Wow – sorry about the long delay in updating the blog but two major factors have been at work: We have been busy, and the primary blogger, John, has not made the time to write any updates. My goodness – where to begin!
The very big news is that our furniture has arrived – hooray!! The lawn chairs are now gone from the living room and we have a real couch and chair to plop our bodies down for TV time. Our stuff was delivered last Thursday but John was concerned about the 53’ trailer and long tractor (as in a large 18-wheeler) was going to have an issue getting through our new gates. John was reasonably certain the tractor-trailer would get through the gates and make the turn to the driveway, but there was that small element of doubt. John had pre-arranged to meet the driver at a nearby rest stop and drive him to the ranch so he could determine if he had the room to drive in to the ranch. Thank goodness he said no problem and things were looking up at that point! First to off-load was John’s shop equipment; John was lovingly swooning over every box and tool that was unloaded into the new shop! After about a ton or two was unloaded (out of a total load of 12,000 lbs.), the truck was driven the short distance to the house. The guys had a little longer to walk, but with just two people unloading, the process went quickly and the entire process was finished by about 4:30 PM which was real fast considering they didn’t begin until about 10:30 AM.
The furniture and boxes quickly overwhelmed the little house to the point where we were actually getting somewhat depressed at wondering how we were going to shoehorn all of this stuff into our diminutive domicile. It is very fortunate that we have a 12’ X 24’ storage building on the property as there is a lot of overflow things in there. Praise God that we are now completely moved out of Florida and all of our worldly possessions are now on our ranch. We will be organizing and trying to accommodate all of our things into the house for many months so we will be taking our time to sort everything out.
Hummingbirds…The hummingbird population has ramped-up from three or four around the feeder to 15 or 20 constantly. We have had so many hummers we bought a large feeder that holds a quart of sugar water and it needs to be filled twice a day and the small feeder is emptied about three or four times a day. What a joy watching the little hummers flit around and chirp and scold.
John the pig slayer… (for a picture, you need to visit the gallery on your own initiative) John, brother-in-law Bill, Bill’s son-in-law David and a friend all went feral hog hunting recently. This was John’s second time on the hunt and the first time with his new rifle, a stainless Ruger M77 Hawkeye in a .270 Winchester caliber. On top is a Nikon 3-9 power 40 mm Buckmaster scope. Bill bought five bags of deer corn and while Bill drove the truck all over the 500 acre ranch, John threw out handfuls of corn for an hour or so. After the corn was thrown out we all went to Cooper’s BBQ in Llano and gorged ourselves on fantastic chicken, ribs and brisket – YUM-YUM. We all had to fight the urge to take a little nap after our very late lunch (we ate about 3 PM) and remain pumped up for our dusk appointment with the hogs. John was assigned one deer blind, David another, and Bill had a third location staked out. About 7:30 PM John saw about six or seven medium size pigs climb out of the river headed towards the feeder. While they were busy having dinner, John drew a bead on the largest one (100 yards away) and fired, immediately knocking it down. Naturally the others ran off but remembering Bill’s counsel about waiting since the pigs might return after a while, John waited. His patience was rewarded as several more emerged to the far right of the blind. John picked his target and fired this time bring down one and probably another one (victim of collateral damage.) John is a nature lover and respects God’s little creatures but feral hogs are a huge problem in Texas – they are very destructive and reproduce very rapidly. He considers hog elimination a public service. Maybe, just maybe, John might be tempted to take his first deer this fall since he has decided that venison is actually very, very tasty. Actually the deer population is so great in this area that many deer need to be harvested every year to keep the population healthy – too many deer can put a tremendous strain on the food supply and as a consequence they all suffer from over population and too little food.
Please visit the picture gallery for a new album just posted!