Fall

September 12, 2021

Hello again,

Summer keeps turning into fall out on the ranch with a dip into the 40Fs at night coming imminently. Almost every day we're seeing a tarantula out and about, seemingly walking in a very determined manner towards its innately-known target. There are tiny, little lizards everywhere as the young have finally hatched out. The kittens, especially the boy, Chaco, are having a great time catching them and eating them. I even encountered a baby rattler at the horse gate the one night as I was coming back in from feeding the horses. I didn't see it under the gate when I opened it and then saw it in the headlights as it rounded to face me and very aggressively held its ground. As soon as I turned back to get my camera in the buggy, though, it darted away into some nearby underbrush and disappeared. The fruits, or tunas, on the prickly pears have turned a deep red and are ready to pick. The same can be said for all of the rose hips on the roses that are planted around the house and casita. The kittens have really taken over the joint and Erin is the ringmaster, whistling and calling them back in at will to their hutch on our side porch. Their favorite thing is to follow her up to the garden and explore all the holes, nooks and crannies around there while she's working. We're still locking them up every night at dark as the coyote activity has been off the charts lately. We plan on continuing this pattern for the next month or two until they get a little bigger. We will still leave the dog crate set up there with the coyote-proof tube inside of it, but at some point we'll take the gate off of it and let them come and go 24/7. Don't worry, we have a rifle at the ready by each door in case the coyotes get brazen! And, I have now been dubbed 'Nacho' at the worksite. We have many regular and irregular workers at the site who are Mexican and I'm speaking Spanish each and every day, little by little learning true Mexican Spanish and seeing the differences that it has with the proper, European Spanish that I learned. As Spanish speakers have trouble pronouncing words that begin with an 'S' and then are followed by a consonant(like 'Scott'...think Espanya, instead of Spain), I was, after much consideration and deliberation given the name Nacho. This name, by the way, is short for Ignacio and the famous food that we eat every day was simply remembered by someone as Ignacio's, or Nacho's, corn chip treats...ah, life on the jobsite! I'm totally famous within at least a quarter mile of this place!

It's hard to believe it, but we've been here for 276 days now! Pennsylvania seems a fond and distant memory. It's hard to believe that at this time last year we were still trying to sell our house and figure out how exactly we were going to get ourselves to New Mexico. As the fall progressed we made two trips out here, landing our ranch job on the second one, and by Halloween were suddenly calling moving companies and trying to figure out how to get all of our stuff out here. In the eighteen months before we moved here we sold four different properties: a house; a cabin; an apartment building; and a feed mill. As you could imagine, we had accumulated a lot of stuff over the years, having all of those places, and it all ended up at our house, which was the last thing to sell. In the last few months we sorted through everything top to bottom and sold nearly half of it at a local antique/flea market and a few yard sales that we hosted. We then rented a huge storage unit that we were at first going to move as much of our stuff into as we could but then later decided to just pay to move it along with everything else out to here. Now, we still have two medium units that are full of all the things that we moved out here as we still slowly but surely get ourselves settled in. We're super cozy, but are just in a tiny, little casita, so we're also dragging our feet a bit in regards to our storage units since we'll be moving next-door into a much bigger house in less than a year. All in all, it's been an adventure start to finish, and it's very surreal to look back and see how much different our lives are now than they were a year ago. Well, we've not looked back once and are absolutely loving this new adventure that we're on and are totally enjoying the New Mexican lifestyle! Some days we literally have to pinch ourselves when we walk out the door and see that huge mesa looming over us...always amazing!

Now, another batch of photos for your viewing pleasure. First up, three different shots of a tarantula that I passed going up the hill to the hay barn the other day when I was...you can even see its eyes in the first one! Next, three shots of our dogs out working the field during one of their nightly runs right before dark. Then, a shot of Nanette totally holding up the works as she walked out into the path of the buggy the other day...to emphasize her point she kept very dramatically flicking her tail. Next, a shot of our house that I took for the chimney sweeps that we have scheduled to come and pay us a visit next week...just a peek into our cute, little place! Then, a shelf that I was asked to build right before the end of the day at work last week for our growing collection of battery chargers...nothing fancy, but nice and solid. Next, a shot of the sky as I looked away from the sunset the other night towards Starvation Peak. Next, a shot of the hay barn that I sent Kim showing her that we were ready to receive our next shipment of hay...100 bales of old-time, wire-baled bales from some really old local equipment down along the Pecos River! Then, a shot of what has been a big puddle for most of the summer and now is a huge, baked, cracked-open spot in the old driveway...we haven't had any rain now all of a sudden for a few weeks. Next, three shots of Rowe Mesa: first, basking in the late afternoon sun; then, two shots of the crescent moon setting over it while it was closely chased by a planet. Finally, a shot of a big batch of prickly pear tuna that are ready to pick!

Have a good one!