Catron County Commission Demands Wolf Incident Investigation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE        

RESERVE, NM.  “The wolf issue is one of the biggest problems the county has faced,” said Catron County Commission Chairman Hugh B. McKeen to Tod Stevenson, Director of New Mexico Department of Game & Fish at a regularly scheduled public meeting on Wednesday, April 6, 2011.  With Mr. Stevenson were RJ Kirkpatrick, Assistant Director NM Game & Fish; Jim McClintic, Chairman New Mexico State Game Commission; and Dick Salopek, New Mexico State Game Commission.  An audience of nearly 100 people attended the meeting.

In late January a formal complaint was filed by the county with NM Governor Martinez regarding a wolf depredation investigation that occurred on January 18, 2011.  Catron County contends that NM Game & Fish wolf biologists Ellen Heilhecke and Mischa Larisch allegedly sought to influence or change the official investigation findings of Sterling Simpson and Armando Orona of US Wildlife Services during an on-site investigation as to the cause of death of a cow. 

“Influencing or attempting to influence the findings of another agency’s official investigation brings up a lot of problems,” said Catron County’s Wolf Incident Investigator, Jess Carey.  “The credibility of the game department wolf biologist is now lost.”  Simpson and Orona did confirm that the cow was killed by wolves, with Carey concurring.

“Other findings of confirmed wolf kill have been changed to probable in the past,” Carey said.  “How can you change documented evidence?”

Stevenson confirmed that Larisch did call and relay a message from Heilhecke to the Wildlife Services personnel while the investigation was in progress, but denied that any impropriety occurred.

“My staff said they did not say that Wildlife Services should modify the finding from confirmed to probable,” Stevenson said.  “My folks called and said there were feral dogs in the area to take into consideration.”

“There were no feral dogs on this ranch,” Carey said.  “Last year, several miles away, a neighbor was letting his house dogs run loose, but that problem was resolved.  Mr. Simpson concurred:  There are no feral dogs out there”. 

At the conclusion of the meeting, Catron County Attorney Ron Shortes stated that he agreed with the Commissioners’ and Carey’s call for an independent, third party investigation of the incident.

“I think you have a conflict of interest when you say you have an obligation to facilitate this Mexican wolf recovery program vs. your constitutional obligation to the people of NM to protect wildlife,” Shortes said.

“While an independent investigation is needed, my ultimate feeling is that you have a bunch of good people with the New Mexico Game Commission and NM Game & Fish trying to do their best, but I’m wondering if they’re trying to do too much,” Shortes said.  “They’re assisting the recovery program on one hand, trying to protect wildlife on the other – is there any possibility of trust while that’s going on?”

After a show of hands to see how people in the audience felt, the Catron County Commissioners voted unanimously to go ahead with their request of Governor Martinez for a full, independent investigation of the incident.  Director Stevenson volunteered to provide a synopsis of the progress of the investigation by April 15, 2011. 

“Catron County has taken a no-wolf stand,” McKeen said.  “I’m requesting that you take a no-wolf stance, too.  It’ll do us all good – we’re not only concerned about livestock but wildlife, too.”

Contact: 

Bill Aymar, Catron County Manager                               

PO Box 507

Reserve NM  87830

(575) 533-6423 

ccmanager@gilanet.com

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New CritterWalls Stickers!

Good day! We have entered a new season, and with Spring comes three new stickers from www.CritterWalls.com.

These stickers are in the Fairy World line, joining the two Unicorn stickers.  The first two are round panels with beautifully detailed images of fairies and foliage by the incredible artist, Dede Lifgren.  The third is a step in a new direction, looking through a shuttered window to see a Cinderella type carriage drawn by white horses heading towards a turreted castle.

Fairy Woodland (detail)

Fairy Woodland depicts a fairy deep in thought, sitting on a lush green leaf, fairy dust all around her illuminating the mysterious woodland foliage.  18" in diameter, retail price $29.95. http://www.critterwalls.com/fairywoodland.htm

Fairy Sleeping (detail)

Fairy Sleeping is our own version of Sleeping Beauty.  Illuminated by the glow of her own magic, a tiny fairy dreams away on the back of a patient cottontail rabbit.  18" in diameter, retail price $29.95. http://www.critterwalls.com/fairysleeping.htm

Castle and Carriage (detail)

Carriage and Castle lets you look through a wooden shuttered window, past colorful flowers, to a view of a carriage that you know a fairy godmother had something to do with.  Is there a princess in the ornate, pink carriage pulled by a team of white horses?  Is she going to meet the price at the ball in the turreted castle on the hill?  37" x 24", retail price $29.95.  http://www.critterwalls.com/castleandcarriage.htm

We have more stickers in the works in the Fairy World line - I know you'll love the whole Fairy World line and all CritterWalls stickers.

Lif's Supposedly San Francisco Style Sourdough Bread

Note that my starter is iffy and my techniques are non-traditional.  I get hockey pucks as often as I get good bread.  The recipe below, however, is what I followed and got a really nice sour loaf - the longer rising time is what lets that sour develop.

1 c starter that's been sitting out at room temperature for at least 12 hours

1 c whole wheat flour

2 1/2 cups water

2 tsp salt

Whisk together all the above ingredients.  If you whisk the starter before you measure it, you'll get a better measurement (you'll whisk the bubbles out of it).

 5 cups bread flour

Add flour a cup at a time, mixing with a spoon as long as you can.  When you can't mix with the spoon any longer, start kneading the dough, adding in the flour that way.  You might need more flour or less depending on factors I have no clue about.  I occasionally wet my  hands and that keeps the dough from sticking to my skin so much, but I'm told I'm a weenie for worrying about that.

Knead bread 10-15 minutes.  Let it rest half an hour or so, then divide it into loaves or shape it as you want and let it rise at room temperature, covered, till doubled.  The original recipe I used said this would take 12-15 hours but it took my dough 48 hours in the pilot-lit oven to double.  I use the oven because 1) my house gets cold in winter and 2) fewer cat & dog hairs get into the bread - they get on the dough somehow even if it's covered.  I don't cook much so tying up my oven for 2 days is no big deal.

Preheat the oven to 375° (take the dough out first if you used the oven to let it rise!).  Slash the top of the loaves with a razor before you bake it- I don't know what good that does but the instructions say to do that and it looks cool.  Bake about 45 minutes.  The original recipe said to bake till the inside temp gets to 190° but I've never put a thermometer in the bread - I might try that sometime, since I think that would mean fewer hockey pucks.  Also, I'm at high altitude - if you're a sea level baker, the internal temperature should be 205°.  

Note:  If you have stronger starter you will probably get a shorter rise time.  If the dough gets doubled at an inconvenient time for baking, you can punch it down, knead it for a few minutes and let it rise a second time - the second rise time will be shorter.  Or you can ignore the dough for a few hours till you're ready to bake, which is what I do.  

New Year's Resolutions

It's already January 2 - have you broken your first New Year's resolution yet?

One sure way to avoid breaking those well-intended resolutions is to just not make any at all.  Most of us are have higher expectations of ourselves than that, though, and we do want to improve.  We all have that little voice in the back of our heads that not only knows what's best for us, but has no problems nagging constantly about it.  In our better moments we heed that voice - we pick the salad over the fries, we walk up the stairs when we could take the escalator, we write the thank-you notes the next day instead of waiting till next week or next month.

It's so easy to slip back into slothful ways, though - and by slothful I don't only mean physical.  We have just as many bad mental habits as we do physical.  Actually, we have more, since the mind is where physical actions originate.

So how do you get yourself to not just pay better attention to that little voice in the back of your head, but to not end up breaking all those resolutions you make during the last minutes of a year?

You tell the right stories, is how.

We're all always telling stories about our lives.  I don't mean fiction; I mean the stories of our daily lives.  They're colored by how we feel about ourselves and how we are living, and they're important, not just for the information they convey to others, but also to ourselves and our little voices in the back of our heads.

Here's a scenario with a one-word story we all often tell (and are told):  Guy walks up and says "Hi, how are you doing?"  We say: "Fine."

"Fine?"  What kind of a story is that?  How often is it not even true?  How often have you given that response or a similar one, when really you were in pain, or you were worried about something, or you were angry?  We naturally hide our negative thoughts and feelings from others unless we know the person well enough to expose that vulnerable side of ourselves.

Here's another scenario that's too common:  We talk to people all day long - and to ourselves - and we tell the stories of how we are and what we fear we're going to become.  We run a repeat loop soundtrack in our minds of the problems we have, the pain we're feeling, the things we fear.  And then we wonder why we break our New Year's resolutions.

Oh, my pants are tight, I need to exercise more.  Yeah, but I need to find some exercise program that I'll stick to - I've never stuck to one for very long.  There must be something easy to do out there.  But I don't have time for exercise - it takes so long and I already have tons of stuff I need to do that I don't have time for.  Maybe if I just eat less…

Oh, I'll eat a salad tomorrow.  I deserve to have what I want sometimes - I don't have to be good all the time!  I'll have the fries, thank you.

The stories we tell about ourselves, particularly the ones we tell to ourselves, are stories we're putting out to the Universe and to the little voice in our heads about who we are.  And the Universe and our little voice believe it.  Those stories, being told over and over and over every day all day long, become a huge anchor that makes change difficult, if not impossible.

You can't sail off to a new place when the anchor's still holding you back.

There is no resolution more important than changing the stories you tell about yourself, whether you tell them to the outside world or you keep them in your head.  You can't make resolutions to change anything until you change the stories.

If you tell yourself and the Universe all the time that you're a fat person, you've put an anchor down that will keep you right there.  All the resolutions in the world won't sail the ship of health if your anchor is fat.

If you tell yourself and the Universe you're tired all the time, you've put an anchor down that will keep you tired.

If you tell yourself and the Universe that you're financially strapped, you'll keep yourself there.

Whatever you tell yourself and the Universe, there you are.

Of course, almost everyone has experimented with affirmations and many have found them to be less than useful.  Why?  Because affirmations - little statements you say once or twice a day, or read on the fridge door when you walk by (at least in the beginning - eventually you don't even see them any more) - are only little statements within the big stories of our lives.  They don't have the power to move that anchor.

Only you can hoist up the anchor so you can sail off.  Just make one resolution this year, and stick to it:  Make the stories of your life that you tell be of the life you want to live, not the life you don't want to live.

Not: My pants are tight, I want to exercise more.
Instead: I'm excited about exercising because when I do it I feel so good.

Not: I need to find some exercise program that I'll stick to - I've never stuck to one for very long.
Instead: I'm looking for the perfect exercise program for me and I can't wait to try them out.

Not: I don't have time for exercise.
Instead: I always have time for exercise because I like to do it!

Not: I'll eat a salad tomorrow. I deserve to have what I want sometimes
Instead: I love salads. Yum yum!

If you change the stories you tell of your life - every story every day every time you tell one - your life will change because you will have moved your anchor.  At first it will feel like lying - but it isn't.  You are the person who makes the choice of words you use and you can choose the ones that are positive and lead to where you want to go.

And the idea here is not just to say the words, but think about them, feel them in your heart, and believe them.  There's no point in saying you love salads if the whole time you're forcing a piece of tomato in your mouth you are wishing you were putting a fry in there.  What you think is a story you're telling, too - you need to tell yourself a story about what the tomato tastes like, how rich and flavorful it is, how satisfying it is and how much you're enjoying eating it.  You need to focus on what you want rather than what you don't have - and if enjoying a salad more than fries is what you want, then that's the story you need to tell.

Hoist up that anchor and sail on into 2011 and beyond!  You can do it!

Rode Inn in Reserve, NM destroyed by fire

Rode Inn in Reserve destroyed by fire

by Shannon Zetich, Quemado Lake Volunteer Fire Department Chief

Reserve, NM  12/14/10  The Rode Inn in Reserve was destroyed by fire during the pre-dawn hours of Wednesday.  Members of seven volunteer fire fighter departments...some as far away as Glenwood, Quemado Lake, Quemado and Red Hill (the latter is over 80 miles away) assisted on this incident. The NM fire marshall was still at the scene the next day; the cause of the fire is under investigation.   More at http://blog.glenwoodgazette.com/2010/12/16/rode-inn-in-reserve-destroyed-by-fire.aspx

New San Augustin Wager Grab Resource

Forwarded from San Augustin Water Coalition (SAWC):

There is a new website that you will find interesting. Our friends and supporters up north are helping to spread the word around the state about our water grab fight and about other serious water issues. newmexicowaterandpolitics.wordpress.com

Sourdough

I don't know why I can't just do things like other people, but it just doesn't seem to be in my nature. Thus it is that I can't simply get a bread machine and make bread (or buy from Safeway which does have a bakery in it), no, I have to get a hundred plus year old sourdough starter, nurse it along, and then try baking bread on top of my wood stove.

The irony is, I'm not all that fond of cooking.

Nevertheless, I have been on a quest for the perfect sourdough recipe that resembles my memories of that wonderful San Francisco sourdough that used to be a staple in my diet when I lived in California years ago.

Now, it is important to understand that what makes sourdough starter do its thing is yeast. There is wild yeast in the air that naturally mixes in with your starter yeast and gives it that unique taste. Thus after a while, a starter is going to taste like the local yeast, no matter what you do. Since I don't live in San Francisco or even near it anymore, and I doubt that any wild yeast around my starter has even heard of California, naturally my starter and the resulting bread is never going to taste like San Francisco sourdough. Yes, I could buy SF starter regularly to add in to my own but that's cheating!

Still, I try.

Aside from not liking to cook, I don't much like kneading bread. It's supposed to be meditative and all that, but I can't get into it. For one thing, dough sticks to my hands. Ick! Everyone says to just dip my hands in flour, but I do, I swear I do, and the dough still sticks. Then there's the problem of the flour itself – it gets everywhere, and cat hair gets into it. I’m sure I’ve mentioned sometime in the past that I’m no housekeeper, and so there is cat hair floating in the very air all the time (if you’re allergic to animals, you don’t visit me). I’ve gotten used to pulling little hairs out of my food but I’m not fond of it. So it does annoy me when I see a hair floating in the shaft of sunlight downward, downward and over just a little to the left… to land right in the pile of flour on the mat I’m using to knead the bred on.

Hands full of flour, sticky with dough – just how do you get that one blasted hair off the dough? I’ve perfected a technique but it’s top secret so I can’t share.

Yesterday out of the blue I decided to make a loaf of sourdough. I got the starter jar from the fridge and noted that the liquid on top was an ugly shade of gray – kind of the color of dirty bathwater when you’ve been out mucking horse pens and such all day. That didn’t bother me, because I’ve read that it’s only when the liquid has turned purple that the starter is too far gone. However, this gray liquid was an indicator that I hadn’t fed my starter in too long. Let’s see – I calculated that the last time must have been… oh, maybe October 9 or 10. Poor starter! You’re supposed to feed it weekly if you aren’t using it!

That was strike one.

So I poured off some of that nasty gray liquid, divided the starter into two batches: The base that goes back in the fridge and lives on to start bread another day, and the starter with yeast that’s giving up its life for the thrill of a quick feeding before being baked to death. I figure that in yeast years, the hours between being fed and baked is something like a few lifetimes, so I can handle it. Disclaimer: I’m not a scientist and have no idea how long a yeast lifetime is.

I added some flour and then thought about how bland my bread has been, so I poured a pile of salt into the palm of my hand (good, expensive mineral salt – none of that cheap pure stuff for my bread) until it felt right and dumped that into the dough.

That was likely strike two.

I mixed in flour (organic! less than a year old!) with my special sourdough bread mixing tool (extra long chopsticks) until it was thick enough that I feared to break the wood, then turned it out onto the mat and began the tedious and tricky (cat hair issue) kneading process.

After a while I decided that was enough (I'm counting this as a foul, not a strike)– the dough looked like dough although it wasn’t that silky texture I keep reading about and have never achieved. I made a nice round ball of it and set it aside to rise for a little.

This was when I knew that I wasn’t going to have a perfect loaf of sourdough bread: It stubbornly refused to rise. I watched and waited and watched and waited and finally had it with the rising part, so I set up my version of a stove-top oven, which actually works OK, all other things being equal – and in this case they weren’t.

I started baking the bread around 5 PM. It's possible that the fire in the wood stove wasn't quite big enough to be baking bread, but it wasn't that cold so what could I do? (Another foul, perhaps?) Sometime around 9 I tapped it and it finally had something resembling a hollow sound – another thing I read about but have never really achieved. I took it off the stove – this little, but very heavy, ball of bread - and set it on the counter. I resisted trying it till it didn’t burn my fingers to handle it.

The taste: boring (I ate two pieces, just to be sure). I just don't understand - only two strikes and two fouls - that doesn't equal being out, does it? Next time I know I'll do better, really. Maybe if I don't wait six weeks to feed the starter that would help. Maybe I could measure the salt more accurately? I don't know - there must be something that people who bake real bread know that I don't - but I will persevere and one day I will bake the perfect sourdough loaf on top of my wood stove, that I do know.