Summer to Fall, A Quick Transition

Our first frost came just when it was supposed to, between September 25-30, so I guess fall is really here. Monsoon rains are over, pine needles are dropping, the yellow zucchini plants look droopy, the maple tree is shedding its leaves and bees and butterflies are having last call drinks from the yellow chamisa blossoms. But days still feel like summer. A friend who was harvesting onions yesterday remarked on how searing the sun felt.

We have crazy apples this year, so apple juice, canned apple pie filling, dried apples, and who knows what else will be preserved.  This is one of three different trees, so I look at them with love and also with dread. It's lot of work to put up all these apples, but worth it when I don't have to buy something at the store.

Red Delicious Apple Tree

Last week we had friends over for dinner: chuck roast, potatoes, country style green beans and a cucumber and tomato salad. I realized later that the only thing we'd bought from the store were potatoes. That's a good feeling.

This stuff was grown inside our Growing Dome

Although the grama grass grew well this past summer, look at that dry dirt! Let's hope for snow.

 This isn't about fall, but just an update on the new pup, Liza Jane. She's a crazy nut, enjoys fetching, and likes to be out and about exploring the ranch, digging holes, and thinking about what it might be like to herd four legged ruminants. Here she is contemplating the neighboring yak herd.

I am still amazed at the changing seasons and don't think I will ever tire of it.

Nickel and Dime Ranch-Five Years!

Five years ago this week we left our 30 year home in California.

Moving tip: Ulta and Barnes and Noble have great boxes

We said, "Goodbye" to family

I didn't realize they'd both be gone within the year.

..and friends

Goodbye, but not forgotten

We thought March would be a good time to move since it was almost springtime.

Rest area just south of Santa Fe

And spring did arrive....in June.

Ranch Headquarters

Ms. Pearl and Bonnie have adjusted to their new place.

Tom's become an expert woodsman. And Ms. P.

We like our neighbors.

Guadalupita Grassfed Yaks

I've learned to grow veggies at 7400 feet.

Everyone around here says, "This is God's Country."

Yes, it is.

Here's to many more years in Northern New Mexico.

Time to Comb the Yaks

When you get an email asking if you might want to herd some yaks, it would be crazy to turn it down, don't you think?

So the other day 20 people, both local and from Santa Fe, decided that yes, yak herding sounded just fine, especially when it's such a pretty day.

Yak herding is easy with 20 herders: One person sits in the bed of a pickup truck and holds out some hay. The lead yak decides that hay is a good idea and follows the truck and the rest of the herd follows, because that's what yaks do. Theoretically.

Our job was to make a line behind the yaks and follow along just in case they decided the hay was a trick and wanted to hightail it out of there. With 20 herders spread out behind the yaks, it was easy peasy and before you knew it, all 14 bovines were in the pen awaiting their shots, ear tags for the newbies, and combing.

The guys picked up each baby for a shot and an ear tag.

 The squeeze chute was there for the adult yaks.

Once inside the chute, they got their shots and a good combing.

Yak fiber is very soft, like cashmere, and is sold for about 18 dollars an ounce.

After each yak was released from the squeeze chute, they looked back as if to say, "What the heck happened?"

When the yaks finished their medical and beauty treatments, we had a picnic under some old cottonwood trees.

Yeah, the life of a New Mexico yak herder is pretty tough.

Photos courtesy of Christa and David. Thanks!

No Yak Puns-Just Some Cute New Babies

I could get all crazy with yak puns, but this week I haven't felt like being funny. There were some happy events, though, here in the valley.

Meet our new neighbors, yak babies born about a week and a half ago.

I call them the sumo babies of the cattle world. Husky, sturdy little guys, aren't they?

I want to just run my hands through that fur!

But I don't think the mommas would like that. Check out those horns!

So what are yaks? The are cattle relatives,  originally from the Himalayas, which makes the winters in Northern New Mexico a piece of cake for these guys. Last year when it was 30 below zero? No worries for the yaks.

Their meat is juicy and a little sweet, like beef but with less fat. Their fiber, which is combed from their coats a couple times a year, is highly prized by knitters and weavers.

Yaks are easier on the environment, too. They eat less than cattle and I suppose that means they poop and fart less, too, so fewer greenhouse gases.  Their feet are small so they don't mess up creek beds as badly as cattle can and they drink less water, as well.

They are, for the most part, pretty docile except for one yak in the herd named P.I.T.A. who has used her horns to throw two different men out of the corral when she was going to be combed.

So that's all from this neck of the forest. Hope all are having an excellent Sunday. I am on my way to a local seed swap and to the local nursery which opened this weekend. Maybe there will be some interesting stuff to plant.

Leave It To The Beavers

We are lucky to have a creek running right through the ranch. Sometimes it's dry, but usually we have water flowing, one of the few sounds out here in the boonies. Cross our fingers that we get some snow so the water keeps on chooglin'.

Beavers like the creek, too, and on the property next to us they have been busy. The first dam I saw, created from rock, was so tidy I thought humans had done it. And they have soldiered on, making a sizable pool. Those wires you see crossing the water are our fenceline.

Looking toward our neighbors' property, this is where most of the pond is spreading. That's a yak in the background and an adobe building behind the yak.

Beavers used to be considered pests, but they have become popular lately with ranchers and environmentalists because their dams cause water in the streams to soak into the surrounding grounds, in some cases causing the water table to rise. In arid climates like ours, that's a good thing.

This dam isn't stopping the water, so our "herd" of beef cattle, all two of them now, have plenty of creek water to drink.

Ms. Pearl likes the beaver pond, too. She calls it her swimming pool.

Sometimes she gives us her impression of a beaver.

We are happy to have the beavers move in. The water level in the creek has been low and fishing here has been almost nonexistent.

With deeper water, maybe trout will stay a little longer, if they don't mind sharing a pond with beavers, cattle, yaks, and dogs.

Yak Is The New Black

Well, that's what someone in this newspaper article about yaks in Northern New Mexico said. Raising yaks is the cool thing to do. We live next door to a herd of yaks and our cattle like to visit them. Let's go for a walk on a frigid morning to say hi to the yaks, too.

Let's walk across the footbridge to the Enchanted Forest. Our property line is just past the pines in the forest and the yaks like to gather at the fence for a convo most mornings. First, Ms. Pearl wants to freak me out and walk on the ice.

I like the yaks because they look almost prehistoric, like cattle probably looked a zillion years ago. They are native to the Himalayas, so raising yaks here makes sense: we are at 7200 feet with cold winters and summers not too hot, usually in the 70's or 80's.

What do you do with yaks? Well, you can eat them and you can comb them. The eating part is self explanatory, but the combing? Some of a yak's fur is soft and fluffy, comparable to cashmere. People don't shear the yaks, though, but instead comb the fibers in the springtime when they are shedding. They don't shed a lot of down, about a pound each per year, but yak fiber sells for around $16 an ounce, so it's worth it to collect the fur.

Here's a mama and her baby. Yak horns make me nervous, but in this herd there is only one meanie. He has thrown two different guys, hooking their clothing and flinging them up and over a corral fence. Bystanders estimate the smaller man flew five feet vertically and six feet horizontally. Maybe there should be yak Olympics with "man tossing" as an event.

Most of the yaks are nervous around people, but this guy came over to the fence for a chat. He has mocos in the corner of his eyes. I wanted to reach over and help him clean them, but we just met and I didn't think it would be the right thing to do to a relative stranger.

And then there's my favorite, Lily, who was hand raised and added to the herd last year after living in a neighbor's front yard all her life. She's friendly and loves to have her head scratched. You might remember her from our yak round up photos.

I think she misses her people, so when Lily comes up to the fence, we have a long talk and a good old head rub right between the horns. No one will ever eat Lily. She has immunity.

We've thought about having yaks on our ranch. They are simple to take care of as long as they don't wander off, have less impact on the land and waterways than cattle because they are smaller and have dainty hooves, and are extremely cold hardy.

Hope you enjoyed our walk. It looks cold, doesn't it? But that's an okay price to pay for mild summers. I do not miss 100 degree heat!

Happy Place: El Coyote, Mora County, New Mexico

A couple months ago we went looking for a neighbor's wayward yaks and I tagged along to take photos and to be there in case they needed an extra yak herder. The story is here if you haven't read it. This photo was taken from a neighboring ranch while we were looking for the wandering mountain bovines.

So if you're feeling stressed, thinking about upcoming holidays, or just generally feeling frazzled, here's a present for you. Feel free to use it as your personal desktop if you want to go to this happy place often.  Sit on the rock and take some time off.

Breathing helps, too. Breathe in on a count of 4. Hold it for a count of 5. Breathe out on a count of 6. Let it all out. There. You feel better now, don't you?

Yak Roundup

Our closest neighbor to the north, David, has a herd of yaks, interesting, shaggy creatures with scary, curvy, pointy horns. Their soft cashmere-like yarn is $27 a skein and their meat is about $30 a pound. They are valuable creatures.

David's yaks went AWOL a month and a half ago.  His place is like ours, with a steep cliff to the east, and that's how those Tibetan bovines traveled, straight up. It took a month to find them, but he and Ernest (everyone's helper around here) rounded them up with difficulty and they were back at David's ranch. Bonus: 2 new yak babies were born while the herd was on the run. They were home for 5 days and disappeared again.

Some wood cutters on a nearby ranch spotted the yaks here and there and gave David a call. With their black humpy stature, the yaks looked kind of like bears when they were in the pines, making the wood cutters a little jumpy. David asked us if we wanted to help find the escapees, so this is where the photo essay starts.

We started at the ranch where the yaks were spotted, about 1500 acres of beautiful meadows, steep canyons, pine forests, and lakes. Benjamin, the ranch manager and a beekeeping friend of mine, let us in and the guys morphed into bloodhounds.

They were tracking for yak poop and hoofprints. Sometimes they worked as a crew and other times they separated. We walked down canyons and up canyons, through pine forests and amazingly, cactus patches interspersed with ferns. What a place!

The guys saw yak sign, but no yaks. Small yak hoofprints were all over the place, but that was about it, so we got into the truck and took a drive around more of the ranch, but no luck.

Mole (pronounced MOLE-ay) is David's Labrador retriever who came along to help. The weather was drizzly, so wet Mole ran alongside the truck, happy to be outside and hunting.

No luck with finding the yaks at this place, so we said goodbye and thanks to Benjamin and piled into David's truck for a ride to the other side of the mountains to the east, near the community of Ojo Feliz (Happy Eye?) That's where the yaks were found the last time, so it was worth a try.

The guys broke out the binoculars and took turns glassing the hillsides to see if they could see, to see if they could see... Since the ranch was 20 square miles, that was a lot of looking.

Tom, David and Ernest

Way off in the distance first Tom and then Ernest spotted the yaks almost to the base of those far trees on the hillside.

Without binoculars they looked like little black and white dots.

So David got on the phone to call Jimmy, the ranch manager, to ask if he would let us in the locked gate to round up the yaks.




 Small world department: Jimmy's mother taught my Corona, California teacher friend, Shela. Shela grew up in Cimarron, NM.

Jimmy offered to help, so we drove as far as we could go and the guys got out.  I drove David's truck down to a corral we had passed on the way up.

I moseyed around and poked into some abandoned, mouse dropping strewn ranch houses, but not for long. The radio crackled and I heard Ernest say, "Bridget, close that gate so they don't get out!" I already had closed the gate, so there, Ernest.

And sure enough, the yaks were getting close, fast, the guys running behind them.  I parked the truck to partially block off any escape from the corral gate. Tom had the camera, and in between running to keep up with the yaks, he took some photos. Click on the photos for a closer look.

This one is of the herd, with Lily, a hand raised, domesticated yak, bringing up the rear.

Here are Ernest and Lily:

Jimmy used his truck to help move the yaks down to the corral.

I positioned myself to the side of the gate so the yaks would go in. I held my arms out and moved back and forth like a basketball guard so the yaks would rethink coming my way. David, Tom and Ernest took up strategic posts to move the yaks toward the corral. Lots of running was involved.

You can't see him, but there was one new yak baby, a white one with black spots. I think he was between the two on the right.

 

Lily stepped outside the corral for a minute and then wanted back inside.

 So all went well and the yaks were trailered back home again. For how long, we don't know. I suspect they like having their babies up in the pines where they feel safe from predators. Who knows? They're yaks!  If it happens again, the yakboys are on it!