New Directions

Here's a link to the new website and blog Green Desert Sanctuary. This has been in the making for a while now, but without a suitable piece of property, we are having trouble getting it off the ground. Yes, we have ten acres outside of Taos, but there are restrictions, the road is horrid, and Taos County has some odd rules about certain livestock. Plus, there just isn't any water, which we need in order to run a working farm. Throw in the spiritual side of it and how I want to counsel people from a spiritual perspective, as well as do energy healing, and Green Desert Sanctuary was born.

Check out the new site, and if you feel compelled, make a donation to help us really get this thing off the ground!

Staying here...for now.

Yeah....we're not going anywhere. There are no financing options and we don't have a boat load of cash at this time, so here we stay, on the border of Colorado and New Mexico. It's not all bad. It is one of the prettiest places I've ever been, there are wild horses nearby and lots of art opportunities.

I did make it into the Arte de Descartes XIII again this year. The show is at the Stables Gallery in Taos and runs through September 7, 2013.

We have decided to move things in  a new direction and so I may not be blogging here too much anymore. But, I'll leave it up for all of you pallet fence folks out there.

I am creating an artist website, which you can find here: http://kerryabennettart.blogspot.com/

And another website to encompass the new direction we will be taking with the farm, which I will share as I get something posted there.

So, for now, we will continue to farm our little piece of the southwest, pray for rain and hope the winter isn't too cold here.

Rethinking it all.

It's hard to be excited about farming or much of anything really when the negative news of the world finally sinks in. The Southwest is in a severe drought with no possible end in sight. Fires and more fires. Is this the new normal?

We are having a lot of trouble finding local hay at an affordable price. Believe it or not, all of the farmers around here grow alfalfa, but they won't sell it local, and instead, they truck it south to the dairy farms in southern New Mexico where they get high dollar for it. These are the same dairy farms that are selling off cattle because of the lack of water? These are the same dairy farms contributing to the problem because dairy cows are simply not sustainable in a desert environment.

So, yeah, I have been depressed. We rented this little farmstead with great anticipation about the water rights. We hoped we could grow our own hay and have an enormous garden with produce to can up for the winter. No water. We did get a little more than expected because the man who runs the ditches and gets most of the water for his cattle and alfalfa operation decided to give us a little extra. His reservoir was flooding you see. So we flooded some of the fields, and got some weeds going, but we have never had enough water to seed and flood the big 17 acre piece, which is what we were hoping for.

So, we have been reconsidering everything. If the Southwest has no future and will dry up within 50 years, how can we expect to have a sustainable homestead here? As a result of second guessing, we have been researching alternative places to go.

Maine? I was born there, some of my family is there, and there is plenty of water. And cheap properties. But, it is a long, long way away.

Pueblo, Colorado, which is back over the mountains to the northeast of where we are now. It is a small city and we are familiar with it. There are health food stores, a nice library system (Taos library has decided to charge a $10 yearly fee to anyone living out of town limits, so we opted to give our cards back.), a zoo and parks for the kids, doctors and dentists, access to a holistic vet and alternative medicine, a growing art scene, a hospital, and 2 1/2 inches more of rain per year than where we are now. Plus, big bonus, Pueblo does not sit over the shale deposit that takes up so much of Colorado, so there will be no fracking there. But, living in the city exposes us to flouridated and polluted water, polluted air, noise, crime and the potential for craziness if the economy gets worse (like it isn't going to get worse?).

We have been looking for a small farm property outside of Pueblo city limits, thinking we could take the critters and continue on, like we always do. But that may just not be possible. Financing is a big hurdle with our abandoned house in the frack zone a couple of years back. They foreclosed on it and so our credit plummeted even more from the low point it already was. The only solution is to rent or to find an owner carry property, which is do-able, but not very easy to find. As a result, all of my time has been eaten up with trying to find that perfect property, but not knowing if we are keeping all of our farm animals or if I should be trying to find homes for them.

Everything is up in the air again and our future is uncertain at this point, except immediately, where in reality, we have no money to do much of anything.

Here are some photos of the day we got water from the irrigation ditch.

Preparing the ditch. The tarp diverts the water to the field.

Water in the ditch.

Here comes the water.

Not so bad on a hot day.

Llama shearing 2013

This past Monday we got our llamas sheared by two wonderful men from Albuquerque. $40/50 a head (depending on how hard they were to catch). Teeth and nails extra.

After we (mainly Richard) had caught and penned them, and tied them all up, the men hobbled the llamas and pulled them down to the ground.

Llamas in a line.

Turbo being led to shearing spot.

Patty hobbled and pulled down.

 

This is a great way to shear, and I've decided it far outdoes the chute method (the llama is held still in a llama chute, but legs are still free). This tie down method leaves little room for error. The animal is completely immobilized, which cuts down on chances of accidental cuts. This is the typical method used to shear alpacas. As you can see, it works great for llamas too.

Frosty getting sheared.

And they all got their nails done. Vader got his done by the shearers, but the rest were done by Richard. Only Frosty had to have his fighting teeth cut back, otherwise all teeth on all llamas looked good.

Vader gets a pedicure.

Vader getting sheared.

And when it was all said and done, two hours later, the llamas sure looked funny, but much cooler and I hope much happier. They didn't get too mad with the whole event. Only Frosty and Turbo filled their mouths with green, nasty, regurgitated goo. Fortunately they never had the opportunity to spit at anyone.

Overall the shearing was a huge success. I will never do it any other way. Turbo and Vader had years of gunk on their legs and necks from never being fully sheared. Now they are naked. We have a field full of naked llamas. I'd recommend these shearers to anyone (in the northern NM, southern CO area)!

Turbo, our guardian, doesn't look so formidable now, does he?

I have three large garbage bags (triple bagged) full of fiber. All of it is very dirty. The wind was so intense on shearing day, the guys did not blow out the fur with the blower, so the wool is full of hay and in some cases sticks (llamas love to roll on the ground, giving themselves dust baths). I'd like to sell it raw, if I could. The moths are so bad here, in the house and in the garage, I'm afraid the wool will get ruined if it hangs around too long. The wool I've been dragging around finally had to be thrown away. After two months of sitting in the garage here, it was infested with moths and larvae.

So, I've got raw, fresh off the animals, 100% llama wool for sale at $1 per oz. I think I have 30 pounds total from this shearing. I do have it divided by animal. We have brown mixed with silver, brown/black with some red undertones, brown and white mix, black, and brown...or some variety depending on the animal. Llama wool is hypoallergenic and extremely warm.  Let me know if you'd like some. Shipping is extra.

We are moving again.

We are packing up our stuff and getting ready to move again and leave this wonderful Earthship in our past. The owner of the Earthship is coming over from Australia and wants to live in his house for a while. Like 6 - 8 months. So, we had to find another place to go with our little farmstead.

We thought about moving out to our land, and what that would entail...some sort of power, water, shelter, fencing for the critters and so on. A lot of work in a short time. We'd have to find an RV to live in and figure out how to make a workable office with power and internet for R's work-at-home, computer based job. Lot's to do and a lot of money to do it, for it to be workable.

Meanwhile, we kept our eyes open for rentals, and one lucky day we found it! A farmhouse with 25 acres and irrigation, a barn/garage, and a pond. Perfect. And affordable. It's across the border, back in Colorado and about an hour from Taos, although from where we are now, it takes us two hours to get there.

Farmhouse

We are excited and have already moved a few things up there and began fencing off a pasture for the llamas. There is enormous potential for a huge garden and we may be able to put in hay on 17 acres, which will keep our animals fed for the whole year. And, there are trees...big old Elm trees, which will provide lots of shade around the house.

Pond...Guadalupe the duck will be thrilled.

The house is small, with no bedrooms to speak of (there is a sun room and a living room that could be used for sleeping), but still bigger than an RV. And it has power and a well. I sooooo look forward to a long soak in the bath tub. And the kids can retire their bath tub/water trough for the real thing. It's a small house, but I think we will be spending a lot of time outside anyway. We can make it work, at least for a while. The kids are small enough still to share a room, and the era of the big house is out and the small/tiny house is in. This house is badly designed, but still a workable 900 sq feet, which is about the size of the house we are going to build on our land. Another experiment in living and learning.

Ute Moutain....defunct volcano....or is it?

The house sits on the Colorado/New Mexico border. Stick your hand over the fence and you are back in New Mexico. It's at the base of Ute Mountain, which worries me a bit, if that old volcano becomes active again. I'm sure it'll be fine.

This week has been crazy with packing and moving and we even managed to fit in a day trip over La Veta Pass to Walsenburg to pick up a stock trailer to haul the llamas in. It was a great deal and the trailer is nice enough. The trip over there, not so much, as we encountered a storm at the top of the pass that had me turned around, facing the kids in the back so I would not have to see our descent on totally iced roads. I hate  that mountain. That was the pass I hit ice on on our last move, and flipped the trailer. Horrid. But, by the time we had picked up the stock trailer, the storm had blown out, and the ice and snow had all melted. Our return trip was wonderful.

Happy Ass Stock trailer

We headed over to ALamosa to check it out on our way back home. There is a Big R there, which is handy, and the City Market has a few organics. We didn't get a chance to check out the Co-op store (it wasn't open) but I'm hoping they have even more organics and maybe even some of the specialty foods we buy for the kids' special GFDF, soy free diet. If not, Taos is still an hour from the farmhouse, and we know we can find everything we need there. Plus we can keep our egg customers and take eggs to town on our shopping trips.

There is so much to do still to get ourselves transitioned into the new place. We have to move all of the animals and take down the barns and chicken coop, remove our raised bed planters (R wants to keep the dirt) and move more household items, which is a lot easier with a 16 foot stock trailer. This time we will not be renting a big truck. But, that means more trips and more gas. Sure hope that income tax return comes in soon.

So tired of moving and moving. At least the packing and moving the "stuff." The adventure of a new place is always welcome. We just need less stuff.

The snakes above the door have been up to young snake antics. I swear these little ones learned from that adventurous Verdi, the little, wild green snake that wanted to do crazy things in the children's picture book of the same name. We have had to pick them up off the floor and put them back in their little crack several times now. No fear, these wee ones. Wish they were big enough to start taking care of the mouse problem. I like them, as much as one is able to like baby bull snakes. I am the snake handler, but I won't miss the snakes in the house one bit. I wonder if there will be any up at the farmhouse?

Baby Bull snake saying hello.

Now, back to packing....