Greener Acres by Doug Fine, The Carbon-Neutral Cowboy

In 2006, Doug Fine moved onto his 41-acre Funky Butte Ranch, outside Silver City, New Mexico, and embarked on a mission to live as sustainably as possible.

Three years, three goats, and one veggie-oil-powered pickup truck later, he's the author of Farewell My Subaru: An Epic Adventure in Local Living (Villard, 2008) and an expert on the ideas—and idiosyncrasies—of going green in the digital age. Now, he pens "Greener Acres," a monthly column for New Mexico Magazine.

Once a month, Doug joins us live from the Funky Butte Ranch to answer your questions about living locally and still living large. Find out more below.

 

The next live chat will be Wednesday, September 29 at noon MDT. Meantime, you can catch up on Doug's September column and previous chats below.

The Accidental Nudist (September 2010)

Why privacy matters—even in wide-open spaces

We’re all Westerners here, which means we’ve seen our share of those “no trespassing” signs that are such a sad reflection on the state of neighborly relations. The longer you try to run a ranch, though—even a fairly crunchy, goat-dominated, solar-powered one like my Funky Butte Ranch, in southwestern New Mexico—the more you realize why, in his book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams summed up the profoundly complex challenges of interstellar relations with the simple sentence “People are a problem.”

These days, I’m fighting to retain remnants of my idealism. I refuse to label my ranch gate (and therefore my philosophy) with an Adams-esque “no trespassing” sign. Because so much of my dream of local living hinges on folks getting along with each other, the Funky Butte Ranch entrance sign is a bit more subtle: “Welcome! Pre-announcing your arrival helps avoid accidental gunfire and/or unexpected nudity. beware of goats.”

Despite my good intentions, this friendlier take on private property assertion doesn’t always get across the message of “Can’t we all just respect each other?” In the past month, one of my upstream neighbors has dammed our shared creek in order to create a “pool” for visiting relatives. Another neighbor, this one downstream, seems to think his dogs should be able to treat my chickens like a buffet line, and expected an apology when my dog acted aggressively toward his roaming, unleashed hound—on my property.
Sigh. This is not a minor issue: One’s home is sacred ground. And it’s amazing to me how the same bit of Earth can contract to a reclusive fortress when you’re confronted with disrespectful neighbors, and expand into almost cosmic proportions when you patch things up. Sometimes you even discover that [gasp!] you weren’t 100 percent right about the conflict in the first place.

There is cause for hope. The same neighbor who dammed our creek was also the first to help out with his tractor when a hailstorm took out the Funky Butte Ranch’s notorious Black Diamond “driveway.” Usually, all we need is to calm down from whatever issue has us steamed and discuss things rationally. Then everything works out fine. Until the next quarrel.

As I see it, Adams should have put it this way: “Too many people are a problem.” Take the nudity clause on the Funky Butte Ranch entrance sign: It’s not as if my family refuses to wear clothes. But when he lives 40 miles from the nearest traffic light, a fellow expects he can skip outside to pull some trousers off the clothesline without primping and grooming as if preparing for a night on the town. I’ve lost track
of the number of times someone has interpreted my ranch sign as a joke, or as something too cryptic to decipher at all. This usually results in me, in my Adam of Eden costume, finishing an innocent pee in the yuccas, only to find a census worker or hopelessly lost tourist acting as if I am the one behaving inappropriately.

In such situations, I usually establish my boundaries by saying something much more direct than the sign, such as, “Before you come any closer—has everyone in your family already had cholera?”

A man’s ranch is his castle. And if we’re gonna evolve into a successful locally based society, I think the first step is to cultivate a little respect for folks’ entrance signs. In a crowded world, a little privacy preserves a lot of sanity. Besides, I think I should be able to pick kale in my birthday suit now and then—and I wouldn’t want to sic my goats on anyone.

Chat Archive:

Catch up on the January live chat, in which Doug talks about greening the economy through local farming.

Catch up on the February live chat, in which Doug talks about reading in the outback.

Catch up on the March live chat, in which Doug talks about the slippery issue of converting his vehicle to vegetable oil power.

Catch up on the April live chat, in which Doug talks about his battle with plastics.

Catch up on the May live chat, in which Doug talks about organic gardening and the joys of goat poop.

Catch up on the July live chat, in which Doug talks about eating local and why living green is worth sticking to.

Catch up on the August live chat, in which Doug talks about why going green is just old-fashioned common sense.

Catch up on the September live chat, in which Doug talks about accidental nudity and a handy sign to prevent enountering it on the Funky Butte Ranch.