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It was a good week for us all out here at the ranch despite the cold weather. Our guest hunters managed to each bring down a six-by-six point bull elk. Apparently everyone 'up top' at the hunting camp had a grand and memorable time, hunters and guides alike, and all vow to come back next year. By then, we might even have my whimsical "Hotel California Saloon" in situ to have a place where everyone can come over for a good sit down supper and gabfest. The Rat is just a little cramped to accommodate more than two or three people at once right now.
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As an unexpected perk, the boys arrived with one full elk carcass for our later use. When you realize the going rate of supermarket beef, this is not a small consideration. In our situation, you have to take such windfalls into serious consideration in the annual budget, too. A few decades ago, venison was the only meat in our larder but the savings on beef purchases made a BIG impact on the food bill. I never forget this truism from an old and well-off friend: "It is easier to save a dollar you have than to earn a replacement for it." This is not quaint folk lore, it's absolutely true. If not for having absorbed these bits of wisdom and putting them into play, we would simply not have come this far in realizing our dream. It took us almost two decades to save up for this moment but we were able to do it without living in a cardboard box under the overpass in the interim. It can be done when you want something badly enough; that is really what separates the wheat from the fluffy chaff. My Atavist has some good primer material in his blog archives on the subject. I was going to keep this subject for a separate post but this is as good a time as any to bring the basis of our success to your attention. More will certainly follow.
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Now don't freak out at the photo below. At first glance, it may strike you as what happened to Aunt Hilda after someone spiked the punch at the town's last ice cream social. This is the bull elk carcass which now hangs aging in our barn. I have no idea who donated the gaily printed sarong of a bed sheet it wears but it serves to keep various ravenous parties away from it. Bottom line: it's about $500 worth of red meat that we don't have to budget for in the future. If you are a meat-eater, I don't want to hear the right-brained screechy Bambi thing ... there is a guilt-free tofu burger waiting out there for you. That being said, I read that plants also feel pain and agony so what do you do? I can honestly say that I wouldn't look down from the clouds with resentment someday if a mountain lion decided that I looked like a great lunch while I was out hiking. It is simply life and it's been that way for a long time out in the real world.
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So unless you are some sort of vegetablist, you now know what is likely fare for supper when you come to visit. One thing I seem to do well is serve up meat to its best character and potential so don't let that slow you down.
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Here's an update while I am up for it:
Just ask Brou or Daisy - it sure was chili dogs here last night! Mark saw a reading of ten degrees below zero when he got up at dawn to let the dogs out. We later thought about the out-of-state elk hunters up top with Slim. I was getting ready to form a rescue mission when Slim finally returned our call. Apparently all was in good order when we initially called but he had been in the middle of driving his newly arrived herd of a hundred or two head the remaining five miles up to his ranch. He admitted that he was quite contentedly off his horse and settled more comfortably into his pick-up truck for the duration.
We knew that he was picking up the hunters in Albuquerque yesterday and now Slim caught us up on the details. He had to stop and check his cows in the corn lot before heading to the big city. The plane was one hour late so he grabbed a bite to eat while waiting. The hunters hadn't been fed on the plane so they stopped on the way back to eat and fuel up. Notice that I used the term fuel. It was only after he had topped up his Dodge diesel that Slim noticed that he had pulled up to the wrong pump and filled up on gas. Ever had one of those days? Luckily, he noticed the smell of gas as he pulled out the nozzle and hadn't started up the engine. The hunters were a couple of easy-going guys and didn't complain as he secured a number of 5 gallon cans and a pump with adequate capacity to siphon out the half and half in order to start the process all over again.
What annoyed Slim the most was the onslaught of bums asking him for gas money as this embarrassing circus was taking place. "Hell, I offered them a whole five gallons and a can and they still walked away. Would you believe that!?" I guess a real can of fuel, pure or half and half, just won't buy a bottle of booze in the end. Who said beggars can't be choosers anyway? Maybe the ethanol lobby is missing a big offshoot market here.
With temperatures of ten below, our water pipes finally froze up at the Rat. I sighed and dropped my head in resignation as the faucet squeezed out one last drop late this morning. How long before it would eventually thaw out? We fired up the blast furnace in the addition to give the water tank and plumbing there a little heat. A little later we decided to pull up the hatch to the space beneath the addition to heat up the wellhead and other plumbing and fired up the heater again. Mark noted that it was foolhardy to pull up part of the floor in a room with no lighting of any sort.
So the predictable tale of two idjits continues. An hour later, I ask Mark if he would step out and fire up the generator. It wasn't 30 seconds later that I heard a thunderous crash and a stream of ultra-volume expletives. I burst into that kind of grasp-the-wall-for-support hysterics. If you are part of that perfect breed of rational humans, I still don't want to hear any 'tut-tuts' out of you. Having been in the same position previously as Mark was now, I was more than qualified to welcome him into the fraternity of trapdoor idjits. And I had paid my dues right then and there since Daisy's little dance with me earlier had left me in a further deteriorating state of extreme pain. Laughing now has its own torments as does coughing from this nicely timed chest cold. I paid for every laugh today dearly, especially when another stream of cursing arose as he hit his head on the generator room's low door immediately thereafter. We both ended up laughing hysterically in the end - what else can you do sometimes?
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Sorry, I just had to go back and add this Dore litho again. I can never get enough of it. You can see its first suitable blog use here: Don't ever wanna hear about YOUR potholes!.
The good news? The heat allowed into the crawl space freed up the pipes! The forecast calls for a slight warming trend - afternoon highs in the low forties for the next few days so we will hopefully dodge the big freeze bullet again.
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My blog friend David over at The Author Blog (see his link in the left hand column) has just inspired me with his new post on partner blog interest and participation. It does seem to take haltering and leading to the blog well at times. In my case, I was fortunate that Mark responded exceedingly well to threats of starvation and/or torture. While he is too stoic to be a cheerleader, he is generally an excellent proofreader when he is in the right mood. And I will grant him that my impetuous demands for immediate editing normally correspond with his time of nodding off while reading the same page of the Wall Street Journal for over an hour or more.
But with his conscripted servitude come certain blog privileges. In this case, he requested that I address our ranch's hunting income for this year. Since we are in between outfitters at the moment, he has decided to play the field a little. Normally, we have been selling our private land owner elk tags to outfitters who market a package with a healthy guide fee tacked on. If you are a competent, self-reliant outdoorsman and hunter, we can help you set up a world class big game hunting vacation in New Mexico for a third to one half of an outfitted hunt. Our 2NN (second nearest neighbor) offers very good meal and lodging accommodations to hunters. I happen to think that their rates are outrageously reasonable given that they are the only game in the canyon. She has several good photos of enormous bulls that have been taken in our area. ...
Z-z-z-h-r-r-r-r-r-r-i-i-p-p-p-p!!!!!
The above line represents the sound of a tone arm ripping across your newly recorded piece of blog vinyl. Sigh.
We had just completed another round of coerced blog proofreading when the phone rang so Mark nipped off to his office to answer the call. Ten minutes later, I hear an announcement "Never mind about that blog thing. It was an outfitter, I think we have a deal."
I was still staring at the recently completed entry. I now became aware that my teeth were grinding painfully together, I could feel the outer edges of my lips expanding into a maniacal grin, my eyelids and pupils were dilating into a glazed off-focus stare. I knew I was slipping into a blog writer's Jack Nicholson Shining moment. I stared at the screen. The recently accomplished words began to dissolve and were now running down into a distinct black puddle of ink at the bottom of that screen. "Oh ... really, dear?" All that creative angst and fighting for cooperation for nothing then? Eh-heh-heh-heh-heh. Bloggus interruptus.
My nostrils flared to accommodate the adrenalin rush as I advanced ever so silently into the office. "So ... tell me more ... d-e-a-r." I felt my fingers involuntarily curl into deadly arches as I surveyed the long and graceful lines of his Lladro-esque neck from behind. He turned unexpectedly and I withdrew those menacing hands just as quickly and assumed a Stepford wife glowing demeanor (or as best as I am capable of, at least). "I think we have a deal." he said. "Oh, really? And you will be happy with that, I mean TRULY happy with that? What I mean to say is that I will never hear any further griping about this then, never have to recreate this last blog? Ever? Really?" "Yes, that is correct." "By really, I mean r-e-a-l-l-y ..." I took the legal pad down from his book shelf and placed it in front of him. "... then you won't mind writing and signing a statement to that effect?" "I will NOT!" Eh-heh-heh-heh-heh. "Then you may ask me to do this again later for some other reason, your most royal sweetness?" And so we discussed a broad range of vaguely interweaving matters. It became clear that he reserved the right to rain on my parade down the road - that's how I took it at least. I eventually acquiesced, only regretting that I know so little about operating the skid steer and all its lovely digging abilities. J-u-s-t kidding, sort of. Remember, unless you are confined to an environment the size of a large shoebox with the love of your life 24/7, you cannot begin to understand the dynamics at play out here. Eh-heh-heh-heh-heh.
As usual, Mark was pressed into proofreading even this rework. This torturous blog exercise is surprisingly therapeutic for both of us. Oh, and the photo is of moose hunters, not elk hunters ... just had to throw that one in to get Alphonse the Moose's attention.
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