The Vilisar Times

CRIMINAL ACTIVITY; ANOTHER LONG RIDE COMING UP
Wednesday, 14 September 2005

Bob and his son Eli arrive back yesterday after ten days away selling cattle and doing business in Chihuahua and Cuauhtémoc. I hear the white 4-wheel-drive pickup in the afternoon grinding down the road across the river, fording the water, and grinding up the bank on this side to the ranchhouse. They bring back groceries so we are all set for a while. Getting groceries is like Christmas: fresh fruits and vegetables, chorizo, etc. Bob leaves again this morning because he has appointments “outside”. He is a really interesting fellow so I shall be glad when we can have more time to talk. He said he grew up on a reservation in the Dakotas and spent his whole life involved with native peoples in his law practice.

Today he is also picking up a 25-year-old man from The Netherlands from Chihuahua Airport who wants to learn to be a cowboy. He approached Bob through the internet. He’ll be turned over to Simon for his apprenticeship and share the log bunkhouse. It is going to get more crowded around here soon: the Dutchman: Alex, the American from Texas A&M; and the eco-gardener all arriving in the next few days. The last two will sleep in another bunkhouse farther up river and just out of sight from here. Cindy, her ten-year-old daughter Tanner, and her four-year-old son Levi will be back on Tuesday.

The big news is that we have an indication that someone is growing marijuana on Bob’s property. This is serious since, if the police find it themselves, Bob’s ranch could be confiscated. It is harvest time for marijuana at the moment. The growers also prey on local beef cattle to feed the harvest gangs so rustling is involved as well.

The Mexican Army is out patrolling and setting up roadblocks on back roads. In fact, Bob said, he passed an Army checkpoint on the extremely washed-out ranch road coming in yesterday (still no sign that the mining company has started to improve the road). Simon and I are going to return on horseback to the mesa north of here this afternoon to see if we can find the grow site so we can report it. It occurs to me as I write that, since we brought our handheld GPS from the boat, I can take it with me and note the exact coordinates.

It’s going to be another long ride over the same rough country. I shall also try to get the digital camera functioning to take the pictures that I wished I had snapped on our last ride. Fortunately the weather has turned dry though we may be coming back at least part of the route in darkness. I hope not. Bob, by the way, says the rainy season is definitely tapering off. It rained daily and hard when we first got here but there has been nothing but clouds and distant thunder and lightening to the south behind some mountains to the south since last Friday. Bob says we will get occasional showers now for a few more weeks and then perhaps once a month till November and then nothing more till next year. Late in the year it gets down into the low-20’s Fahrenheit at night in the extreme. “Winter” nights might bring frost starting in late November or early December but the days are sunny and warm up into the high 50’s and low 60’s every day. Sounds all right to me.

Eli, a very energetic and alert six-year-old, has been travelling with Bob, his dad, for ten days now, i.e. basically ever since we arrived here. They came back late one night and left again before dawn the next morning. Bob hinted and Eli stated that it has not been exactly easy for either of them. As Bob was getting ready to leave this morning Eli asked him point-blank if he might stay at the ranch. I was standing there and indicated to Bob that it would be fine for a couple of days. (It could, I guess, be a problem if I get a translation today: there is one in the offing. It would also mean I couldn’t go with Simon to the grow-site. The burden will fall then mainly on Kathleen, who after a summer of kids fulltime is enjoying the quiet.)

Eli is pretty rambunctious but we are beginning to talk German to him; he already speaks Spanish well, Simon tells us, and of course English. He and his little brother and older sister are home-schooled. At the moment he is chasing the two small cats, carrying one in a plastic bucket and swinging it around. Like most little boys of that age, he likes to smash things up, cut them with knives, and generally be destructive (Bob was relieved when I told him that my two boys were the same way at that age; William at age seven used his newly acquired pocket knife to cut up the headliner and arm rests in the back seat of a friend’s car on our way back from Vienna. It was pure boredom at that age. And no sense of property at that age. We were recalling it this past summer with William who had entirely forgotten the incident. I remember when I scolded him that he pulled the pocket knife out and handed it to me. “I guess you’ll be wanting this.”)

The other interesting and rather startling thing is that Bob said that, if we wanted to stay, we could have a piece of land to build a house for ourselves. Building materials are available locally in the form of adobe for bricks. The Pima Indians know how to find the materials; adobe requires 30% clay and 70% sand mixed with water, formed by hand into bricks and left to dry in the sun. We could pick almost any site we wanted but it would be better to build near the other ranch buildings since isolated houses left unattended are likely to get broken into.

posted by rjb,
1:10 pm

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		News From Ron and Kathy Bird__
For more pictures of Ron and Kathy Bird and the Vilisar, see these beautiful photos by Albert Pang Click here to e-mail Ron Click here to e-mail Kathy Archives January 2004 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 February 2007 March 2007 Vilisar Translation Expert German-English translation available; business and finance our specialty. SachverstÃ¤ndige Deutsch-Englische Ãbersetzung; GeschÃ¤ft und Finanz unser Spezialgebiet.	Wednesday, September 14, 2005 CRIMINAL ACTIVITY; ANOTHER LONG RIDE COMING UP Wednesday, 14 September 2005 Bob and his son Eli arrive back yesterday after ten days away selling cattle and doing business in Chihuahua and Cuauhtémoc. I hear the white 4-wheel-drive pickup in the afternoon grinding down the road across the river, fording the water, and grinding up the bank on this side to the ranchhouse. They bring back groceries so we are all set for a while. Getting groceries is like Christmas: fresh fruits and vegetables, chorizo, etc. Bob leaves again this morning because he has appointments “outside”. He is a really interesting fellow so I shall be glad when we can have more time to talk. He said he grew up on a reservation in the Dakotas and spent his whole life involved with native peoples in his law practice. Today he is also picking up a 25-year-old man from The Netherlands from Chihuahua Airport who wants to learn to be a cowboy. He approached Bob through the internet. He’ll be turned over to Simon for his apprenticeship and share the log bunkhouse. It is going to get more crowded around here soon: the Dutchman: Alex, the American from Texas A&M; and the eco-gardener all arriving in the next few days. The last two will sleep in another bunkhouse farther up river and just out of sight from here. Cindy, her ten-year-old daughter Tanner, and her four-year-old son Levi will be back on Tuesday. The big news is that we have an indication that someone is growing marijuana on Bob’s property. This is serious since, if the police find it themselves, Bob’s ranch could be confiscated. It is harvest time for marijuana at the moment. The growers also prey on local beef cattle to feed the harvest gangs so rustling is involved as well. The Mexican Army is out patrolling and setting up roadblocks on back roads. In fact, Bob said, he passed an Army checkpoint on the extremely washed-out ranch road coming in yesterday (still no sign that the mining company has started to improve the road). Simon and I are going to return on horseback to the mesa north of here this afternoon to see if we can find the grow site so we can report it. It occurs to me as I write that, since we brought our handheld GPS from the boat, I can take it with me and note the exact coordinates. It’s going to be another long ride over the same rough country. I shall also try to get the digital camera functioning to take the pictures that I wished I had snapped on our last ride. Fortunately the weather has turned dry though we may be coming back at least part of the route in darkness. I hope not. Bob, by the way, says the rainy season is definitely tapering off. It rained daily and hard when we first got here but there has been nothing but clouds and distant thunder and lightening to the south behind some mountains to the south since last Friday. Bob says we will get occasional showers now for a few more weeks and then perhaps once a month till November and then nothing more till next year. Late in the year it gets down into the low-20’s Fahrenheit at night in the extreme. “Winter” nights might bring frost starting in late November or early December but the days are sunny and warm up into the high 50’s and low 60’s every day. Sounds all right to me. Eli, a very energetic and alert six-year-old, has been travelling with Bob, his dad, for ten days now, i.e. basically ever since we arrived here. They came back late one night and left again before dawn the next morning. Bob hinted and Eli stated that it has not been exactly easy for either of them. As Bob was getting ready to leave this morning Eli asked him point-blank if he might stay at the ranch. I was standing there and indicated to Bob that it would be fine for a couple of days. (It could, I guess, be a problem if I get a translation today: there is one in the offing. It would also mean I couldn’t go with Simon to the grow-site. The burden will fall then mainly on Kathleen, who after a summer of kids fulltime is enjoying the quiet.) Eli is pretty rambunctious but we are beginning to talk German to him; he already speaks Spanish well, Simon tells us, and of course English. He and his little brother and older sister are home-schooled. At the moment he is chasing the two small cats, carrying one in a plastic bucket and swinging it around. Like most little boys of that age, he likes to smash things up, cut them with knives, and generally be destructive (Bob was relieved when I told him that my two boys were the same way at that age; William at age seven used his newly acquired pocket knife to cut up the headliner and arm rests in the back seat of a friend’s car on our way back from Vienna. It was pure boredom at that age. And no sense of property at that age. We were recalling it this past summer with William who had entirely forgotten the incident. I remember when I scolded him that he pulled the pocket knife out and handed it to me. “I guess you’ll be wanting this.”) The other interesting and rather startling thing is that Bob said that, if we wanted to stay, we could have a piece of land to build a house for ourselves. Building materials are available locally in the form of adobe for bricks. The Pima Indians know how to find the materials; adobe requires 30% clay and 70% sand mixed with water, formed by hand into bricks and left to dry in the sun. We could pick almost any site we wanted but it would be better to build near the other ranch buildings since isolated houses left unattended are likely to get broken into. posted by *rjb,* *1:10 pm* Comments: Post a Comment
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Wednesday, September 14, 2005