Sunday, November 24, 2013

Coyote Fence Origins


Weather: Fragments of snow Friday and Saturday, with more last night; 9:01 hours of daylight today.

Friday’s snow fell on leaves that warmed it before it reached the roots. On trees and shrubs, the leaves were on the ground. On perennials, dead or green leaves and flower remains caught it several inches above. Captured snow melted into the ground after the snow on bare earth or gravel had disappeared. In some cases, the aerial parts may have acted as snow fences to trap snow on one side, so more moisture would seep down.

Saturday’s snow was heavier and reached the ground. By then, the plants had had 24 hours to adjust to new conditions. They needed it for the snow that fell early this morning.

What’s still green: Juniper, arborvitae and other evergreens, cholla and other cacti; leaves on Apache plume, roses, fern bushes, Oregon holly, yuccas, garlic, hollyhocks, winecup mallow, dog violets, Saint John’s wort, vinca, coral bells, golden spur columbine, oriental poppies, scarlet and blue flaxes, Dutch clover, sweet pea, bouncing Bess, anthemis, cheat grass.

What’s red: Coral beardtongue leaves.

What’s grey or blue: Four-winged saltbush, snow-in-summer, pinks, catmints, California poppy, chocolate flower, golden hairy aster leaves.

What’s yellow or turning yellow: German iris, golden spur columbine leaves.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums, aptenia.

Animal sightings: Horses are eating grasses and hay remains in local fields.


Weekly update: When I first moved here, people told me coyote fences were traditional, implying part of the original material culture of the Española valley.

Now, I’m more credulous. Fences usually are made from inexpensive, easily available materials, use familiar construction techniques, and don’t burn. Wood is none of those. Adobe walls were probably more common when barriers were needed. In the more mountainous north where ranches developed, wooden rails probably were used to keep animals in pastures.


Vertical board construction is rare. Natives and Spanish-speakers used dried clay. English and Germans used horizontal logs. American invented balloon framing. French are the ones who used vertical board construction in the New World. Their earliest fur trading forts had palisades when rocks weren’t available for high walls.

Coyote fences probably are one of the hidden contributions of the Rocky Mountain fur trade. They not only are found in northern New Mexico, but also in the San Luis valley of Colorado.

Around 1834, William Sublette built Fort William below South Pass on the North Platte. His trading station for Cheyenne, Arapaho, and other northern tribes was built of logs. According to one German naturalist who passed through, Friedrich Adolph Wislizenus, "the outside is made of cottonwood logs, about fifteen feet high, hewn off, and wedged closely together."

John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company bought the operation in 1841. When John Charles Frémont passed through in 1843, the log buildings had been replaced by "a quadrangular structure, built of clay, after the fashion of the Mexicans, who are generally employed in building them. The walls are about fifteen feet high, surmounted with a wooden palisade."


Construction of the palisades were not recorded. Early posts may simply have been pushed into soft ground. The mounted ones certainly had to be lashed together. I would guess lashing was introduced by Native workers, not Spanish-speaking ones.

The United States army bought the buildings in 1849 to protect the trail to Oregon. They renamed it Fort Laramie.

The other important trading station was on the Arkansas river near modern-day La Junta, Colorado. When the Bent brothers built their compound in 1833 with Ceran St. Vrain, everything was adobe. The outer walls were 15' high and 4' thick.

How then, did the palisades of the northern fur traders reach people living under the Mexican government along the northern Río Grande? When Kit Carson settled in Taos, he married a local Mexican girl and lived in an adobe compound.


The name for the fencing offers a clue.

When the United States took over northern Mexican territory in 1848, the locals were seen as being Indians who should live on reservations and Mexicans who had land. The cultural differences between the pueblos, the Navajo, and plains tribes weren’t recognized. Neither were cultural groups within Spanish-speaking society.

While the northern pueblos did not encourage social relations with the colonists, other natives had different experiences. After the Reconquest, the Spanish government in México had problems repopulating the area. First, it sent families from Mexico City and Zacatecas, many of whom were mestizos. Carson’s wife’s ancestor, Jose Jaramillo Negrete, was among those recruited in Mexico City.


Angelico Chavez says, in those first years around Albuquerque, those with the status of proper colonists were called españoles. When their sons produced children with native or mestizo servants, the children were called coyotes. If the children of coyotes then married españoles and behaved properly, they might be restored to españole status. His family history is filled with fathers reacting to their wayward sons and grandchildren, and churches recording coyote or españole on official papers.

In the north, Comanche captured Natives from other plains tribes. They were sold as servants, but often ransomed and allowed to settle the buffer zones between the colonial settlements and the Ute and Comanche frontiers. When they mingled with local Spanish-speakers, their children were called genízaros. Sometimes, the older term, coyote, also was used.

Doris Swann Avery says most were Apache, Ute, Kiowa, Pawnee, and Comanche. Navajo claim they became the primary subjugated group

The term genízaro eventually was used for any detribalized Native, including servants brought from México and those evicted by the pueblos. When the United States became the greater danger, Rubén Cobos says coyote was recycled to refer to "offspring of a mixed Anglo-American Indo-Hispanic marriage."


Local coyote fences probably were built first in wooded areas of the north where men lived who weren’t comfortable or held no stake in the endogamous Spanish-speaking villages. They reflect contributions from all the groups living in the west. The French probably were responsible for the idea of a barrier of poles. Natives lashed them together. Americans strengthened them with post and rail frames.

The one thing they were not is effective against coyotes. Hungry canines will dig under or leap over most barriers to get to pasturing sheep. If you want that kind of fence, government wildlife specialists suggest the most effective use 13 strands of electrified wire. Even then, they suggest keeping guard dogs to bark when one gets in.


Notes:
Avery, Doris Swann. Into the Dens of Evil: The Genízaros in Colonial New Mexico (2008).

Barbour, Barton H. "The Fur Trade at Fort Laramie National Historic Site" (2000) is the source for quotations from Wislizenus and Frémont.

Chavez, Angelico. Chávez: A Distinctive American Clan of New Mexico (2009 edition) pages xiv and 199-200.

Cobos, Rubén. A Dictionary of New Mexico and Southern Colorado Spanish (1983).

Green, Jeffrey S., F. Robert Henderson and Mark D. Collinge. "Coyotes," Internet Center for Wildlife Management website.


Photographs:
1. Purple coneflower head, 22 November 2013.

2. Saltbush, 22 November 2013. When the leaves and heads have fallen, the debris collects snow on the ground.

3. Saltbush, 23 November 2013. When the heads remain, they collect the snow.

4. Prostate German iris leaves collect snow, 22 November 2013.

5. Fallen leaves under cold-wary rose of Sharon collect snow, 22 November 2013.

6. Grasses under a young cherry act as snow fence to collect snow and protect the stem graft, 22 November 2013.

7. Coreopsis leaves act like scoops to collect snow, 22 November 2013.

8. Snow remains on debris near winterfat, 22 November 2013.

9. Snow collects in leaves and flower fluff along branches of winterfat, 23 November 2013.


10. Clouds Friday morning after the snow had stopped, 22 November 2013.

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Coyote Fence Building


Weather: Storms moved overhead, leaving a sense of gloom without much water; last rain 11/15/2013; 9:29 hours of daylight today.

What’s still green: Juniper, arborvitae and other evergreens, garlic, yucca, cholla and other cacti; leaves on Apache plume, roses, fern bushes, Oregon holly, hollyhocks, winecup mallow, dog violets, Saint John’s wort, vinca, coral bells, bindweed, oriental poppies, scarlet and blue flaxes, Dutch clover, sweet pea, bouncing Bess, moss phlox, snakeweed, anthemis, grasses.

What’s red or turning red: Raspberry, coral beardtongue leaves.

What’s grey or blue: Four-winged saltbush, snow-in-summer, pinks, catmints, chocolate flower, golden hairy aster leaves.

What’s yellow or turning yellow: Cottonwood, weeping and globe willows, German iris, golden spur columbine leaves.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums, aptenia.

Animal sightings: Small brown birds, probably goldfinches.


Weekly update: Fence building is still a highly individualistic activity.  Common styles, construction techniques, and underlying principals are variously combined.

A man down the road has been working on a coyote fence for several weeks. He began by setting rail timbers in the ground for uprights. Then he drilled holes to thread through rebar, the ribbed steel bars used to reinforce concrete.


The man across the road from him use pipe uprights with pipe and bar horizontal pieces.


Still others get more elaborate, with block stone pillars. A few, in the past, have used no frame, with unstable results.

Although the smallest standard length for rebar is 20', the man probably has been setting his timber uprights on 8' centers. The span is still too wide to be stable. He’s been setting a center post about a foot into the ground and wiring it to the rebar.


Every time I’ve seen him, he’s been working by himself. He doesn’t want his fence to touch the ground. To stabilize the edifice while he’s working he places the most recent log on a piece of concrete block. Then he ties it to the rebar with wire, looping the wire around the two.


When horizontal bars aren’t use, men have woven two pieces of wire around the posts like basketry. When men have used wooden braces, they have also tended to use nails.


When he finishes a section, the man is piling earth around the posts to create a barrier, although not one that will do any good against rabbits or ground squirrels.


In the village, one man has determined automobiles are now the more dangerous predator.


Photographs: All have been taken in the general neighborhood or village.

Sunday, November 10, 2013

Thunderation


Weather: Morning temperatures down to middle 20s Friday, two day after the sun angle code changed in The Old Farmer's Almanac; last rain 11/5/2013; 9:29 hours of daylight today.

What’s still green: Juniper, arborvitae and other evergreens, garlic, yucca, cholla and other cacti; leaves on Apache plume, roses, fern bushes, Oregon holly, hollyhocks, winecup mallow, dog violets, Saint John’s wort, vinca, coral bells, bindweed, oriental poppies, scarlet and blue flaxes, Dutch clover, sweet pea, bouncing Bess, moss phlox, snakeweed, anthemis, grasses.

What’s red or turning red: Raspberry, coral beardtongue leaves.

What’s grey or blue: Four-winged saltbush, snow-in-summer, pinks, pink salvia, catmints, baby’s breath, chocolate flower, golden hairy aster leaves.

What’s yellow or turning yellow: Cottonwood, weeping and globe willows, German iris, golden spur columbine leaves.

What’s blooming: Jupiter’s beard, broom senecio, chrysanthemums, tansy.

Bedding plants: Snapdragons, sweet alyssum.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums, aptenia.

Animal sightings: Small brown birds, probably goldfinches.


Weekly update: About the time the first fire started last spring, I began looking at the humidity levels every morning on the government’s weather website. I’ve learned two things.

Humidity levels just tell you how much water is in the air, which is interesting when the percentage falls below 10%. You don’t need it tell anything to tell you when the level is above 80%.

I discovered what’s important is not how much water, but where the water is coming from. The only moisture that matters is water moving in from some other area. Otherwise, it is coming from the ground and leaves. That’s not something they tell you.


The other thing I learned is that weathermen have standard ways of forecasting, so whenever they use unusual words or phrases they mean more than they are saying.

A week ago Saturday, 2 November, they said:

"A moist weather disturbance rolling east from the southern California coast to New Mexico will combine with a southbound plunge of Canadian cold air Monday to produce another round of wintry weather for northern and western New Mexico through Wednesday morning."

That all sounds a bit prosaic, although words like disturbance always sound so bureaucratically neutral. Then, they added:

"With some uncertainty remaining in the exact time and place of the collision between southern California moisture and cold Canadian air"

When the language gets dramatic - a la the clash of titans - beware.


Monday came, and so did the weather. Around 8:30 pm, there was thunder and lightening. It already had rained in Los Alamos, and thunderstorms were around Santa Fé. Nothing odd. I went to bed.

Sometime, and I didn’t look at a clock, thunder woke me. Not just thunder. A deep rumble that went on and on and on. So deep, it penetrated my body.

Half awake, I thought, but there’s no lightening. With that much noise, the room should be lit up. I fell back asleep.


In the morning, I looked up thunder in Wikipedia. Obviously there was something I didn’t know.

After the usual commonplace about lightening causing thunder - which it did not in the night - it went on to explain some mechanics:

"thunder must begin with a shock wave in the air due to the sudden thermal expansion of the plasma in the lightning channel. This heating causes it to expand outward, plowing into the surrounding cooler air at a speed faster than sound would travel in that cooler air. The outward-moving pulse that results is a shock wave."


More techy than I wanted, but I gather what happened, is that collision between warm and cool air forecast a week ago wasn’t some vertical confrontation. It was horizontal. That is, the warm air must have been riding over the cold air, rather like a bronco riding holding on. The differences in temperature must have caused the prolonged rumble as they passed overhead.

The next day’s forecast was equally obscure. NOAA predicted "patchy bands of rain," which is a good a description as there is for what passes for rain in this part of the country.

Then, they added, "ice pellets may fall out of some of the lower elevation bands." Not sleet, not hail, just bits of ice falling out of the atmosphere after that great collision. And they did.


Notes: Hazardous weather warnings for 2 November and 5 November issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Weather Service.

Photographs: Cottonwood growing near a lateral ditch in town, 8 November. It must once have been farm land, but everything was cleared for some business. Then, that building was razed, leaving a smooth, concrete slab. Now the tree stands alone, dropping its leaves to protect itself. They must have fallen after the storms of Monday and Tuesday to lie so densely and undisturbed.

Sunday, November 03, 2013

Tucking In


Weather: Morning temperatures below freezing; last rain 10/30/2013; 10:13 hours of daylight today.

What’s still green: Juniper, arborvitae and other evergreens, garlic, yucca, cholla and other cacti; leaves on Apache plume, roses, fern bushes, Oregon holly, hollyhocks, winecup mallow, dog violets, Saint John’s wort, vinca, coral bells, bindweed, oriental poppies, scarlet and blue flaxes, Dutch clover, sweet pea, bouncing Bess, moss phlox, snakeweed, anthemis, grasses.

What’s red or turning red: Bradford pear, apricot, spirea, cherries, raspberry, coral beardtongue leaves.

What’s grey or blue: Four-winged saltbush, baptisia, snow-in-summer, pinks, pink salvia, catmints, baby’s breath, chocolate flower, golden hairy aster leaves.

What’s yellow or turning yellow: Peach, apple, rugosa rose, beauty bush, lilac, forsythia, cottonwood, weeping, globe and sandbar willow, German iris, golden spur columbine leaves.

What’s blooming: Chamisa darkening, Jupiter’s beard, broom senecio, chrysanthemums, tansy, calendula from seed.

Bedding plants: Snapdragons, sweet alyssum.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums, aptenia.



Weekly update: A week ago Wednesday, October 25, I saw smoke rising in the east. The Forest Service was running a controlled bun on Borrego mesa. That’s the area that burned on its own this summer in the headlands of the creeks feeding the Santa Cruz river.

I thought, "that’s nice, but it would have been nicer a year ago."

A day later, a storm moved through, dropping rain on its way.

I thought, "this is nice, but it would have been nice to let the fire burn a bit more, and it sure would have been nicer if we had the rain a year ago instead of drought."

Still, they managed to burn 147 acres.

In this erratic climate, one learns to appreciate random acts of nature and man.

That rain was followed by another that passed through this Tuesday with high winds. Trees and shrubs that slowly were preparing their leaves to drop, now are barer. More important, they started laying blankets to protect their roots in the coming months.

Catalpas are nearly nude. Their large leaves overlap to smother many things that try to grow. Broom senecio loves the protection.


Fruit trees have smaller leaves, but more of them. Their sheddings accumulate in layers.


Elms leaves are smaller still. So far, most are clinging to their branches. But, with so many, puddles are forming.


Shrubs with even smaller leaves are adding to their caches with debris from their flowers. Spent heads lay in the mix under roses of Sharon.


Native four-wing saltbushes are adding seed remnants to their middens.


Winterfat is filling with fluff.


Superstition says, when leaves fall early, the winter will be mild; when they fall late, the season will be severe. Also, if November is warm, the months that follow will be cold.

Tradition says nothing about what happened this week: native cottonwoods still have their leaves, and skunkbush is bare.


Notes: James White, "Weather Folklore and Sayings," NOAA ‘Bout Weather, fall 2010, available online.

Photographs:
1. Cottonwood down the road with snow in the distant Sangre de Cristo, sandbar willow between; 2 November 2013.

2. Elberta peach leaves around the base of a datura, 1 November 2013.

3. Catalpa leaves with blooming broom senecio, 2 November 2013.  Red leaves are from the sand cherry.

4. Neighbor’s apricot, 1 November 2013.

5. Siberian elm down the road, 2 November 2013.

6. Rose of Sharon leaves in my back yard, 1 November 2013.

7. Four winged saltbush debris in my yard, 2 November 2013.  Yellow leaves are from the peach.

8. Winterfat fluff in my yard, 2 November 2013.

9. Skunkbush branches and leaves in my garage dripline, 1 November 2013.


10. Trees of heaven growing along a ditch where they get cut to the ground every year, 2 November 2013. The young sprouts are bare; older trees still hold their leaves.  Siberian elms are green in back.