Holidays...or not.

So, it's that time of year again...that time I love to hate. And this year we aren't even pretending to celebrate any of the traditional consumerist holidays. They are all tainted with lies and consumerism. We decided not to participate, but to make our own traditions and celebrations instead.

This year when everyone was spending their Thanksgiving stuffing themselves, we decided to go out into the woods to search for sticks. I read about a Native American custom of making prayer/spirit sticks, which then would be planted in the ground on the Winter Solstice by the head of the family. We thought we would give it a try.

Into the woods.

While most of the nation was inside watching football and eating turkey, we spent the day hiking through the pristine, quiet woods (no hunters out) looking for our perfect sticks to transform into objects of power.

Looking for sticks.

The next day, which Americans celebrate as Black Friday, the biggest day of greed, we cooked our organic, free- range turkey, which we bought locally from a turkey farm down in the river valley. The turkey was delicious, and expensive, but a nice treat. We never did get around to raising turkeys this year. I also made the kids a homemade and handmade gift to show my gratitude for being their mom.

Car bridge over the Rio Grande...to the turkey farm. One car wide and a little scary.

Homemade dinosaurs from scrap material.

The prayer sticks turned out great. We worked on them December 20th, in celebration of the Winter Solstice--a big one this year. Residents in our town of Taos have been working toward raising money to install a pyramid on their land. There is a lot of talk about pyramids working with the energy during this Winter Solstice to bring in good things. Pyramids. Hmm...

So, we decided to build one. At first we were going to build one out on our land (with pallets) and then anchor our spirit sticks to the directional corners. But, it began snowing here around December 14, and hasn't really stopped, or at least the dirt roads haven't cleared, and it is so cold. We haven't been out to our place for a while. So, with time growing short and the Solstice fast approaching, Richard decided to build the pyramid out of conduit from his hoop house projects and put it in the house. The only place it would fit was in the kids' room. So, that's where it is, with the prayer sticks anchored to each corner. It looks cool. We meditated in the pyramid on the Solstice, and yesterday when I had a stomach upset, I sat in the pyramid for a half hour and felt energized and my stomach issue cleared up.

Pyramids are said to have healing properties. No, it doesn't seem to matter if it has solid sides or not, only that it is angled correctly, in direction and in how it is built. Richard spent a lot of time figuring out the dimensions and angles so it would be correctly energized. We added distilled water and crystals, plus the prayer sticks that have copper wire...all to pull the beneficial energy in.

Pyramid

Prayer /spirit sticks on the pyramid.

Duck and chickens in the snow.

Before the snow and the freezing temperatures came, we did manage to get some mudding done on our pallet shed out on our land. That was great fun. We hooked up the mixer to the generator, which made it go a little faster. I really enjoy the "flow" of putting the mud plaster on the walls.

Doesn't look like a pallet shed anymore.

We also decided to insulate the shed with a light straw and mud insulation, which we packed into the spaces in the pallet walls. This is still ongoing. We had to clear out a rat's nest and cover the floor with a few inches of gravel, which we also filled inside the first few inches of the pallet walls. We hope this will keep the critters out of our shed. We did get all of the outside walls plastered with the first layer of mud before the snow came. And it all dried. Lucky.

Light straw and mud insulation.

Richard has also been building chicken coops out of disassembled pallets and selling them on Craiglist to raise money for hay for our llama herd. The girls and boys are all doing great, but they sure do eat a lot (well, not as much as goats, or horses, or a cow).

Richard's pallet chicken coops.

Big bale of oat hay.

We have made several trips around the area to find hay. One to the San Luis Valley for alfalfa, one to Espanola for oat hay, and then another to Espanola for some wonderful grass hay. Richard has been building chicken coops like mad....until the snow came.

Llama smorgasbord.

The pallet feeder works great. It is between the girls and the boys on the fence line so they can all get to it. The little llamas reach up from underneath and the rest dig into the hay from above. So many of them are now spitting at each other, to try to scare off the competition. It doesn't work--the spitting, but it is funny to watch the llama antics at feeding time.. Everyone gets their share and everyone seems happy enough.

Yesterday we went to a Solstice ceremony at the New Buffalo Center, and to see the pyramid they brought up from central Mexico. It seems more like an art piece to me, but was still designed to capture the energies. We participated in another labyrinth ceremony, but this time my little girl was a little bothered by the crowd moving in for a group hug (of about 50 people) and the humming (Ohm...) so we snuck out and missed the talk around the pyramid. Too bad.

But, we have our very own pyramid at home in our warm and sunny Earthship. I love this house. I hardly even notice how cold the temperatures are outside. Except when we brought the chickens into the spare room for a night with temps around -11. That was a bad idea. The roosters started crowing at 3am. It was a night of little sleep and I found myself eagerly awaiting the rise of the sun so the flock could go back out to the coop. Now we put heat lights in the coop. The downside is the power drain. Being on solar, the lights suck up the power over night, and we usually lose power in the morning sometime, before the sun comes up. This morning we hooked the generator up to the house. This is only going to work while Richard is on vacation for the week. When he goes back to running his computer for eight hours, we won't have enough power for the lights.

How we took our on grid lifestyle for granted, with heat lamps and electric water de-icers for the livestock. Life is more interesting and more challenging now for sure. But, we love it and we are doing great figuring it all out. And, it's kind of fun.

Adding llamas to the farmstead

This week has been about llamas. Getting more llamas. Having them delivered. Setting up more fence, and thinking about what to do next.

We have been in the process of acquiring four female llamas. There were seven available, but I decided if we were going to have to buy feed, it should be for the younger ones who are at reproductive age. We settled on three young girls under a year and one mama to one of the crias who is seven months old.

Richard built a hay feeder out of pallets that will hold a bale of hay.

pallet hay feeder

And, while we waited for the girls to arrive, he put a new trailer hitch on the van that also showed up via UPS. We ordered the hitch online, and it came just in time for us to get a load of water before our cisterns run dry. We have not had any moisture in this desert land, ironically, while we watch the northeast United States recover from Hurricane Sandy and the over abundance of moisture they have received. I would not want that kind of flooding, nor that kind of damage to deal with. I am glad we chose to stay in the Rocky Mountains when we decided to move. I wish everyone the best of luck in recovering.

hitch on van

The new llama ladies arrived in a big fancy horse trailer. I could see it ambling across the dusty road, heading towards our place, and I yelled at Richard, "The llamas are coming!"  The kids and I could hardly contain our excitement. It is always so much fun to have new animals come to the farm.

Arrival of new llamas.

It was quite a challenge to get the llama girls out of the trailer and into their new yard. They had never been in a trailer, and weren't real fond of the harnesses, which unfortunately didn't fit real well. We only have large harnesses here on our little farm, and no access to a store with llama gear. But, we got the harnesses (adjusted as small as they would go) and leads on and proceeded to pull and push the frightened critters into their new yard, taking breaks now and them to let them (and us) adjust and relax for a minute.

Meet and greet.

The boys were very curious about the new ladies, and all came running to introduce themselves over the fence that now separates them. After the girls were released, they quickly found the hay bucket and got to eating. There wasn't too much nervous humming that went on, and overall, I think everyone handled the arrival pretty well. We've got our work cut out, with training these girls to lead and load into the trailer, not to mention just get used to human handling so we can brush them and trim their nails, and one day milk them.

Llama girls.

Paddie the cria.

So today, I find myself researching how to clean and card llama wool. This past week I also found a set of carders on Craigslist for really cheap, and a friend picked them up in Santa Fe on her monthly shopping trip to the "big" city. (Thank you Susan!)

Hand carders.

I am almost ready to get out the bags of stored wool I have been hauling around, and deal with it. And, I'm not so afraid of it, having watched countless videos on You tube on how to clean the wool and card it. So happy for the internet.

Bags of llama wool.

I am so looking forward to the day when we can be on our own land, with a barn for the animals and places to do all of the things we want to do.

Haven't had much interest from other parents about helping out with the cost of the "llama dairy." I guess we will proceed ahead by ourselves and hope at some point other people will want to join in. In any case, our kids will benefit from this little experiment, I hope. I am eager to get these girls bred and get on with it, but we can't really breed them until Spring, when the weather is warm enough to support baby llamas. The girls will be in gestation for one year, and all of them will be at a healthy breeding age come Spring. That also gives up time to find an intact male to breed them with.

One step at a time. One day at a time. It is taking shape.

Camel Dairy?

How the direction of our lives can change in such a short period of time. Life is truly amazing and unpredictable.

While we have not had much opportunity to get out and work on our land, due to our lack of funds, we have done a few things, like clear more sage for the other leg of the fencing on the west perimeter of the land, and Richard built and installed a door on the shed (out of disassembled pallets), and we had our first experimental try at making adobe bricks.

Richard fills the adobe brick form.

Adobe bricks.

Pallet shed door

Bus shopping center: General store and restaurant.

In other news, I have decided to start a church on our property, or more likely online, with some meetings and ceremonies at our place. This will utilize my minister ordination and allow us to connect with more folks in regard to creating a sustainable community and planet. I learned a new term this week, which aptly  describes my current position in life: Spiritual Activist. I seek to help awaken others in the hope that we can all spiritually evolve in an attempt to save the planet from the destruction that is running rampant with current policies and methodologies, especially in my own home country of the USA.

It is vitally important that we all set aside our differences and come together in order that we may evolve into a new humanity that supports the ideas of peace and equality for all and environmental responsibility. No, I don't support communism, just peace and love, and happiness or the pursuit of, for all people.

Life is full of lessons isn't it? And people who are bigger than me, in the sense that they are more open-minded and forgiving of different belief systems that go against everything they stand for. That is commendable and I am lucky to have made a new friend over the past few weeks who is just such a person. This woman came to my house to buy our extra roosters because we decided they were more than we wanted to take on in regard to processing. Richard's chicken processing classes have not been very popular, and in fact most of the classes we have offered have met with little interest in this community. Perhaps we need to rethink our audience.

It turns out this lovely soul is the mother of three beautiful little girls who all suffer in some form or another from allergies or ailments, including symptoms on the autism spectrum. My daughter was diagnosed with PDD- NOS last year and, although my son did not receive the diagnosis, his behavior mirrors his sisters so much, with a good bout of hyperactivity thrown in, that I have to wonder if his lack of diagnosis was correct. In any case, his allergies are beyond reasonable and he is also on the gluten, casein, soy free diet his sister is on. We also feed only organic, additive free, preservative free, nitrate free, dye free, non-processed foods. It is an expensive diet, but one that should be adopted by everyone concerned with their own good health, and a diet we hope will help to heal our children of the health issues that actually combine to cause the condition of autism.

So I met this wonderful mom who is on a crusade to heal her kids, as many parents of children with autism are, who asked me if I had ever heard of the benefits of camel's milk? Well, no, I had not. So she provided me with the beginning research that would lead me down an interesting path indeed. She had noticed my llamas, who are always eager to meet new people and stood hanging their curious faces over the gate.

Camel's milk is a fairly new to the world of autism, but researchers claim the benefits of drinking the milk have had profound positive effects on diminishing the symptoms of autism. Here is an article in Natural News that explains this amazing milk. Also their are claims that donkey's milk might just have similar positive effects. As I began doing my research, I was directed to a site that sells camel's milk, called Camel Milk USA, and a naturopathic doctor named Millie Hinkle, who has helped many people set up camel and/or donkey milk dairies. She in fact got a law passed that allows dairies to sell this milk in the US.  So, I called her.

Yes, she can help us find a dairy to buy the milk for our kids. The milk is incredibly expensive though, so I asked her about starting my own dairy. We have the land, and even some know how...with milking goats, but not camels. Camels are also incredibly expensive. As are Mammoth donkeys, which she recommended. But, we could start with regular donkeys and work our way up. On a whim, and because it has come up, I asked her about llamas. Well, llamas, being of the same family as camels, have milk that is just as beneficial, but milking a llama never produces enough milk to really make a dairy any profit. So what, I thought. Llamas are accessible and I know something about llamas, having three of my own. But, we never bred any of them and all three of our males are gelded. Too bad.

But then, 7 free female llamas show up on a Facebook site my new parent friend has recommended to me. Wow. Talk about miracles. Talk about life jumping in a new direction. Now, I am in the process of acquiring these seven llamas, and wondering how this whole thing can be pulled off. Especially when Richard reminds me how we barely came up with the money to buy hay for our own llamas. I spent the whole night tossing and turning and wondering if a had made a huge mistake. The woman who is giving up the llamas can't afford to feed them through the winter. Will I be in the same position?

I am currently trying to enlist the help of other parents to donate funds to help buy hay and build a shelter for these llama girls. We do not have the llamas yet, and maybe I could back out of it, or even take a few less. However, I feel this is the beginning of an opportunity that won't come again. If I get these llamas and get them bred, then in a year, we will have access to the milk that may help my kids heal inside. Everything is a gamble. There are no guarantees.

I feel that if I can pull this off, I can then graduate my dairy up to donkeys and perhaps even camels one day, A female camel, bred, costs about 15,000$. That's a lot of money we don't have. But we do have seven free llamas at hand with almost the same milk, although, admittedly, there is a lot less of it and we will have to learn how to milk these girls with a syringe. Doesn't that sound interesting? We also will have more llama wool, assuming I find someone to shear them, which we might be able to sell, or at the very least use for insulation in our house building endeavors.

We could try to take the llamas trekking, which might raise more money, but my life partner seems to have very little interest in this whole endeavor at this point. Shame. Maybe I could take them for llama walks to generate some money while he stays home with the kids. I just don't know. I do know this is an opportunity that probably won't present itself again. And, if it doesn't work out, we could re-home the girls in the long run, I suppose. But why not give it a go?

So, I'm running on blind faith now, hoping that within the next few days a solution will present itself in regard to financing this dairy endeavor. I don't have the llamas yet. Nor do I have fencing to contain them or a shelter for them to get out of the harsh, mountain, winter weather that is coming. Thankfully these critters are adapted for living in these conditions.

I have to believe this will all work out for the best. What else can I do? If I don't jump, will I always wonder at an opportunity missed? Don't things have a way of working out?

If you'd like to donate to this endeavor, please follow the link here: Green Desert Sanctuary
If you'd like to buy some art, which will go to support this endeavor anyway, please follow this link: Kerry Bennett and if you are interested in an original piece of artwork, please contact me through the artist website. I will give you a deal. I have seven (plus three) llamas to feed.

Let's get this camelid dairy going! And thank you Vivian for showing up in my life when you did and being such a noble and courageous person and dedicated parent! We can do this!! You have renewed my faith in people and lead me back to the belief that even in spite of our profound different beliefs, we still have so much in common, the very basic being we are simply people, trying to survive and take care of our families in the best ways we know how.

Life on the homestead. Life in Taos.

Haven't written for a while. Been feeling down with little money to invest in Our Place. It's hard to sit at home when we want to be out on our land building. We did pick up a bunch of metal barrels off of Freecycle, which Richard wants to turn into biochar and rocket stoves. We took the barrels out to the land, but didn't do much else. I meditated on the serenity as a Raven circled our work area.

Life in Taos goes on in the weird ways it normally does.

New business on the Mesa

There is a new bus out on the Mesa, called The General Store Bus. Wonderful. We did not stop in, but signs say they carry pet food, firewood and car parts. And pizza. Competition for the ice cream/coffee/burger bus?

This past week I went on an adventure of sorts, wildcrafting with a local herbalist.

Mullein--first year

On our day trip, I got to see the beautiful trees. Fall is here. I can no longer turn a blind eye to the snow that is coming.

Aspens in the Ski Valley

Today, while at home on the 'Stead, I followed Fluffy around. He's my giant Cochin Buff rooster. Reminds me a little of my tiny Cochin Napoleon from the Colorado homestead. I miss that fiesty little roo. (He died mysteriously one morning. Sad, sad day for me.) Here in NM this past week or so we lost one of the ducks to some mysterious illness. One day they are fine, the next day, stiff as a board, lying in the yard. No amount of research has yet yielded an adequate answer.

Fluffy Pants/Fancy Pants the Roo and Guadelupe the lonely duck.

While I play with my chickens, the always inquisitive llamas stick their noses into my business. Or, maybe they are just saying hi.

"Hey, whatcha doin'?"

And an ultralight airplane soars overhead as I watch the hot air balloons rising over the hills (Taos Gorge balloon rides). Interesting morning.

 Ultralight?

Also caught two snakes in the mudroom this past week. Bull snakes, but they do a fine impersonation of a rattlesnake. Caught on two different days. One huge one...about five feet long, and then a tiny baby about a foot long. An angry baby--hissing and striking at the glass of the jar we caught him in. He puffed his head up into a diamond shape, and he is so lucky he did not have a rattle nub on the end of his smooth tail.

Snake medicine.

I have decided to take an herbology course when the funds come in.

Sold a painting. An original no less. Not much money, but enough to buy 20 bales of hay for the llama boys. Stocking up for the winter. The next art sale goes for propane. Or maybe to register the trailers. Or the van. So many choices. Buy some art here!!

Just another amusing week in northern New Mexico.

The tarantulas are traveling...fall is here.

Tarantula crossing our driveway.

Interesting week . The tarantulas are out on their walk abouts. On the highway down to our land last week, I counted fourteen of the little guys crossing the road. Yesterday there were ten in the road and one in our driveway. Lucky for me this guy presented a photo op that could not be passed up, especially since last week, when I was trolling for tarantulas along the highway (after having seen 14), driving at about 15 mph, I didn't find a single one to stop and take a picture of. They are not as big as I expected. The ones we had in Fremont County, Colorado were larger and more varied in coloring. The female that lived next to our path to the barn was beautiful, and huge! And a little intimidating.

Also this week there have been beautiful birds...migrating maybe. Crazy colors. When I first saw these guys, I thought, wow, they look like the African Masked Weaver I made for my Safariarte piece. What would those birds be doing here?

Recycled wood, yard staple--African Masked Weaver

On further inspection, they are just opposite of the Masked Weaver, and I think they are really Yellow Headed Blackbirds.

Blackbirds with yellow heads and breasts.

Yellow Headed Blackbirds

Still, they are very pretty and took my breath away as they added color to the desert landscape.

It is fall in the desert. There is no denying it any longer. It frosts nearly every night now and there was snow on the mountains one evening after a rain. We tried to cover the plants, and saved them one night, only to be caught off guard the next night when the weather forecast did not call for a frost. We lost most everything. We planted too late here anyway, I think. There are still some peppers under a row cover that may survive a little longer, but overall our gardening experience has been less than we had hoped this year. We got onions, garlic, potatoes, some lettuce, radishes, and there are still carrots in the ground. The peas went to seed too fast, so we saved them for seed for next year. Richard still has hopes on getting a few fall crops in.

Surprisingly (or not really), when you spend so much time out in the desert, you begin to notice the subtle changes in color as the seasons change. The sage is blooming. The Chamisa is a bright yellow in some places and gone to seed to create a creamy yellow in other places. There is bright, white Winter Fat, Purple Astors, Brown -eyed Susans, other varieties of yellow flowers, plus the sage green of the sage not blooming, and other plants gone to seed. Most of this colorful loveliness is next to the roadsides where the plants get the most water from rain runoff. So as we head to our E-ship down our long and dusty dirt road, the eyes are drawn to the color along side the road. It is amazing and inspirational. The colors of the desert in bloom in the fall cannot be beat. I am in love with this place and I am in love with the palette presented to me daily as a go about my mundane chores. I will try to get a photo before the colors fade into winter.

We haven't gotten out to our land as much as we would like due to financial constraints. Gas is expensive and we still have bills to pay before we can buy more supplies. Richard did a canning class last weekend, which was a great success, and we are hoping to have another one at the end of the month. Also another chicken processing class is coming up this weekend. I hope more people sign up for the classes. You'd think with all of the instability in the economy, people would be more interested in learning the homestead basics.

We did finally get the gravel out of the trailer and into the cistern down at our place. Richard sloped it down to the drain. The next step is to cement the floor of the cistern and of course keep adding more bag courses.

Gravel in the cistern.

We also dug out the foundation trench for one of our "cabins" which in reality will end up being a small home...not tiny, but I like to call it that. It should come in around 600 sq feet with a 20 x 26 foot footprint. It also will have an upstairs.

Staking out the tiny house.

Tiny house foundation trench...done in about 7 hours. 

There is always something to do, it seems, and still nothing gets done a fast as we would like. I wish we could be out on the land so we could get more done. But we have to have a house to live in first. And so much still to do for the coming winter. Maybe we can get enough people into the classes to buy our hay for the llamas or refill our propane tank, since Richard's job is not paying much these days.

I'm still trying to work on my art, when I can. Have a new  website , connected to some print on demand thing. The cool thing is people can buy prints pretty inexpensively, and if they want an original, they can contact me directly. Check it out. Buy some art. Feed the homestead.