery so maybe that was why. I ended up buying Miracle Gro Planting and Transplant Solution which I don't think is as good. The Vitamin B solution is supposed to prevent shock in transplanting.

SUCCESS! Just looked it up on Amazon and they have a 1 gallon bottle of Liquid B1 transplanting solution for $23.15 and free shipping on Prime. I am ordering a bottle since the Miracle Gro is just a nitrogen base fertilizer. The Vitamin B1 works perfectly. You dilute it in water and pour it around the roots after transplanting.

If the rose is struggling and you can find a small jar of Rootone powder (or bag - haven't bought any in years since our Ph factor here is 9!) You can try digging it up and sprinkling the powder over the roots so it clings. I used to dip the ends of the cuttings in water then in the powder before planting. They all took and grew. And as I say I used to have ""the thumb of death". That changed after I subscribed to Organic Gardening for about 5 years, and got a bunch of books to read about soil health. Now of course with our highly toxic soil, I have hardly been able to grow anything for 30 years.

I stopped DH from pulling up the pepper tree upstarts and the elderberry upstarts since they actually survive in our soil. Anywhere else that we want to plant we have to remove the sol and replace it with half and half mix. One of the reasons we grow in containers. He is currently building a retaining wall behind the tool shed. No ne except the sheep and dogs can see it Once it s done he informed me he would buy dirt to fill it in and I could make a garden there!

Has he not learned that we are surrounded by serial ground squirrel plant murderers? Yes, another tomato was attacked last night. The trap will be placed in position and baited today. I am considering using the Ratinator as well. Although the electro netting is out of stock at Premier until May, maybe I could get a charger and run a wire to the ornamental metal garden fencing and just electrify it. I will start looking on the internet for other electrified small space netting. Death to the garden predators! I might be forced to buy some kingsnakes and release them into the garden. Unfortunately the dogs hate snakes and will kill them. $$$ down the drain. Ferrets? Probably the same thing. Buy a ferret for the grandkids and have them bring them over and put them down the ground squirrel holes then take them home again? English children used to keep ferrets for hunting rabbits. But could they catch them again? The traditional way of hunting rabbits with ferrets is to put nets around the rabbit holes then put the ferret down the hole. The rabbits run out into the nets and you bop them over the head. The ferrets come out and you can catch them too. This was 60 years ago and I am not sure whether this is allowed in England anymore since they have barred a lot of stuff. Unfortunately I am not sure where those pesky ground squirrel burrows are. That is another problem.

Anyway, escrow on the Yelm property is supposed to open this morning. I will put the 1031 people in touch with them and fill out the papers asap. I hope it goes through so we can get on with the rest of our lives.

I wrote to my brother about helping my sister move in the fridge that we offered her. He said "NO", since he is taking care of his 10 rentals, doing the yardwork on 2 of them, and building his retirement home on several acres and putting in the fencing, fruit trees, and bushes there. This is in addition to his full time job with Boeing. He wrote me yesterday explaining that he had gone to help her a year ago while Covid masks were in force. She asked him to help her clear out a lot of garbage to the dump so he spent an entire day with her. He said that after driving 1 1/2 hours to get there, then spending the day while she "sorted" through her junk he finally lost it after she took 2 hours to decide that she couldn't throw away a small rusted out garbage can, pulled it off his truck, and replaced it in the "keep" pile! Then she was upset that he "shouted at her and was so mean"! His wife has forbidden him to help her anymore. It is a shame, but she has alienated her whole family except those members who live far away, only talk to her on the phone, and don't see what she is really like. He agrees that she has become a textbook "hoarder". We all live n fear that she will die and when they finally find her we will have to assemble to empty her house. My youngest brother said we should just let them bull doze it, but she has all my grandmother's and mother's valuable items, including their good jewelry. My family will have to be the ones to go up and pick through the rubbish, since neither of her brothers will speak to her anymore, and there is only one other niece - who also won't speak to her.. She is a year younger than I am but in her present depressed, self-pitying frame of mind, who knows what will happen? Her last test was - first "I don't want your help because you are too old", second "I know you won't have time for me", and third "nothing really matters very much". While this would have sent most people rushing up to get her medicated before she jumped off a bridge, she talks like this all the time for sympathy. It has become "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" for this family.

Back to more enjoyable subjects. How do I find people's threads when they don't come up on my email or the latest posts portion? I have marked a bunch of people as "Follow" but I can't find them and don't get notices of their posts.

Angel is home with a shaved tummy and a cone head. The vet has given us tranquilizers to try to keep her quiet because she hates being confined. DS1 just came in and said that she had inverted her cone somehow. He replaced it properly. I will go down shortly and move a couple lambs into the jugs next to her to see if this will help her settle down. I don't have any lambing ewes which would keep her content. These lambs are older and were being weaned so are still in the creep pen. I will move them so she can talk to them through the bars.

DS2 will be coming home the end of the week. Then he will be rejoined by DDIL2 and little Robert. 5 adults to feed again and a baby. According to the news we have heard Robert has started spitting up. His worried new mother has taken him to the doctor to check up about this perfectly normal baby activity. Some of my children and grandchildren seemed to view spitting up as a hobby. DGS2 specialized in projectile spitting up with a grin on his face as he targeted people across the room. Oh well, if he gets colic - been there, done that. Actually since both DH and I have TV earphones, we won't even hear it. Oh, sorry, do I seem like an unnatural grandmother? Not rushing to wrest the screaming baby from the ineffectual parents' arms and rocking him for hours during his colic attacks? Nope, unless desperate parents really need me, I will allow them to deal on their own. Like I said, been there, done that!

I told DH that I am longing for a trip in the 5th wheel. We won't be taking it to Yelm. We will take our air mattress, sheets and blankest, towels, and some camping chairs. That is all we will need while we are there. Oh and the duffel bag of Coffee maker, pans coffee, paper plates, etc. And toilet paper. If we bring home the nice exterior mahogany door stored in the old barn, and the fridge they will ride home in the truck bed. IF, which is doubtful, my sister unearths my grandmother's bedroom set, we will rent a U-Haul to bring everything home. Not holding my breath.

IF, and I am hopeful, the Yelm escrow closes in 27 days, we will be immediately leaving for Texas.
On the way back we will detour north to Idaho to visit DH's sister and her husband. Maybe we can take a trip further north into the Dakotas nd Montana. I really want to travel up there and see that part of the country.

 

[Larsen Poultry Ranch]

Are you looking at BYH on a phone or the computer? There should be a 'Watched Threads' link, it's just accessed differently on phone vs computer. Once there you should see a list of all the threads you have watched, sorted with most recent posts towards the top. If the title is bold it means there's a response you haven't read yet.

On my phone I click the menu button (three horizontal lines), then under Forums, Watched, there is the link for Watched Threads.

Haven't been on BYH on the computer in a while as the internet at home is lousy right now, hopefully someone else will chip in how to get there.

 

[Ridgetop]

HomeOnTheRange: Sorry I forgot to answer your question, I kept writing this post and having to leave to do stuff. We like east Texas. As desert dwellers here we want water. We are planning on the Piney Woods near Elkhart, Crockett, Grapeland, etc. We like that area. Less people than Dallas-Ft. Worth. Austin is a big NO - even our friend down there says too many liberals coming in and changing it. Houston is too muggy. Tyler was a choice but it is really growing there with a lot of retirees moving in since the medical facilities are so good. If worst comes to worst, we can look in south eastern OK. But I think we will find something in Texas. Prices are way up though over what they were when we started looking 2-3 years ago. Our Yelm, WA, property manager (the evil ones from the dark side that totally let our tenant screw up our property and other things) talked us out of selling then by telling us that no one was buying anything in the area due tp problems with water. I think even then they had an eye for buying our property to develop. Developers were stopped from putting in homes, but our property has its own well and I think now that we could have sold it back then for the same price as we are under contract. We trusted that real estate guy which was our mistake. The new guy we have is excellent and we are under contract now.

We really like the Piney Woods area - good water, hayfields which we plan to fertilize and hire to have cut and baled. We are looking for around 50 acres, with house, well, barn, pond, and some cattle pens, with existing hayfield(s). If we have enough wooded acres we can expand into meat goats which are bringing more $$$ than lambs. We will have to do some additional high perimeter fencing for the guardian dogs. We will be doing other improvements before moving back there with our sheep. The 4 acres in Yelm 30 miles from Olympia, WA, is being sold to finance buying the ranch before selling our 6 acres here. Originally, we thought we could take the sheep up to Yelm and stay there. Plenty of grass on the acreage, good well, 2 good barns and other outbuildings. Plus the small house that we had totally rebuilt for my aunt 5 years ago. Then we found out it had been incorporated into the City of Yelm. No livestock allowed.

Anyway, we need to find and buy the ranch, then get it ready before being able to transfer our 30 head of Dorper sheep, Josie The Mule, and 3 Anatolian LGDs to the new property. It is really impossible to move from an operating ranch to another ranch which is not set up for the livestock you are bringing (our sheep vs TX cattle fencing). Not to mention moving all your equipment to the new place. We will take a year or 2 to go out for a month or more at a time to fence, build or repair barns/sheds if necessary, then sell or rent our current house and move to TX. Many of the smaller properties on the market need some repairs on fencing and sheds so we need to do all that. Once we are there, we will do whatever renovations and remodeling we want to do to the house. Of course, these are only our PLANS and we know what God does with man's plans! Trying to get there before Biden changes the tax laws and the government takes all our money!

 

[Ridgetop]

Larsen Poultry Ranch: I can read emails on my phone but have trouble logging in to reply so only use the computer. The text is bigger too for these old - Ooops, in the prime - eyes. I have forgotten my password (so many passwords for so many things and they tell you to have different ones for everything) but it is saved on my computer. So easier for me that way.

I went way back in some of the threads or whatever and found some of the ones I wanted. I also looked at the Just posted line. Keeping up with all my BYH friends is hard because I want to see what EVERYONE is saying and there are not enough hours in the day!

 

[HomeOnTheRange]

As desert dwellers here we want water. We are planning on the Piney Woods near Elkhart, Crockett, Grapeland, etc. We like that area. Less people than Dallas-Ft. Worth.

I know the feeling of wanting water!! I would love to not have to worry about it every single year. We have been told that there will be no irritation water as of the middle/end of July, which means a lot of people are going to lose their fields.

Have you tried chewing gum for the ground squirrels? Just get some Juicy Fruit gum, chew it for just a few seconds to get it into "gum" form and leave it out by their area. Will take a pack or so, but it does get rid of them.

 

[Mike CHS]

Not hard to just keep a running one sided conversation..... @Ridgetop is real good at it, and I tend to run on at the mouth sometimes.... The worst part is a couple of times I have accidently erased part or all of it when I hit the wrong key or something... so I often will post it and then try to write more so I don't lose a whole page.....

When you lose text while typing in threads, you can hit CTRL z and it will restore the text that disappeared. That only works though if you actually see the text disappear. If you continue typing a bit after it goes away, it doesn't work. A lot of times I'll be typing a response while I'm actually watching TV so I often don't see the text go away.

 

[Ridgetop]

Thank You Mike! I will try it.

Water is everything. 2 years ago I considered Utah where we have a friend who raises hay and sheep. He said he would cut and bale the hay on any property we bought within a certain distance from him. Then early last fall when I talked to him again he said that they did not get the winter snow they usually did and the reservoirs had run out of water mid summer. No grazing left. No final cuttings of hay. Really bad so I decided not to pursue a Utah ranch.

Water is the only thing I really worry about with a ranch. 30 years ago my uncle who was a rodeo rider and cattleman told me that wherever I went to make sure I had water rights. No water - no ranch. First thing always ask is there a well and second thing is how many GPM. It is surprising how many ranch real estate agents have no idea what GPM means!