San Augustin Water Grab Hearing Date Set - Feb 7

The State Engineer has scheduled a hearing on the San Augustin Water Grab for Tuesday, February 7, 2012.   PLEASE put this on your calendar and plan to be there. Our numbers are making a difference. It's hard to ignore a crowd!

Date of the hearing: February 7, 2012
Place: Socorro District Courthouse,

  200 Church Street, Socorro
  Courtroom 1, second floor

Time: 10AM

The hearing is on the motions to dismiss the application.

Wood Stove Comfort

Copyright © Lif Strand 2011

I’ve just come in from feeding the horses and splitting some wood.  Yesterday it snowed briefly and never got above 48°.  I built my first fire in the wood stove.  I used wood that had been sitting stacked next to the stove since this past spring when I let the last fire die out, so it was plenty dry and fast to ignite.

The wood stove is my only source of heat in the house.  I hooked up a propane wall heater a while back but when I tried it, it leaked and no matter how many times I reconnected everything I couldn’t get it to stop leaking.  So wood still remains my heat source. 

Trust me – wood heating is a lot of work.  I’m a lazy person.  The two don’t go together all that well if the person in question expects to stay warm when it’s blowing and freezing outside. 

It occasionally freezes inside my house, too.  As a result I have no house plants, just those potted herbs, veggies and flowers that I’ve brought inside to keep them going a while longer.  They only last till the night I insufficiently stoke the wood stove before retiring, or when I go away and just let the house get as cold as it is going to get.

Lest you worry, the cats and dogs all have fur coats and deal with the occasional frostiness inside my house just fine.  I don’t.  Trust me on another thing:  If you’re sitting around a blustery winter evening reading, you need a wood stove to keep you warm.  Quilts, furs, fleece and down won’t keep your fingers, your nose or your toes warm enough.

Thing is, there’s so much work associated with wood heat.  Oh sure, you can get yourself  a paycheck from a 9-5 job and just buy split wood, get it delivered and stacked - but my boss is me, and I don’t get paid enough by me to spend money on the multiple cords of wood I need to get through the cold season. 

My best intentions are to cut early and the wood will be dry by the time I need it.   I choose trees on my own place that have been hit by bark beetles or are just fading away because of drought – I not only get wood for the stove but also provide a better environment for the remaining trees while making my land more wildfire resistant.  My best intentions rarely ever pan out. 

Remember my boss?  She just doesn’t ever seem to give me a break.  Work, work, work – I wear out the lettering on my keyboard keys all the time (good thing I’m a touch typist).  Typing does not = a stack of wood.

And there are so many other reasons for not going out there and cutting wood – don’t want to do it when it’s hot, can’t do it during fire season, and when it starts raining, I don’t want to do it then either.  Right now, October, is a good time of year for cutting wood, though it won’t all be as dry as it might be before I really need it in winter.  I really should be out there with the chain saw today – but I think I’ll take it into town instead and get it tuned up and sharpened.  I’ll cut wood another day.  Probably, like last year, in the dead of winter.  Hey, logs pull down the hill much easier on snow!

Even if I cave in and buy wood (it could happen!), that’s not all there is to a wood stove.  There’s splitting the wood, carrying it in every day (twice a day if it’s really cold), cleaning out the ashes regularly, sweeping up all the wood debris and dirt that falls off the logs, climbing up onto the roof every so often and banging on the stovepipe to knock the creosote off the walls and of course, stoking the fire regularly enough that all the work yields a warm house in the dead of winter.

And yes, it’s worth it.  There’s something about the heat from a wood stove that is very different from any other heat.  It’s as if it reaches out to something in my very being and touches my core with comfort and security, not just physical warmth.  When it’s snowing and blowing outside and there’s a cheery blaze in the wood stove, enough logs in the burn chamber to last the night and a stack of wood nearby to build the fire up again in the morning, when I turn out the lights and see the yellow flickering light cast by the flames through the vents in the door and I feel that warmth on my skin all the way to my bones, I know all’s right with my world.

 

Baseboard heaters just don’t do that for me.

Living in Freedom

Terrorism isn't about blowing up buildings or killing people.  Terrorism is intimidation. The attacks of September 11, 2001 have achieved a terrorist victory that we Americans gave to them:  They hit the twin towers, but we've allowed ourselves - encouraged ourselves - to succumb to the fear.  Full article

Living My Life: High Summer

copyright (c) 2011 Lif Strand

Part 2 of the series.  Go to Part 1
There’s summer, with day after day of clear blue skies, white hot sun beating down, so dry that you don’t even sweat because any moisture you produce evaporates before it can bead up. Every afternoon you bless the shadows that are finally cast, shade that feels cool in comparison to earlier in the day, even though it’s still in the high 80s in the shadow. All that wind from spring is gone and you wish it back, you welcome the slightest stirring of air to provide some relief from the searing heat.

That’s summer. And then there’s high summer, when we have rain. The brown grass turns a verdant green, a riot of flowers are heavy with pollen, lush fruit ripens and bends the stalk. That’s now.

I’m sitting in my car, engine off, waiting for my friend to meet me so we can car pool to town. Everyone car pools around here – or at least the women do – partly to save gas money and partly because most people prefer to have company when they drove a lot. I don’t – I do some of my best thinking while driving – but the gas savings is still important, and my friend generally prefers company when she drives.

It’s pouring rain. The sky is blue in two directions, black in the other two plus overhead. It could only be the Southwest in monsoon season - July, August or September - when sometimes it rains on a cow’s left horn but not on the right.

Living at the end of a long dirt two-track means extreme planning for at least two seasons:  High summer (now, the rainy season) and dead of winter (January through March, when there’s the most likelihood of snow and ice). Our soil here has a high clay content – slick snot when it’s wet. It’s amusing to see the tracks of vehicles that have gone before you, leaving the wandering tracks across the road like a drunk driver's, maybe even with the bonus of a gouged rut in a ditch where the car or truck slid off the crown. It’s entertaining – until it happens to you.

So you plan. You avoid driving when it’s actively raining and for a good half hour or more after. You watch weather reports so you can get out and back while the road is still a road and not an amusement park slide. You make sure you’ve got enough supplies to last at least a week, preferably two, in case of flooding when the road can be bad for days in a row. In the winter you get out while the road’s still frozen, come in after dark when it freezes up again.

The thunder is moving on; rain now just a light shower. I wouldn’t risk driving the two miles home from here right now if that’s where I was headed even though the road surface doesn’t look all that bad. I know that’s deceptive, and that within just a few feet the tire treads would be packed and the rubber coated half an inch or more with clay. I can see from here the first spot where I’d be sweating it, a very slight curve around a juniper tree – just enough for me and others to slide off the edge. It happened so often I finally took a chainsaw to the offending branches, but it’s still not a straight shot.

There are a few other spots after that – one place where there’s a slight bump, another couple areas where water pools a foot deep, creating an additional twelve inches of mush at the bottom. All fixable if I owned the road, untouchable as BLM property unless I jumped through some expensive hoops and put myself in a position of public liability. No thanks. I’ll risk the drive as is.

In spite of all the planning, the four wheel drive, the mud tires, I still get stuck every so often.  I never know until I turn off the engine if I'll make it home if I try at the wrong time.  Last week I had two close calls driving in with a load of hay. The road at those places looks like a tank battle took place – and it was a battle of sorts; my skill vs. the mud pit. That time I got out, but it was very close.

You’d think that going home would be easier since it’s downhill, but when I get truly and deeply stuck, it’s always in the downhill direction. That's why I always carry a tarp for the hay – not just to protect the load from rain but from cows, too, if the truck has to be abandoned.  And that’s why I always carry rubber boots and a rain coat.  Even though I'm usually not a happy camper when I first start the hike back, my boots picking up the same clay that the tires would have and making them dead weights as I slog through the muck, by the time I've gone a little ways I'm at peace again with the world.  I love high summer.

Living My Life: It's a tough job but somebody's got to do it

July 17, 2011

There’s really only one thing anyone wants to read about: Something about themselves or that could be about themselves, or something that’s going to help them live their lives – which really is still about themselves. We’re a selfish bunch, we humans – but all living beings are. It’s the only way to ensure survival of the species.

What I’m here to tell you about is how I live my life. Everyone’s life is fascinating in the hands of a good storyteller, but some of us live different enough lives that no matter who the storyteller is or how she tells it, the story carries itself.

So here I am, a mature woman (sorry, I may never grow up enough to be a senior), raised conventionally, who turned out… different. The reasons aren’t really important now. (That’s one of the great things about having sufficient years under the belt – you start looking at the big picture and realize the small stuff is just that. You finally get to focus on what’s important and best of all, because you’re old enough, there’s no one around to tell you to pay attention to all those pesky details).

But I digress – I tend to wax philosophical but I’ll try to cut that down to a minimum. What I’m trying to say here is that my life nowadays is different enough that it might actually be meaningful - or at least entertaining - for others.

How different could it be, you might well ask. Here’s a partial list. You decide.

• I’ve lived in a straw bale cabin for about 13 years. That is, a house made of straw bales and not much else. None of that plaster stuff covering the straw, so wind tends to blow through. Birds nest in the walls and a resident four foot (and growing) bull snake keeps the chick population under control. My house does have a roof (it leaks), and doors and windows though, and someday I guess I’ll get around to the plastering. I love my little place (700 square feet and no interior walls) - snakes, bugs, birds, wind and all.
• I have no heat other than a wood stove. Sometimes in the winter if it’s really, really cold and I’m too lazy to get up during the night, it freezes indoors. Potted plants don’t do well in my house and it can get annoying when I don't have anything liquid to brush my teeth with in the morning, but somehow these winter issues feel more like challenges than problems.
• I don’t have real indoor plumbing, unless you include a hose poked through a wall with a garden spray nozzle delivery system as indoor plumbing. For years I heated water on my wood stove (or propane kitchen stove), but this year I made a solar hot water system and it works great when the sun’s shining. My shower involves a big pot holding suitable temperature water and a quart-sized ladle to get the water on my body. It works just fine, and I suppose someday I’ll fix it, but I'm in no hurry to fix what ain’t broke.
• No indoor toilet. No outhouse, either. The old chamber pot system works just fine. I compost the results.
• Off the grid – the nearest electrical lines are a mile away. Solar power has its drawbacks, but the great benefit is no monthly utility bill, and for a low-income person, that’s great.
• No cell phone service. Maybe that’ s not such a big deal – after all, plenty of people live in little hollows where there’s no service. But I’m happy there’s no service.
• Nearest neighbor is a mile and a half away. And that’s too close in my opinion.
• Nearest store is 30 miles away. Almost far enough.
• I live in the Southwest, so when it rains it pours. My little valley floods periodically and I can't leave for a few days. That's like vacation time for me.
• I’ve been self employed almost all my adult life. From house painter to dude ranch wrangler to technical writer, I’ve somehow avoided 9-5 jobs almost the whole 4 1/2 decades since I left my childhood home. I don’t always have a lot of money, or even enough money, but that means I improvise. I do as much of the building and repair work by myself as I can. As for the rest – does it really matter if it gets done?
• I care for six horses now – down from a lifetime high of around 50 at one point in my past. There’s no shoer nearby these days, so I deal with horse feet myself. There’s no vet nearby, so I treat the horses myself. And if needed, when the time comes I move a horse (or dog or cat) on to the next plane myself with my trusty .38. It’s a hard job, but it’s an ultimate act of love.
• I have little to no social life. After my husband died suddenly over ten years ago, I’ve lived alone. I found I don’t need a man in my life. I’m not helpless. I’m free to become a hermit if I want or do anything in the world I want to do. I love it.

So there you go. I little strange, but perhaps stranger even is how much satisfaction I get from living my chosen lifestyle.

I dream of even greater independence – I’d like to fully raise my own food, for instance – and I’ve been working towards that it seems forever. I’m in no rush, though - it’s the journey towards self-sufficiency that holds the fascination for me. I’m not so very good at all of it, but in the end, who cares? I don’t want to wait for perfection to do what I want in life.

Next: High Summer

Quemado Independence Day Celebration

QUEMADO 

INDEPENDENCE DAY 

CELEBRATION 

SATURDAY JULY 2, 2011 

· 11 a.m. ParadeTheme: Thank You Fire Fighters

· 11 a.m. Senior Bake Sale

· Noon BBQ(Quemado Fire Department)

· All Day Vendors around town

SPONSORED BY AG COUNTRY PROPANE 

BBQ meat by Matthew Massey 

www.catroncounty.net/quemado 

Open letter to NM Gov. Susana Martinez on AWSA projects and protection of true stakeholders

June 21, 2011

Office of the Governor

490 Old Santa Fe Trail

Room 400

Santa Fe, NM 87501

Email:  Susana.Martinez2@state.nm.us

Subject:  AWSA projects and protection of true stakeholders

Dear Governor Martinez:

The Interstate Stream Commission (ISC) has been authorized by the state of New Mexico to assume responsibility for the design, construction, operation, maintenance, and replacement of projects for waters designated available by the Arizona Water Settlements Act (AWSA).  To that end, people of the four counties of southwestern New Mexico for which the AWSA waters are available have been working since 2004 to develop projects to submit to ISC. 

It is the ISC’s mandate to apply the best available science to consideration of these projects, taking into account the ecological impacts of the proposed water uses while also considering the historic uses of and future demands for water in the Gila Basin, and the traditions, cultures and customs affecting those uses.

Unfortunately, what is and should be a relatively straightforward legal process has been distorted beyond functionality by non-stakeholders who were given “rights” to participate in the process by your predecessor.  Mr. Richardson added a level of bureaucracy through the creation of a stakeholders group that included individuals who are not water rights holders and who therefore cannot be directly impacted by AWSA waters decisions.  AWSA project process development has operated through stakeholder group consensus, thereby effectively providing the non-stakeholders with veto power.  These non-stakeholders were further aided by Richardson’s environmentalist-group-supported declaration that AWSA projects could not include planning or consideration of construction of dams on the Gila and San Francisco Rivers.  Since the only realistic way to have water to use during dry times of the year without cutting into downstream flow is to trap and retain it during times of extreme flow, such as during flood or snow melt, Richardson essentially blocked the most logical and potentially viable projects that could be submitted to ISC for consideration. 

The intent of the AWSA was to address the legitimate water use needs of the four county area of New Mexico.  The people who hold existing water rights are the true stakeholders impacted by the ISC’s choice of projects, however these very people for whom the water was intended have to compete with non-stakeholders for projects, and ultimately for the water needed by water rights holders to live and thrive today and in the future.

The AWSA is not about creating healthy watersheds so as to possibly produce more water or about conserving water, as important as these issues are.  AWSA is solely about finding beneficial uses for 14,000 acre feet of water annually.  It is essentially a “use it or lose it” proposition with a 2014 deadline.  Consensus veto power and non-stakeholder opinion have no place in ISC's AWSA project evaluation or decisions.

Governor Martinez, with your support the ISC can make wise decisions about projects for the stakeholders of the four county area.  I strongly urge you to instruct the ISC to resist the pressures of non-stakeholders with respect to ASWA waters.  Furthermore, I urge you to instruct the ISC to not consider proposals submitted by the US Forest Service, no matter the merit of the projects, given that the AWSA water was meant for New Mexico water users, not federal agencies.

Thank you for consideration of my comments.

Sincerely,

  

Lif Strand

Quemado, NM

CC: 

Estevan Lopez, ISC Director estevan.lopez@state.nm.us

Jim Dunlap, ISC Chairman   Waterjim1@live.com

John D'Antonio, State Engineer  john.dantonio@state.nm.us

Craig Roepke, ISC Deputy Director  craig.roepke@state.nm.us