Category: The Grab Bag

You may have noticed, dear readers, that I have been away for a while.  I can explain.  Spring and summer came over the Figure 8 Ranch with an endless list of work to accomplish:  barn building, garden planting, shop-cleaning, mowing, more planting, tree falling, wood splitting, cocktail mixing, raids into northern California, horse buying, and ...

  Recently, I was contacted by Dietrich Waller, a blog reporter from the German fanzine Der Luftballooner with a request for an interview.  Though this blog has a low readership in Germany, I was surprised and consented to spend a few minutes with Dietrich.  It was an enjoyable conversation.  Here is a segmented transcript of ...

The French, much in the news lately, and for all of the wrong reasons–and as luck would have it, just as I was finishing a terrific biography of Marie Antoinette–have an elegant phrase:  L‘esprit de l’escalier, which might be rendered literally as “staircase wit,” either in the pejorative, or merely as an observation of fact, ...

Our final push into Austin was a dash through the heart of Comanche Country, a trip that only a few sleeps ago would have invited certain death.  The Comanche, “Lords of the Southern Plains”, were not an outfit to be trifled with, given that they ran the Apaches–no slouches–out of what became Texas, turned the ...

On a theme of Billy the Kid, Muleshoe, and The Chiminea Debrief… We made Santa Rosa, barreling through snowfall so heavy it made me dizzy, performed a flawless locked-wheel skid at the entrance to the Santa Rosa La Quinta Inn, dumped our gear without ceremony, then headed back out into the storm to find some ...

Last week we butchered the turkeys. I can admit that I didn’t feel good about it–who would–but it was time. With the deep snow our henhouse simply wasn’t big enough for the turkeys and chickens to live in bird-harmony anymore, given that the turkeys were approaching forty pounds each, and acting like jerks. So, reluctantly–I ...

We are expecting snow here by the end of the week, along with much of the country, which means that the hundred or so winterizing projects I have been putting off can’t wait much longer.  I’ll admit to a touch of simple laziness.  A late fall warm-up seduced me into thinking I had more time, ...

Yesterday I was fitted for hearing aids.  I’ve known for some time that my hearing is in decline, and the tinnitus in both ears has been driving me crazy, so a couple of weeks ago I drove into town and took advantage of the free hearing test in Sisters.  I flunked.  I knew that I ...

Yesterday, near the end of a daylong cattle-buying adventure in the soggy Willamette Valley, I enjoyed quite possibly the best hamburger I have ever eaten.  I don’t throw out praise like this very often, so you can take it to the bank.  If you ever want a GREAT hamburger–that is, if you aren’t sulking around ...

This year I applied, through the government lottery system, for seven separate hunting tags.  I applied for, in order of importance for the ranch freezer, the following tags:  bull elk, cow elk, deer, antlerless deer, bighorn sheep, Rocky Mountain goat, and antelope.  A hunter is allowed only one bighorn tag in his lifetime, so there ...