SAN LUIS VALLEY — Thin shafts of light filter through gaps separating boards that make up a wall of the small cabin where Zane and Samantha McDonald live with their four children.
There are no windows in the 500-square-foot structure, which is heated by a barrel stove. A taut sheet of plastic keeps the wind out on one side, and insulation clings to other walls.
“All of this was hand-cut by me,” said Arik, the McDonalds’ 13-year-old son, who used a hand saw to size the boards.
Arik and his sisters, twins Rayna and Mashel, 12, and Ziza, 10, all worked with their parents to build the cabin. They are among the 30 percent of Conejos County kids who live in poverty.
The family moved to the San Luis Valley from Alabama two years ago. Marijuana drew him to the state, said Zane, 41.
The former tattoo artist has chronic pain brought on by a badly damaged elbow and diabetic neuropathy, he said.
The couple bought 10 acres in the desert close to the Rio Grande River for $11,000. They get $787 a month from the state’s temporary aid to needy families program, and that pays the $250-a-month mortgage plus clothing, gasoline and other staples.
They receive another $880 a month in food stamp benefits.
A neighbor sells them 400 gallons of water each month for $20, which they hold in barrels packed tightly in the kitchen.
Nine batteries power solar panels for electricity. They bathe in a plastic tub.
PHOTOS: Poverty in Colorado rural and urban families
Samantha McDonald, 37, learned to pinch pennies growing up poor. “I grocery shop like the world is going to end,” she said.
When they first moved in, they bought 40 chickens. Coyotes and other predators decimated the flock, leaving only a rooster named Jackass. In early May, they came home to find the bird had disappeared, probably carried off by a raptor.
Dependable transportation is crucial.
Until this year, when the school district began running a bus to a stop 5 miles away, it was a 20-mile drive each morning and afternoon to the spot where a school bus picked up the kids and took them to Centennial School in San Luis.
Food banks in the valley provide them with some of their food, and some clothing comes from a clothing bank in Alamosa, about one hour away.
To get treatment for Rayna, who has congenital scoliosis and a neurological condition called Chiari malformation, they must drive to Children’s Hospital in Colorado Springs, a three-hour trip.
Despite distances between neighbors, it is a close community, and members of families who run out of food before the month ends sometimes join the McDonalds for meals.
Samantha McDonald added: “There are a lot of people out here that live rougher than we do.”
