Blog from the High Country

Shikiss

August 1995 - January 15, 2007
RIP Shikiss, First Dog

(AKA Tri-paw, Shikkie, Shikkis-Bolikkus, Shikka-lickus, Shikkie-Lou-Who, Caninus Trileggus)

Many years ago, when I was young and mostly crazy, and definitely not responsible enough to even take care of myself, much less another creature, I went to the animal control (The Pound) in Gallup, New Mexico, with my friend Christine. Gallup is a small town on the edge of the Navajo Reservation, the nation's largest Indian reservation.

I had this half-baked idea to get myself a dog. I'm not quite sure why I thought this was a good idea -- I'd only recently finished college, and had moved a month before to Gallup, where I was working for the Gallup Independent (motto: The Truth Misspelled). The last thing I needed was a responsibility like that.

But this cute little blonde-and-white Rez Mutt puppy caught my eye. I remember the moment like it was yesterday: She was in the corner cage with her two littermates. I came up to the cage and she leapt at the bars like she was, well, as crazy as I was at the time. My heart melted. "This one," I said. "For sure, this is the one."

I took her home. THe next day at the newspaper, I solicited input from other employees on a name. Evelyn, a really nice Navajo woman who put together obituaries and news briefs, suggested a Navajo word which I translated as "Shikiss" (SHI-kiss), which meant, Evelyn said, "My Friend."

(I am quite sure that I did not pronounce this word correctly, from day one. Navajo is a beautiful language, filled with breathy halts-and-starts, nearly impossible to reproduce if you weren't born into it).

Just the same, despite Christine's insistence on calling my new puppy "Shit-kiss" for several months, I adopted the name.

For the next several years, it is true Shikiss was my friend -- at times my only friend, it seemed. For that first year, especially, Shikiss and I went everywhere together -- she came with me on long drives through red sandstone canyons on the Rez, to late-night school board meetings in Chinle, to wildfires in Chinchilbito, to murder trials in Shiprock. At night, I would write articles, and Shikiss would hang out and keep me company. More than anything , she loved to come with me in the car. She sat in the passenger seat and barked at horses we passed on the roadside. Even when I went to work, she much preferred waiting for me in the car to waiting at home.

The story of how Shikiss lost her leg shall be skimmed over. My friend Don came to pick me up in his big old brown 1972 Ford Pickup Truck, and since the Rez has no fences, Shikiss decided to chase us. She got caught under the wheel. Her left front leg was amputated when she was 9 months old. I remember the vet bill: $300. Something close to half my monthly income at the time.

A lot of water has passed under the bridge since our time together on the Rez. Other dogs have come , and gone (and other cats, and goats, and rabbits). Shikiss over time lost her youthful ability to walk long distances, and in 2001 she started showing signs of having a lot of pain. An X-ray that spring showed her hip joints were already nearly completely worn down, as a result of her lopsided, three-legged gait. The vet told me she would need to be put down soon, perhaps that summer. He insisted she would need pain pills until that day came.

I took her home, and never took her back to a vet. I didn't give pain pills -- I gave glucosamine. Lots of it.

Despite a few good walks and chases, Shikiss spent most of the next six years playing Backup Barker to more agile dogs who liked to chase coyotes -- she would stand on the porch and bark for hours, while the others sprinted across the fields. She loved her role as backup barker, and she loved that her disability gave her Special Privileges. While the other dogs often got banished to chicken protection duty at night, Shikiss came in and slept by the fire. She grew rather Peevish.

Not that she ever gave up: To her dying day, Shikiss liked to chase cars. She liked to chase them because she wanted to be up there, in the passenger seat. In fact, she believed very much that she deserved to be there.

When I knew for certain this morning that Shikiss could not survive until the ground thaws this spring, as we'd been hoping, I was at first worried: How were we going to get this dog, in terrible pain, into a car?

Silly me. Here's how: Open the car door and invite her in.

Although three kids had definitely reduced the number of car trips Shikiss took the last few years, she never lost her love for coming with me in the car.

So I opened the door to our Toyota truck, and she jumped right in. (She whimpered, but she jumped -- it had been months since this dog jumped).

On our way down to the vet, Shikiss barked. She barked at the horses searching through the snow for some grass in the field next to ours. She barked at the German Shepherd down the road who chases every car that passes. She barked at the coyote sauntering across a field near the river.

We stopped for burritos: One for me, and one with extra bacon for her. I tore off pieces and gave them to her, as we drove through the Rio Grande canyon.

For the first time in months, she trusted me enough to lay her head against my shoulder (for the past six months or so, it has hurt her too much to be petted, so she avoided it).

I did not ask the vet for any hope. I announced my intention, and that was that. We were brave, Shikiss and I. We ignored the irritating Pit Bull in the waiting room who wanted nothing more than to play with us. We ignored the yippie little dachsund who tried to lunge at our throats. Shikiss sat, and I sat. Every so often, she looked up at me, as if to ask, "Is it time yet?"

And then the time came and the vet wasted no time. Shikiss went up on the table, onto a white cloth. I held her head as they put the needle into her remaining front leg, I whispered into her ear, and I said, "Thank you, Shikkie, thank you. Thank you for being such a good dog. Such a good dog. Oh thank you, Shikiss."

It was fast and, I think, she was grateful to be done with her pain.

The ground here is frozen under several feet of snow. For now, poor Shikiss is buried in a snowdrift. Come spring, when the ground thaws, we'll make her a nice grave on the farm.

I will miss you, My Friend.

It appears I have my blog spam problem under control now. Since I can now access my own blog without getting buried under ten thousand e-mails selling viagra and disturbing Internet porn sites, I can now get going on this blog again.

Our news today: Nearly 3 feet of snow in the past week.

I've been living up here in this area for six winters now and I've never seen anything like this.

It just figures. We move into a boxcar for an indefinite camping trip, and the skies open up. After five years of horrible drought, the rains started approximately 10 days after we moved here in June. This summer was the wettest on record since 1890. It rained just about every day from June 30 to September 30.

The first day of December, I brought home with me from Texas: A new kid. Harlan Quinn, an old family friend, age 15, needed a place to live since his father became gravely ill. So now our family totals 6 people. That's right: 6 people living in a boxcar without hot running water in three feet of snow. Less than 400 square feet.

I tried to wade out to the goat barn this afternoon to feed the animals and found myself in hip-deep drifts.

I'll post some pictures tomorrow, if I can find my digital camera. The wind picked up about 5 p.m. and started blowing the snow every which way.

(And yet, this is nothing, compared to the mud to come).

THis is a test of my new anti-spam system. Have to get a grip on it before I can get going again here.

We've had a delightful autumn here in the high country -- mild temperatures and warm days and weeks of sunshine to makes us all forget the soggy summer. We planted garlic until mid-November this year, feeling lucky the ground wasn't yet frozen. The last day I planted garlic, Ella and Silas were hanging around playing, and I realized at some point they had stripped their clothes off and gone wading in the ditch.

But the weather is turning on us--the forecast calls for snow tonight and tomorrow, and tomorrow night the forecast calls for possibly sub-zero temperatures.

What we've all been dreading has arrived: The start of winter, from the perspective of those of us living in boxcars.

I'm sure we'll survive, but here's how I spent my day today, the last shreds of autumn: Frantically planting crocus bulbs. I'd bought some several weeks ago but hadn't found time to plant them (when the sun shines like that, it makes you feel it might last forever). But the last two days, that evil north wind chilled me down to my bones, and I knew I'd better get anything in the ground that needed to be there. And I knew I couldn't survive the month of March here at 8,000 feet, living in a boxcar, without some splashes of earliest crocus color to remind me that the winter will not, afterall, last forever.

We have good news to report on several fronts, and I'll update the blog again just as soon as I get back from a quick trip to the coast in Texas. Hee hee. Yes, that's right: Our first truly cold night of winter, poor Avi will sleep alone in the boxcar while I frolic on a warm beach. I'm sure I'll hear about it later. (Question: Dare I ask him to make sure to cover the cold frame to protect the little spinach seedlings?)

I wish I had been kidding when I briefly mentioned the skunks in the outhouse.

I suppose I was kidding, in a way. I have no indication there are actually any skunks living in the outhouse.

We do, however, at this point, have some solid evidence there are skunks living under the foundation of the house , under the room that shall someday be known as "our bedroom."

The first four or five weeks we were here, I did notice that on a nightly basis, not long after sunset, I would notice a distinct aroma of skunk. And last winter, when we were in and out, I noticed that the house itself smelled like skunk -- I figured we had left the door open and a skunk got in and just spent the night.

So a few weeks ago, we started doing a lot of work at night in that room, which Avrum had turned into the Garlic Room. We harvested the garlic and started braiding late into the night.

At first I thought the skunk smell was due to all this rain we've been having -- you know how humidity carries icky smells?

But eventually I had to start wondering. It didnt' smell bad during the day, when it was raining. Only in the evenings.

One night, Avrum heard a rustling noise that seemed to be coming from under the floor. The next day we went out and found a definite burrow, with poop at the entrance.

If anyone has any advice on how to trap a skunk without setting it off, I'd appreciate it.

And speaking of potatoes, don't they grow well in Ireland?

This is the only explanation for the so far impressive results of the Great Potato Experiment of 2006.

In late June, just a couple weeks after we hurriedly moved, my friend Mary offered us a lot of seed potatoes which were unfortunately sitting at the hardware store for weeks waiting for someone to pick them up. It was pretty late for planting potatoes in our short season at 8,000 feet so we decided to try something fun: Tire plantings. The method is described here:

www.humeseeds.com/potato.htm

We put a couple seed potatoes in the middle of a tire, stacked some compost and mulch on top of it, and have been adding tires every time the tops get big enough to warrant it. Potatoes develop along the stalk of its stem, above the root.

Here is when they first emerged:



So far, we've been flabbergasted by how fast the potatoes are growing. We have seven stacks of tires and although we only planted about five or six weeks ago, starting with one tire, we now have four tires on many of our stacks. We're hoping for huge yields of yummy potatoes that do not smell or taste like used tarry rubber. I'll keep updating photos as they grow-- we're so pleased.

The Katz family, you might be interested to hear, has applied for a new home on the TV Program Extreme Home Makeover. As I said to Avrum, I'm not quite sure we are the kind of family they are looking for. I think we're so ridiculous, they'd have to pick us ... except maybe they’re looking for a family that accidentally hit hard times due to unforeseen and tragic circumstances, rather than folks who blithely ran headlong into hard times counting on the lottery to save them from themselves because they wanted to be able to grow potatoes.

Still, we retain a sense of humor, which surely works in our favor, and we are at least decent people with , umm, lofty ideals. We're honest-to-goodness going to apply to be foster parents if we ever have a spare bedroom. I've got a few ideas in my head about non-profit groups I'd like to start to get food -- good quality food, nutritious food, grown locally-- to homebound seniors and families with small children.

Here's what I sent in our five-sentence application, due the 11th. We're having fantasies about the off-grid 2,500 square foot adobe they will build. I"m hoping we can convince them to also build a 1,000 square foot root cellar and a nice goat barn.

"THE KATZ FAMILY

Avrum Katz, dad, age 48, public school teacher and farmer
Kristen Davenport Katz, mom, 35, freelance writer and farmer
Nik Katz, age 12, Avrum’s son from 1st marriage
Ella Grace Katz, age 3
Silas Katz, age 2
Plus 3 dogs, 2 cats, 20 goats, 6 rabbits & 30-something chickens

We are organic market farmers living in a 100-year-old adobe house on 32 mountain acres near Taos, New Mexico -- a remarkably beautiful piece of earth good for growing organic vegetables. But the house has no running water, no bathroom, rotting floors, and a foundation built of river rock. Right now the house is not entirely habitable, and we are sleeping in an old converted boxcar on the property while we work on the house, but we have run out of money and time. We have a composting outhouse, and our bathtub (fed with irrigation ditch water) is out under the blue sky – and drains to our potato patch. But, we are panicked: Winter is coming and we’re worried about how we’re going to make it during the cold months when our ditch freezes."

As we've mentioned, we happen to be (mostly) living in a boxcar currently. This boxcar is 9 feet wide by 40 feet long. Five people, plus most of their belongings -- beds, dressers, clothes, books, muddy shoes, stuffed monkeys, etc.

New Mexico is having a particularly rainy summer... in fact, the first rainy summer since 1997. We call these --out here in the desert -- the "summer monsoons." (Which seems silly, considering that "monsoon" means in this case about 4 inches of rain in a month).

During the summer monsoons, the pattern is for clear, sunny mornings and big booming thunderstorms in the afternoon and hail and downpours that create new arroyos and wash out roads.

So, this afternoon, I went over to Picuris Pueblo to talk to a woman about the Pueblo's Feast Day tomorrow (for a story for the local newspaper). She invited me in, told me about the tribe's patron saint (St. Lawrence), gave me a loaf of pueblo bread (white flour, yeast, water and lard) and sent me home. The pueblo is about 10 miles from our house and I headed uphill, because we were planning to go to the farmer's market in Dixon that afternoon.

As I was leaving the Pueblo, I saw it: The stormcloud. From where I was, that many miles away, I could see the solid curtain of rain coming out of an ominously dark thunderhead. Avrum was, I knew, at home with Ella and Silas, as well as their friend Anna Soma.

"Hmm," I thought. "That curtain of rain looks like it might be... right over our house."

As I got closer to home, the sky opened up. As I passed our garlic field on the right, a mile away, I could hardly see the car in front of me and the road as it turned to gravel also turned to a river. I turned onto our road and the car fishtailed in the mud. I turned into our driveway and the driveway was under a good six to eight inches of water.

"Wow," I said as I splashed into the house, where I found the family huddled in the computer room. Avrum said it had been raining like this for half an hour.

I decided to head down to the boxcar to see if the doors were closed-- that is not really the type of thing Avrum thinks about. So I went down and sure enough, the doors were open. I hopped up into the boxcar, and sighed -- my nice faux-leather chair was all wet. There was a big puddle on the tile floor. And then, I looked in the direction of our bed, above which is a nice skylight through which we can see the stars. And I noticed something strange: There seemed to be rain coming in through the skylight. Onto the bed. Onto the bed and onto the two baskets of neat, clean, folded laundry (clean laundry is worth its weight in gold in a household without running water). Onto the bed, the laundry and... the kid's bookcase.

As it turned out, the storm blew a skylight off our boxcar and an inch of rain-- which fell in 45 minutes-- came right in and made itself at home.

Although it took us hours to clean, the only permanent damage was about 12 books that had to be tossed. The bed dried. The laundry was hung the next morning in the inevitable sunshine.

My goodness. I've let all my loyal followers down.

The Katz family has, finally, moved to its tumble-down adobe home. We are here and trying to make a go of it. We have no well & therefore no running water & therefore no hot water other than what we heat on a propane stove. We're living in a boxcar. We have a goat problem and several kittens and it won't stop raining. This would be nice if it weren't for the mud. The thing that scares me most is not my dirty dishes (although they are scary, without hot water) but the skunks in the outhouse.

This week I am, finally, going to update my website -- which has earned us not a penny since, oh, October-- and revamp the blog. So stay tuned.... oh the fun things that are coming...

On Friday, I went down to Espanola --- heroin capital of the world-- to try to find Kayla, my 15-year-old friend & spiritual first daughter who is (geeeez, Kayla) pregnant. Five months pregnant.

Sigh.

Kayla, not surprisingly, stood me up and could not be found nor contacted via telephone. Let's hope she isn't shooting heroin.

So, barring something better to do, I went to the feed store to see if they had goat minerals, because goats are high-maintenance and need minerals as well as hay and grain and marshmallows. The store did have minerals, but no marshmallows, and out back I saw: Eight really gross goslings.

They were in a cage two-feet by two-feet and they were way, way past the cute stage. They stank to high heaven and by this point goslings really should be eating something besides bulk manufactured protein. Like grass or tomato seedlings or something.

The guy said the goslings were intended to be sold before Easter to gullible animal lovers looking for cute creatures. These were the leftovers. As I said, they were past their cute stage.

So anyway, very long story short, I ended up home with four On Sale geese and, yes, I need new geese like I need a hole in my head. (And I do have new goats on the way, too). They are hilarious and even Avrum loves them. We checked into whether they will eat the frogs at the new property and as it turns out, geese are vegetarians. Thank goodness.

We are pretty sure geese will thrive at the new place, where there's a perennial low-flow stream for them to snorfle through. But four geese and 50 chickens is just begging for bird flu, don't you think?

(For those who are past the paranoid phase of bird-flu fear, see here:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2090-2144416,00.html

for a hilarious article)

OK and stop asking me when we're moving. Soon. Within 8 weeks, we'll be over there full time. More likely four weeks. But we have this problem of 2,000 to 3,000 tomato plants to sell and I can't water them over there because, if you recall, we've got no running water yet. So we're here until either the plants get sold or the well gets dug.

Wooooo, I've got all that spring energy going... little sperm & pollens & life life life floating around everywhere making me dizzy (&sneeze). I just got finished seeding my last 13 trays of tomato plants -- these will be for selling at the farmer's market this May/June. The earlier plants we've been working on are for market and also for selling to some local nurseries. I have 3 nurseries buying tomato plants this year (heirloom & high altitude), plus one local landscape company has expressed interest. And, I'm trading some to the local hardware store to help pay off my debt there from last year (nice folks, the Sahds).

This morning, I bred every single darn one of my female rabbits-- all 7 of them -- to see who's going to go into the stewpot and who's going to get to stay. I am trying to raise Rex rabbits (otherwise known as Velveteen rabbits) and so far I'm not having much luck convincing the girls to get pregnant. Other than Dr. Pepper (see below).

As for moving, Avrum nearly got the new goat fence up yesterday and over spring break we're building a storage shed. Then we'll start moving everything into that shed. Hopefully we'll get a well dug in May. (Picture me waving my magic wand, conjuring more money out of thin air...)

If it's been a while since you read my chicken page on the main website -- I believe it's titled "93 and counting" -- you might reread that one just for kicks. Most of those chickens were either traded for fencing at the local hardware store, eaten this winter (I think we have 2 left in the freezer), or went off with the coyotes. I have about 10 hens left.

So, I got my annual chicks in early March and ordered 85 chicks total. Hey, look, it's better than last year -- and 15 were for Nicole and 15 are for Cynthia. Still, it wasn't the best timing... I had about 70 chicks (minus a few that died) in the house for 2 weeks..... They are all outside now in the chick coop. I didn't light any boxes on fire, this year, thankfully, although at one point Silas picked up a half-gallon of water and poured it into a chick-box.

So Wilfred came over yesterday... Wilfred is the guy who loaned my dad and I the horse last fall when we went backpacking. Wilfred is the guy always trying to strike a deal, somewhere, generally involving animals (he's also the guy who took care of our weird little boygoat, Roy, last fall).

He tried to buy several of my goats, but we agreed he will wait until all of them have their babies so I can decide what to sell and what to keep. It's good news, however, that someone out there wants to buy my goats-- even at the prices I quoted him (which weren't low). Our first goat to have a kid at this farm, Hobau, is due in 2 weeks. This is another Exploding Abscess Goat who has been isolated for quite a while ... I'm very nervous for this birth. The rest of the babies will be due in late May.

Avrum is pretty insistent that our goat capacity has about been reached, at least for the moment, which is a shame because I just found this great deal on some new Nigerian dwarf goats... dangit.

Meanwhile, Wilfred also asked if I had any roosters. Roosters? You want roosters? I've got roosters!

"How much do you want for them?" he asked. (If I'd had my wits about me, I would've asked for five bucks. Instead, I thought, "I'll PAY you to take them!" but said out loud, "Free!")

So we went into the coop so he could grab some roosters-- there were four roosters in this very small space-- and I saw that one of my older hens was laying on the ground very near death.

My first thought: "BIRD FLU! BIRD FLU! BIRD FLU!"

(This is one consequence of having my mother for a mother.)

But this hen was pretty old and hadn't been laying for quite a long while. I'm sure she died of natural causes. No other chickens are sick.

Wilfred, who's very good at getting rid of unwanted animals, took 3 roosters and my nearly-dead hen (To "feed to the coyotes" I told him, warning him against eating her, just in case she's got bird flu).

And it sure is quiet in the coop this morning...

Below is a story from Scripps Howard News Service-- sent to me by the ever-trusty ex-boyfriend, Boogabooga Ross -- which made me feel downright smug.

Anti-organic forces -- people who think organic agriculture is dreamy foolishness and people who buy organic produce are hippie freaks-- have said for years there is no proof that organic vegetables are better for you than non-organic.

While this might be partially true (some studies have shown that, all else being equal, they are nutritionally equivalent) this article starts to tell a different story. Ultimately, it has science behind it that could indicate organic is indeed better.

Our society is obsessed with everything being big, and fast... we grow all these hybrids and gene-altered foods that are faster, bigger, and supposedly better (mostly because they're better for Corporate Agriculture's bottom line... if you plant a seed and it grows a four-ounce beet, it's not as good for their finances as if the same seed grows a two-pound beet).

Organic producers not only grow crops in soils with more "zing" in them (more trace minerals, more beneficial bacteria, more nutrients) but they also are more likely to grow more traditional, non-hybrid crops.... Heirloom vegetables not only taste better, maybe they're better for you? (If you need an incredible source of heirloom vegetable seed, please click on the link for Baker Creek Heirloom seed... But gardeners beware, it's pure garden porn and you'll be getting out your debit card momentarily ... www.rareseeds.com)

Anyway, enough preaching. Here's the news article, which should in fact disturb you:


By LANCE GAY
Scripps Howard News Service

In spite of what Mother taught you about the benefits of eating broccoli, data collected by the federal government shows that the nutritional content of America’s vegetables and fruits has declined over the last 50 years — in some cases dramatically.

Donald Davis, a biochemist at the University of Texas in Austin, said that of 13 major nutrients in fruits and vegetables tracked by the U.S. Department of Agriculture from 1950 to 1999, six showed noticeable declines.

The six declining nutrients included protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, riboflavin and vitamin C. The declines ranged from 6 percent for protein, 15 percent for iron, 20 percent for vitamin C, and 38 percent for riboflavin.

“It’s an amazing thing,” said Davis, adding that the decline in nutrient content has not been widely noticed.

He said an agriculture scientist appears to have been the first to pick up the disappearance of nutrients in 1981 in a paper comparing the data on nutrients on garden crops grown in the United States with those grown in England.

Davis, who discussed his findings at a recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in St. Louis, suspects the trend in agriculture toward encouraging crops that grow the fastest and biggest is a reason for the decline. The last five decades have been marked by the “Green Revolution,” which has seen a marked increase in U.S. production and yields as farmers have turned to the fastest-growing and greatest-producing plants.

The tradeoff is that the faster-growing plants aren’t able to acquire the nutrients that their slower-growing cousins can, either by synthesis or from the soil. He said there also are differences in the amounts of nutrients lost in differing varieties of wheat and broccoli.

Davis said he doesn’t want his study to encourage people to stop eating vegetables on the grounds they lack nutrients.

“That’s completely wrong,” he said, contending his study shows that people need to eat more vegetables and fruits, and not less. “Vegetables are extraordinarily rich in nutrients and beneficial phytochemicals. They are still there, and vegetables and fruits are our best sources for these.”

Al Bushway, a food-science professor at the University of Maine and an expert on fruits and vegetables with the Institute of Food Technologists, said the decline of nutrients in vegetables and fruits could be made up through other foods Americans eat.

“For vegans only using plant sources for food, this could be an issue,” he said. But he said most Americans would pick up adequate quantities of calcium they need by drinking milk.

Bushway said that fruits and vegetables are still crucial to providing nutrients people need. “They are an important part of the diet — extremely important,” he said.

The Agriculture Department data that Davis used doesn’t include all of the nutrients scientists today can identify in fruits and vegetables. Scientists in the 1950s did not understand the role of phytochemicals, and other important nutrients, like magnesium, zinc and Vitamin B-6, were not counted in the data scientists collected until more recent times.

Here's a nice one. This is me, a week or two back, after I got scratched on the cheek by a rabbit.

I was trying to move Dr. Pepper-- that's our chocolate-colored Rex rabbit -- to a boy's cage because I'm trying to breed rabbits to sell as Easter Bunnies (I have an agreement with 2 feed stores to sell them some baby bunnies before Easter). Well, Dr. Pepper was already pregnant and didn't want to go. She struggled, and my grip slipped, and next thing I knew, there was blood dripping off my cheek. As luck would have it, I had a wedding to attend the next day. I looked like a cat with a set of whiskers missing.

She had her babies last night, though, so that means she was already pregnant. She had six of them, Velvet rabbits, and they survived their first night in the nest despite a low temperature of just above zero. Ella was mad as heck that I didn't let her go mandhandle them ...