Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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In this modern world of paved roads and interstate systems, the automobiles are spoiled rotten. Even I’ve got a car that only has a couple of inches of ground clearance and can’t go very far from the highway without getting in some sort of bind. Long gone are the days when the best of the best was bad pavement and dirt was always on the route. I’m not complaining, by any means. I enjoy the spoils of luxury maybe a little more than the average citizen. Because there’s a lot of...
The amount of time spent rolling in some vehicle or another is more than too much to count when you grow up on a big, flatland farm. Back and forth in the field, to and from the field, hauling to town and back, and all those circles and forward and back that is moving dirt — or stuff that’s dirtier. What’s interesting to realize is that most of that time is spent doing the driving and being in control of the ride. That’s the point, of course, but there’s something to be sai...
Thanksgiving leftovers make mighty fine burritos to take to the field the next day. Turkey, dressing, and cranberry sauce, all rolled up in a tortilla and wrapped in aluminum-foil. When lunch time comes around, it's a surprise you may have forgotten about, but a welcome change from the burrito ingredients that are available the rest of the year. I'm not saying that I'm particularly sad that a turkey burrito is a once-a-year food-item. It's probably best as a rare, seasonal...
Agriculture as a livelihood is a long-term life. Trying it out thoroughly is not really an option. You can get a glimpse and a taste by finding a job as a hand for someone already invested. But the work that gets done during what the rest of the world seems to label as “working hours,” is not always so easy to see. A day is only so much time, and everyone eventually realizes that only so much can be done between our evening sleeps. A day’s work is only so many things. It se...
Writing this column every week starts by picking a thought. There’s, so far, never been a problem coming up with one that provokes at least as much length as this format allows. There is no shortage of stories, facts, figures, and close calls in my own life experience to write these possibly forever, or at least the practical equivalent. This is one half of my weekly paradox. On the other side is the fact that even though there is infinite material, there is also always more t...
The variation in length — and lack — of a schedule on the farm or ranch has been mentioned before, and it’s all still true. The day to day varies from week to week and season to season and so forth and so on. The big perk is the flexibility. Most of the time, you can work your work around the rare event in the outside world that has a certain time and a certain place. But even though I wouldn’t go so far as to say that there are things that must happen at a certain time an...
The important features of your daily mode of personal transportation are why we acquire it, what we brag most about, and what we miss the most when they are no longer available. We won’t talk about the little things that are tricky when we go vehicle shopping. Let’s focus on the best part, asking the most important questions. Which of the coolest things does it have that I need, want, and would like to try? And of course, how many of each one and where? Cup holders are imp...
There’s a long history of peanuts in this valley. Perhaps the heyday of the goober has come and gone in the Portales Valley, but even so, it is a heritage that is a long, long way from being gone. And on the bright side, you’re less likely to have peanuts sitting in the field keeping you from coming to town this weekend to have a little fun. The Peanut Festival is an event that I’ve gotten excited about for as long as I can remember and even as it has moved and changed over...
The weather of choice, to whomever it is that gets to choose in this here desert, seems to be hot, with a chance of getting hotter. For three out of four of the supposed seasons, we just get a variation in seasoning but little effective change in temperature. The spring brings the wind, which can make the hot more bearable, or at least distract us from that discomfort with the gritty blast of another. The summer doubles down and gives us a break from the wind sometimes, but...
Emergency Bovine Medicine is a skill that most cattlemen gain some level of proficiency in due to repeated and pungent exposure. It’s similar to the related field of Emergency Human Medicine, but CPR looks a lot different and the equipment/treatment generally available is quite a bit more limited and less sterile. The EBM core kit consists of whatever you normally have in your pockets and, of that, the pocket-knife is the useful part. The my-cattle-have-bee...
Rain and fog and misty September mornings are more than welcome on the desert Plains. You won’t find me complaining about the moisture, but you might find me voicing some disappointment about the specific circumstances of my pickup’s windshield. A wet windshield isn’t too big of a problem if you are able to generally keep your glass relatively clean, but between the wet weather, there’s this odd tendency of dust and grit to accumulate. I can’t imagine where or why the sand...
To list even the common situations where one needs to tie-down, secure, drag, lift, compress, hang, head, or heel something — would be a list too long to post here or to get through in any decent amount of time. But, proceeding with the understanding of how numerous and often these tasks arrive and must be handled, let’s talk about rope. Rope is a simple term for a thing that is so varied and where variety matters so much. There’s the generic, archetypal rope that I’ve...
There are at least a couple of systems that you can use to measure things. Standard or metric, depending on where you spend most of your time or which brands of tractors and equipment you use. I’ll avoid getting into the never-ending debate as to the pros and cons and frustrations of these two main contenders in the eternal battle of measurement-king. (I will admit that a base-10 system does make for easier math. But, I’m personally fond of rational fractions over decimal num...
Time on the farm is a bit hard to explain. In one way, it is stretchy and flexible, but in the other direction it is undeniably set in its way. Yes, you can often start or end at a time that isn’t exactly precise, but there is usually a cold, hard interval that you have to get the job done within. So, you can start and stop on the thing that needs done, just as long as you are done before the real deadline comes. If you know how long the job will actually take to be done, this...
There are times when it may seem like the wind will never stop blowing, the rain will never start falling, and the world is never going to be more than the hot, hard, dry desert that it is at that moment. But whether it is wisdom or foolishness, those of us in agriculture, who succeed and fail on the whims of the uncaring weather, keep going on the faith that the weather will always change — and eventually it will be certain to change for the better. In the middle of the summe...
The weather is never far from your mind when you make your living off the land. You wish it were your friend, but nobody keeps a friend as volatile and unreliable as that. Or at least you don’t keep them around all the time and involve them in a crucial role in your business. The weather is not your friend, even when it is helping you out. The weather isn’t your enemy either. It has been known to turn on you and ruin your entire year. But an enemy is more than a problem, an en...
Regardless of your opinion on what shape the globe might be, there is incontrovertible evidence that there are some places on this earth that deserve to be called flat. The High Plains is one of those places. I don’t know how to explain all the things that make the flatlands the best home for this flatlander, but I’d wager that there’s a little more than familiarity at play. It’s true that I’m accustomed to and was raised where the earth is flat, but I’ve traveled and seen mo...
When you live in a desert, rain is rare, by definition. When you live in a desert and are involved in agriculture, that rare rain is precious and always appreciated (even on the occasions when it also causes some inconvenience.) Usually when that water does fall from the sky, it is so quickly absorbed by the thirsty earth, that any perks other than just moister ground are not experienced. But every once in a blue moon, there comes a storm that really brings a big bucket and...
With every job, there is a location where you are bound to spend some notable portion of your time. Some jobs are quite thoroughly bound to a spot that we call an office. So core is the location that we even go so far as to call them “office” jobs, defining the vocation by the location. Well, there are very few jobs on the front lines of agriculture that you can even think about calling by the office. I mean, yeah, you might spend an hour or two in the office of someone els...
This new fad that has swept the parking-lot vendors on both sides of the road; this thing they call fidget spinners, is interesting to me. I mean, I can’t argue that anything on a bearing (so long as it isn’t froze up with rust, of course) is inevitably pretty entertaining. So, I’m both a bit surprised that it took this long to become so obvious, and also a bit underwhelmed due to the fact that I think it’s something that I already knew. There’s plenty of things to spin on t...
Transportation is critical in any walk of life. In order to do much of anything, you need to get to where you are going. Crawling is the method of choice for babies and when the house is on fire and you don’t want to breathe so much smoke. Walking is choice if the distance is short, the time is long, or there’s no alternative. Running is for emergencies and races only. Unicycles are for clowns and people who like to learn things for no reason. Bicycles are not for when you...
We live in a wide land where automobile transportation is not a benefit but a necessity. Rules for dealing with cars are almost as important as ways of dealing with people. And dealing with people’s cars and people in cars, is pretty much the epitome of need-to-know. Getting into someone’s vehicle without permission or invitation is a pretty serious line, in general. And I certainly don’t recommend ignoring that important standard of conduct in your everyday life. But, as wi...
Some stories have a lesson to tell. Some stories have a message to convey, and some stories just happen. As we all know, even just after the fact, details and descriptions begin to blur, a phenomena that eventually results in the great myths that make some of the best yarns. This is one such muddied stream of events that somehow came to be. Once upon a time, Mahindra, Kubota, and their little friend Fendt were chasing a deere ... They were young and ambitious and one day, whil...
There are a lot of requirements to being a farmer or a rancher. You have to have some real estate suitable (or at least potentially so) to your particular endeavor. You need equipment, time, a minimum level of cooperative weather, and the willingness to gamble year by year. You probably need some help and some idea of how to raise livestock or those plants that we call commodities. Certain behaviors and characteristics are important as well. You’ll definitely need a deep strea...
It is a fascinating fact that even in the dry, not-so-lush-lands where a decent crop requires more than a little irrigation ... the weeds will always grow. And the less fascinating, but more problematic, truth is that they will grow faster than the useful plant. A field is like one of those old western towns that only exist in the movies. There’s just not room for both the good and the bad. The weeds will take over a field in a hurry if something isn’t done to keep the und...
