Pioneer Days in Ash Fork, Arizona

I love living in a small town.  Once a year I don my 1890's garb and saunter through the streets, making my way with other, similarly clad characters, to the local museum.  There awaits a feast of homemade chili and pies along with local entertainment.  

     

Many small towns in the west celebrate a special day centered on their town's history.  In Ash Fork, Arizona, it is known as "Pioneer Days".  Established in 1882 as a siding of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad (now Santa Fe Railroad), Ash Fork reserves the first Saturday in May to celebrate its ranching, quarrying and railroading history.  There is also a good deal of Route 66 memorabilia involved, as the longest remaining stretch of the Mother Road runs right through town to Seligman, Arizona, 30 miles to the west.  My son and I love to pick out scenes from the movie "Cars", pinpointing them on our drives from our house to Kingman, Arizona or Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Since suffering the loss of the main line of the Santa Fe Railroad, which was moved north of town in 1960, and the bypass of Route 66 by Interstate 40 in the late 1970's, Ash Fork has remained a small, quiet community, claiming the distinction of being the "Flagstone Capitol of the World".  

Stories abound of the town's better days, when bars and businesses lined the streets, underground tunnels ran between city offices and houses of ill repute, and moonshine was quietly exchanged for cash through basement windows.  Ranchers once drove cattle through these same streets, to be loaded onto railroad cars for wealthy appetites in California and in the east.

Now the wind blows without mercy.  Cattle graze on sparse grasses and seek shade under juniper trees.  Preppers and homesteaders buy up one-time ranch lands and put up solar panels to power their trailers and pursue their self sufficient lives.  And an outlaw or two still has a hideout back in the hills where the GPS doesn't reach.

Blustery Days of May

range cows sheltering "neath the spreading juniper tree"

April showers did NOT bring May flowers to this part of Northern Arizona this year.  Maybe that's because we didn't have any April showers...While other parts of the country are experiencing late spring snows, here on the Homestead it's balmy temperatures and blustery winds.  Early mornings and late evenings are the best part of the day, not just because of the delightful play of light and shadow, or the gazillion stars that are visible, or the overwhelming quiet, but also, those are the times when the wind dies down or stops.  

This time of year I like to have my morning prayers outside, sometimes walking the property with a homestead dog or cat tagging along.  This is when I find the freebies - wild growing plants and herbs to add into the daily meals.  Dandelion greens for salad, tender horehound shoots before they send up flowers for cough syrup.  Soon the algerita bushes will bloom - or not - and I will know which ones to watch for fall berries.  Ditto the prickly pear cactus.  These fruits are bitter and take determination to collect because they are protected by thousands of tiny stickers, but they cook up into delicious syrups, jams and jellies in the fall.

Another month and I'll have to get out early in the morning just to get the outside chores done before it gets too hot.  But for now, spring on the Homestead is a welcome respite from frozen water pipes, frozen water troughs and generally cold bones.

Recycling - Sorting and Storing

Recycling is a big part of our homesteading lifestyle.  Getting the best and most possible use out of everything we have just seems like good sense since we're trying to live simply and keep expenses down.  It also helps to have a place to put things so they are not cluttering up our life.  So recycling is not just about saving every scrap, but also putting it to use. 

For large items, such as lumber, scrap wood, posts, fencing, and potential water tanks, etc., we have a "bone pile", a designated area of the yard where these things are stored until needed.  Things such as "oops" paint, caulking, and other chemicals or supplies that would not do well out in the elements are stored in a shed.  For aluminum drink cans and other household recyclables, we have an old dog run where we have sorting bins.  One for aluminum drink cans, another for tin cans, one for plastics, which are further sorted by number or letter code at the recycling center, one for newspapers, cardboard, glass, etc.  We find this keeps these items from blowing around the yard with our frequent high winds, and the sorting bins keep the project manageable and easier to haul to the recycling center.  Also, when a need arises for a gallon plastic jug, or some newspapers, we know exactly where to find them. 

Inside the house, there is a smaller scale sorting system.  All junk mail, as well as waste from bills, etc., gets sorted into files:  letter size pages with one side blank are used in the copier for copies that don't need to be "official"; smaller papers and envelopes with a blank area are filed for further processing into notepads, which we go through an abundance of; burnable, non-glossy pages are put in the firestarter box, along with toilet paper rolls, cereal boxes, and other small, burnable packaging; glossies go in the trash, as they don't burn well.  When we had a paper shredder, we would shred alot of our junk mail, including glossies, to use as bedding for the animals and nest boxes.  From there, it would go into the compost heap or be used as mulch.

In the kitchen, vegetable and fruit trimmings and peels go into a bucket for the compost heap; other scraps go into a bowl for the dog or chickens; eggshells are dried in a pie pan in the oven (on pilot light), then crushed and fed back to the chickens;  coffee grounds and tea bags go into the compost bucket.  We have a trash can and a recycle can.  All cans, glass, and plastics get rinsed out and placed in the recycle can, later they are sorted into thier containers in our sorting bin area.

In the laundry room, worn out clothes, towels and bedding are washed well and placed in the rag basket.  Some are taken to the workshop for use there.  Some are placed in a mesh bag out in the tool shed to be used as oil rags or for other outdoor purposes.

Of course, many cities now have recycling programs as part of their trash pick up service.  Even so, in the city one can still set up a system that works for their particular situation.  If there is a recycling center nearby, you may wish to bring some items in for cash.  You may want to have a compost bin for your garden; you may want to recycle junk mail for the copier or notepads, as we do; worn out clothes and such are always good for cleaning rags.  In future posts, I will examine each area of potential recyclables, talk about how we repurpose them, and offer other ideas in each category.  Here's to a greener life;)

Tomato Tales

I think our local Wal-Mart was being overly optimistic when they put out a rack of tomato plants.  As they became frost damaged, the price became 50 cents apiece and my friend and I were lucky enough to happen upon them on one of our infrequent trips to town.  (We are over 50 miles away from the nearest big town with a Wal-Mart.)  I took them home and set them up in my south-facing kitchen window, finally repotting them.  We still have a few more weeks of possible frost here, but after Mother's Day, it's usually fairly safe to harden off the seedlings and transplant them in the outdoor garden.

The bad luck I've had with tomatoes here in our volcanic clay soil aggravates me to no end.  Sometimes I lose the transplants to frost, but more often, they are lost to the withering dry heat and parching wind we experience in waiting for the monsoon rains to come and set everything growing again.  I refuse to give in and continue to try.  One year I got about a dozen green tomatoes that I brought in on the vine and let ripen.  We had those around Thanksgiving that year.  This year the plan is to put half the transplants in the more protected shadehouse/greenhouse I'm working on, and the other half in the front garden.  Maybe I can rig up some little shade houses over them with drip waterers until the rains come...