Ranch Updates and Important Updates

9/18/8- 5th Day - After Breakfast. Good Morning y'all. Things at the ranch are going fine here. The weather has been absolutely gorgeous for a week or so, since the rains came We have had beautiful days with absolutely stunning blue skies with the temps around 80 or so, and cool nights in the low 50's and even some high 40's, which is highly unusual for summer in Central Texas. Anyway, we have enjoyed the gorgeous weather. We didn't get a drop from Ike, so we were spared the flooding and other devastation. My sister is still in Houston, but is doing well, though she has been without power since the storm.

We have been doing some work on the garden, though a lack of resources has prevented me from doing everything I want to do. My sweet potatoes are still thriving, and we harvested a BUNCH of basil the other day. I have 9 basil plants that have absolutely thrived since the rains came. We harvested about 60% of the leaves off of them the other day, and we are drying them as we speak. I am pretty certain that we will end up with well over a quart jar of dried, crumbled basil - which is a lot of basil. My peppers have also revived, and we have planted some fall items like lettuce, squash, egyptian walking onions, and broccoli. I am planning on planting a large amount garlic this fall as well.

None of our cows have dropped calves yet, which is surprising, and, as I mentioned in a previous post, our pig Bitty is highly pregnant, but hasn't delivered yet. Mimi, the other huge gilt, doesn't even look pregnant. If she doesn't start looking pregnant really fast, she will be butchered, maybe at Ranchfest if we can get some morning cool enough to do it. According to my figures, the last date our gilts were with the boar was on June 18. A female pig has a gestation period of 3 months, 3 weeks, and 3 days. This means the absolute last day that these pigs should deliver is October 10, the first day of Ranchfest. So if Mimi has not delivered by then, we will probably have some pig butchering as a Ranchfest event. From the looks of it, Bitty should have delivered long before then.

Speaking of Ranchfest, things are looking good, and we are expecting a fairly large crowd this year. Donations have been basically zero, so we hope that improves, or we will have a fairly large crowd sitting around looking at eachother, or butchering a big fat pig. We need Ranchfest donations in early, because we need to be able to buy supplies and get things prepared for the week. This way we'll know what we are doing. I will be sending out an email to my friendslist today. If you do not receive it, it is because you are not on (or you have been removed) from my private email list. Please see the post below to see about getting added to the list.

I hope you all didn't lose everything in the stock market! The governments of the world are throwing untold billions of funny money at the problem to keep the world from crashing. Except the Russians, they just closed their markets and announced they would sieze a large portion of the Arctic in order to drill for oil... makes sense. The politicians are all pointing at eachother with one hand, while they jam the other down into your wallet to throw your money at the problem. I told my chickens, pigs, goats, cows, and rabbits that Wall Street fell. They didn't get it. Not one of them panicked. Of course they usually don't panic when they are going to the butcher either. Only the goats do. Somehow they know. Which maybe explains why the stock market fell.

Michael