Living off the grid

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, June 10th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Ranch life.

What’s it like to live off the grid, deep in cattle country, where the nearest neighbor might be miles away?

WORLD Senior Writer Kim Henderson traveled to a remote ranch in New Mexico to find out.

KIM HENDERSON: If you’re headed to Spur Ranch, fill up your gas tank. The nearest town of any size is about an hour away.

Then prepare for an 8-mile stretch of gravel and gritty New Mexico dirt before you reach the ranch’s main residence.

TOM PATERSON: Here we use the roads very deliberately as fire lines . . .

That’s Spur Ranch Owner Tom Paterson, driving a dusty Honda side by side. Fires and droughts are on his mind this time of year.

We’re in Catron County, the largest county, area-wise, in the state. Here, elk outnumber people 3 to 1.

Tom’s wife, Callie, is ok with that.

CALLIE PATERSON: The elk will come down to water, and so they're, you know, like, maybe 100 of them on our field … It is beautiful to look out, and all you see is God's creation.

TOM: We have deer, javelina, black bear, raccoons, rabbits and all sorts of squirrels. We have many bird species that are here. And oh, and turkey.

And don’t forget cattle.

But because there’s so little rain, vegetation is sparse. That means it takes a great deal of land to support livestock.

CALLIE: What most people do who have cattle in this part of the world is they buy an allotment, which is the right to run cattle on the U.S. Forest Service.

So ranchers have their own land, and they also lease federal land. Lots of it. They’re responsible to maintain it as if it was their own.

CALLIE: We have, like, 117,000 acres of land that needs fences and it needs water for the cattle . . . all that kind of infrastructure that cattle need.

And for Tom, there’s a whole other layer to ranching. He’s also a conservationist.

TOM: I have a fence around it that keeps the cows out, because I'm trying to make sure that we grow a new crop of narrow leaf cottonwood trees in here . . .

Over the decades, he’s worked to build three major soil retention structures on his property. That’s a lauded achievement in New Mexico.

TOM: Genesis 1. That's what God commanded man to do, take care of God's creation.

Tom is native to the area, but he made his mark in Texas as a successful attorney. Still, New Mexico was always on his mind. He and Callie bought this ranch 25 years ago, and they spend as much time here as possible. But living on a remote ranch has its challenges, and not just the four-hour drive to an airport.

Callie Paterson Photo by Kim Henderson

It took 7 years to build their lodge-style house, because it was difficult to get materials and workers. They had to dig a well for water and come up with their own electricity.

CALLIE: We have solar panels, a lot of solar panels, but we also have a generator.

Cell service has gotten better recently, but they’re keeping their landline phone.

CALLIE: The key to living here is duplication. Redundancy. If something fails, you want to have a backup . . you never know how long it's going to take for someone to get here to fix it, if you can't fix it.

You don’t make quick trips for groceries, and Amazon doesn’t deliver to your doorstep.

The challenges of remote living aren't just material. There are relational and spiritual difficulties too.

CALLIE: There isn't a lot of Christian fellowship here that I have found. Maybe there is, and I just haven't found it. But, you know, I think that that is hard.

The Patersons have chosen to stay tied to their church in Houston.

CALLIE: Yeah, I mean, I think it's so much different now than it was even when we first started coming just because of the internet and, you know, Zoom and you can connect with people whole lot better than than we could when we first started.

Callie says after a month tucked away at the ranch, she’s eager to see people. To experience face to face communication.

CALLIE: They could be the store clerk, and I want to have this 30-minute conversation with them. And they are not very interested in that, but I am just dying to talk to somebody. So it's funny.

Ranching has its joys, though. The Patersons’ daughters grew up riding horses and looking at a peak known as Dillon Mountain right outside their living room window. Callie delights in cooking for visitors and their ranch hands. Tom looks forward to hard, fulfilling work days like tomorrow, when they’ll be branding new calves.

Having six hundred pounds of ground beef in the freezer—well, that's a perk, too.

And, after all these years, the Patersons believe the silence and solitude that comes with ranch life can be a blessing as well.

CALLIE: His ways are higher than our ways, and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. And so it's real easy to think we're going the right direction when we may not be . . . . Slowing down, it allows you to hear God's small voice, because otherwise you just get so busy and kind of ignore it.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kim Henderson in Luna, New Mexico.

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