We finished another environmental education session at Fenton Ranch Oct. 12 and now our main job is to watch the property for the school. Fall is a perfect time to complete outdoor projects around the 5 acres of land and prep for the winter. As our wood-burning stove beckons to be stoked every morning already,…
Currently living/working in: We’ve taught 4 fifth grade classes and 4 fourth grade classes for the private school at Fenton Ranch and will be finishing up the season with second graders! We still love, love, love teaching environmental education and wrangling kids into the outdoors; it has been an amazing experience, so we’ll see how it…
Currently living/working in: We are back to caretaking Fenton Ranch in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico and teaching kids (5th, 4th & 2nd graders) environmental education! The fall session of teaching will run through mid-October, while the caretaking role will be all winter. Current mood: Really excited to be settled down again for a bit and…
Currently living/working in: We just wrapped up our 5-week spring teaching session at Fenton! It went so, so fast, but was so, so busy and tiring. We had kindergartners, 1st graders and 3rd graders this go around. Nonstop from Monday late morning until Friday at 1pm. Chock full of: campfires, tree identification, Leave No Trace,…
Currently living/working in: They’re back … Our quiet winter retreat at Fenton Ranch has been interrupted by high-decibel shouting, courtesy of 20 kids a day! The truth is, we don’t mind, in fact, we absolutely love it!!! We are happy to add a dose of environmental education in today’s nature-deficient children, no matter how deafening and…
Currently living/working in: Still property caretaking Fenton Ranch in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico … the environmental education program starts up here at the end of March. Current mood: Enjoying one more month of peace and quiet before our life gets crazy and busy teaching kids nonstop again! Currently excited about: Announcing our grand summer plans!…
Besides Justin’s mom, who visited in December, we’ve had 3 other brave souls venture into the boonies this past week to spend time with us. First were our kindred spirits: Paul and Kristen. We call them our kindred spirits for many reasons, but mainly because they are just as keen about sleeping in the dirt…
Currently living/working in: Still property caretaking of Fenton Ranch in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico … and January finally produced the winter we expected with FEET of snow! Home sweet home! The icicles around the property are deadly! Current mood: Content to be snowed in and cozy by the fire most of the month (except for…
It used to be, no matter where we lived, we would have a revolving door of visitors. Nowadays, we live even more in the boondocks than ever, and only a few brave souls follow us where we go. I’m happy to say, we hosted our first Fenton Ranch visitor: Justin’s mom! This visit was extra…
Currently living/working in: Property caretaking of Fenton Ranch in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico through the winter, although J is still tending to his health over the border in Colorado for at least a little while longer. Current mood: Still grateful for SO many things, but dang, my emotions have been playing a ping pong match…
I have officially fallen into a stereotype. I am the woman who lives in the woods by herself with three female cats and writes all day. To be honest, that might be a dream come true? Lemme back this bus up and say Justin is doing a-okay (and I still hope to someday tell his…
If there is one thing we’ve learned about living in New Mexico, it is that there is no shortage of outdoor opportunities. However, our fall teaching schedule has been a little busier than our springtime teaching schedule was–especially with some weekend work–so escaping has been more difficult. The good news is, Santa Fe National Forest…
Sorry for the radio silence around here! Turns out this working thing is really, really time-consuming. I know you just cursed my name since we typically only work 6 months out of the year, but my defense is that our environmental educator role at Fenton Ranch has us going pretty much nonstop from Monday at…
We bagged our 40th state high point this past weekend: New Mexico’s Wheeler Peak at 13,161 feet. We had planned to do this one last spring when we were living and working here, but the trail was snow-covered through May. With that in mind, we didn’t want to wait too long this fall, as winter…
We have wrapped up our spring season at Fenton Ranch! Though we’ve only been here 6 weeks, it feels like much longer. Some of the days were unending–like the day we had a group of overnight 3rd graders leave at 11:30am, but the next group of 1st graders arrived early at 11am. Go, go, go.…
The spring weather in New Mexico has been more like fall into winter, derailing a lot of our weekend backpacking agendas. Every weekend, we’ve had grandiose plans to head into the mountains at higher elevations for J’s Denali training. But, when it is snowing and accumulating at 8,000 feet where we live, we know better…
Bandalier National Monument is not the only National Park Service property near us. In October 2015, the NPS purchased the bordering Valles Caldera, establishing it as a national preserve. This piece of real estate has a crazy history. Imagine the scene. Mountains. Valleys. HUGE crater. This very distinct bowl among the other land forms is…
One of the first things we did after we accepting this job in New Mexico was map out our weekend adventures. We had grand plans of several backpacking trips. However, we didn’t account for the unpredictable spring synonymous with living in the mountains (case in point, I packed shorts and sandals. I will probably never…
J & I are on a quest to hit all the national parks, but often times, we overlook the monuments. So we were elated when we realized Bandelier National Monument was just about an hour from our doorstep and last weekend, we made the trip to explore. Bandelier is most known for its prehistoric ruins…
One of the great things about this job is that we have a solid 2 days off each weekend. This means every Saturday and Sunday, we become weekend warriors and explore the surrounding area! I’m behind on my updates, so here is a report from our first weekend here, when we got ourselves in hot…