Point of View

October 3, 2021

Howdy folks,

Not much to report on this week other than our slow progression towards colder nights and our rapidly growing kittens. They've seemed to double in size in the last week and are starting to wander a little farther and farther away from our casita. They've been going back and forth from the garden for a little while now, but have recently added the depot, hay barn and tractor shed to their territory. Once they even followed me and Erin over to the new house in the evening and had a great time romping around on the smooth, concrete floors. They've ambushed us twice now and stormed the house, finding a weak spot in the screen door to push their hard, little heads through so that they could come inside and see what we were doing. Even as it's been gradually growing a little colder, we typically have one, if not both, of our screen doors open and the kittens really seem to like being able to still see and hear what we're doing from the outside. Our boss wants us to have a colony of totally feral cats on the ranch, but we're taking the viewpoint, as former feed mill owners, that they need to be treated more like a hybrid like a millcat: somewhere between spoiled indoor cat and the totally wild feral cat. Already these kittens have killed lizards, birds, grasshoppers and baby rats, so I think that we're on the right track. After all, cats are little killing machines that do their jobs quite effectively and we feel that we can spoil them a little while letting them live freely to do their thing. Over time, as these cats have their own kittens, and those have their own, etc., I think that we will lose more and more control over them and we will still reach the same goal of having a feral cat colony to control all the critters out here. The first step in that process, though, will be to stop penning up the kittens at night in a few weeks and making sure that they can survive it.

It's really hard to believe that we've been out here for over nine months now. It's even harder to believe that as little as fifteen months ago we were still running a big feed mill back in Pennsylvania. We both grew up in family businesses, Erin choosing not to stay in her family's print shop and me choosing to stay in my family's feed mill, and have both been working since our early teenage years. While I stayed on a single path, Erin has been a coffee & tea seller, a substitute teacher, an eldercare worker, an office assistant, a waitress, a bartender and a caterer. It's very natural for her to now have jumped to something else entirely, but it is a new experience for me and so far I have found it to be very rewarding to switch gears so drastically and to look at life from an utterly different point of view. For us to be caretakers on a ranch out West is awesome, as is our possible futures that lie in front of us. First and foremost, continuing to do what we are now doing should take at least five to ten years to even begin to start getting old. And, on top of that, our boss is quite the entrepreneur herself and has expressed interest in everything from turning this ranch into a mustang rescue operation/b&b to starting a restaurant. We just tingle at the possibilities and dream of what lies ahead of us here. While we have always loved traveling to Portugal and have thus far wanted to end up there at some point in our lives, this place has really put a hook in our souls and just might not allow us to leave! Every drive into town turns into an exercise of trying to keep our chins from hitting the ground as our jaws gape open at the scenery around us and, while Erin goes to either Las Vegas or Santa Fe every week for supplies, I leave it much less often and am growing happier and happier at not being in town anymore. We lived in a cute, little town back in Pennsylvania, right along a pretty park along the river, but still right smack in the heart of the downtown. I lived in the house that we just left for 25 years, Erin for 15 of them, and it just tickles my fancy to be so out in the middle of nowhere!

Now, time for a new round of pictures showing our latest escapades on the ranch. First, a series of three shots of Erin's kitten crew helping her in the garden...literally their favorite thing to do. Then, a shot of the kittens following me up to the barn as I looked back at them and spied a rainbow over the mesa. Next, three shots of the dogs and horses checking each other right behind the new house...the horses all lined up in the pasture and put their heads down, sweeping together in one motion towards the dogs at the fence. It was very impressive to see their defensive maneuvering! Then, two shots from the roof of the new house as the horses one morning first came up to get a drink of water and then left to head towards the ridge and the feeders. Next, three shots of me working up on the roof on the same morning, patching holes and cleaning and vacuuming every cell in preparation for imminent rain and the spray foam insulation guys returning in another week. Then, a shot from the same vantage point of Barillas Peak to our north...this is the peak that my friend and I were trying to get to on an old road a week or so ago and are now going to hike back to here from. Next, a shot of one of the many military aircraft flyovers that we get every week...the Colorado Springs-Albuquerque route seems to be a very popular one! Then, a particularly striking shot of the late afternoon sky as I walked back along the garden from the barn to the house. And, finally, a bloody, orangey sun just beginning to raise its head up over the horizon this week...even doing the most ordinary and rudimentary things out here is quite often accompanied by the most spectacular of scenery!

Be well, everyone!