The Switch

April 30, 2023

Hello again,

We had a spring snow storm on Friday!  While it is not uncommon for the temperature to drop during any particular month to below the freezing mark, we had a system move through that actually made it snow all day.  First came the ledden skies and wind, then the flakes started falling!  Nothing made it to the ground, but with a high of 80F recently, it was something to work in all day long.  I was cleaning windows at work and doing various other outside tasks, so I got a respite from the heat and the sight of snow on nearly the last day of April.  The kitten is growing like a weed, going from 5 to 7.5 ounces by week's end!  I think for once we seem to have gotten to this one in time and she met us more than halfway with her will to live.  Erin's like a zombie, only ever sleeping for maybe up to five hours at a time.  She cancelled exercising with the boss temporarily and has just been trying to keep her head down and plow through this.  Now, that all sounds dramatic, but she loves every minute of it and while she's sitting there fussing with the kitten she's usually going through all of her seed packets for the garden.  She's assembled quite an array of seeds over the years and has continued to thin it down over time as some things get too old.  But, the weather has seemed to have turned in the right direction and everything is currently green and beautiful.  What has helped with all of the green is the rainy week that we had, in general, not to mention the snowstorm.  We saw a range of temperatures from 30-80F this week, with a fair amount of cloudy days.  Quite often it is indeed raining, but it never reaches the ground.  Not that you could ever get sick of all the sunshine, but some days are just much nicer when the clouds never lift.  My friend, Valentin, let me know that he wanted to hike the mesa again here in San Jose.  We've done it twice now, summiting in May 2021 and nearly missing last September.  Last time we followed a huge arroyo all the way to the top, but then went straight to the central point, underneath which we couldn't go much further as it all turned into vertical cliffs.  The first year we followed the arroyo all the way up, nearly to the top, but veered off to the left and had a much easier time of it, making it all the way up to 7800' man, man and dog.  This time Valentin has invited another friend along to accompany us and he will be bringing his dog, as well; I was asked to bring mine, but I don't think my knuckleheads are ready for rock scrambling 1600' above the valley floor!  Plus, two are almost 10 years old and Willow never stops running, so I could only imagine her along the cliff's edge...

We keep dreaming of property a little further down the river in Villanueva, about 15 miles from here.  We are in the ideal situation to do this finally.  Before moving out here, we had put money down on some land in Tres Piedras, about 30 miles west of Taos.  We weren't able to sell our house in Pennsylvania in time to be able to satisfy the contract, so we didn't get it and ended up finding this ranch in San Jose.  Erin happened to see a Craigslist ad the day that it appeared seeking live-in ranch caretakers and the rest is history!  In any event, the piece of land was 80 acres and had a metal barn on it along with some elk tags(never actually verified), but nothing else.  We were literally planning to live in our cars and tents until we either built something or could buy a yurt.  So, all of those potential scenes of suffering never came to pass, but now that we are safely settled on a 275 acre ranch in San Jose as caretakers(soon moving over to the much bigger old house from our little casita)we have found another 80 acre parcel that we're excited about.  This time it's one with a well already there, plus many other things already in place!  If we can pull this off(or something else like it nearby), then we would be able to go down on the weekend and piecemeal the whole moving out onto the land thing little by little, instead of showing up with a boatload of animals and all our stuff with no shelter in sight!  Something around here on a piece of land like that would afford us the opportunity to raise/grow/sell lumber, mountain stone, adobe bricks, pinyons, cholla fruit, chickens & all of their associated products and even puppies(I grew up in a family that raised bird dogs and we still have them to this day...I'd love to do that again!).  And it would dovetail perfectly with what Erin is doing now that she has started to make soap out of local, natural products.  She's thinking hard about renting a little cottage kitchen to make bread and preserves to sell, too!

OK, I have another batch of photographs for everyone to see.  First, a jazzed-up, artsy version of Daisy nursing with Erin.  Then, a similar take on the foreman's new, little truck camper.  Next, two shots of BRJ and Baby Boots sleeping out in the backhoe...they know all the good spots!  Then, a series of six different shots of Daisy, up close, showing how her eyes have been coming to life this week.  Next, the sun setting over the newly trimmed aspen trees that stand over the garden.  Then, a closeup of Freedom's mane, complete with new braid...the boss always said that an old, wandering Indian spirit braids their manes in the middle of the night, but I think that it's probably a neighbor that's really good with horses!  Next, an evening shot of the bigger group of horses at the bigger of the two feeders.  And, finally, three shots of the continuously-squalling snow that we got on Friday.

See you soon.