Stanley Had Dreams

Saturday, February 27th we followed Nancy to her goat farm outside of Pie Town, New Mexico. It took a few hours to get there due to the road conditions. Once we left the major highway, it was about 10-15 miles of dirt road to get there. The road was either covered with mud or snow but Charlie held up really well and made it all the way there.


Coonridge is pretty much completely off grid except they have internet. Nancy lives at least 5 miles from her mailbox, which would drive me crazy. There was no running water, all water was collected rainwater inside huge vats and then small jugs were filled to bring inside. There was an outhouse near the main house where you put used toilet paper in a bag and "flushed" with ashes. Probably the most unsanitary place I have ever been to. There were two other people there, Yogev and Danielle. Yogev is from Colorado, had very weird ideas of fun and has been visiting Coonridge regularly for 5 years. Danielle is from New Mexico and had been at Coonridge for a week when we got there. It was kind of weird in the beginning hanging out with everyone because they didn't seem to have much else going on except talking about goats and other various farm animals. There wasn't too much work to be done except for milking, feeding and sometimes making cheese. Making cheese was my least favorite because the "cheese room" was kind of ridiculous in the fact that there were propane burners to heat water and the propane burned the shit out of your eyes, nose and throat. We got to watch while they slaughtered a sheep and like 4 goats, tried sheep heart, goat testicles, and goat brain, watched Yogev fill a goat's nutsack with dirt to make into a wallet and try to light the gas in the stomach on fire, and carried baby goats to get their horns burned off and ears tattooed. One morning while milking Nancy pulled me out to watch a goat give birth to 2 kids which was incredibly creepy and weird to watch but the little baby goats were so freaking cute. I had the most fun hanging out with the baby goats, letting them suck my fingers & nose and watching them spazz out and ram each other.





We had to leave on Friday, March 5th because I started having a lot of trouble breathing. Almost got lost on the way out of Coonridge but we made it to Albuquerque that night, got a hotel room, and went to the ER. Had a very boring time in the hospital: received 2 breathing treatments, got hooked up to oxygen and a steriod shot in my hip. I started to feel very nauseous this morning because of the antibiotics the doctor prescribed but starting to feel better. Last night we went to the movies to see Shutter Island, pretty good but not was I was expecting at all! We left Albuquerque today and arrived in Sante Fe not too long ago. We will be staying here for 3 days and then probably head down to Roswell to do some camping. Planning on going to Austin before we have to be in Colorado.