Doug Fine: Author, Journalist, Adventurer, Goat-Herder

It’s almost a month past Solstice, and even in the Funky Butte Ranch’s high desert ecosystem, nothing other than conspiratorial political ideas is really growing yet, not outdoors. So after a pleasant, pretty much carbon-neutral visit with the aquatic mammals of Old Mexico (I drove on veggie oil and brought my own kayak), I came home with an understandable craving to continue my all-burrito road diet.

What did I find in my larder? Anasazi beans I grew. In the freezer? Green chiles from the famous and nearby Hatch Harvest. Tortillas made in the nearest town and tomatoes growing on my inside vine rounded out the meal. I found I was an unintentionally winter locavore. For a couple of nights, anyway. I expect almost no petroleum in my meals in the summer, but in winter? This was as pleasant a development as non-pre-ordained candidate winning a primary.

So now, the mission, should I choose to accept it, is “make all my meals this way.” Protein from the Funky Butte Ranch is once again looking promising after a devastating summer coyote attack on my poultry left me wondering why it took four decades for the cartoon version of this Genuinely Smart Canine to catch one brainless roadrunner. And if Natalie the Goat is indeed pregnant (I think she is – see the November 15 Dispatch), it will be looking great.

She’s due in the spring. Stay tuned for a forum on this site dedicated to free, uncensored exchange of yogurt, cheese and goat ice cream recipes. As for now, it’s the Anasazi beans that have me the most excited. Back in October, I harvested about twelve pounds of them (enough for the winter) from the FBR garden. These are the exact beans cultivated by the folks who lived here before the Americans, Mexicans, Spanish and Apache. Literally – someone found them in some buried pottery, and they sprouted, a Millennium later. Now they’re in every crunchy co-op.

I hulled and jarred them at harvest, and the first batch is soaking as I write. Amazing what a little drip irrigation and some appropriate seed choices can do. No wonder humans lived in my valley 1,000 years before Wal-Mart — in greater numbers than they do today. Thriving without high fructose corn syrup, some of these folks were healthy enough to have lived well into their thirties. As the photo shows, this is a beautiful, Pinto-like bean whose psychedelic surface swoosh reflects the art of the culture that cultivated these genes (they disappeared with the 13th Century equivalent of the oven on the last time the climate got weird). The soil must be meant for this stuff, if I, a decided agricultural amateur, could reap such a bounty in my first effort. In politics, it’d be like a C-student, alcoholic business failure winning the Presidency.

Legumes, though they feed most of the world most of their meals, only go so far for an epicurean palate like mine. And I knew even before winter meandered in that until Natalie’s giving gallons of daily goat milk, I had to figure out other options for protein. So last fall I traded 60 pounds of the local green chile harvest for a share of the year’s wild Alaska salmon run with my friend (and fishing partner when I lived in the Last Frontier) Rafe. I justified this long-distance exchange by remembering something a Tlingit canoe carver told me one time in the sub-Arctic. I was marveling at all the indigenous skills I didn’t possess, wondering how I ever would have survived before, say, Fed Ex and Thai take-out.

“You know, there was always trade,” he said. “We carved, and the folks further north rendered the fish oil. Not everybody had to know how to do everything.”

In fact, there is a long precedent for dividing labor in indigenous communities that predates box stores. This mind-blowing fact of vibrant, segmented, pre-Western economies helped me live at peace with the reality that I couldn’t personally perform every task necessary to thrive at the Funky Butte Ranch. Once Natalie kids, maybe I’ll be able to trade some goat milk for, say, shoes, should Asian slave factories go away. There’s more to living local than just food.

For now, though, my belly is happy, and here’s at least part of the reason why — this is a homemade sushi shot — a meal made from my salmon bartering. OK, so the Anasazi didn’t necessarily eat sushi with regularity. They did import macaw feathers from Central America. And the way I see things, it’s not healthy to live in the past.

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