New year, new things

Well, it's a new year so new things must be in store.

We are still trying to downsize the farmstead and find homes for our animals. It won't be much of a farmstead then, but it is what it is.

We are growing tomatoes and kale on the sun porch even now, when the outside temps are still in the single digits. Although this week has been amazing, warming up into the 40's F during the day. The tomato plants are starting to bloom.

In just a couple of weeks I will begin the first of my classes towards my Masters in Cultural Resource Management. I have to say I'm excited and a little scared. It has been a long time since I went to college and now, with these two little wild children and their online home school, time is at a premium. But, it shouldn't be any worse than going to college during the day and working all evening, which is what I used to do. How did I ever get anything done?

Richard is so excited about me going to school that he is looking into pursuing his own Masters. A sustainable MBA. That should be interesting. He is working on finding the right program. We shall see. With both of us working on our Masters in our spare time, life is going to get interesting at home. Will there be any time for farming?

I'd sure like to get a nice kitchen garden going this spring and grow enough to put away for the next winter. The past few years have been really tough because we have not had our store of home canned goods that we grew accustomed to. Financially we could have really used those extras.

We are thinking there will be no hemp on the farmstead either as the state raised the registration costs to the point we can no longer afford it. Plus there is the testing fees, if one is lucky enough to be chosen. Let's just count on that. Yeah, we think we will skip the hemp. Too bad too. I have a ton of seeds. Ha. I should just wander and throw them in the wind. Like Johnny Appleseed. That'd get the county and the state all up in arms. Maybe for real. Better not do that then. I don't want to get shot by the law enforcement, which seems to be a real risk these days, although less for me, not being a black male.

We are really considering moving Down East when we finish our new degrees. So, once again I have been browsing the real estate pages. looking at ancient old farmhouses back in the state from which I once originated. They say that they are more likely to accept you there if your family has been there since colonization. Well, my heritage has, but I have not, being raised in my mother's home state of Colorado. I even have rumored ties to the Native American tribes of the north east. If only I could track down my Native heritage. I wonder if they would accept a long lost relative, one without the typical Down East accent it takes a while for outsiders to understand? Maybe you can go home again. Or, maybe not.

I have been a nomad for so long now, where exactly is home?

We are looking at buying a school bus to convert while we get our degrees. Then at least we will have our own home, built by us. I wonder if we could accomplish at least that? Then no matter where we go, we will always be home.

So the land is still for sale. All of it. I am feeling restless, confused, not sure where to be. My heart is breaking with each animal I rehome, but I know it is for the best. I am anticipating good things with the many changes happening now. And while I so want to run south to where the birds overwinter, I also realize that it would probably be best for our future family to go back to the place where I began. If the climate is going to change so drastically in the next few years, we need to be in a more hospitable climate, where the water is plentiful. And who knows, maybe it will warm up enough there that I will be able to tolerate the winters.

Two years is still a long time, especially for us, and a lot can happen. We shall see what the Universe holds for us. And with new degrees, the job opportunities may lead us in entirely different directions than we would ever expect.

Letting go

Chloe left for her new home yesterday down near Belen, NM, a place I have always wanted to go. Today, I miss her little grunts and snorts as I do my chores outside. I hope she finds love and happiness in her new home. There are a couple of potbellied pigs there and some goats and chickens to keep her company. It certainly is warmer down that way, which I am sure she will appreciate.

Frosty the llama has a new home as well, but we will be keeping him here for a few months until his new owners get their alpacas, which he will stand guard over. I don't have to let him go just yet. It is emotionally draining to re-home the animals I love so much.

Things change quickly when you no longer have the income to take care of your homestead. Of course it is never supposed to be this way. The whole point is to become self-sufficient and have to rely less on outside income. As we continue to bounce around from rental to rental, it becomes more unmanageable to work on our land. As it does when you have to work so many hours to make a living. And there just isn't the money for permits and supplies to build. Not now.

I have tried to enlist others to join in our homestead, to create a community, but there isn't enough real interest, and I probably wouldn't really like living so close to other people anyway. Maybe they sense that.

As a result, we have decided to sell our land. We have both properties listed on Craigslist:

http://santafe.craigslist.org/reo/4717093877.html

http://pueblo.craigslist.org/reo/4717075198.html

I have decided to go back to college and pursue my Masters since there is a college in Alamosa that has an online program. I will be studying Cultural Resource Management and hope this degree will enable me to actively defend the historical sites as well as ideas and traditions of indigenous and historical peoples. I start in January.

We are considering another relocation, perhaps somewhere north, although I am still inclined to stay in this area, but a little closer to the mountains. In any case, we have a couple of years to decide as I work my way through Grad School.

There has to be hope. I continue to look for it in the dark corners of this crumbling society and my own crumbling dreams. There is no time to give in or give up.

Old woman in the desert

I thought she would be waiting for me somewhere, the old woman of the desert, the old woman in the soul cards. She was calling me back to the desert, bringing me home, but I haven’t found her yet in my search for the perfect place to be. Wouldn’t it be something if she was waiting somewhere, like the mother I have never known, standing with open arms to embrace me as she whispered “I have been waiting for you, welcome home.” Is it possible that this crone is a future me, leading me back to the place I need to be?

As I grow older, I begin to realize how futile it is to change anyone’s mind, and yet changing their minds is the only hope I have to creating a better world for my children. If we, as a society, do not bridge the gap to our higher selves, we are doomed. Humanity, along with thousands of other species will face extinction as the planet warms to an unlivable climate that no longer supports life as we know it.

I am a mother. I watch my youngest children grow and play, enjoying the sunshine and fresh air. How long before that is no longer possible? Will they see the end of human civilization in their lifetimes? Will I see it in mine? I am forty five and by several of the newest scientific predictions, the catastrophic end times may begin as soon as 2030. I may very well still be alive to witness a suffering of life that we can only imagine.

I am also a shamanic healer and I notice the shamans are witnessing a dark shadow falling upon the earth that no one can explain. Is this darkness a reflection of the human condition? In America, it would appear that people are sleepwalking, already the zombies they love to fear in the coming dark times. I fear my older children are already lost, victims of consumerism and a mainstream mindset that may cost them their lives.

We are a nation with blood on our hands. Our government has trained living beings to be brainwashed killers against people they do not know. It’s all in the name of what they like to call terrorism. And yet, the terror perpetrated upon this earth is mostly by an imperialist mindset, a holy manifest destiny that America hides behind its patriotism and consumerism. It is this way of thinking that is killing the earth and it is this stubborn close mindedness that will lead us all to an unhappy and miserable end.

No, I can’t seem to change their minds. I try. They argue. They call me names. They disown me. But the last thing they are willing to consider is how their own beliefs and behaviors are creating this sickening spiral, sucking everything into its path, creating a black hole, the likes of which we have never seen before. Perhaps it is this darkness that is reflecting back at us. Maybe it is this shadow of our own hatred, racism, greed and fear that hovers over our Mother Earth, threatening to engulf her in the filth of negativity.

I was recently accepted into Grad School. At my age, I am going back to further my degree so that I can spend the remainder of my life trying harder to convince them to change their minds. I am a mother. I have to try as hard as I can to make this world a safe and livable place for my children and for all children. As parents, we have betrayed our youth, taught them to compete in a dying world for things that do not matter, when instead we should be teaching them to love and nourish a planet that keeps them alive.

As a parent, I can only say I am sorry I did not begin this fight earlier. I should have been trying to change their minds a long time ago, instead of trying to fit into a culture I don’t belong to. I have wasted a lot of time, distracted by shiny things, but now that I have awakened, I can’t just turn it off and go back to the illusion and delusion that is the American way of life. It no longer exists. The empire is toppling and it will drag down every single person who is not paying attention.

The last grab of resources by greedy corporate hands is their last resort to try to fill their coffers to the brim. They have to get it while they can, not realizing nor caring that these resources they pull from the bowels of Mother Earth are her very life blood, and ours too, as her children. Nature sustains us and when we destroy the earth, we destroy ourselves and our home.

Is there any hope then, when the masses do not listen and do not care? They pretend to care, but they are more concerned with who is right and who is wrong, the color of skin, the lines of ownership. They are defined by their stuff and their loyalty to a country that would destroy the entire world population to retain its power and control over the very resources that are creating an inhabitable home for all of us. It just doesn’t make any sense.

I can’t change their minds. Or can I? A spiritual master once said that once we awakened, it was our obligation to awaken others around us and that if we had reached just one other person, we had done something meaningful. In that light, it is all I can do to keep talking, to keep shouting, to keep making noise in the hope that someone, anyone, will shake their head free of the cobwebs of conformity and look around at this mess before us. We have so much work to do and there is so little time.

I am a mother. But I am also a spiritual being placed in this body at this time to accomplish something. This is my something. My father always told me I had a big mouth, and that used to make me cry. Not now, not anymore. My voice is my gift and I will use it until I can no longer speak or write or create. I will be the voice of nature, of Mother Earth and the creatures who call her home. I will be the voice of a humanity, so caught up in its own ego, it can’t see it has cut off its nose to spite its face.

And the old woman in the desert? I will meet her one day, of this I am certain. I can only hope that when she asks, I can tell her I did my best, I fought the good fight, and I gave my everything to saving Mother Earth in the hope that humanity could continue on. That is my duty and my legacy. How does this story turn out? It’s hard to say. In thirty years we can look back and say, it was  a good thing we woke up in time, or too bad we missed our window of opportunity. Which will it be?

A Star is born

Patty finally dropped her cria sometime early this morning. I have my suspicions it might have been around 6am when the dogs started barking like crazy in their kennels in the sun room. Of course it was still dark and we couldn't see anything out there. When the light came, Richard saw an extra set of baby ears out there, so we ran out with towels to investigate. Sure enough, a little llama was already following mama llama around. We found the afterbirth frozen, so it must have been a little while since the actual birth.

New Baby, still covered in gunk.

Patty's little girl.

Star in the sunshine.

We pulled a lot of the dried gunk off of her...the dried up birth sack, but she was still wet and I was worried that the tips of her ears had been frost bitten. So Richard gave the girls some hay to distract them and we took the new baby inside to let her dry in the warm house.

Star in the sun room, inside the house.

The kids had a lot of fun hugging and petting the little cria. You can do that with girl babies (at least, that is my hope). Boy babies will go nuts when they get older if you cuddle them.

Star with a jacket on, getting ready to go back out to Mama.

She's pretty darn cute. 19 pounds. She's actually bigger than Leonardo was when he was born, but she sure seems tiny next to him now.

Leo has gotten so big in the month he's been around. And, he's kind of a brat, always trying to get out of the yard. Just yesterday he climbed through the electric wire, again, and was running around on the boys' side of the pasture. They didn't know quite what to make of the pint sized llama. I chased him back through and Richard put up more wire. He's is certainly testing his boundaries.

So, on this cold, fine Fall morning, we welcomed little Star to our farmstead. She is the second huarizo born here. Thankfully she has the thick fur of her Alpaca daddy, which will help keep her warm these cold nights and mornings.

She's okay. Her ears are fine. Richard washed them off and found it was just dried fluid on the tips, not frostbite. She was completely dry when we took her back out. We left the jacket on her to give her a little added insulation from the cold. Hopefully it will warm up fast this morning.

She's really cute and we are all in love with her already.

Neighbors

Leo and mama

We had a llama escape this week, when little Leonardo climbed through the electric fence and his mama followed him. After running around where he wasn't supposed to, mama llama herded him back through the fence, with Richard following close behind. It turned out the fence was not electrified due to a broken insulator. Richard fixed that and added another wire for good measure.

As he was fixing the fence, Richard met one of our neighbors, who turned out to be really nice. They got to talking and Richard asked him about the pigeons that hang out on one of his outbuildings. Not his, he said. Wild pigeons. He explained how he and his young daughter tried to raise chickens once. They came out one morning to find headless chickens all over the yard. Coyotes, or neighbor dogs, he didn't know which. My guess? Dogs. Coyotes don't leave the kill behind. Dogs kill for sport.

Yet another reason to fence your dogs and not let them run. Unfortunately our other neighbor believes his dogs should run free, regardless of their resulting behaviors on anyone else. It is the country, after all, he tried to explain to me. And a free range state too, he said happily. Are you from the city? He asked several times. Maybe that means I can read and actually know my rights, even if my family and our eight llamas just recently relocated from the suburbs(?). If only he was educated enough to know the actual laws. In Colorado, free range livestock never, never includes dogs. In most Colorado counties, dogs are required to be on a leash when not contained behind a fence. Certainly in this county, I know. Dog owners are entirely responsible for the trespass of their dogs and the damage done by them. And property owners are legally entitled to shoot said trespassing dogs, no questions asked.

Too bad I don't own a gun. Oh, no it isn't, or I'd be one of the "armed" and dangerous, ready to shoot an innocent dog because his owner is an idiot. I'd be more inclined to shoot the owner, but that is simply not allowed. Good thing I don't believe in gun ownership, or killing.

But, I do believe in my right to enjoy my home and land. And, even if we are renting (that moron tried to explain that as a landowner, he has rights...implying, what, I don't? Oh, wait, I do, and I'm a landowner too, in fact we own too much land right now, but he is the ass in assume.), we have as much right to the land use as the owners do. Therefore, dogs harassing me, my kids, and my livestock are a problem and I will involve the law (too bad it comes to that) if need be.

Maybe the country bumpkin neighbor finally looked up the regulations and instead of spouting more crap out of his butt, has realized the error of his stupidity, because the dogs have not been on our side of the fence since my yelling match with him when I caught his dog chasing back and forth along the llama fence, on our property.

Needless to say, the landlords of this wonderful rental sided with tenant rights, as they should, and are standing behind us in the event more idiocracy arises from this.

And, down the road a ways...neighbor Larry and his sweet wife were out when we headed over to the land to drop off boxes in our storage shed/tiny home. (Tiny homes are NOT allowed in this county.) They had been away, spending time with the grand kids. They were worried something had happened to us since we and all of our animals had vanished from our place. We were in turn concerned about them, and wondered if they had headed south for the winter. But no, everyone is fine, except the dog, who had one major, never-ending seizure and died. Up until then, he had not had a seizure at all -- the Magic C oil was working. It turned out he had a brain tumor, and the medicine was too little too late. Too bad. He was the only dog I didn't mind coming onto our property.

I miss being out there, in the quiet and solitude. I miss the coyotes and the big, open sky. I miss my labyrinth and not having to worry about what the neighbors are doing. I think ultimately, I do better without neighbors.

But I do love this warm house. The passive solar is still working well and we are at 70 F inside when the morning temp outside is 13 F. And with no additional heat...just the house itself.