NM Winter

February 22, 2021

Howdy everybody,

Well, we've had a crazy week this week. We started with sub-zero temperatures and a foot of snow and ended with temperatures in the 20s and a foot of snow. And, as of today, there is not much of any traces left. Our first storm(the infamous one that then plowed into Texas) hit Saturday night/Sunday, but we then got snow every day through Thursday...just a few inches each day until Wednesday night when the forecast 1-2" ended up being almost another foot. I was going to measure, but it's really not worth it out here. Even Monday morning, at around 10F and sunny as I was doing birdfeeders, you could just see the sun sizzling the snow. Til you think about going out to stick a yardstick into it, it's already melted a few inches. And, on days when we only get a few inches, it's not uncommon to start seeing patches of ground in the afternoon. But, this is the best way for the ground to get water out here. The slow melting of the snow allows for this hard ground to be able to actually soak it up instead of it running off into the next county after a rainstorm. For me, this amounted to cleaning off the solar panels after each snowfall, shoveling around the houses and having to trudge through it out in the pasture(AM icy snow/PM muddy mess)...I didn't have any trouble sleeping this week!

As far as sleep is concerned, we did have a sleepless night on Thursday night once all the snow was over. Our fire alarm kept going off and the wood stove just seemed to be smoldering at best and not being able to keep much of a temperature. The wind had really picked up and we were getting crazy downdrafts. I'd get it going again with the door to it a little cracked, to draw air, but each time once I got it going and shut it back up, it seemed to plug up again. So, we let it go out around 3am and figured that we'd be warm enough until morning when we could figure out what to do about it. Obviously, we figured that the chimney needed cleaned out, but after calling Kim's longtime chimney sweep, we learned that it was probably more of a baffle issue inside of the stove. Sure enough, after downloading the manual(Dutchwest 2460), we saw that we just needed to take the top of the stove off and all that was right underneath, and just like a smutty, old Mercedes, it just needed the filters cleaned out. So, long story short, we cleaned out the chimney, took the lid off the stove and cleaned out both the baffle and the catalytic combustor(apparently, we have a fancy one...kind of like a turbo for your stove!) and that was that: clean as a whistle and burning like crazy now. The manual also showed us how to use the two air intakes most effectively, as well as the damper, and now we're literally incinerating the wood and leaving very little ash!

Our other big project right now is figuring out recycling out here. It is not at all like the East and there are not many alternatives available. We've decided to crush our aluminum cans and take both those and our bimetal to scrappers in Las Vegas. This will repurpose all of this material and stick a few hundred bucks a year in our pocket. Plastic is not recycled hardly at all unless you are in one of the two big population centers and, still, I believe that it's single-stream, which means that half or more of it ends up in the dump. Already, we've switched to bar shampoo and Erin is starting to make a bunch of her own liquids that she needs in the bathroom and kitchen herself so that we don't need this steady stream of plastic containers that we can't do anything with once we're done with them. For instance, we've also switched to frozen orange juice, as that only leaves a paper wrapper and two metal ends for the small price of it not being 'Not from Concentrate.' I think that we can find a home for cardboard and fiberboard...Erin even thinks that we should hang on to our hundreds of moving boxes to resell them(apparently this is a hot commodity, so why not?). Glass is another problem. No one really takes it, and if they do, it's to line the garbage dumps with, so it's used, but not reused, if you know what I mean. The kid at the natural food store told us that some people smash up all the glass, heat it and then sell it in blocks to glassblowers. We looked this up, and while possible, it would take heating it to over 1000F and then finding a home for it. Still, a creative solution to a constant problem. Maybe we've arrived out here in time to make a difference on this front. Las Vegas seems poised to be entering a renaissance in the food, art and building preservation fronts, so this would dovetail quite well with the similarly-minded people behind all these other goings-on(see the great article that I attached about Las Vegas).

https://savingplaces.org/stories/historic-las-vegas-new-mexico-stands-strong-through-the-pandemic#.YDL6XPllDIV

Which leads us to our next venture. We have been wanting to start a website to document our move out West and have finally made it official. We now own www.newmexicoranchlife.com and are in the process of getting it up and running. Erin and I both have done website programming before and are excited to get this up and off the ground. We're going to basically take the emails that I've been doing and flesh them out into a whole website: daily adventures; local cuisine; processing game; gardening; creative works by us(music, art, etc.); and a milllion other things. The response to our emails has been very encouraging and we both feel that we have a lot to legitimately offer the world, while also allowing us to come up with a way to pay our bills while never having to leave the ranch. We've found the perfect person who owns the perfect ranch in the perfect part of the most beautiful state in the country and we want to share that with the world. And, if self-absorbed teenagers can become huge social media influencers, landing lucrative deals, then why not us? I think that Erin and I could really make this thing a smash hit. Who knows, this could turn into the next great, Western magazine, like Cowboys and Indians!

And, finally, if any of you noticed that the Earth's magnetic poles had just shifted, or that you heard a constant humming in your ears and couldn't figure it out, I want to make an announcement: I have finally switched from a flip phone to a smart phone. Yes, you read that right. I did not seek this out, but once presented with one decided that there was no reason to fight it any longer. Also, as it came from my boss, I decided that it was not wise to fight city hall. Kim, out of the kindest of her heart, gave me her old iPhone when she updated hers and I sincerely thank her for that. Quite frankly, I was expecting her and Erin to gang up on me at some point, maybe this summer, and try to pull this off...but this just came out of nowhere two days ago. I'm already seeing the immense quality of the camera on it and have nearly maxed out my memory once I discovered iTunes! Also, more to the point, I guess that I always used to conflate social media with the latest technologies that supported it. I don't understand social media, and think that it has a great ability to cause chaos and much worse, but have finally realized that one of these new phones is so much more than that. Luckily for me, as my camera just died, I can use it to keep taking pictures of this amazing new landscape that we now find ourselves in.

And, speaking of pictures, here are the latest. The first is of our outside cats' feeding station and general hang-out spot. There were four outside cats when we got here and we now belong to them: Hiyupo(Lakota for 'follow me' - she's the fearless one); the Big R(originally Big Boy Roy, but shortened to our new favorite store); Bootsie(...ask Erin on this one?); Sheeba(pronounced 'Cheeba' - an inside joke once one hears the local way of saying Shirley, Sean or sheep). This is immediately outside our side window where the bar is and we have become television for each other, with us always looking out at them and them looking in at us: Hiyupo is on the table with Sheeba peaking around the base. The next four shots are some hot flip phone shots from when I'm out feeding the horses: first Freedom coming in for a close-up, with Rosie keeping an eye; then the crew waiting for me as I'm ambling out in the tractor; next, a few weeks ago, I used the wheelbarrow a few times when the Kubota went in to the shop...that only lasted a day or two as the feeders are .33 miles from the barn; and finally half of the crew digging in Thursday morning as we all awoke to another foot of snow. Next, a landscape shot from a few weeks ago that Erin took that really came out super-detailed and textured. And, next an ad from Quarter Horse Journal in 1982 that my sister and I were in...proof that I've been cowboying for almost 40 years now! Next, my new pair of Rocky boots. My current pair of Rockys are in their twentieth year and are only just starting to get leaky and worn...I put the new ones to the test this week! Then, a shot of a raven swooping over to keep an eye on things...we have tons of ravens here. The next six are recent snow scenes: heading back from the morning feeding on Thursday; getting back to the house just after that, where Erin was shoveling; a shot from the same morning of Kim's patio entrance; sunset a week or two ago, I can't remember the date...the sky will suddenly pop and just start glowing at times; finally, two shots from in the tractor this week, one heading out, one heading back. Lastly, a shot of our handiwork cleaning the woodstove.

Be good, everyone.