I’ve been on the governing board of the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum for about 16 years and it’s always interesting at the board meetings. Our location, about 30 acres, is becoming surrounded by houses, businesses, and schools, and soon we will be a rural island in suburbia. Some of our neighbors complain about the smells emanating from our livestock. (We are the only museum in the state that has animals.) Well, the pens are cleaned daily and if you get right next to, say, the cattle, they do smell like cows. But this odor does not carry hundred of yards, so that’s a bogus complaint. They say that the museum produces the flies that are in their backyards, but flies are naturally everywhere in New Mexico, spring through fall. So I say, well, those flies travel 210 miles to my back yard because they’re all over my backyard.
The most humorous thing that happened in our board meeting yesterday came from the Department of Cultural Affairs, the state entity that controls state museums and monuments. Greg, our livestock manager, was going to buy a bull to breed with some of the cows, but couldn’t find one he liked. So he decided to buy some bull semen and artificially inseminate the moms-to-be. But that expense was denied by the DCA for some inexplicable government-type reason. However, because of donations from our support group, Friends of the Farm and Ranch Museum, we have ways to fund such needed expenses beyond the state of New Mexico.
