Part 8

Laurence Houston's father and mother lived only a mile from us. Mr. Houston had spent his entire life in these mountains and knew more about hunting deer in this area than anyone I knew. When meat was needed Laurence and I often hunted together and shared the kill.

We had no way to freeze and store quantities of meat so we took only what would last a couple of weeks. If there was more than that we gave the excess to those who worked on the ranches, or to people who came to visit.

Producing all we needed in the way of milk, eggs, meat, nuts and fruit on the ranch, there was little we were ever in want of. There were no power lines in the area, however we had a small electrical plant located in a storeroom in the stable area. It was wired to automatically run whenever a light switch was turned on anywhere on the ranch.

When riding together Henry and I discussed ways to make the ranch pay its own way. We finally decided that if we could secure leases on surrounding lands and several large mountain side grazing areas we'd do well raising Angora goats. These animals were highly prized for their fine silky hair that was used in high end furniture, as well as the clothing and automobile industries.

Henry acquired grazing rights to the additional areas we needed, then together we traveled to New Mexico where we purchased 300 head of Angora goats, most of them young nannies. At the New Mexico State Fair we bought six registered Angora Billys, then contracted for the herd to be trucked to Deer Springs.

After the goats arrived long hard days of labor followed as we cut new trails and built pens and shelters. We moved the herd deep into the brush away from home base to feed every day. At night they were securely penned to protect them from coyotes.

The goats with their long hair could not stand cold rain without a covered shelter to get under. Setting up camps for and hiring herders was not difficult. An ad in the Oxnard paper brought more applicants than we had expected, and sorting out those we wanted from those who were wasting our time as well as theirs was not too big a chore.

Henry brought an old man named Mr. Berleue to the ranch to work for me. A kindhearted person, Mr. Berleue had been sentenced for involuntary manslaughter after running down and killing a pedestrian while driving drunk. The court had subsequently paroled him to Mr. Chamberlain, and he was a lot of help to me in cleaning up around the houses and stables and keeping an eye on things.

Another herder I hired was a Mexican who passed his time in the evenings casting counterfeit 50 cent pieces made from melted aluminum scrap. These were amazingly realistic works, and while he was not much of a counterfeiter when it came to his choice of materials, he was a good goat herder once he understood the terrain we were working in. All told it appeared things were smoothing out and beginning to look promising as far as the ranch supporting itself was concerned.