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Sunday, September 18, 2005
MOUNTAIN STORM; PIGS TO LIVE IN NEW LUXURY; FRESH CHICKEN FOR SUNDAY DINNER; INDIAN BURIAL GROUND
Sunday, 18 September 2005
Mountain Storm
Simon has been saying for several days now that, when it gets this hot (around here “hot” means, let’s say, 80°F) then there is bound to be rain within in a couple of days. “Rain” around here means that, during August and September (the remainder of the year is basically dry), tall cumulus clouds begin to build over the mountain ranges, the skies cloud over and turn dark and, after a play of thunder and lightning, a deluge hits in late afternoon or early evening lasting for either just a few minutes or several hours. It hasn’t rained now for ten days or so. Two days ago when Bob, Simon and I took our long ride, however, the skies clouded up late in the afternoon and we had a show of thunder and lightning and a few big drops of rain. This is the tail-end of the rainy season and the downpours will become less frequent and finally taper off altogether in the next few weeks.
Yesterday, Saturday, we get a real blow. The timing is typical but the intensity is the strongest I have seen so far since we have been at Rancho el Nogal (a little over two weeks ago). First the dark clouds and then the thunder and lightning come first from behind a mountain range and then from right overhead. When the rain comes it is intense and accompanied by Chubasco-type high winds, first from the south and then from the north while the lightning and thunder seem to be right over the house. Sebastiaan Pluijmen (aka “Dutch” Pluijmen) starts out into the field on some errand just as the clouds approach but turns around suddenly and dashes back into the covered walkway when he sees a bolt of lightening strike the far end of the pasture. He is barely under cover when the rain hits.
Instantly all the eaves are running heavy water, the older shingled rooves dripping through. The wind is also tearing at the sheets of corrugated iron on the rooves and some of the sheets began to flap as if a hidden hand were trying to yank them off. As the wind and rain intensify I see from the guesthouse window where I have been reading one sheet over the covered breezeway on Simon’s log cabin bend back completely flat. The rain drums on the tin roof over my head and I see water begin to drip down the inside wall on the river side as the wind drives rain against the window panes. As the wind shifts water start pooling below the windows on the corral side.
If the rain seems loud and the thunder close, the advent of hail sets up a drumming on every tin rooftop and on the pickup truck parked just outside the guesthouse. The wind shifts suddenly to the north, back to the south and then to the north again. The hailstones are not large, fortunately, but there are enough of them that the ground in front of the corral is becoming whiter by the minute.
The deluge and the wind lasts for a good half an hour before it begins to slacken, before the lightning bolts and peals of thunder begin to move away to the south and west leaving a sodden ranchhouse complex and, as we experienced in the heavy rains two weeks ago, water running down the walls of the ranchhouse itself. With every rain the roofing project gets moved farther up Bob’s “To-Do” list.
Pigs to Live in New Luxury
Porky, the cute little white boar with the curly tail, and Schnautze, the larger grey-brown and hairy sow, have been living temporarily in the dog run just over the hill behind the ranchhouse. The pen is not totally secure and we have spent a lot of time chasing them around when they escape. I suggest to Bob that Dutch Pluijmen, who is still not fully employed as he works his way into rancho life, build us a new pigsty out behind the main corral and near the chicken coop. This would move the smell farther away, make feeding activities more efficient since the swine would be near the chickens, and we could possibly built a shelter to store the feeds out there.
Near the chicken coop there is an old unused pole barn that will probably one day be torn down. It still has a serviceable roof over part of it and we could convert it to a sty. After walking the proposed site together, Bob gives the go-ahead, and Dutch, Eli and I start picking up the old wood, logs, old metal and wire, and years of other trash, and start separating them into separate piles. For a future bonfire, we stack the useless wood in a big pile in an open space; the metal bits will be taken to the dump way in the far back pasture.
With the site cleared, Dutch goes to work with a peck basket of old long nails, a hammer, a pair of pliers and a power chainsaw, which Bob brought out of one of the storerooms. Clearly Dutch knows what he is doing. He handles the tools with experience and vigour. Leaving Dutch alone I return to the guesthouse to write. Dutch comes in occasionally for a glass of water or some other tool. After five or six hours he announces that we should take a look at the pigs’ new luxurious quarters. And fine they are too! He has renovated the old stable so that the pigs have shade and a wooden platform to lie on as well as mud to play in. Feeding and watering can be done without actually having to go into the sty. It is at right angles and 100 feet from the chicken coop and there is enough roofed-over area so that we can probably store feedstuffs out there as well.
We decide to wait until feeding time to move Porky and Schnautze so we can entice them over. This plan is postponed because of the heavy rains; nobody wants to wade around in pig manure and mud. The ground dries quickly and we might be able to do it on Sunday or Monday. But the pigsty is a big improvement. Dutch is a real worker and has a lot of really useful skills for a ranch. He ought soon to be getting thank you notes from Porky and Schnautze.
Later on Sunday
We just finished convinced Schnautze to vacate his old quarters and move to the new Ramada Pig Sty. We thought we could entice both him and Porky with kitchen slops. But as soon as we dropped a lasso around his neck she broke into a panic and no amount of grub was going to get her out of there. Kind of like some die-hards in Hurricane Katrina-flooded New Orleans. We wound up dragging her with Eli shouting and smacking her bottom, Dutch dragging on the lasso and Bob holding Schnautze by her right hind leg. I dumped the bucket of slops into the new pen. Once Schnautze was in her new quarters she was sceptical about things and refused to try the scraps. Meanwhile Porky has run down to the arroyo; we hope that Schnautze will entice him back with calls. I sure wish we had had a film camera to document us “cowboys” dragging a squealing pig across the corral.
Fresh Chicken for Sunday Dinner
With a surplus of cocks in the chicken coop, Bob decides to dedicate one of the four or five roosters to our Sunday culinary enjoyment. Bob has had lots of experience growing up in a big family in the country; his family kept some 300 cocks for eating purposes and the family had a real assembly line approach to catching, killing, cleaning and gutting chickens.
It turns out that Dutch, who has a formal agricultural education, also knows how to go about it. Yours Truly actually beheaded a chicken years ago but can hardly claim to be an expert. The hardest part seems to be picking out a rooster from amongst the hens. The one we think is the fattest we are not completely sure is male. He is nevertheless doomed. Dutch corners him and carries him by the feet to the yard near the water tanks while I get the hatchet. This instrument is a little dull so we don’t get a clean cut and wind up hacking off his head. To do so, Dutch asks me to hold the head while he holds the feet and wields the blade. I am not sure that I want to have my fingers near the neck but I still have all my digits when the rooster’s ordeal is over.
While we turned to making pancakes with Eli, Dutch sets himself down with a bucket of boiling water at the picnic table behind the kitchen to pluck the chicken and gut it. By the time we finish breakfast the chicken is in the pot and Dutch is making a soup big enough to feed us all later today after we come back from a walk Bob is proposing.
An Indian Burial Ground
Kathleen and I wondered about the circular, three-foot high pile of rocks in the middle of corral yard. Today Bob told us that he had Simon erect it over a spot where, after heavy rains, human bones and skulls still appear along with cut-bone beads, etc. According to Simon, who he told us was part Apache and part Pima, this was an Apache encampment and/or burial ground overlooking the river where they could spot any approaching enemies. Bob has picked up quite a few shaped-stone instruments from around the site here.
Apaches were a Spartan people who were ferocious in battle and raiding. Their legendary leader in the late nineteenth century was Geronimo and they tended to hole up in these mountains and come into conflict with both the Mexican and the US Army. In their burial practices, Apaches would bury their dead in the ground and secure the sites with rocks to prevent scavenging by animals. Exceptions were babies who, if they died, were hung in their papoose boards in trees (Sioux buried everybody in trees) and the very elderly who were left to die on their own. This was a tough practice. But in a nomadic people who were always close to the existence minimum, useless mouths were, by common consent even of the elderly themselves, an intolerable burden on the clan. Since the Apaches had many enemies and frequently had to move fast and far, the elderly were an additional burden. Even before they died or were abandoned, the elderly were expected to take a distinct background role in the clan. They wore the oldest clothing and ate last and least. Political power went largely to the young war leaders, although a medicine man might retain influence beyond his years. When someone died and was buried, either his personal effects were buried with him or her or burned immediately. For a notable warrior who died, his horse or his best horse was killed and buried or burned. The bereft had a fear that the spirit of the dead would linger on in artefacts and haunt the living; the Apaches had a distinct fear of the dead and of ghosts and of night-time as well. They almost without exception did their ambushing and raiding in daylight.
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