Back in the saddle

I’ve been AWOL since last Thursday. Daniel Pace and Caio Ribeiro joined Mathew Walker and me in West Texas. We went to Balmorhea and then to the Big Bend Park, from there back to Balmorhea, on to Fort Stockton, our old farm at Bakersfield and finally back to the ranch at Belmont where I now live. I enjoyed the trip but I’m glad to be home. Vast distances separate towns and locations in Texas and invariably I find trips to the Bend involve too much driving and not nearly enough sleep. Daniel and Caio were shooting footage for a companion documentary and or promotional material for Contrabando, the film. I detest being photographed and filmed; by the time they were done, I was all but snarling every time they raised a camera in my face. How do you like me now, motherfucker?

I notice that the efforts to kill the blowout in the gulf have failed. This comes as no surprise, but the news is a terrible blow, nonetheless. Basically, we’re fucked in more ways than most can or will imagine. Here’s the gist of it: the environment will be destroyed and someone will continue drilling.

On the home front, we harvested a meager wheat crop averaging about 35 bushels to the acre. Wheat prices are pathetic. Makes me want to stuff the shit up every available orifice of the bastards that control such matters. Grass continues growing; the second crop of hay is near ready to cut. The garden continues to produce more vegetables than we know what to do with. I’m irrigating corn where I can and warring with feral hogs determined to harvest our corn crop before we do.

Javi Garcia’s latest record continues to be the best new work I have heard this year.

And I don’t have much else to say at the moment.