Life Goes On

May 29, 2022

Hello again,

Well, we had everything from 35 to 90 out here this week. The immediate threat of fire has lessened and we actually had some cooler nights and cloudy days. It is pushing towards Pecos and the canyon to the north of it has been evacuated, but the town itself is just on a 'ready' status, the least severe of the three fire evacuation levels. Down our way, to the south, it is no longer moving in our direction and it never made it any closer to us than just a little to the south of Barillas Peak. On Tuesday we had our best chance of rain in a while, as it was overcast with clouds looming all day, but we never ended up getting much more than a few dozen drops for less than five minutes. I had a big project that took me all week to get done and that was putting 210 bales of new hay away. The hay supplier came again from Las Vegas and dropped them all, 21 bales at a time, in two big piles just inside of the roofline of the barn. Then, over four nights, I laid down pallets and stacked them in the back corner six high. The first night was moving our last sixty bales of alfalfa forage out of the way and then three nights to move all the new hay into that same spot. We're awaiting a delivery of the forage, and will have to either get our brokedown backhoe running again or will have to cut the pallets open and remove the top layer or two of bales so that our little tractor can handle them. Not sure when that is arriving, but I will inevitably have to rearrange everything in the barn again to fit it all. The flooring insanity has died down at work, as we finally got both layers of OSB down everywhere that it was required, and after a couple weeks straight of doing that I'm now back to cleaning again. After doing the whole house head to toe, I then had to set up two levels of scaffolding so that I could clean up some unreachable windows that had plaster and paint splattered on them. Just as quickly as that was done, I had to tear it back down again and move on to the next project. We're still awaiting more flagstone to keep working on the patios, but as of yet have no idea when that will be coming. In the meantime, my friend, Valentin, is back to finishing the outdoor wall that he's been working on for a few months in between everything else and I'm doing odds and ends in and outside of the house. And the kittens have come full circle, back to Cat 5 on our front stoop again, after the hay delivery scared them out of the barn. It does seem, however, that Bootsie is moving them around throughout the day, back and forth, between our stoop and the barn and the two kitty tubes that we have stationed in between on the hillside. We're finally getting glimpses of them and they're finally not being as skittish as they were at first, so we're getting lots and lots of entertainment and the dogs are wearing themselves out watching them!

Erin spent Memorial Day weekend mostly in the garden and now has all of her rectangular raised beds fitted with irrigation lines and only has to do the big strawberry bed and the one extra-large bed that she just threw together next to it. She should be able to have that done tomorrow and then she can do a test run to see if and where there are any leaks. Then, it's on to planting! Like most things, after first being flummoxed by having to custom build drip lines, she quickly took to it and has been really making them look nice. She's had seeds growing inside here for a month or more and finally took them outside to her little, pup-tent greenhouse in the garden where she's letting them all acclimate. She even just came home today with a whole bunch of chile plants: jalapenyo; Anaheim; serrano; and a hot bell pepper. The longer we're here, the more immune that we're becoming to the heat of these chiles(that are in everything out here!) and just can't seem to get enough of them. They're turning up in Erin's smoothies, ice cream and fruit dishes, let alone more traditional uses in savory things and main courses. Now that she's been getting regularly from a food co-op in Las Vegas, her next big project is to start going to the local farmers' markets in there and also in Santa Fe. It has been nothing for her in the past to supplement her gardening with random, big purchases at the market that would lead to her cooking and canning all week long, doing huge batches of whatever it was that she happened to find! On top of that, she's been itching to get off of the ranch a little more and would love the chance to interact with some human beings once in a while, which markets would be ideal for. As for me, I'm happy to be around the animals and don't really care if we ever go to town. Now, it is great fun to go out to eat and to have someone hand you a whole, menu-full of choices to ponder, but other than that, I'm happy right where I'm at out here where the wind is blowing and not much more than that is happening.

Now, another batch of pictures to share with everyone. First up, two altered photos from this week showing Farmer Erin watering her seedlings and then her homemade sun tea on the back of the buggy. Next, two shots of the kittens out on the front stoop: first, through the window and screen as they played around Bootsie; then, the first time the dogs were able to get super close. Then, the actual shot of Erin watering her plants. After that, two shots of her handmade water line fixtures that she made out of baling wire and staples. Next, three shots of my progress throughout the week putting all the hay away, each time putting a bale on the buggy to spare me from having to move it any further than that. Then, five landscape shots that I took this week, including: the buggy reflected in the wind-buffeted horse trough; a shot of the horizon showing clouds, smoke, puffy white clouds and patches of blue sky; next, a water trough shot that captured a whole bunch of little balls of light over it; and, finally, two different shots of the fire flaring up to our north. And, lastly, I couldn't start my yellow car this week(because I never need to run it...I barely run the blue one each week), so I had to put the trickle charger on the battery and let it slowly build back up to normal over the course of a day. That's all for this time!

See you next week.