SHIFT

Seven years ago this week, I was in way over my head. The ranch had come onto my radar, my business partners and I wanted it, a bid was made, and then came that in between bit, the waiting game. Though I had made one other big real estate purchase before, that had been a decade prior and anything I learned about the process had long been forgotten.

My refresher course went beyond reminding me what I had learned buying a residential property in Austin. Buying a ranch is a whole different monster. Even now, should I try (I shan’t), I know I would fail to recall all of the inspections, the “experts” I brought in, the learning curve I had to surf. But I did it. Got through it. And on October 2, 2015 I got the call from one of my partners: the ranch was ours. I cried so hard I had to hang up the phone.

The learning curve here at the ranch turns out to be perpetual. This summer’s lessons have been about hay, with additional unwanted courses offered in my least favorite subject: fucking fencing. Regarding the former, there is a hay shortage right now, courtesy of the drought, which is courtesy of global warming, which is courtesy of us humans. What this means on a day-to-day level for me is that feeding my livestock is not just a financial endeavor that would take your breath away, but it means that in order to give all of my money to the hay people, I have to first locate the hay people. 

Most everyone says the same thing. Either they don’t have round bales or they can’t deliver until—pick a date that the cows will have died from starvation by. Those that do have them are asking for $150-175 per bale. My animals can cruise through six bales in less than a month. 

Yeah, expensive hobby I have here, right? 

The bright side to yesterday’s fencing nightmare and attendant chicken massacre was that it prompted me to don clothes and head to Callahan’s, also known to me as The Mall, because it is the one stop shopping place for ranch folk. From cowgirl duds to kitchenware, cow cubes to fire pokers, they got it all. They don’t carry round bales but they do have square bales (which are actually rectangular for those keeping score at home), which are more expensive. Needs must, I ordered eight square bales since the critters already whipped through the six bales I bought on Monday.

While I was out back getting loaded up, I asked the guy if he knew of a round bale source. I felt a little douchey and figured it was bad form to ask one store where I might go to better spend my money. But it does pay to ask. And before I knew it, I was the newest member of a club I will call the Round Bale Insiders’ Gang.

You see, one of the guys at Callahan’s is also a musician who recently played a funeral at the ranch. He saw me talking to the Secret Hay Guy and came over to put a word in on my behalf. This helped. The Secret Hay Guy let me in on something I didn’t know. He’d already been to my ranch with hay the year before, back when I had The Most Incompetent Idiots in The Universe “running” the place. They’d put in a big order, let it be delivered, then never paid for it. 

Out here in the country, that’s not just bad form and thievery. The Secret Hay Guy would have been well within his rights to tell me to piss off and to also tell other vendors to avoid me. Intuiting this, I groveveled before him, apologized profusely, and offered to square things up on the spot. He, in his slow bubba drawl, told me it was no bother, we’d figure it out. Also, his hay is literally across the street from my ranch so delivery will be no problem. And, furthermore, he will sell it to me for half the cost of the other hay people. SCORE.

Since we were chatting, I told him I was thinking about maybe starting to grow some hay, or better still, lease fifteen acres and let someone else do the hard work. Sure as shootin’ he said he knew just how to make that happen. This, folks, is how deals go down in the country, and that is perhaps the most important thing I have learned out here.

I was glad to have saved face and the day courtesy of this exchange. Buoyed I returned to the ranch and set myself to the task of mending fences. There are few chores I disdain more than working on fences. I am not good at it. I know with all certainty I am going to rip up my hands. And I am aware with greater certainty, too, that I will not escape the task without having a very long, very resentment-filled pity party in my mind, lamenting all the people who have taken advantage of me since I first got the ranch and started hiring incompetent people.

That problem has been remedied. I have good help now. But ultimately, the Big Picture still falls to me to maintain. And, to be honest, ever since lockdown I sort of lost my way with the ranch. There was the parade of stressed out brides—always brides—who took out their covid anger on me. There was the parade of live-in “help” that got so proprietary they called the cops on me when I moved home, as if I were an intruder on my own property. 

I was dwelling, if not in full despair, then roughly in that neighborhood more often than not. Cognitive dissonance to have the privilege of living in so much natural beauty but never being able to exhale because I seem unable to spot con artists. 

The other night, I had a shift. I had a word with myself, and then another and another. I saw how my enthusiasm had dampened tremendously. I recognized this to be the cumulative toll of lockdown and my poor judgement. I reminded myself I have shifted a million times in my life and so I can shift again. 

When I shift, when I truly get into it, I shift hard and fast. I summoned up all the good memories of all the happy events I’ve hosted, when people were joyful as a rule, not shitty. I thought of my own world travels pre-pandemic and how my favorite places were those quirky stumbled-upon locales that exist because the people that occupy them authentically live their eccentric lives. They do not cater to fussy guests. They create environments that just happen to be interesting to others, and those others are lucky to get a chance to partake.

Less than 24 hours after I made the decision to shift, I got a call from my friend Larry, who owns a rainbow hearse. Larry is supremely cool. He said he had some German friends that wanted to meet animals. Two weeks ago I probably would have declined. Instead I said yes.

We had THE BEST time. They reminded me of my traveling days, of the beauty of having wide open conversations with strangers because there’s nothing to lose. Knowing the odds of meeting up again are slim brings with it a freedom. They were thrilled to tour the ranch and helped me see it through Beginner’s Eyes. 

With the boost of their visit, I made a solid decision. It’s a decision I realize is rooted in the very first thing I thought the very first time I walked into the main house of the ranch, when I was considering buying it. In its last iteration before I took over, the place had been a meth lab and junkyard. It was filthy, falling apart, and looked like something you might see on the evening news, accompanied by a story of mass murder.

I saw a completely different set of circumstances. I saw a place that could be a meditation and retreat center, a gathering place for events, an opportunity to build real community. I also knew that to support such a dream I had to make money. To make money, I hosted weddings. Lots and lots and lots of weddings. They were fun until they were not. And lockdown made weddings very very not fun.

Now I’m in a place that I see has taken seven years to reach. I don’t have the patience for weddings every weekend. Instead, I am turning every available space into a camping area. You can even sleep in the greenhouse. It’s an experiment to be sure. And I’m going to have to really work to rebuild my smile-and-walk-away muscle so I don’t let myself be taken down by the first idiot who slips in and complains that there are insects in the country! (This actually has happened to me, and the renter threatened to leave a bad review—for ants! In the country!)

My optimism is definitely of the cautious variety—a change for me. One way I’ve gotten things done in the past is to convince myself that amazing results await and nothing can possibly go wrong. Even when I know I’m tricking myself, even when I know imminent pitfalls abound, that has always been my strategy. This time, having been burned in all sorts of unpleasant ways, I’m hoping to learn from my mistakes.

Stay tuned to see how it goes. Please send me your eccentric friends in need of overnight accommodations. I’m ready to be excited again at the prospect of sharing this paradise.