December 2025 Ranch Update

 

I might equally title this "November and December 2025 Ranch Update", as it occurs to me that I posted nothing last month.

We had a bit of a set back in the pumphouse by The Cabin.  Usidean Ruadh was having a bit of a faucet problem and so he called The Young Cowboy, who went and took a look at it.  On a whim they checked the pumphouse and found that a fitting had failed and had been flinging water at pressure for perhaps up to two months (the last time Uisdean Ruadh remembers going in was sometime in October, so it could have been up to two months). There was two inches of water on the floor.

They got it shut off and The Young Cowboy very kindly resolved the issue.  That said, we now have a pumphouse with mold on the sheetrock (and into the insulation as the leak went straight into the wall) that will need to be remediated long term - The Young Cowboy sprayed it down with bleach so at least the immediate need is met.

Not exactly the development we were hoping for.

As I had mentioned, our agent had suggested taking the property off the market for the Winter, which sounded reasonable as we had no interest (and things are slow in Winter anyway).  The individuals that had made the low-ball offer came back asking about renting the place for six months.  We had a difference in the nature of the conditions - they wanted the barn cleaned out and the cattle gone within one month of the start of the lease, my expectations (for what they were offering) was the house/garage only.  We have not heard back from them after we countered.

Given all The Cowboy and The Young Cowboy have done for us, a short turn around time a renter seemed not right to me.  Also, for the size of the property, what they were offering seemed a little....low.

My Aunt continues to hang in and do well.  She is between chemo treatments for the holidays.  Her spirits are high, she is fairly mobile, and she is always engaged in the conversations.  Thanks for all of your kind thoughts and prayers.

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If anything, these past few months have convinced me that the decision we came to was the right one.  Trying to regularly keep with a property that is far away is mentally tiring - let alone worrying about what random failures are going to happen.

I look back now and wonder if we just should have cleared the house out and rented it as soon as it was clear my parents were not coming home.  I do not know that I could have done that then, but part of that was a fair amount of sentimentality on my part, sentimentality that was not really driven by giving consideration to the facts on the ground (in this case, the fact that I was likely not going to be able to move there for years yet or even if it were realistic to do so).  I will say that, in general, this is causing me to reconsider a great many things in my life and ask the same question.

I will always have a heart for The Ranch, knowing at the back of my mind that someday, the visits will be very infrequent indeed or even cease entirely.    But there is also a part of me that will be glad to lay this down once and for all.