Gloriously cool weather inspires ranch maintenance & repairs

By Ma. Eugenia Guerra

 

The weather has been gloriously cool -- perfect for undertaking any of the maintenance projects that have been on our lists for months.

Last year's abundant rains provided a lesson in Lay of the Land and Drainage 101. We've made cuts into the soil where needed to carry off the aftermath of a hard rain, and we've built up places that have flooded in the past. The rainwater collection system at the barn has been in operation for about two years and we are working on the one at our house.

We've taken on a couple of nice improvement projects, things you can view upon completion and admire as work that was needed, like the fresh coat of paint on the corrals or the new shed roof we added to one end of the bodega.

On a very chilly evening we worked well into the night building a long hutch out of some old used cedar 2x2s and hardware cloth in preparation of the baby chicks we were expecting by mail.

Other projects, like the brick sidewalks we built at the two houses on the ranch, are testimony to recycling by using materials we didn't have to buy. Years and years ago, my Uncle Oscar Gutierrez stockpiled a pretty nice stack of Mexican brick and some six-foot concrete posts for which we have found a myriad of uses. I felt so resourceful to put them to use, to use rebar scraps to hold the posts in place to define the edges of the sidewalk and ranch sand to set the bricks. Those sidewalks have a wonderful look about them, so much nicer than poured concrete.

The maintenance effort at the home compound has been ongoing -- whacking mistletoe, trimming grasses and trees, stacking firewood, and putting a two-foot hardware cloth skirt at the bottom of the fences around the ranch houses. We've buried the edge of the hardware cloth in the soil of a narrow trench and tied and stapled the rest of it onto the existing wire fence, hoping that the effort will discourage the populations of rattlesnakes that make it into our yard and up to the houses.

I came rather close recently to a snake bite. Just after dark on a cool night I had walked in and out of my parents' house at the ranch without an idea that danger was nearby. As I walked onto their porch to re-enter a few minutes later I heard the unmistakable, fear-inspiring fury of a rattler warning it would strike.

In the dim light, the only clue to its approximate whereabouts was its sound, which seemed to be coming from a red cardboard box turned on its side on the porch. I was stunned at how close the sound was, and I moved away with alacrity and to scoop up the baby chocolate-colored mutt that was following me. I secured her in a kennel box in the bed of the truck and went into my own house for the little .410 shotgun, a couple of shells, and a high beam flashlight so that I could get a better look at the snake, which was coiled in a cardboard box a foot from where I had stood.

In a heartbeat, mine, the beautiful cool evening so filled with the soothing fragrance of the brushlands in bloom had turned tense.

I was relieved to see the beam of the ranch hand's flashlight as he walked from his house to help me. He slowly and methodically moved the box off the porch and onto soil with a pitchfork. The snake remained enroscada, coiled, and poised to strike. I aimed at the back of the little box and blew box and snake to shreds with a loud ka-bloom. We separated the head from the body and buried both so that the dogs wouldn't end up with them.

The shotgun blast had cut the night in two, and the adrenaline rush of my fear and the speedy dispatch of the snake put an edge on the night that made me listen closely when I stepped in utter darkness from my house onto the porch to look at the night sky.