Retiring to the Frontier Part 3 and a Fond Adios

Liza Jane

I wanted to finish this three part post by talking about Northern New Mexico culture, but I've realized that there are multiple cultures here and many of us have picked up ways of living from all of them.

It's an appreciation of heritage, of having a connection to this place for hundreds of years. Our friend Ernest Martinez' family goes back to the 1800's. We live on a ranch that was once owned by his grandparents.

Ernesto Martinez

It's a reverence for spirituality, be it organized Catholic religion or a celebration of just being part of This Earth.

Santa Rita Catholic Church, Lucero, NM

Good Friday Pilgrims

It's a sense of community, whether it's making a quilt together, voting, or celebrating Summer Solstice.

It's doing it yourself, self reliance, and an appreciation for the animals that sustain you.

Tom staking the bridge after a flood

Bridget doing something rare: Feeding the stock

It's growing your own food, but also relying on a little help from our friends, trading this for that, sharing seedlings, and seeds, and know-how.

It's about water: What sustains our animals, our crops, and us.

And it's about querencia: The way we are connected to a particular place and its landscape. It's home. And when you're away from it, you want to be there. And this is now our home.

I hope you've enjoyed following our lives for the past 10 years, watching us adjust to a new community, a different landscape, and a new way of life. 

But we are not disappearing. If you'd like to follow us on Instagram, look for @bridgetNM510 where we will still be posting about life here at The Nickel and Dime Ranch as well as any quilting shenanigans I might be getting into. Love, and cheers, and thanks for reading, 

Bridget and Tom

Quilty Pleasures-Russell by Carolyn Friedlander

Well, this blog has been asleep since December, but really, I haven't been sleeping. I've been busy starting quilts and finishing too few of them. But my plan is to finish one quilt a month, and I'm ahead of schedule since Russell is finished.

I started it in 2018, so finishing in 2019 isn't too bad, for this ADHD quilter!

Russell is throw sized (there are other size options with the pattern), 40" by 47" or thereabouts. The fabrics are from my stash and my local quilt store, ThreadBear. Quilting was also done there, by Michael Siewert, my local go-to long armed quilter.

Thanks to TJB for being the quilt holder.

Backing is also from ThreadBear,  an early Art Gallery print in total harmony with the quilt's colors.

I asked Michael to quilt with two layers of batting because I want to display this quilt above the door to our bedroom, which, as you can see, is way up high.

Here's a close up of the quilting, an all-over panto.

This was a challenging quilt to make, and many thanks to Ann Siewert at ThreadBear, who made the quilt first and was able to explain the nuances and pitfalls as I paper pieced it.

I'm thinking of re-launching the blog, but still in the thinking stages. Let me know what you think.

Retiring to the Frontier Part 2

While researching a place to retire, Tom made a matrix of options we deemed necessary for living: crime statistics, education, average income, ethnicity, population, whether the population was growing or not, weather, and whether there was a hospital anywhere near. There were other considerations, but those were ours and not listed on the matrix.

Did it matter in the long run? Well, kind of. Let me give you the low down on what we looked at and whether it actually mattered.

Crime: It was important, at first. When we looked at the crime rates for our county, it was higher than New Mexico's which, in turn, is higher than the United States' averages. It looked like a hotbed of criminality! But when we took into account how small in population our county was, it wasn't that big a deal.  In 2016 our county had 4, 550 residents, and the violent crime consisted of five aggravated assaults and fifty burglaries, larceny and car thefts, no murders or rapes. We could live with that. Folks with vacation cabins sometimes experience break-ins unless they hire a local guy to keep an eye on their places and an old guy in an area about 30 miles away had some bad felllows break into his house and rob him a couple of years ago. Our own place was a vacation home and before we bought it, the home and garage were broken into twice. The burglars were caught and most of the stolen goods were recovered. That said, we are not complacent. There is a drug problem here and so we keep our home secured and don't advertise when we go somewhere. We have someone keep an eye on the place to ensure its safety.  I rarely see local police, (except when I am speeding).

Education: We wanted to know something about the schools, not because we had children, but because often a school is a reflection of what's going on in an area. An 85% graduation rate is what we found here, but that doesn't take into account that only 22% of the students are proficient in reading and 14% proficient in math. 100% of the kids are considered economically disadvantaged. A neighbor whose daughter was the valedictorian of her graduating class ended up taking remedial math in college because she didn't pass the placement test at the University of New Mexico. A recent problem occurred when the county superintendent was found to have falsified his transcripts, a letter of recommendation and credentials to get the job. I have encountered several residents who drive their kids 30 or more miles to Angel Fire to attend high school and others who home school.

Average Income: We looked at this to see if we'd be able to afford living here on our retirement savings. Household income is just $21,000 and the poverty rate is 20%. Although income is lower than both the New Mexico and national averages, home ownership is at 76%, which is higher than the averages. People inherit homes and land, and if the home is falling apart, there's either a rudimentary fix or they'll pull in a used mobile home, a travel trailer, or something else one can call a home. Unemployment is 5%, with agriculture and forestry being where most of the jobs are, which don't pay much. We were told that if we were coming to retire, that was a good thing; if we were going to take someone else's job, well, that was another thing and we might reconsider. Since we are retired, it's all good.

Palace of the Governors Archives

 Ethnicity and Population: We wanted someplace small and not growing, which is what we got. Population here is going down. Someone said we could maybe adopt some Syrian refugees and they could open a restaurant. I wonder how Syrians would do in a county that's 85% Hispanic. We are doing fine, although at first it seemed weird to be a minority. Some long time residents have done what old time non-Hispanic settlers did years ago, which is give their children Spanish sounding first names. Carlos White, Diego Mueller, and Cielo Kagan are some names that mix it up. I kind of like the idea. Most of the people born here will tell you that their families are from the original Spanish settlers who came along with the conquistadores. The Spanish they speak is interesting. It's not Mexican Spanish, but Spanish whose roots are in the 14th and 15th centuries, combined with words from the Pueblo natives with whom they intermarried. Everyone code switches when they are talking, even many English speakers, which is a whole other level of cool. Now we are used to being a minority and it's no big deal.

Hospitals: A retired lady who moved here recently with her husband was matter of fact: "I figure that if one of us has a heart attack, we will probably die." Well, I hadn't really thought of it that way, but she is probably right. The closest hospital is 48 minutes away, and that's not counting how long we might wait for an ambulance. A couple years ago there was an additional sales tax levied for ambulance services, but they are understaffed. Calls go unanswered and someone died because the only driver scheduled couldn't leave because he had two small kids to watch and no other driver on the schedule. So I guess we don't count on an ambulance if we are hurt.  I had an anaphylactic bee sting reaction, so we drove to the hospital after I gave myself an Epipen shot. The hospitals are fine and have figured out that if they can't fix it, a helicopter will take you to Albuquerque. We have a good local clinic for minor issues, and specialists one, two and three hours away. We usually spend the night if the drive is two or three hours, for a fun medical getaway.

Groceries: There was a small market 12 miles away but it has closed. The closest grocery store is WalMart which is 35 miles away. If we are desperate, there's Allsup's (a gas station mart) and Family Dollar, where I was happy to find the lemon juice I needed for drying my apple crop.  Something new, though: Los de Mora, our local grower's coop, has a farm store open on Monday and Tuesday afternoons. They sell veggies and fruits in season, are starting a bakery, and have USDA lamb and beef cuts in the freezer. We are excited about this and hope to see the little store grow and grow. It's significant that people have gardens, hunt elk and deer for meat, and generally grow or gather what they can for their families. That doesn't preclude the occasional trip to Wal-Mart, a grocery store in Taos, Trader Joe's, or Costco. It's just not an every day thing.

Weather: We were done with unending 100 degree summer days and the other seasons that felt like summer. We wanted seasons, but with sun. Vermont has 157 days of sunshine a year; Santa Fe has over 300 days. It also has snow, something I'd never experienced for more than a couple days up in the California mountains. And winters are cold. But I justified the cold this way: there are just so many articles of clothing one can remove in hot weather, and it still feels hot. With layers of the right clothing for cold weather, it can feel warm even when outside. I'll gladly trade a cold winter for a moderate summer.  Yes, there is ice and snow sometimes, but the good thing about being retired is we don't have to drive in that bad weather every day. Home, looking out the window as it snows, is just fine. Being able to grow a garden without the sun burning it to a crisp is also a big win.

Guns: Most people here have guns, but it hasn't contributed to a spate of murders. Gun owners here are liberal and conservative, Democrats and Republicans, and like most country folks, consider guns to be tools for hunting and/or for home protection. One friend told a story of her women's group having brunch outside at her place one spring morning. A couple bears walked up nearby, so she grabbed a shotgun and shot, scaring away the bears. Then she calmly put the gun down and inquired if anyone needed more coffee.
(I said it's the frontier. )

After considering the matrix, we realized that many of the items we were looking for weren't as important as it was just to live in the country, to breathe fresh air, and to not worry about neighbors close by. Yes, some things give us pause to reflect, but at this point we aren't too worried about living in the frontier. Drone grocery delivery and driverless cars will be something to look for in our future.

Retiring to the Frontier: Part 1

Our friends back in Southern California have said they couldn't see themselves moving out of state to someplace completely new and at first I couldn't, either.  I'd spent all but my first five years in suburban Orange County, California, a childhood, adolescence and young adulthood filled with trips to the beach, to shopping centers (and later malls), a five to fifteen minute drive to whatever I wanted or needed. Orange groves dotted the landscape between postwar housing tracts, and that was all we needed.

Moving to rural inland SoCal in our mid twenties for T's first teaching job took some adjusting. Farther from the beach, from stores and from our friends, it was now a 37 mile drive to college, where I was finishing my degree and teaching credential. but getting to Orange County was a smooth 30 minutes on a good day, not that big a deal. We liked living in our little yellow house on the hill, looking out over the citrus groves, red tailed hawks circling overhead, the manic sounds of coyotes howling and yipping into the evening darkness. We were spoiled for country living.

By the time we were ready to retire, our country life had been spoiled. Horsethief Canyon Ranch and Sycamore Creek housing developments moved in where citrus groves had been. I missed the scent of orange and lemon blossoms on my drive to work, and my 12 minute drive to work became 30 minutes, then 40 minutes, until finally I planned for an hour just in case the freeway had a problem. It took forever just to go grocery shopping, fighting the traffic, finding a parking space, waiting in long lines. Errands took hours. Cars clogged the roads. We were living in the fastest growing area in the country.  Where it had always been hot in inland SoCal, now it was also humid since the new homes had grassy lawns with automatic sprinklers watering nonstop. And I don't do hot and humid very well.

 So we knew it was time to move,  looked around, and found we could afford to live in New Mexico, a place we had visited so often it felt like home. It helped a lot to have Southern California Edison purchase our little home for a project that has never been completed.

Our new 'hood is census designated as "frontier, " which means we're far from hospitals, food sources and jobs, with around three persons per square mile.

This is the first of three posts introducing our frontier and how we adjusted to a different culture, found new people and became much more self reliant.

Quilty Pleasures: Our Lady of Guadalupita

I taught a class at ThreadBear a while back on improvisational medallion quilts. The three session class was designed to give everyone a start on the process, so I haven't seen their finished products.  Nonetheless, it was fun sewing along with the students so they could watch the process and get some ideas, with a few instructional stops along the way.

You may have seen the Lady of Guadalupe quilt I made after taking an epic class on Liberated Quilting hosted by quilting buddies Gwen Marston and Freddy Moran. (Click on the link above to get that story.)

Anyway, I still had some Our Lady panels in my stash (and have started another quilt that I hope to finish this winter), so that's where I started. Since this quilt was improvised, there was no clue what the finished product would look like, just starting in the center, working border by border.

Here's a look at the quilt. I built around the center, got bored with that and decided to add details at the top and the bottom.

Here's a close up of the different layers I added around the center panel. Because I wanted this quilt to be finished quickly, I made strategic use of interesting fabric rather than piecing each border. Freddy Moran, whose quilts have a plethora of fabric and color, likes black and white borders in a busy quilt so our eyes can stop and rest. For reference, the half square triangles are 1.5 inches finished. I'm not sure about the orange and rose fabric touching each other, but it's done and a small matter. At least that's what I'm telling myself.

Look at the quilting Michael at ThreadBear did, the rose and leaf quilting pattern echoing both the roses in the red border and and the general flower motif I repeated throughout the quilt. Oops! Don't look at that stray white thread. Oh, you looked, didn't you?

Towards the top of the quilt is an arch of Gwen Marston's Liberated Stars. I made the stars first and worried they would get lost in the bold colors, but by placing them at the top,  they become a focus motif. Liberated stars are free pieced, no measuring the stars' points, so each one is different.

At the quilt's bottom, I used Gwen's Liberated Basket technique to make flower pots, the flowers from an old Kaffe Fasset fabric. Gwen has used these same pots in one of the Lady of Guadalupe quilts Freddy and Gwen made for their book Collaborative Quilting.

An aside: If you haven't seen Quiltfolk magazine, please do. This issue is about the Michigan quilt community and features an article about Gwen, my quilting hero and a national treasure.

The backing fabric is Alma y Corazon by Alexander Henry. Love his fabrics and am grateful for Ann at ThreadBear, who made a bee line to this exact fabric, knowing it would be perfect.

 As I was making the quilt, I thought about a student I taught in Corona whose mother had gifted me years ago with a beautiful white crocheted sweater and later, after I had retired to the mountains, sent me a cozy hat and scarf to ward off the cold. I've always been so grateful for these gifts because, well, it was a parent who wanted to show me I was valued, and her son Juan went on to become a teacher, too, which is even better. So I sent her the quilt, now named Our Lady of Guadalupita. The name? Guadalupita, NM is the closest village to our place so it makes perfect sense since that's where I made it.

It looks like Mrs. Rosa Salgado likes Our Lady of Guadalupita, so I am glad to have been able to make her just as happy as I was receiving her gifts of love.

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.

Letter From Northern New Mexico

Hello, Friends,

Summer is almost gone: Nights are cooler, leaves are turning, and a successful monsoon season is drawing to a close. That said, it's time for a big old catch-up session because I haven't been writing and there's much to see here in Northern New Mexico.

We've been here for 8 years now and even though there were a few bets that we wouldn't last, here we are.

So let's get to it.

We still have cattle, but it's a rotating cast of characters. These guys were Regis and Phil(bin). Tom named them; not I. 

Regis and Phil(bin) are gone now to the great pasture in the sky and we are grateful to them.

Our new pup, Liza Jane, has been a handful. We went from exceedingly polite Ms. Pearl to a bossy tornado. This is a rare puppy pic of her lying still.

Summer gardening was successful. I think having a canine tornado keeps the bunnies from eating too much.

 This was early in the season. We had asparagus, green beans, kale, carrots, strawberries, sugar snap peas, and there's some broccoli I'm hoping will weather the upcoming cooler weather. The kale was especially pretty. I even froze some and I will tell you how another time. I used this kale for Zuppa Toscana. I found a copycat recipe for this Olive Garden favorite and it was yum!

Inside the Growing Dome we had a good season, too. Up here at 7200 feet it can be iffy for tomatoes and indoor gardening solves this problem. This year I grew five plants: Golden Jubilee, Black Cherry, Chocolate Sprinkles, good old Early Girl and Brad's Atomic Grape. All did well and I froze some, made a tomato and gruyere galette, and sometimes leaned  over the sink, salt shaker in hand, and ate them like apples, juice everywhere.

Tomato Plants Growing Like Crazy

Straight Eight Cucumber Plants and Burgundy Green Beans

A Few Tomatoes

Tom has been cutting up a cottonwood tree that split in two.

We really don't need firewood because last winter was so mild, we didn't even touch the artistic wood piles I made.

And he chopped thousands of thistles, which are noxious, invasive weeds. I don't have any photos of that.

I set up a sewing area on the porch.

Here was my view:

There was a field trip to Santa Fe's Botanical Gardens.

And to the Santa Fe Opera, twice! It was my first time experiencing opera and I loved it. People have tailgate dinners here, so we did the same. The big difference was our tailgate had road dust inside and out, and just as I was taking the photo, there was a wine mishap, but you get the idea.

I think I'm growing up. Opera? Wow.

It's always nice to come back home, though, to our little bubble.

See you next time!