Bells, Bells, Bells.....

AHHHHH, New England........



















Well, its official, the Rouse-Vittums have gotten engaged....as in engaged to be married.
No, we are not kidding. Yes, this is for real.
The picture below in just a reenactment of the actual moment, please control yourselves.
Special thanks to Crissy Supples for the fine photography and capturing the "in love again" moments on our tour of The Lakes Region NH.
None of the mushy details on the blog, if you want to know how it went down, you are going to have to catch us in person (hard to do) or on the phone (possibly harder). Actually, we are in NH and have more time than ever to chat, so please call.

Neil goes for the bling-bling.



















In Love Again at the Sandwhich Creamery


















In Love Again in Front of Mount Washington





















Crissy Meets Her First Love: The Town of Sandwhich





















Whistle while you work 11 hours on a Saturday::::
The Vittum house has all new windows on the first floor. The house has been powerwashed, the decks have been stained and the first coat of paint is about to be applied. Just a little light side work.


Al and Amy hoist on of the new windows into the frame.

Last Days At the Ranch

EEK! 40+ Mice caught in our House, Plus 8 in our Van! The tally is getting out of control and the 2-leggeds seem to be losing. Crissy finds herself oddly compelled to take a portrait with this one that she said was, "staring at me while I was writing thank you cards."





















The final days at the ranch were a little bit of a blur, with preparing for the community BBQ for 500 with free food and and wrapping up all the cans of worms that I opened here in the last 2 months, we have been busy little bees...Oh, and yeah, moving for about the 67th time this year. We packed up the ole van, drove it to boulder and hopped on a plane. Now I am sitting by the banks of lake Winnipesauke (Dr. Marvin, Dr. Leo marrrrvinnnnnnn) writing this epithet to a wonderful 2 months at the Mendoa-Zapata Ranch.

The last week was rough for all of us, we said good bye to a great dog and work partner with a pizza party in the Inn's kitchen

The Team Poses with the Pizzas in Mid-Preparation




















Happily Enjoying the Pies. Skaking the Blues Away. Ol' Goose in the Middle Waving His Piece in the Air.



















With my arm final feeling better I prepared for the big day, my first real ride on a horse. We decided to ride to the ancient Indian skeleton recently discovered on the ranch.


Saddling up for the Big Ride.


I took one look at old Grasshopper, the horse so stubborn you have to whip him the entire time you ride him, with his scabby old mangy body, the flies circling him and thought -- this is going to be interesting. I had no idea just how true that would be. Basically, I will spare you all the play - by - play and just say that while Neil and Jeff were adjusting my stirrups the horse reared back and continued to rear back higher and higher, shaking off Neil and Jeff and finally me. He threw me off his back as he, in effect, sat down and I hit my head on the ground and lost my vision yet again this summer and tried not to pass out from the fall. Really, this was 2 monthsalmost to the day that I fell into the Animas river. How fragile and irritable life can be.
everyone said it looked like he landed right ontop of my, but I don't think he could have cause I don't hurt nearly enough for a 1000 pound animal to have crushed me. All the crushing was don't by gravity and dear old mother earth as my head collided with both. Actually, I hit the back of my neck too and my left hand was numb for the rest of the day, I thought I may have seriously injured my left arm (formerly the "good arm") at the elbow, but felt confident that the pain in the lower pack was superficial.
Once it was clear that I would stay conscious and I could form complete and coherent sentences, we took a car back to the house to being the now familiar ritual or applying arnica salve to the entire body. This time, friends from the Animas Adventure, we dosed me with a more reasonable amount of arnica (10 drops, not droppers) and although my headache grew increasingly worse throughout the evening, I stayed totally altert and conscious. Many forced games of dominoes later (I made them all play something with me so they could tell if I was spacing out), being awaken every hour through the night and at last a couple tylenols, I felt as good as someone who has just sustained a head injury can feel.

It's nice to feel confident in your herbal first aid skills, even better to have a third person there as a trained wilderness first responder to clear you of spinal injury and to take your pulse every hour, but I think I would rather, at least in the future read about this kind of thing in books.

Having never really hurt myself badly in my life, I am uplifted slightly by knowing I can preserveer and that my body, although not that of a teenagers, is still resilient and able to heal. It does make you really think about the fleeting nature of health and able-bodienss at the least, and of life itself at the most macabre. The good arm is, one week later, the good arm again and the bad arm feels pretty good these days too. Some brain fogginess, the feeling of being rattled and soreness of all the neck muscles were the only lasting effects and I feel fine now. What a life!
Ol' Neil told me he cant take much more of watching these things, but I reminded him he didn't even see the first one. Even so, I don't plan on adding any more posts like this in the near future.


Old Chapulin Strikes Again; Pre-strike I Try to Commiserate with a Mangy Horse






















The Skeleton we Didn't Ride to; Before Someone Stole the Skull:

A day in the life of the MZR

crissy gets crafty during a recent photograpy workshop
















ahhh, just another tough day at the MZR. Business breakfast with the ever classy business beadhead and business tye-dye.





















lots of family dinners with fresh fish and mmmmmmmmmmm.

















The cowboys hard at work on a game of "shoes", horse shoes for you non-ranchers.





















it is that season::yellow everywhere.

Little House in the Valley.

And then we found them, by a miracle really, the nicest people on earth. Here there are living totally off the grid, just them, the chickens, the navajo breed of sheep and the draft horses they use to work the 5 acres of vegetable and the 260 acres of grains they grown for the first CSA in The Valley.






















We drove up and I said, they have a teepee Crissy, this is it.
















They also have wind power, passive solar greenhouses and house, strawbale, adobe and earth berm root cellar, a biodisel mini lab and lots of other salvaged buildings and alternative energy uses. I was in love.






















Karen answered the door looking at each of for a moment and then asking, " have i met you before?" Seemed like a good sign as we settled in the cutest farm kitchen ever to talk about details of a speaking engagement met. Colin stopped us after only a few minutes saying, "before we go any further I think that you should know we are very radical."
Crissy and I just looked at each other and smiled. Thank god. I've been here for 2 months and its about time we met some folks living like this. Then we just continued with the farming conversation, that is farming as it related to biodeversity, oil, war, energy use, race, class and gender. No big deal.






Outside the straw-bale, passive-solar greenhouse:





















Inside the Greenhouse:





































Did I mention that Colin is an MD that went to Howard and drives a draft horse driven buggy to the ER where he works. They let him build a little shed there to house the buggy and horse!


















And all we have is this piece of junk.....Just a jump. that's all the ol' rental car needs to get started any more. Note to self and the rest of the world: never by a nissan.
















Chicken, never touch!!!

Fungi-allah-faeeia-ashay-ahsay

Yesterday crissy and I set off in search of local farmer and farmers for a workshop coming up next month at the ranch. Local agriculture in the San Luis Valley. I am working on the menus and we set off in search of field trip destinations as well as a guest speak. Here is what we found.

1st stop: Rakrah Mushroom farm. Largest employer in the valley at 300 people working 24/7 and supplier of button and portabella mushrooms to Sysco, Grocery strores and other food service venues. One crazy place and very full of shit, literally. They make their own compost from hay in the valley, add in liquid nitrogen (turkey poop), gypsum, etc and make huge windrows of compost for each flat they will then inoculate with the spawn grown on barley grains.


















Huge rooms of Douglas fir flats comtaining the homemade compost.



















And then they fruit:


And they are cut 3 times for different sizes and sent to the slicing room and or the packing room. This place was bumping. Music blaring, boxing being carted around on dollies and fork lifts, conveyor belts a runnin'.....



The ladies hard at work packing the sliced mushrooms.

















No rest for the weary here at the MZR....the mushroom lawn decor and the portabellas that are going into my bison sirloin burgonion tomorrow.

more retroactive blogging

some pics from the SWSBM season of my life, sent by amanda this week:


me, kat and amanda






















amy tries to hula hoop with a doggie


















(more posts with pics in the near future.)

Sayonara Suckers!

We commisioned this work from Get Pumped Crafts!, some of you may know her as one Susan Theresa Jelinek Melllage. She crafted this with the speed of the wind to get it to us in time for our AZ departure. We hung the flag from our campsite for the last week of class and took portriats of most everyone in front of it as they pulled off down the dirt road, single tears forming in the corners of their eyes, driving away for the last time from the SWSBM.

ps. you may notice the unbelieveable wind blowing whilst the piccture was being taken. This in the point at which i opened my door in the middle of this wind storm, only to have it blown the wrong way on the hinge making a terrible cracking sound. Even throwing all my weight into the door, I was no match for the mighty Zephyr and the door has never been the same. It took flagging down a classmate on highway 80 to help us get the door mashed shut.

Howdy Partner

Cowgirls::NACO, MEXICO::May 2006

Medano-Zapata Ranch and The Great Sand Dunes

Bison













The Sangre de Cristo mountains rise to the East of the Ranch, the Great Sand Dunes have formed just below them in the San Luis Valley. The Valley is an agricultural haven, with the mighty potato being the major cash crop around here.
















..Where the Buffalo, or are they Beefalo?, roam....














Read about the ranch here:
http://www.nature.org/wherewework/northamerica/states/colorado/preserves/art535.html




The wilderness of the Sangre de Cristos is vast and wild, and with very few acess roads and trails, it is hard to get into. Natural and artesian springs sprout up all over the land with cotton wood groves forming small communities across the ranch's 150,000+ acres.

Just us and The Chairman

Neil and I just spent a weekend in Leadville fishing at a private fishing club, lets just say that we both caught rainbows that are no joke....about 18 inches, and i learned a new way to clean fish, that is really cool, but really gross. The perks of having new friends in CO. The cabin came into his family, ironically enough, through the Maytag family. It looks jsut like my grandparents cabin in Baldwin, which owes a lot to the Whirlpool family. It was like a time warp. Probably not weird to anyone but Neil and I.

Now we have arrived at our housesitting gig in Boulder for yet another new, and very trusting friend. Yup, its just Neil, me and The Chariman. Who is the The Chairman you ask? Well, Chairman Mao is a fat striped cat that I will pretend I like for the next week while we cohabitate in a 400 square foot condo; this place is small. Real small.

I'd send some new pictures, but our camera broke again. We have a full week of errands ahead of us.



Pedicularis grayii

Camp Recovery

Thought I’d hit you all with a picture of when I feel and hurt the old arm – that’s Kat and her brother Wes acting the fool in the background.















Another picture of the Sub-alpine meadows from out trip from Ouray to Durango. I love these meadows. We camped for 5 days just south of here.

















The Camp Recovery Center















Here is Neil holding up the tops and the root of Osha (Ligusticum porterii) – a major medicine of the region and world wide. Bears love this root; it is their medicine as well and hence has many spiritual properties for many of the native tribes. The aromatics are excreted through the lungs and are a classic remedy for cold, dry chest conditions that need moisture and heat brought to them.

















Osha Root














For the last two weeks Neil and I have been homesteading in the San Luis Valley – right near the great sand dunes. Neil has been cowboying around– I hear that he was born to ride and that he makes a great hand. I haven’t been able to do much riding with this arm; I can’t pull the reins hard enough to control these work horses. This place is owned by the Nature Conservancy and is 150,000 acre working ranch with one of the only free ranging bison herds in North America. What that really means is that we’ve been eating some buffalo burgers and elk stake.


We’re heading down South to the Conejos river today to get in some fly-fishing and camping. We’ve become masters of cooking over the open flames; just cause you’re camping don’t mean you got to rough it….




















Poppies in Ouray

Keep your eye on that grand old flag.

Hops To it My Pretty


Oh, my heart beats true for that red, white and blue,
where there’s never a boast or a brag,
let old acquaintance be forgot,
keep you eye on that grand old flag!
Happy Birthday America.

Salsify aka Oyster Root



After a week of camping and caravanning around the state with Kat and Amanda we are on our own for the new month of July. We drove throught the most beautiful mountain passes from Ouray, CO to Durango. We made it, in one piece, almost. Last week I had a little fall, I will spare you the details, only to say that falling face first off rocks into a few few of ice cold Animas river is about what its cracked up to be. Haha. I can type again after 6 days, but still cant twist my arm much.
Here are a few things I learned:
1) Rocks can look rough and yet be worn to a slick consistency; look carefully before you bound down to the first bath you’ve seen in a week.
2) Your brain works amazingly fast in situations like that. I had time to think about hitting my face on the rocks below and time to decide to break my fall with my right arm.
3) That all that herbal mumbo-jumbo is a little more than just magic and hippies picking flowers; it can really save your life. If you all had seen the way the swelling of my arm went down in just a couple of minutes, if you could see the lack of bruising, the way the color came back to my blue lips, then you would be in awe and know that arnica is truly a miraculous herb.
4) That I was lucky to be with people who had cool heads and listening to me and held me up on the rocks while I got over the shock. Good frieds make all the difference in crisis. Thank god for people who don’t want to rush you to the emergency room, but trust your knowledge of your own body and how to heal it.
5) That money is better spent on a nice hotel room with cable and a hot tub rather than on x-rays that tell you something you already know and splits that you could make yourself.
6) That a first aid kit is something that you really should have if you happen to not be traveling with every possession you own in your car.
7) That I was luckier than hell to have only hurt my arm and banged up my legs.

Anyway, enough of the tragedy. I can’t find the camera cable or I would gift you with some pics of the mountain views or at least of my huddled in the folding chair post trauma. An old plant picture from the field trip will have to do. Neil and I have been camping north of Durango, in the San Juan Mountains for 4 nights now and are about to start heading back toward Alamosa and the Great Sand Dunes where we will meet up with Crissy in a day or two. I haven’t been to the rest of this state, but from what I have heard and seen this is a place not to be missed. The Southwest corner of the state is awesome, full of national forest and BLM land, and not over populated.
We are gathering plant medicine, cooking over fires made of aspen and sleeping soundly in the honey wagon. Life is good, hope all of you are too.


One of the last classes with the illustrious MM.