Falling in love with New Mexico
A trip west led my husband and me to make a life-changing decision: We would build our dream ranch in the Land of Enchantment.
My husband, Kenny Weber, and I have long dreamed of moving our herd of horses to higher elevations with room to roam and ride year-round. Kenny has lived in southern Texas all his life, while I’m a relative newcomer, having arrived six years ago from comparatively balmy Arizona and California.
Enduring long Lone Star State summers with high heat and humidity has been hard on us all. I don’t tolerate the heat well, and several of our horses suffer from seasonal allergies, including pastern dermatitis, sweet itch and hives, along with bouts of white line disease, each a result of the vagaries of climate that swing from floods and mud to drought and dust. Our herd includes Tennessee Walkers, Missouri Foxtrotters, Arabians, a Morgan and, of course, Farley the rescue (see “From Sickness to Health,” EQUUS 473). Two summers ago we took a trip that would change our life. On our way home from California in a 26-foot U-Haul truck packed with my late mom’s furniture, Kenny and I stopped to visit a friend in New Mexico. Set amid 45 pinyonand juniperstudded acres, his home is 16 miles south of Pie Town in Catron County, the state’s largest---by land area, with almost 7,000 square miles--yet its third most sparsely populated county, with 3,500 people. We fell in love with the 360-degree mountain vistas, including sweeping views of the Continental Divide. It didn’t take long to forge a plan: We would come back from our ranch in Texas and create a new life here. As a signal of our commitment, we left the contents of the truck in a storage unit in Pie Town.