Autumn West

October 17, 2021

Hello everyone,

I'm finally getting around to another missive, after procrastinating for more than a few days. The slow but steady loss of daylight in the afternoon has been messing with me. I work 7:30-3:30 every day and, after being able to crash for an hour or two after work in the summer, suddenly I'm finding that if I want to get anything done before dark that I don't have too much time to waste. The weather has been incredibly unpredictable and erratic, with the winds returning in force and temperatures some days reaching the 70Fs and others only up into the upper 50Fs. Nights aren't much different and are clocking in at anywhere between 30-45F right now. Erin has finally cleaned up everything out of the garden, including one final haul that included 20 pumpkins and over 60 watermelons. After eating tons and tons of dried cucumbers and all kinds of beans back in the summer, now she is cooking down all of her tomatoes into passata and prepping everything else in about every way that can be imagined. We haven't had a garden since 2018, so this year has been quite a treat for us. We used to have a huge garden behind our apartment building, right in town back in PA, and had ten 4' x 8' raised beds and enough room for eight 25' rows of sweet corn. The very first thing that we did to start on our path westwards was to sell our apartment building, and since it sold after just one day on the market back in May 2019, there was never a chance for a garden that year. We lived right next-door but had a tremendously shaded backyard, so last year was the second year in a row that we went without a garden. This year we were out here in plenty of time, but with most of our stuff in disarray in storage and a whole new setup to learn, we didn't figure on this year being a very productive one. However, Erin worked her magic and, with the help of lots and lots of horse manure, we ended up producing so much this year that we are literally running out of canning jars and the space to even store them!

As for some of Erin's creations in the kitchen lately, she has taken her knack for breadmaking and expanded it to now include soft pretzels. The same dough that she keeps going in the refrigerator can now be used for a whole multitude of things: bread; biscuits; pizza dough; bagels; soft pretzels; focaccia; tortillas; bialys; and English muffins. We're gearing up for the first pumpkin pie of the year and have had to figure out a way to sort through all of the watermelons: some are volunteer plants that sprang up on their own in the garden from hybrids and have no fruit inside, just membrane and seeds; others are normal ones that were planted this year with actual heirloom seeds and are quite delicious. We finally have gotten our compost bins built so that we can still put the watermelon duds to use as fodder for organic matter and food for all of our worms. Erin keeps making tamales over and over and has been enjoying experimenting with different ways to put the masa and meat together in the corn husks. Then, after many meals in the Southwestern style that we've now assumed, she'll do a 180 and start churning out some good, ol' chicken pot pie, pierogies and halusky! We still have fun dreaming about what her food truck would be like...an amazing and eclectic combination of French, Portuguese, Mexican and Pennsylvania Dutch cooking, but one thing's for sure, as pretzels are about as hard to find in this state as hens' teeth, that will probably be at the top of the menu.

Now for another batch of pictures. First up, a shot of Willow and Cheyenne that I played with a little on the computer to make a new image. Then, two shots of our older, outside cats(Big R & Bootsie) hanging out at their little outside hub as the full moon rose, sitting right outside our side window. Next up, three shots of the girls all out for a run(with Ela)...more and more Rui will join us for about the first five or ten minutes but then circles back through the garden to munch on a bunch of tall grass and then to start barking at the front door so that he can have Mama all to himself! Then, the last big haul of the year with all of the watermelons and pumpkins. Next, three shots from the jobsite: first, an interior room that was literally glowing as I walked by one afternoon; then, looking at the house through what will soon be the man door in the horse fence; and lastly, a tree well that I installed last week behind the house...or, technically, I installed the dirt all the way around the drip line of the tree, which I left alone. Then, two shots of our chaise lounge that I shared with a friend this week(comparing it to where it was in our yard at this time last year!): first, the lounge itself; then, secondly, the otherworldly view that you can see from it. Next, two shots from the rugged northern section of the property, showing the mesa as it spreads out from here to the west and then also the high mountains that separate where we are from Santa Fe and the valley of the Rio Grande. Finally, two shots of the new oilfield pipeline fencing that was installed in part of the pasture this summer: first, a view of it running right along the back of the new house; then, a view from the house side of the fence, looking east towards Starvation Peak.

That's it for this week. Be good.