Larchblossom Ranch
Larchblossom Ranch itself takes up a moderate amount of space in the saddle between two clusters of hills. The four families who make up this ranch compared to other Oatman Canyon ranchers, tend to take their herds the farthest out along the perimeter of the Canyon. For most of the year, two thirds of the people here will actually be several days' journey away.
Purpose / Function
Larchblossom Ranch is the compound for four families totalling eleven people. Each family has its own small shack or cottage surrounding the main "ranch house", a communal kitchen/storehouse/workroom/library where shared duties are performed or tracked.
Outbuildings
Most of the buildings are made of brick. They blend in with the color of the nearby canyon walls.
The Care Barn is the smallest of the animal buildings. It includes a partially enclosed mini-corral plus five stalls. Ideally, the Care Barn is empty of everything except the occasional chicken: it is meant to host mothers close to birthing or recently foaled, any herd critter sick or injured, or any critter caught eating something it ought not to eat.
The entrance to the Care Barn also hosts the chicken coop. Chickens have full access to the perimeter of the garden; they eat any potential pests such as crickets and spiders, they eat most of the seeds that try to blow into or out of the garden, and almost never get eaten by scavengers or predators.
To keep the chickens safe from such hazards but also out of food meant for people, the Larchblossom Ranch families have built a screened-in garden between the ranch house and the Care Barn. The screen is hand-woven of whatever cheap, flexible metal wire the families could acquire, sometimes patched or reinforced with twine. It has to be repaired every late summer due to heat stress, but it holds up well against hawks and Purgatory Sidewinders that try to get at the chickens.
The Argali Barn is about 24' by 48' in size, but not terribly tall. It houses around fifteen sheep when the ranchers have not taken them far afield to pasture, such as during the late winter. For most of the year, it is used for drying out the oats and hay which will get stacked up in the loft for the wet season. The Argali Barn is also where sheep are released after their annual shearing, so that they associate being inside the brick building with a chance to relax after a lot of fuss. Leftover bits of wool cling to the interior walls through most of the year.
The Wot is twice the size of the Argali Barn, with support pillars at the corners and in the center of each exterior wall made of stacked stone mortared together. Two of the pillars, on the southern side most likely to take the brunt of seasonal winds, had their component stones melded together by an itinerant wizard sixty years ago. The resulting rock columns did not turn out to be as sturdy as hoped, but do need fewer repairs than the other pillars.
Residences
Although three of the four homes are also made of brick, these two-story buildings have bright colors and reflective flecks built into their construction. Some of that is meant to soothe the soul, or at least to show individuality; some of it is to make a ranch hand's exhausted stumble in the dark more likely to put her in the correct bed.
Only the ranch house has actual glass windows in the traditional sense. For the cottages, recycled materials are used for smaller openings -- a cottage is for privacy, the ranch house for community. Old hooch bottles placed near the top of the extra-thick east and west walls, necks removed and butts exposed to either side with adobe mortar surrounding each pair of bottles, create windows to let in extra light without warming up the house too much in summer.
(Six years ago, Ruggiero Bicchieri asked about the missing bottle necks while he watched one of the windows being rebuilt. Ari Harrell smiled and showed a bamboo basket full of candle hurricanes, most already containing pillar candles, ready and waiting for inclement weather. Mr. Bicchieri still cannot decide if he is more frustrated at the reduction of cheap glass on the local trade, or impressed with the great craftwork he can pitch to customers in other regions.)
The cottages do have small wood-burning stoves for heat in the winter, situated in the bath chamber, with its chimney pipe passing up through the main bedroom on the second story. They were built with a smaller bedroom on the second story over the parlor -- in the Mullins home, this second bedroom has been converted into a storeroom.
Only the home of the Opiatmasin family has its own root cellar.
The residences do not have official names. Every ranch hand knows what a given speaker means when the phrase "Guess I'll git on home now" appears.
Ghost and Faith decorated their house in bright greens. When they had cause to rebuilt more than half of the house after the stampede a dozen years ago, they tossed dark green glass beads from recycled beer bottles into the bricks as they were forming, and they used more of the green bottles to build windows in the upper rooms. This effect proved so pleasing that the Raven demanded her daughter put an extra window in the bath chamber. The Raven refused to cook another thimble of soup until she had her "hygienic windah" ready for the morning ablutions.
Mystery and Justice Mullins are the residents with the aforesaid bonus storeroom. Their home has orange bits of glass and bead dangling from the eaves as tiny, high-pitched wind chimes. Mystery always did like sparkly bits in motion, and sunsets, and honey lollipops. Their cottage is the furthest west so Mystery and Justice can have an uninterrupted view on their rare evenings home.
Avery and Johnnie and Gillie took over the old Hawkins cottage when they joined up. They don't know where all that aqua sea glass came from. They ain't interested in parting with any of it, neither! Gillie thinks it wards off bad luck, ever since that time he fell out of the saddle and never so much as twisted his ankle. Every few months he takes a morning off from regular chores to polish up all the exposed bits of glass in the bricks.
The three brothers tried every arrangement they could think up to share the two bedrooms between them. What eventually worked was to convert the ground floor parlor into the bath chamber, dry out and refit the original bath chamber into a third bedroom, then draw straws to see who wound up in the one bedroom with no direct heat. (Johnnie cheated. He figures he can always go to bed in winter wearing an extra pair of socks. His brothers want to be warm all year round, that's fine by him -- he rather sleep cool in the wet season.)
Unlike the other three homes, the Opiatmasin place is stonework from top to bottom, carefully fitted together in the lee of a hill. It is a two-story small home, made in as many colors as its residents could find when stockpiling building materials. The bottle-based windows include clear glass ovals from the Geldar Republic in addition to the usual round-bottomed amber and green bottles of local hooch. It does not often get direct sunlight. Twice a year, Nishat tells Wong that she is going to invest in mirror-bright yard decorations to bounce natural light into the house. She never has done it yet; maybe next autumn will be the time she follows through.
The Larchblossom Ranch brand
looks like a bright purple cone
on the flank (for ungulates)
or leg (for fowl).
looks like a bright purple cone
on the flank (for ungulates)
or leg (for fowl).
Families:
- Ari 'Ghost' Harrell and Dane 'Faith' Harrell, Ghost's ma Lula the Raven
- Eula 'Mystery' and Justice Mullins
- Avery and Johnnie and Gillie Cross
- Nishat and Wong Opiatmasin, Wong's much younger cousin Dashi Opiatmasin
