Our county road runs past our house here on the ranch, and up the hill further into the wilderness. There are two houses past ours. Yesterday those neighbors had some trouble getting to town because the road slid down the hill a few feet. The road crew came out and fixed it within 24 hours, […]
Archive | Ranch Life
Beehive – honeycomb
Late in October 2010, before the rains started in earnest for the year, we did some burning on “Hell’s Half Acre”, our Oak Savanna restoration project here on the ranch. The burning was done to get rid of endemic poison oak and invasive blackberries, salmonberries and Douglas Fir trees, among others, that had pretty much […]
Dry skin treatment
I don’t often plug products here.
Just saw a star blow up
Just saw a nova!
Oregon Country Fair 2009
Oregon Country Fair 2009 – a great fun trip
The sunspot count keeps dropping; what’s that mean?
What does it mean that the sunspot count for the first three months of 2009 (when 87% of days were without ANY sunspots) is even lower than the average for last year (2008, when 73% of all days had no sunspots), which was the lowest year since 1913? See this article on sunspot activity. What […]
Notes on Logging – and a surprise
Today I took my camera and dogs on a walk up the hill from our ranch house to where we are doing some logging — about 20 acres of mixed alder and fir trees. It’s March 3rd, which is very early to start logging. There’s mud everywhere because it has rained about 6 inches in […]
Rain on the Ranch
We have a flood alert in effect through Monday here – the Coquille River is filling up due to the incessant rain for the last few days. THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN MEDFORD HAS ISSUED A * FLOOD WARNING FOR THE SOUTH FORK COQUILLE AT MYRTLE POINT. * FROM THIS EVENING TO TUESDAY MORNING. * […]
Spider Webs
Today in the space of five minutes walking around the ranch I saw three different spiderwebs — all made by the same species of large brown spider. These spiders are about an inch long, quite fat and horrible up close. The stuff of nightmares. But they make pretty webs and catch flies, flying termites, whatever. […]
Praying Mantis
A few days ago a wild praying mantis appeared on my front porch here on the ranch, perched on the edge of a plastic water tray under a potted plant. I’d been told that praying mantises existed here in rural southern Oregon, but had never seen one during nearly ten years of living here. I […]