Friday, June 29, 2007

random things....

In all honesty, the biggest thing going on in my life right now is the high drama decision to sell the farm, where i would go if i did and how much the farm needs to sell for so that i can actually find a home with more amenties for my -not getting any younger- worn out and weary self......BUT, that said, i was gonna try and take a break from it all for a couple days so as not to self destruct from the stress so i'm loath to go on about it right here , right now.

tomorrow i go to see this little place down in the village, again, but this time the owner will be there to let me in and answer questions...i will bring the camera, take lotsa pics, post them here and await y'alls wise replies.
the woman who lived her life there died not long ago at 103 years old....which i'll admit draws me in. I need to have a connection with my house....like a lover a house is to me.

My house here is practically part of my body i'm so connected to it. I love love earthen homes for that reason.

In other news...one of my so-called hens, well, pullets, is turning out to be a rooster i believe. I watched the little bugger trying to crow yesterday morning stretching its wings and rising up to tippy toe with a cracking tentative voice like a pubescent teeenager. All i can say is he'd better behave himself or he'll end up the first animal to be slaughtered on the farm...last thing i need is some cranky rooster givin' me grief. The only other testosterone induced, willie swingin' being on the farm is my big boy cat Marcos...and he just recently got his balls snipped so he doesn't really count anymore.


and that folks, is all the news thats fit to print.
cheers!

Sunday, June 24, 2007

gay saves the day!

so i know how all you radical revolutionary city queers get about pride, i was that way once too. I couldn't go to any pride in any place without getting kinda cranky, ill from everyones smelly crap and smoke, and deconstructing ev-er-y-thing.... got to where i just wanted to stay home instead.
and lord knows it could happen again if i made a habit of going, but...on this day....i went for the first time in years. Since i moved here anyway.
I left the farm in the morning to head for santa fe and i was so out my body with worry , and major life decisions to make, wallowing in my isolation and mustering my bravest front. periodiaclly weeping frustration and longing on the 2 hr drive, not knowing why i was bothering to make this long exhausting journey to snobby ol' santa fe but making myself do it anyway.

and when i got there it was just what i needed. i resisted at first, rolling my eyes at the corporate commercial yickiness, and giving dagger eyes to all the smokers.
but then the dj started in with some gotta move to it 80s dance music like yaz or prince or whatever and before i knew it i was lying in the shaded cool grass, exhausted from dancing on the hot sun plaza, listening to all the sounds and taking in the people.
hoardes of all kindsa queers, all kindsa bodies and adornment, all kindsa genders.
and youth...beautiful creative brazen youth.
wow.

coming down my mountain top through the hetro, catholic, modest, rural valley that i live it was a feast for my soul.

and dare i say it...i felt... a little....proud.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

happy solstice!

it kind of freaks me out that the days are going to get shorter now....i'm still so winter traumatized! summer is not exactly blogging time...too busy outside busting my butt. I thought i'd share some of the summer beauty of the mountains.
the days are hot now and unlike the sheep, the llamas get to be out all night grazing away...so when the daytime comes and the sheep are needing to be out and about , all the llamas want to do is stay in the cool dark of the barn. and if the llamas don't go out , the sheep won't either....so the poor sheep don't get to graze! So, in true shepherd fashion i've been taking them out myself. really a great excuse to take a break from working and just sit in the shady forest for a spell. This is the entrance to the woods, an old logging road that goes back to the creek.I had wanted to go all the way back there and photograph the creek and the old growth trees but the sheep are reluctant to go in too deep....i don't blame them, its predator world back there.I'm glad to see that the grass supply is holding up well!and heres my favorite sunset place to sit....i've a footbridge crossing the arroyo, theres a little waterfall just above, hidden by the brush. so lucky i am to be in new mexico and have all this water and green.Its the pay off for surviving all that snow!I hope you all have a magical solstice.

Saturday, June 16, 2007

reality check

yesterday on Democracy Now! one of the folks on the show was a Palestinian woman named Laila El-Haddad. I'm posting this in order to urge you all to check out her blog "Raising Yousuf, Unplugged: Diary of a palestinian Mother."
"This blog is about the trials of raising our son between Gaza and the US, while working as a journalist, and everything that entails from potty training to border crossings. Together, we endure a lot, and the personal becomes political. This is our story.

her writings are a much needed glimpse of life under occupation...children, elders, families...just trying to live.

from the post "war games"...

"I was down in Rafah again this week. While inspecting the site of a future park project my friend Fida is working on (and which we are making a film about), we were disrupted every few minutes by the voracious sound of multiple F-16 fighter jets flying overhead in unision. Sometimes one or two; then four or five.

Children scurried about playing football with a deflated basketball on the sand lot.

"Do you think I will be assassinated one day?" one child asked another. He didn't say this jokingly.

I can't sleep. I get up maybe once every two hours. Go to the bathroom, walk around a little, and then doze off again. Only to be awakened by the drones, followed by the manic hovering of helicopter gunships.

This time they were directly over our apartment building. I would have been afraid, except this happened once before, maybe two years ago. Panicked and fearful at the time, I called my cousin, who re-assured me that when an Apache is directly overhead, it means its intended target is about 500 metres to one kilometre away. It is information I wish I did not know."

Thursday, June 14, 2007

a little -fuck you- to big oil.

Today was the first wvo (waste veg oil) filtering day of the year. I finally got my booty down to las vegas (viva!) earlier in the week and got some great oil from my favorite, sleepy, no one cares what i'm doing dumpster.Its a nasty stinky messy job but hey, i brought home around 20 gallons so thats a 60 some dollar job.

I thought i'd post a bit about the process....if you have absolutely negative amounts of interest in veggie cars then just skip it baby!
I got my equipment from both fattywagons and vegpower.

first it gets filtered through these heavy sock filters...this can take hours...drip drip drip. Notice how totally high tech my setup is.

This is my beloved 1981 mercedes 300td wagon.We found eachother down in vegas a couples of years ago...she was 800 bucks. Tanks these cars are. After 85' they started making the engine blocks out of aluminum unlike this beast with the cast iron block, so its the ideal machine for thick veggie oil.
Some modifications are necessary to insure that the oil stays hot and thin. My car has a simple single tank conversion so i can only pull this off when its warm out...otherwise the oil waiting in the fuel tank is too thick to do its job. A tank heater of some sort would help a lot...but thats for another day when i win the lottery. Its also ok to mix whatever ratio of biodeisel or dinodeisel to wvo in the tank to help it get started in cooler weather.
heres some photos of what was added....this is the first filter the oil reaches, its heated and it seperates out any water.
the orange wire is a hot wire that keeps the injectors nice and hot so the oil is the right temperature when its injected/sprayed.

So anyway, now that the oil has gone through the sock filters its ready to go into the car. Notice the rich amber color...and its not cloudy!


and this is my favorite part....i usually chuckle out loud.....i've a little deisel fuel pump that runs off the battery and glug glug glug i love love the sound of my tank filling with something that isn't linked to trazillions of wasted dollars, wasted lives, endless war and hey lets not forget climate change.and it smells like french fries when i'm drivin' around.
yay!

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

images of a small farm life

random stuff...just because....just for some ease of mind

the chickens are growing so fast! the white one is my one delaware pullet, they are super rare so she's kinda special. I call the brown ones my 'red tail hawks' just to make them feel special as well....

this old door is the start of what will be the interior chicken digs by the time winter comes. frida has decided that for now its her very own -time out- space.

I've spun some yarn from everyones fleece at this point and sold a good amount so far! heres some that i spun from godiva the smiling sheep.

and this beauty is one of the few wild iris i have left. When i moved here and didn't yet have ruminants, the pasture was covered with these. apparently they are pretty damn tasty.

Monday, June 11, 2007

summer is officially here.....finally!

So yesterday was the first day that i found myself HOT....as in warm, not sexy...which i am...but, thats not what i'm talking about....phew.
yes...hot....i worked on the chicken coop for a while in the morning and found myself retreating to the cool dark of my adobe house.
Now i'm just hoping that by october i'll be completely thawed out and ready for another winter.
but i'll tell ya....from where i'm standing right now, the thought of another winter makes me feel kind of queasy and dizzy and, well, afraid.
and on that note....i've had a bit of an affair with another property. Its down the valley in the larger town that this county has to offer. a quaint village home...with all the bells and whistles....and waaay too much traffic.
but it was good to look at it...made me appreciate the absolute peace and quiet of my home here.

and because i feel the need to share awkward things with all of you in blog world....
heres my hair in its gangly growing out state of being.
i do quite like how my crows feet are growing to meet my laugh lines...

Thursday, June 7, 2007

a shepherds' weeping

sometimes when i’m just so sad
and grief bleeds from me my breath drowning in
some kind of letting go of ideas and beliefs
that have held me together a rock piled mountain
crumbling i’ll lay my bones on the ground
curled up like new fern
or old toothless coyote
and the sheep always come to me
stand close around my small body like a shield
or a conduit
smell my tears
chew my hair
just stand there
till i’m through it.

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

works in progress, global warming and fuck war anyway

trying to write about going hungry in the empire in some sort of inspired , arty, poetic , grab the reader by the cojones type of way...its not an easy task. it does not work in the interest of good art to be putting up walls to protect myself, but getting past all the classist, ableist, capitalist crap in the world about poor people is hard stuff.

the wind is howling today, could see gusts to 60 mph...not something i associate with otherwise green and luscious june at all. But word has it that wind is only gonna get worse here with the whole climate death scenario. lovely.

funny how both the hunger and the wind can then so easily transition to the fucking bush clan and those goddam democrat corporate cowards we foolishly elected to end the war thinking that democracy was actually intact somewhere somehow....
reminds me of my youthful anarcho days when i used to listen to crass..." left wing, right wing...they're all the fucking same."

i'm so bone weary of all the waste and death and resources sucked up by the mighty war machine.
so weary of wealth.

wind howling.

Lupe was finally sheared...shorn? The jury is out...my sheep are chubby....sigh. guess the good news is that i don't need as much hay next winter, which means more food for me!
this post isn't very cheery eh?.... well, in more upbeat news ...it appears i'm in some sort of film thats been doing quite well at assorted film festivals around the country. Its screening in albuquerque this month so i'm gonna head down and check it out.(a summer bonus is that i can make such a trip for free since in the warm weather my car runs on waste veg. oil yay!) Its called "committing poetry in a time of war"....if you find it playing in a town near you...go see it!