Good luck little Chuck!

I gave away my baby rooster today, to a nice woman who I think will appreciate the bond between a gal and her roo. One of Charlie's sons (looks just like his dad) has gone on to rule his own roost and take care of his own harem of laying hens. Good luck little Chuck!

And, it turns out the other chick I hatched from an egg is also a rooster...Chuck's brother, a Barred Rock,  Black Star Cross. Kind of funny looking, but he's coming into some pretty tail feathers now and some have a hint of green. Interesting boy. Not crowing yet. A late bloomer? I think I will call him Gideon, from a dream I had some weeks ago of a baby with the same name. Didn't understand the relevance of the name in the dream, but it seems fitting for my lonely little orphaned rooster who is just nineteen weeks old.

I have been so caught up in the Occupy revolution, I have not been writing or doing much of anything really.

Took the kids to the city for their autism screenings. Turns out my son is fine, perfectly normal...well, his role  model, his older sister, has taught him a thing or two, which might be questionable, but otherwise, it's all good.

My little girl, however, is another story. That's how the doctor told us. Another story. Diagnosed PDD-NOS, which in autism lingo means not full blown autistic, but on the spectrum. Pervasive Developmental Disorder - Non Specified. She has many autistic traits, but she also speaks and can communicate, even if it is a little off. So there we have it. They'd like my daughter to undergo therapy once a week. Speech, occupational, behavioral...learn how to be social, in a normal way. What does that mean? I'm not even social in a normal way. Although, I have to admit it has been an issue for me in my own life. Maybe my daughter can learn how to talk to people and stand to be in the same room with more than say five individuals. If not, hey, I will understand.

Still got New Mexico on the mind. In a bad, bad way. Or good. I search through Craigslist daily, trying to find a place we could rent with all of our critters. But I also have been trying to find homes for some of them. Anyone want a nice, male, neutered indoor cat? It turns out my son may be allergic to all of the animals anyway. His next blood test will tell us.

The oil drilling in our neighborhood continues. There are now three within a mile of our house. Fracking? Yep. Heard it from several people now. But "there's nothing to worry about,"and "it's not that bad," and "maybe the town will use the revenue to fix the roads," or "a little fracking is not as bad as a lot of fracking." Right?

Wait...what?

"Oil fracking is not as bad as gas fracking." and "give it some time and they will go away."

How long? Long enough to grow a tumor out of the side of my head? Or maybe when our water smells like fuel? Or maybe when the ground starts to shake and our house actually falls into one of the old abandoned coal mine shafts 300 feet underneath of us? How long? Maybe when they put a drill in the empty lot next to us? There's one in the next town over...sits smack in the middle of four houses. I'd say those lucky families are less than 300 feet away from that nightmare. Evaporation pits. Sure, they are using chemicals. "Not that bad"...how do we know if they won't tell us what chemicals?

Abandon ship! Abandon ship!

I think it's time to move on now to a community that doesn't favor profit over human health.

Not in my back yard, damn it!

And since NM still calls to my spirit, I think it's time to listen and find another place. They have autism therapists down in Santa Fe. I checked. Even a DAN! (Defeat Autism Now!) doctor. And the home school laws in NM are a bit more lax than in Colorado. Plus, you can collect and harvest rainwater. It's not against the law. Imagine that! And, as everyone knows, the Land of Enchantment is home to the most interesting people one could ever hope to meet. As one of my old lovers once told me...I'd fit right in. And as my family and friends always ask...who'd want to live in New Mexico? Exactly! Too many people here know me now.

I'm going to die in New Mexico, I promise. It'd be nice if I could do a little living in the land Georgia O'Keeffe came to love. The land recorded by Ansel Adams and written about by Tony Hillerman. It is an artist's paradise...a land where the muse runs free with wild and crazy abandon, dancing with the wind under skies ablaze with glorious, smoldering  sunsets. 

It is home. Even if I don't live there yet. I will get back to the land where my spirit sings in harmony with the energy vibrations of the mesas and mountains and the beautiful sage. I'm coming New Mexico, I'm coming!

Brooding and hatching

Haven't been keeping up with the old farm blog as I should, but my heart just hasn't been in it. So much going on with Richard applying to grad school in NM and our septic leachfield needing to be replaced, and the truck needing $3000 worth of work, and of course with Richard's back injury he hasn't been working as much, not to mention the pay cut of $500 a month his company imposed last month, so now I'm having anxiety attacks in addition to the joys of regular life. Welcome to America!!! It seems we have, or are about to, join the ranks of most of America these days with bills we cannot pay, medical care we cannot afford--all while we stand here, scratching our heads wondering where it all fell apart.

But life does go on, and we continue to labor away on our little farm, although I'm not sure we can continue to water our gardens with the water bill so high. Where is the rain?

2 homemade baby chicks

A few weeks ago I decided to try to hatch some chicks under one of our broody hens, so I saved four, marked them with a penciled red star to keep them separated from the rest, and let the old girl have them. Well, not even quite 21 days later I find a chick under broody hen, and another egg cracking. How exciting is that? I hoped, but didn't really think it would work. Turns out we only got the two chicks out of the four eggs...I waited another twenty four hours before I threw the dud eggs away. But the two tiny ones are cute as can be, and they are now living in the good old Rubbermaid "brooder" in Richard's office.

4 month old Honey

And my sweet Honey girl is growing like crazy. Took her to the vet to get spade (the responsible choice for pet owners) last week and at four months, she's weighing in at 48 pounds! Of course with everything going on, I'm wondering which of our animals we can afford to keep for the long haul. I'm thinking of selling the llamas and the guineas...or at least trying to find them good homes.

This little experiment in sustainability didn't turn out very well, did it? Two years in and we are losing the battle. Never even made it to producing enough food to can for the winter. I have to wonder what the Universe has in store for us next, because this is getting downright ridiculous with all of our failed attempts at the good life in this place or that. What gives?

Siding and a window on goat barn

Richard is feeling good enough to get some farm work in and we spent a few days putting the siding we bought a year or more ago off of Craigslist on the goat (or llama) barn. It looks good. Doesn't match the color of our house, and it'll be even better when we put up the beige pieces. It was supposed to be for a garden shed that hasn't been built yet, but as we think of moving and renting or selling our house here, we have to finish some of the projects. We even used two of the old windows we've been collecting for a greenhouse in the llama barn siding project.

Dark red siding on goat barn

We are trying to refinance the house in the hopes we can come up with the $3500 to put in a new leach field. We'd like to give the truck back to the bank, but would be $7000 in the hole, so we have been thinking of trying to trade it in on an economical commuter car. Last year when we tried to trade in the truck, they laughed us out of the dealerships. Not sure we can afford another car payment anyway. If anyone wants to buy a 2004 Ford 250, crew cab, 4x4 for 21K, let me know right away!

Tire retaining wall in front of house

Also have been working on my little project of berming up the driveway with tires. Essentially, I'm building a retaining wall out of the millions of tires we have collected over the two years (to build an Earthship style greenhouse, which the town won't let us build). And, except for running out of dirt, it's coming along nicely. When it is finished and stacked three tires high, I'll paint it and plant something in the tires. Or someone will, maybe, if we are not here.
Perhaps we should demolish the Earthbag barn to get dirt for the retaining wall, since it seems unlikely we will come up with enough revenue to have someone finish that project. Or, when they come to dig a new leach field, I can use all that dirt for my tire wall.

So now we are in a holding pattern, just waiting, like good old broody hen. Will Richard get accepted into Highland University? Will our refinance go through so we can fix the septic? Can we find another place to live in NM that allows us to bring the farm? I have even been looking at travel trailers, wondering if we bought one with some of the house money, could we find a piece of land to park it on in NM?

The kids have their first evaluation tomorrow at some place here in town that can do mental evaluations to see if they think the kids need further evaluations. Whatever. We've got appointments a month out and I'm not even sure we will still be here. I guess with how hard these appointments are to get, we better drive up for them. Grad school starts August 21. Yeah, cutting it close. Nothing like being prepared, is there? Who'd of thought going to Taos for a party would throw our lives into such chaos. But then, that's the power of Taos, isn't it, and I was hoping for something meaningful from our trip to the Land of Enchantment.

As soon as we got back, I started reading the Georgia O'Keeffe biographies that have been sitting in my bookshelf. I thought if I can't paint, then I can read about someone who did. Of course, that pulled me deeper into the fantasies of New Mexico, and the urge to paint was too overwhelming to resist. After several days of trying to think on how exactly I could paint (where and what medium), I came up with the kitchen table and watercolors.

Watercolors at the kitchen table

I never learned how to paint with watercolors. I read a book once that I checked out from the library and could never find again. But, I've got nothing to lose except empty paper and tubes of paint that are drying up. I took it to heart when I read that O'Keeffe painted the same scene over and over until she felt she had achieved what she was looking for, and since my view is limited to the one out my kitchen door, I've been painting the Wet Mountains behind the llama barn every night after I get the kids to bed. I'm not happy with anything yet, but I sure am having fun with it. It makes me long for the oils, but I know that's too toxic for the kids (fumes) and oils are harder to drop and run when something comes up. So, for now, it's just me and my watercolors...learning how they work and what I can do with them.

I'm loving my evenings of painting, and I started adding a morning painting too. This morning I even dared to take my watercolor pencils and paper into the living room to look out another window at Pikes peak and the mesas in the foreground. Wonderful!

And because readers want to know, Richard has been going to physical therapy here in town and finally found someone who does the "McKenzie method." It has been doing wonders for him. The first thing that has really worked since he began this back pain journey last April. We keep going to doctors, and keep paying our $50 copays for nothing. No one can do anything. The drugs don't relieve the pain. And, we are running out of copay money. I hope we can continue with the physical therapist for as long as it takes, but if not, we can find the books that Robin McKenzie wrote about this method to relieve back and neck pain. If you have back issues, check it out. Cheaper than surgery and better for you too.

So, that's an update on life at the farm. Hopefully we can relocate the farm to NM and continue on our path of sustainability. Richard wants to study scientific, sustainable, farming practices in grad school and be a farmer who uses his brain instead of his brawn. That's a good plan, considering all of the doctors did tell him he has the back of a fifty year old man and no one sees how it'll get better. Although, I suspect if he stays out of the typical doctor's office his back will get better on its own time. Yoga, yoga, yoga. Flexibility will keep you healthy and vivacious. (I should get back onto my exercise program.)

Now, on to painting and a new biography...Paul Cezanne! Color, color, color...it is everything.

Crazy, hazy days of summer

Wild days of summer, with so much to do, so many plans and smoke from the surrounding fires in the air, it's definitely harder than you  might think to just stop and breathe. The west is on fire it seems, and no matter where we go, the smoke is there to great us.

Susan's Skybus

We spent the weekend of the fourth in Taos, incredibly enough, visiting our fellow Earthbagger Susan for her "Bus warming." The place is great. An old school bus in the sage, out on the Mesa, in the foreground of Two Peaks. It was an adventure, as most trips to NM usually are, and we met several interesting people at the party, some I'd like to get to know better in the future maybe. It was hot out there under the New Mexican sun without any shade, but not as hot as our little homestead in Southern Colorado, which I nicknamed upon arrival here two years ago, "The Surface of the Sun."

Two Peaks

The sagebrush soothed my soul and standing out there in the midst of it, staring at the Taos Mountain, I felt very much at peace, although I did have to silently ask said mountain why she decided I could not live there? I never got an answer, but as Richard, the kids and I spent a morning driving around town, remembering it all, I realized it was no longer a place I wanted to live, that it felt commercialized, somehow, but more importantly, it held too many lost dreams and tainted memories of things that went bad.

Little boy in sage

Still, I was so glad we went and even the two almost sleepless nights in strange places were worth the few moments of bliss I experienced standing in that good old beloved New Mexican sagebrush. Even the smoke couldn't dampen my feelings of euphoria, nor could my son, running off into the sage so I had to sprint my fat self after him for about two hundred yards. Overall, the kids had a delightful time, playing with their little friend, Susan's young daughter, and for the most part, the tantrums and strange OCD behaviors stopped. New Mexico is good medicine.

Our makeshift camper

Strangely enough, or maybe not, the morning after we got back home, the tantrums and spacey behavior started up in earnest, full blown, and Richard and I began to wonder if it is this place that is causing it? The house, the town, the geographical region? Do the surrounding prisons create a vortex of negative energy like the vortex of positive energy that exists in such places as Taos, Manitou, and Crestone? Something to think on.

Several of our new acquaintances spent time talking to Richard about life, the future and spiritual paths, and perhaps it made some impact upon him, because after we got home, he decided he was interested in returning to college to pursue his Masters, and he began researching Universities...in NM.

The trip was wonderful and I long to return to the Land of Enchantment, where my spirit belongs.

 

Back here at the farm, everything stays the same, for the most part. Before our trip we took the llama boys up the mountain to the Stage Stop Llama Ranch to get them sheared, and Vader looks foolish now, parading around as a giant poodle.

So, new plans are in the works which may involve relocating the farm to some quaint little burg in the NM landscape. Hope it works out, but at the same time, there is so much unfinished here, and so much to do just to get ourselves prepared for such a jump into the glorious unknown. I will simply allow the Universe to do as it will, riding the waves of change as they come, and who knows, maybe next summer I will be back in the New Mexican sage, on a more permanent basis.