Fall 2023: Collaboration

Beehive at Zia Queenbees.

Photo by Douglas Merriam.

Photo © Douglas Merriam, Santa Fe Farmers Market Cookbook farmfreshjourney.com

Collaboration

What is a harvest festival if not a community work party? It is nearly impossible to imagine a meal—much less a feast—that is not the fruit of collaboration. But, as anyone who has ever worked the line or the floor at a restaurant, who has ever wept over a lost crop, or who has ever hosted a harvest festival knows very well, collaboration is not always easy. It requires making space for the lives of others, adapting to their rhythms, listening, tasting, sharing, and sometimes adjusting the timeline or the recipe.

In this issue of edible, we celebrate the art of cooperation—its beauties, its challenges, and, above all, the wealth that can be wrought from it. Reporting on food co-ops in the state, farmer and co-op veteran Shahid Mustafa reflects on the “funk” of the cooperative, writing of the way co-ops can empower and energize community. Mariko O. Thomas tunes into the bee clock with three northern New Mexico beekeepers, inspiring us to join her in wondering what humans might learn from bees, whose collaborative practice is their means of survival. And micro-baker and cook Cassidy Tawse-Garcia shares stories of entrepreneurs who have made their way thanks to shared kitchen spaces.

Turning toward the table, we dine at a Santa Fe restaurant whose chef suggests that feeding people is itself a collaborative act. Jessica and André Kempton introduce us to a high-desert farmer raising and milling wheat for them and other bakers in northern New Mexico. Too, the Local Heroes featured here—community planners, all—exemplify the landscape-changing power of collaboration. Speaking of the nonprofit she cofounded nine years ago, Erin Garrison declares that Food is Free Albuquerque was born from abundance. Living as we do amid preoccupations of scarcity, in labor as in resources, we invite you to consider what else might likewise be made from the bounty that, seen and unseen, surrounds us.

PUBLISHERS

Bite Size Media, LLC

Stephanie and Walt Cameron

EDITOR

Briana Olson

ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Susanna Space

COPY EDITORS

Marie Landau and Margaret Marti

DESIGN AND LAYOUT

Stephanie Cameron

PHOTO EDITOR

Stephanie Cameron

EVENT COORDINATOR

Natalie Donnelly

SALES AND MARKETING

Kate Collins, Melinda Esquibel, and Karen Wine

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Cristina Grumblatt

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Stephanie and Walt Cameron, Publishers

Susanna Space, Associate Editor

STEPHANIE CAMERON was raised in Albuquerque and earned a degree in fine arts at the University of New Mexico. Cameron is the art director, head photographer, recipe tester, marketing guru, publisher, and owner of edible New Mexico and The Bite

CANDOLIN COOK is a historian, writer, editor, and former co-editor of edible New Mexico. She recently received her doctorate in history from the University of New Mexico and is working on her first book.

JESSICA AND ANDRÉ KEMPTON, partners in life and business, are involved in and support projects that relate to local farming and regional food security. Both are the owners of Wild Leaven Bakery and Kempton Communications. In their free time, they enjoy doing outdoor activities. Find them on social media @wildleavenbakery and @kemptoncommunications.

DOUGLAS MERRIAM is a travel and lifestyle photographer with a passion for anything food related. He published the acclaimed Farm Fresh Journey: Santa Fe Farmers Market Cookbook, available at farmfreshjourney.com

SHAHID MUSTAFA owns and runs Taylor Hood Farms, practicing regenerative organic agriculture on two acres in La Union and offering a CSA with home delivery. Through his nonprofit DYGUP/Sustain (DYGUP stands for Developing Youth from the Ground Up), he has worked with staff at Las Cruces High School to implement an environmental literacy curriculum and establish a one-acre plot where students receive credit for helping with all stages of vegetable production.

BRIANA OLSON is a writer and the editor of edible New Mexico and The Bite. She previously edited the Greenhorns’ New Farmers Almanac and Mount Tamalpais College’s OpenLine, among other publications, and has written on food, land, and art for outlets such as Southwest Contemporary, Cordella, and the local plant zine Rootwalk. She lives in Albuquerque.

SUSANNA SPACE is a writer and the associate editor of edible New Mexico and The Bite. Her essays on topics ranging from meteors to filmmaking to beluga whales have appeared in numerous literary outlets. She lives in Santa Fe.

CASSIDY TAWSE-GARCIA is a storyteller, cook, and PhD student in human-environment geography at the University of New Mexico. She lives in Albuquerque with her cat, Ham, and six chickens. She is the owner of Masa Madrina, a pop-up food project.

MARIKO O. THOMAS is an independent scholar, instructor, and writer living in Taos. She is interested in plant-human relationships, environmental justice, and storytelling.

MARISA THOMPSON is New Mexico State University’s extension service urban horticulture specialist. In addition to landscape mulches and tomatoes, her research interests include abiotic plant stressors like wind, cold, heat, drought, and soil compaction. She writes a weekly gardening column, Southwest Yard & Garden, which is published in newspapers and magazines across the state. Readers can access the column archives and other hortrelated resources at desertblooms.nmsu.edu. Find her on social media @NMdesertblooms.

Cucumber soup from The Kitchen (page 58).

Photo by Stephanie Cameron.

REUNITY RESOURCES COMMUNITY FARM

FARM, CENTRAL NEW MEXICO

AN INTERVIEW WITH COFOUNDERS JULIANA CIANO, PROGRAM DIRECTOR, AND TEJINDER CIANO, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ALONG WITH REUNITY TEAM MEMBERS

Photos by Douglas Merriam

Tucked among the elms near the Santa Fe River, Reunity Resources goes far beyond a farm dedicated to growing crops. Although the Local Hero category is “Farm,” Reunity promotes a closed-loop system in which they strive to reunite the community with resources that would otherwise be wasted. They began in 2011 as a small operation turning used cooking oil into biodiesel. That now includes both commercial and household composting, helping to keep valuable resources in the community while reducing the production of greenhouse gases that results when food and yard waste go to the landfill. For Reunity Resources, the relationship between food waste, compost, and farms is one complete and interconnected system that works to both address climate change and improve food access. Today Reunity Resources operates ten interrelated programs—not least, a regenerative farm.

Reunity Resources Community Farm was born from the passing of Santa Fe Community Farm. How did your initial partnership with Santa Fe Community Farm begin, and how has the farm grown and changed under Reunity’s management?

The Santa Fe Community Farm began in 1947 with a World War II veteran named John Stephenson. After witnessing the trauma of war and widespread hunger in Europe, he felt he was still alive for a reason. Upon completing his service, he returned to Santa Fe, purchased this land, and decided to grow food to donate to those in need. This was an all-volunteer operation for decades, with so much credit to everyone involved! We met Stephenson in 2015, when he was ninety-nine years old. At the time, we were searching for land to expand our

Tejinder Ciano and Juliana Ciano at Reunity Resources Community Farm.

santa fe wine & chile 2023

Wine & Chile Dinner

Featuring Rombauer

Thursday, September 28, 2023

6:30 PM

USD 225 PP ++

Wine & Chile Lunch

Featuring Louis Roederer

Friday, September 29, 2023

12:00 PM

USD 185 PP ++

Wine & Chile Dinner

Featuring ZD Wine

Friday, September 29, 2023

6:30 PM

USD 225 PP ++

Executive Chef Andre Sattler

composting program. He was excited about expanding composting on the property—he called it “the golden circle,” composting food and farm waste and then feeding the farm’s soil with that very compost. When Stephenson passed, we began a conversation with his sons about maintaining the mission to provide food for the hungry and reinvigorating the farm as a community hub. In 2019, we were able to purchase the farm and begin this work in earnest.

How do the farm and farm stand support Reunity’s overarching mission to create systemic change in regional food systems?

The heart of our farming practices lies in regenerative agriculture. We implement a range of techniques to ensure the health and vitality of our land—from cover cropping and crop rotations to low- and no-till practices to pollinator-friendly permaculture landscaping. We also abstain from using pesticides or chemical fertilizers, prioritizing natural and sustainable methods instead. This way, the farm both keeps harmful chemicals out of our local ecosystem and actively contributes to its regeneration. Our soil is revitalized, carbon is sequestered, and nutrient-dense food is grown to nourish our community.

Our farm stand aims to address the food insecurity faced by local families. In this area of Santa Fe County alone, 16,940 people lack consistent access to healthy and affordable food. Reunity Farm seeks to bridge this gap by providing access to fresh, organic produce to all members of our community. We participate in Double Up Food Bucks, WIC, Senior Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program, and FreshRx food-access initiatives, ensuring affordability for our

customers. Also, in addition to providing fresh food to an average of fifty households a week through our food-access partners, we distribute thousands of dollars in Farm Card donations to families served by those organizations, allowing them to buy what they want and need from our farm stand.

How does your compost differ from what someone might purchase at a commercial nursery or box store?

Reunity Resources’ compost is produced and sold locally, effectively reducing our own landfill’s methane emissions and adding water capture and carbon-sink capacity to area soils. It’s fresh and full of microbial life appropriate to our ecosystem. It hasn’t traveled many miles, nor has it sat in storage or on a shelf for any length of time. There is a labor of love that goes into our compost production, and supporting this supports local jobs. —Trevor Ortiz, compost operations manager

Why and how is collaboration central to all facets of your work? Can you share an example or two of particularly successful collaborations, whether in food access, policy, or education?

Just as it is clear that the seeds, soil, water, and sunshine need each other, and that the pollinators need the flowers and vice versa, collaboration and reciprocity are clear models for thriving systems.

Our new collaboration with FreshRx and the NM Farmers Marketing Association, La Familia Clinic Southside, and Presbyterian Medical Services means clinicians are able to prescribe food vouchers to patients whose health journeys could be supported by eating more

Left: Shannan Dunlap in the field. Right: Lorraine Chow at the Farm Stand.

fruits and vegetables. Using these vouchers at the farm stand, the patients can purchase fresh local foods to prepare and eat as they wish. As one of our earliest partners, Santa Fe Public Schools committed to cafeteria composting and has invited us to lead hands-on classroom activities and planned farm field trips where students can harvest carrots or press apple cider and learn about the food cycle. We’ve taught SFPS summer program participants to make connections between climate change, biodiversity, soil health, and water—and how to make fresh veggies tasty and fun!

Santa Fe Community College is another wonderful collaborator. From supporting the inception of the biodiesel program to being a host site for college agricultural interns to combining our harvests for food donations, we love SFCC!

Food access and land—and water!—access go hand in hand, and we are collaborating with a couple of grassroots organizations to provide growing space and shared infrastructure. These land stewards sow seeds and host gatherings and skill shares, building food sovereignty and connection with the land.

What’s one of your favorite volunteer stories?

Working with Steven, who we all call Sweet Pea. He’s a retired volunteer master arborist who has dedicated himself to improving our orchards. He is such an asset to our orchard and farm space. —Jill, farmer

It was great to work with YouthWorks. The teens and young adult team had such a fun energy! —Dave, farmer

We’ve had a three-year-old, an up-and-coming farmer-in-training, named Max, who has been visiting the farm. He normally lives with his parents in Hawaii. His joyous energy is infectious and we love having him here. —Sian, harvest manager

Talk about the philosophy behind the community fridge. The community fridge is a food support system put in place because we believe that everyone deserves equitable access to healthy food. The fridge and pantry are stocked by Reunity Resources as well as community members, with a combination of farm-grown produce, storebought groceries, and homemade meals, and [they’re] maintained by

a dedicated group of volunteers. The fridge serves and is cared for by the community, and through direct action aims to address the unjust food insecurity pervasive in [New Mexico]. —Jessi Fuchs, volunteer coordinator of the community fridge since its inception in 2021

The fridge is open 24-7 to anyone who needs it, offering food at no cost with no questions asked. More than six hundred meals a month are eaten, thanks to this initiative.

What are some favorite fall farm ingredients? How do you like to use them?

Kuri squash; I like to make soup and squash pie with it. —Jill, farmer Pumpkin to make Choctaw pumpkin bread. —Julian, farmer Potatoes to make delicious gnocchi. —Dave, farmer/chef

Delicata squash, cut into half rings, and roasted with the skin on. Even the skin is delicious. —Sian, harvest manager

I love leeks, fennel, collards, and roasted brussels sprouts all cooked together. —Uvee, farm manager

I’m a big fan of roots, and a simple chopped root roast, featuring whatever is at hand (carrots, beets, onions, garlic, turnips, winter squash if the crop survived the squash bugs), rosemary, thyme, salt, and pepper, tossed in oil and roasted . . . yum! —Juliana

Any recommended reading that has informed your practices or shaped your views on food, community, and sustainability?

Braiding Sweetgrass, Emergent Strategy, Healing Grounds, Farming While Black, The Light We Carry, Into the Unknown Together (local authors/artists!), The Mushroom at the End of the World, The Dirty Life.

Anything else you’d like to share with edible readers?

Let’s connect! Come to a concert, support our community fridge, buy some fresh produce, take a workshop, join our Doorstep Compost Collection program, or enjoy a meal field-side with farm-forward food made in our kitchen, The Broadfork. The farm stand operates from June to September; sign up for our newsletter or check the website for current hours and events.

1829 San Ysidro Crossing, Santa Fe, reunityresources.com

Farm Stand at Reunity Resources.

photo: Gabriella Marks

FOOD IS FREE ALBUQUERQUE

NONPROFIT

AN INTERVIEW WITH ERIN GARRISON, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND COFOUNDER

Almost a legend now, Food is Free Albuquerque (FIFABQ) began with an ad on Craigslist in 2014, when two women asked if they could harvest people’s fruit trees. Since then, they have harvested millions of pounds of private food abundance and distributed it to “those forgotten by our current food system.” Embraced by the Albuquerque community, the women are still swept away by the generosity and tenacity of others and humbled by the many hundreds of fruit trees they have

had the privilege of harvesting. Erin Garrison, executive director and cofounder of FIFABQ, calls herself a resource finder, connector, and celebrator. “Food is Free Albuquerque has been a work of the heart, not just by myself but by an entire community that has encircled and driven us forward.” Always looking for ways to grow, ways to better serve their communities, and for new connections, FIFABQ’s core belief is that fresh food is a human right, a tenet at the heart of all they do.

Bounty from apricot harvest by Food is Free Albuquerque. Photo courtesy of FIFABQ.

In 2022, you harvested nearly 25,000 pounds of fruit and other produce from residences, orchards, and farms in greater Albuquerque and sometimes beyond. How did you get there, and what have you learned since your first community harvest?

We have learned so much. One of the lessons, which we have adopted into our core beliefs, is the idea of abundance, that there is enough. Everyone deserves and should have equitable access to fresh fruit. The fruit just kept coming every season. This organization blossomed out of abundance.

When you talk about community, how do you define yours? How does collaboration play into your approach to community building?

I have so many descriptive words for our community. Gracious, giving, brave, tenacious, accepting—I could keep going, but I think those paint a good picture. Collaboration is where FIFABQ was born; it began with a simple partnership with homeowners. We have since collaborated with agencies, individuals, and businesses that span far beyond Albuquerque, and some beyond New Mexico. What is mindful distribution?

When we began this journey, it was to play a part in curbing food waste; it quickly became apparent that unless the food was distributed mindfully, we would also become part of the system of waste. We want the food to be used well and to reach as far as possible. An apricot may be bruised, a little ugly even, but it’s still very edible. Those are great for home preservers or kitchens that can transform that ugly fruit into something extraordinary; still, it isn’t right for an outreach program giving fresh fruit to community members. Grapes can make great wine and jelly, but those are so good to get right into the hands of community members.

We also know what it’s like to find ourselves swimming under a mountain of fruit and the work it takes to distribute it, so we never want to give anyone more than what their resources allow them to manage. All of our partners know it is 100 percent up to them to decide what amount is right for them.

Each harvest is distributed with what, who, when, and how in mind. Our lead harvesters survey the harvest and begin making their distribution plan on-site to ensure all of these expectations are met to the best of our ability.

Left: FIFABQ team Kate Colovos, Sam Henning, Trista Alters, Samuel Sullivan, Anni Telfer, Echo Garrison, and Erin Garrison, photo by Stephanie Cameron. Right: Harvesting from an apricot tree, photo courtesy of FIFABQ.

Describe a residential or farm harvest from the perspective of a homeowner or farm owner.

What a great question; it allows me to think back to so many beautiful memories. One that springs to mind is a homeowner who invited us into her family orchard, which was over fifty years old and so beautiful. We had a crew of homeschoolers out that day—there were so many youths in the orchard and so much playing. The homeowner came to join us, and she was so moved by the sounds of the kids playing among the trees. She and I chatted for a moment and she told me that the orchard had not had kids play in it since her children were children and it was such a gift to her that we were there.

I hope that the trees and fields we harvest and the people who steward them feel those feelings of connectivity.

Talk about the Seed Share you host every spring. How does that intersect with your broader mission?

We have worked with many different projects through the years, including community gardens, and many people have asked us for growing advice. One year we decided it would be fun to host a seed swap, so we wrote to a couple companies asking for seed donations. We also invited several knowledgeable growers to come share what they knew with community members who came to get free seeds. It was a small event, with about fifty guests, but we left with more seeds than we came with. So we just kept doing it. The event now hosts a variety of organizations, businesses, and community members with cool things to

share—and it is supported by several local and national businesses that supply thousands of packets of seeds we can share. We now need venues that can support a minimum of three hundred guests.

How does it tie to our broader mission? Growing food is just part of the solution of solving hunger in our community and we have tapped into a resource that allows us to meet our community’s needs in a broader way.

What (or who) have been three of your greatest influences?

Again, a question with so many excellent answers. My two biggest influences have been the trees and this vibrant community, which has never stopped believing in us. We have spoken often of how we (not just the organization but personally) were grown under those trees. In nine years a lot of life has occurred, with lots of changes. The trees have offered solace and comfort throughout it all. Building a nonprofit has been hard and sometimes scary work, but we have had such a supportive base of people who have cheered us on, carried the heavy things, provided us with iced tea on hot days, and most of all told us they believed in what we were doing. That support given by both has been the magic sauce all these years.

What is your favorite way to eat or prepare stone fruit?

FIFABQ friend Helen’s apricot butter smeared on her homemade peach bread, with glasses of tea with big square ice cubes clinking in the glass, under the shade of the trees she harvested the fruit from, with the company of friends and laughter.

fifabq.org

Apricot tree harvest. Photo courtesy of FIFABQ.

Environmentally Packaged Fresh and Nutritious Food ALBUQUERQUE

La Montañita Co-op–Nob Hill & Rio Grande

Lowe’s Market on Lomas • Moses Kountry Natural Foods

Silver Street Market • Triangle Market in Sandia Crest

Lovelace Main Hospital

Heart Hospital of New Mexico

Sandia National Labs • UPC at UNM

UNM Hospital in Cafe Ristra

Presbyterian Rust Hospital • INTEL- Rio Rancho

Nusenda Corporate Office

Presbyterian Cooper Center

UNM Campus - Mercado, SRC, Cafe Lobo

Frontier Market - Corrales

PLACITAS

The Merc

SANTA FE

La Montañita Co-op • Kaunes Market

Eldorado Supermart at the Agora

Christus St Vincent Hospital • Pojoaque SuperMarket

LOS ALAMOS

Los Alamos Cooperative Market

Los Alamos National Laboratory

ESPAÑOLA

Center Market

• Presbyterian Hospital

TAOS

Cid’s Market

GALLUP

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VEGETARIAN KITCHEN

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CAFECITO

CAFÉ / COFFEE SHOP

AN INTERVIEW WITH SOLANGE SERQUIS AND ANDRES PAGLAYAN, OWNERS

Since the day they gathered beneath the rusty 1949 Monte Vista Fuel and Feed building in Santa Fe, Cafecito’s owners have transformed the space to manifest their vision. A landscape architect, Solange Serquis crafts spaces that connect communities, foster learning, and facilitate healing, spaces that echo her outdoor-oriented childhood. Her optimism guides her local and international work, driven by her mission to inspire through design. Andres Paglayan, with a background spanning business management, biomedical science, textiles, industrial construction, and software development,

helps Serquis’s vision materialize, grounding her creative instincts with his practical experience.

Empanadas and maté, two of Cafecito’s distinctive menu items, reflect basic advice from the owners’ restaurateur family members, who suggested that a menu must have a strong connection with one’s reality. “Do what’s true to you,” they were told. Thus, a menu of Argentine and Armenian cuisine. “Customers appreciate the authenticity that Cafecito embraces,” say Serquis and Paglayan. “No, we cannot match our grandmothers’ [dishes], but we are still working on it!”

Photos by Stephanie Cameron

You’re entrepreneurs, designers, real estate developers, builders, café owners, and parents. How do you keep it all going, and how does Cafecito fit into the mix?

We try a holistic, go-with-the-flow lifestyle. All we do in life and business is interconnected. Serquis + Associates, our landscape architecture firm, is a small office with a seasoned team of creatives producing ideas and designs that get built. Our children, who grew up visiting construction sites and actively participating in our ventures, are part of the set of experts we consult before making important decisions. As for Cafecito, we see it as a way to express our vocation for hospitality—“a tribute and care for the other” through food, ambience, and service. The café is an evolving challenge that is finding its way and identity, and attracting team players. Good things take time, effort, commitment, and consistency!

Cafecito opened in 2019, just before the pandemic began. How did that affect the way your menu and offerings developed? What’s different now?

The menu is a restaurant navigation chart. Since we never closed, it had to be changed almost weekly, adjusting to different imposed conditions. Today is more stable, but we are still learning, evolving, and preparing innovations.

Cafecito has always relied on local growers and producers. Who are your partners, and how do you envision those relationships developing as Cafecito evolves?

Our local partners are Reunity Resources Community Farm, ArtfulTea, Sage Bakehouse, Above Sea Level, Chocolate Maven, ZIA Beverage, Sheehan Winery, Gruet Winery, Taos Cow, Toni Fuge (wood for furniture), Chlorophyll Fine Houseplants, local tango dancers, pottery artists, and others. This is still an area with room for improvement for us, and our commitment is to grow and evolve with them.

Your culinary aesthetic is distinct for being simple yet elevated, reflecting the spirit of Serquis’s landscape designs, Cafecito’s greenhouse-style dining room, and the modern rental units you’ve built. Tell us about your influences. What inspires you?

Inspiration and ideas come from our own lives, heritage, experiences, friends, and, mostly, from the work and influences of our parents. Traveling and looking at everything around us contributes to the shaping of ideas. Cafecito’s greenhouse under the trees (forest) is part of the showroom for Serquis + Associates, a green destination to unwind. We planted the trees, in a variety of sizes, before finishing the construction. Today we refer to each one as an experiential learning tool for our visitors, clients, and collaborators. Construction began in 2017, and now six years later the trees are getting the protagonism as planned. A landscape with a building, not a building with a landscape!

You’ve been involved in the planning of the bike path and access between the Baca Railyard and downtown. You offer bikes to those staying on your property and have installed EV chargers in your parking area. In your vision, where does urban planning intersect with food?

Solange Serquis and Andres Paglayan, owners, at Cafecito.

Serquis: My vision is urbanism at a human scale, and an environment contributing to people’s health and wellness. I was a landscape architecture intern making renderings at the firm that did the Railyard master plan for Santa Fe. A multimodal dream is what provided the drive to develop the Trailhead Compound. Cafecito is not just the food, it’s a part of a bigger view of the human scale. Ideally, we can create the perfect environment for food to have its place between other needs for human nurturing. Cafecito is a confluence point for drivers, bikers, pedestrians, locals, and visitors coming to or from the trail, wandering for some relaxation, fun, a bite, coffee, maté, or a glass of wine. With all of your projects and interests, how do you find time to enjoy each other? When you do get time off, what do you like to eat?

We are best friends and celebrate each other, taking turns to back each other’s interests and projects. We have breakfast, lunch, dinner, and the most fun snacks (maté con tostadas con dulce de leche) while checking on our family, revising our current schedules, and making deadlines—and we always look to the horizon for the next vision. While we have our fair share of disagreements and different opinions, we always find a way to compromise and create the perfect balance. From the black and white, we often get to beautiful shades of gray, and we always manage to get things done or learn how to evolve and keep us going. At home at the end of the day, the projects are infinite! Now planting an orchard is part of our daily lives and that part feels like time off.

We like all food when it is made with good ingredients, and we are very curious to try everything when we are traveling. We cook and sit at the table at home every day—a ritual we both got from our families in Argentina.

You’ve both lived in Santa Fe for more than twenty years. What does community mean to you?

Community is the world at a scale where we can contribute to making things better. We make the effort supporting art, education, and children’s development. We frequently host teachers in our Airbnb, and students and young artists in our café, often weaving art and education into these spaces as a manifestation of our gratitude toward our community, and a commitment to the future of our youth.

Any plans for travel (or recent travel stories)? What kinds of destinations inspire you?

Last May our family visited Armenia to celebrate Hermine’s (Andres’s mother) eightieth birthday. We had never been there before and the experience provided a better understanding of ourselves.

We were eating simple food crafted from the best grains and by traditional artisans, enjoying civic spaces, and getting greens and flavors directly from the land.

922 Shoofly, Santa Fe, 505-310-0089, cafecitosantafe.com

Left: Empanada sampler plate with chimichurri. Right: Housemade pasta with grilled beef strips.

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MILAGRO VINEYARDS

BEVERAGE ARTISAN, WINE

AN INTERVIEW WITH RICK AND MITZI HOBSON, OWNERS

Photos by Stephanie Cameron

Almost everyone laughed, insisting that growing grapes for wine in Corrales was folly, say Milagro Vineyards owners Rick and Mitzi Hobson. That was thirty-odd years ago. It began with the purchase, with friends Jo and Dave Browning, of eight acres in Corrales. The purchase “seemed like an adventure to nurture a growing interest in grapes and wine acquired through travel,” they add. Rick came to farming from a cotton farm in La Union in the Mesilla Valley, then earned his PhD in chemical engineering at the University of New Mexico. The Albuquerque office of James, Cooke & Hobson is the sales engineering company that became his day job, and Corrales was close enough for a daily commute. Today, through a combination of serendipity and inspiration, Milagro Vineyards subscribes to an awareness that wine is food and that the synergy between local wine and other food grown in the same soil is important.

How did you come to winemaking, and why Corrales?

Mitzi was working in a school in 1985 when a coworker asked her if we would meet with a young man he was tutoring in English who had heard about the vineyard effort. This was the beginning of a lifelong friendship with Laurent Gruet and the Gruet family. (We just returned from our goddaughter Laura Gruet’s wedding in Belgium.) Laurent encouraged our desire to grow vinifera grapes and make wine in Corrales.

Then, in 1992, Michael and Rebecca Malone, wine brokers from Healdsburg, California—the heart of Sonoma wine country—moved in “over the wall.” (Kyle Malone of New Mexico Harvest and Squash Blossom Boys is their son.) Blind tastings “at the fence” of Milagro wines beside commercial labels indicated that grapes grown in Corrales could make great wine. Bonding in May 1999 made us a

Jesse, Michele, Chris, and Liliana Padberg at Vivác Winery tasting room in Dixon.

Milagro Vineyards grapes at harvest time.

Photo: Daniel Nadelbach Photo (c)

Photos: Daniel Nadelbach

Photo (c)

Weekly Performances by Doug Montgomery

commercial winery and allowed us to sell wine, which committed us to raising grapes and thus formalized our commitment to keep the Corrales land in agriculture. “Handcrafted from vine to wine” became a tagline as well as a road map.

Some of your white wines profile varietals, such as roussanne and sémillon, that are well known in France but less so in the United States. How did you decide which grapes to cultivate, and what principles guide you in crafting blends? What is unique to the terroir of your vineyards?

Milagro Vineyards’ grapes, twelve varieties, are all raised in Corrales in fifteen vineyards positioned from the valley floor to the sand hills throughout the village. Soil core samples show the sandy soils are derived from alluvial (flooding) and fluvial (flowing) action of the Rio Grande, hence the minerality of our wines. The more wine we made, the more we understood the reality that good wine is made in the vineyard. Our inspiration comes from France and old-world techniques, but our growing conditions are a little different.

Late-spring frosts are the nemesis of grape growers in New Mexico. Planting location and late-budding varieties are considered to mitigate frost damage, and it was the search for late-budding, less-frostsensitive varieties that led to the production of roussanne and sémillon. The vision for roussanne and sémillon is to make a food-friendly, light,

crisp style, preserving natural acidity while using barrel fermentation and aging to make a long-lived wine. Harvesting grapes at a lower sugar level helps preserve acidity (cooler nights help with that too) and emphasize citrus and stone fruit aromas and flavors. It also means that Milagro wines are lower in alcohol than many wines, so they pair well with food. The terroir in Corrales—encompassing climate, soil, viticulture, and winemaking practices—defines the character of our wines. Talk about your collaboration with Silver Leaf Farms. How did that start, and where is it going?

The search for younger growers interested in carrying on Milagro Vineyards was resolved when Rick was making a delivery at Albuquerque’s Farm & Table in 2017. Co-owner of Silver Leaf Elan Silverblatt-Buser introduced himself, and the rest began to be history. In 2018 we made a trip to Dijon so Rick, Elan, and his business partner and brother, Aaron, could take a class in strategies for pinot noir and chardonnay at the University of Burgundy’s Institut de la Vigne et du Vin Jules Guyot. Elan and Aaron decided to add grapes to their farm crops and wine to their list of “value-added” products. During the pandemic, the winery served as a farm stand pickup, giving us both an avenue to reach customers when markets and restaurants were closed. That project evolved into the Farm Stand in Corrales, where you can buy our wines alongside ingredients for dinner.

Left: Rick and Mitzi Hobson, owners, at Milagro Vineyards estate. Right: The grounds at Milagro Vineyards.

Max Wagner, then of Farm & Table, began working in the vineyards and learning winemaking in 2018, and is now our full-time assistant winemaker, so the Milagro team for the future appears to be set.

Do you still rescue Boston terriers?

In a reflection of our commitment to animal welfare, the labels on our bottles feature Wilbur, who was our house pig for fifteen years. At first, he was on there because there wasn’t a real label, and Rick wanted to be sure the wine merited one. After spending a week in Sonoma working with a label designer, we decided to keep the pig because he represents our balance between seriousness about what we do and not taking ourselves too seriously.

The pig chapter evolved into the dog rescue project, which focuses on brachycephalic breeds (Boston terriers, pugs, Frenchies) but

is open to all breeds. The dog rescue was started the same year Milagro was bonded and now helps about sixty dogs each year get vetted and rehomed.

Anything else you’d like to share with edible readers?

With growing experience in the Mesilla Valley and twenty-plus years doing viticulture in Corrales, we’ve determined that grapes use low amounts of water and are therefore beneficial for New Mexico’s water-challenged future. Come see for yourself! The winery is open for tours and tastings one weekend a month (and by appointment), and wine service is offered Fridays and Saturdays from 3 to 7 pm at the Farm Stand in Corrales. Be sure to reserve if you’re planning to come with a group of six or more.

125 Old Church Road, Corrales, 505-898-3998, milagrowine.com

Left: 2019 merlot. Right: Mitzi and Rick with their Boston terrier rescues.

Three Sauces in Oaxaca

Words and Photos by Briana Olson

Oaxaca de Juarez, nestled in the foothills of the Sierra Madre in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, is known to some for its colonial architecture, to others for its mezcal. Of the city’s official contributions to global patrimony, its cuisine may have the most diverse roots and the longest history. For the sauce enthusiast, this elegant capital city offers infinite possibilities for bliss—not least, but far from only, its moles. Here, in no particular order, are three.

LOS DANZANTES: Miel de Chilhuacle Negro

Named for the dancing figures carved into the walls at nearby Monte Alban, Los Danzantes plays hard with traditional dishes and regional ingredients— some sourced from their garden, all treated with reverence. Helmed by Chef Alex Burgos, the modernist kitchen produces five exceptional house moles, offered as a starter with a basket of plantain chochoyotes. Many of the dishes, like the huitlacoche-stuffed ancho with pumpkin puree, are not only beautiful but utterly unique. In one, identified on the menu as a salad, numerous sauce components—fresh cheese infused with hoja santa, local coffee emulsion, honey seasoned with the earthy chilhuacle negro chile—intersect with the sweet umami of mesquite-smoked beets. With towering earthen walls embracing the dining room and a bar made with recycled metal, the restaurant’s atmosphere (and service) matches its culinary sensibility and commitment to Slow Food.

DOÑA VALE: Salsa Morita

Memelas are available all over Oaxaca, but they are perhaps best eaten at the markets. At the sprawling Central de Abastos, where locals shop for everything from kitchenware to T-shirts, food vendors can be found among the sea of produce dealers—I found one serving wonderful blue corn memelas with beans and salsa verde near stacked bundles of cilantro—as well as in the market’s somewhat byzantine food court area. Tucked in a corner is Doña Vale of Netflix fame. Her popular salsa morita is earthy and beautiful, but the tomato-based salsa roja is also excellent. Numerous groups offer food tours of this truly vast market.

EL ESCAPULARIO: Estofado Verde

Outside Mexico, estofado is a lesser-known mole, but it is beloved in Oaxaca. Sometimes called mole almendrado, it is lighter, sweeter, and more delicate than mole negro. Of those I’ve tasted, the most distinctive was prepared by Chef Esther “Teté” Alonso. El Escapulario was recommended as a counterpoint to the city’s newer, hipper fine dining establishments; Doña Teté, I’d been told, comes from the generations of women chefs whose cooking first made the city a culinary destination. Her menu proves that there are well more than seven moles of Oaxaca. The estofado verde marries the salty umami of olives and capers with the acidity of tomatillos and the sweetness of almonds and raisins. Alonso, who serves guests herself, has been known to offer a mezcal digestif, on the house.

Mesquite-smoked beet salad at Los Danzantes.

Five moles at Los Danzantes.

Memelas at Doña Vale.

The lively creative community of the North Valley is delighted to renew the tradition of a Studio Tour in the Valley.

We are painters, sculptors, ceramists, jewelers, fiber artists, woodworkers, metalsmiths, and more. Join us in our studios as we share our art and our creative process amidst the autumnal glow of the beautiful North Valley.

www.northvalleystudiotour.com

Spring Light | Cynthia Wister

RECIPES TO Celebrate Fall

Words and Photos

by Stephanie Cameron

The moment in the year when the sun is exactly above the equator and the day and night are equal in length, we exit from summer and enter into fall. According to the Old Farmer’s Almanac, the fall equinox arrives this year on Saturday, September 23, at 12:50 am mountain daylight time in the Northern Hemisphere. The equinox occurs at the same moment worldwide, and for farmers, it means harvest time. Days grow shorter, nights grow cooler, and the forecast for first frost signals the time to pick the last fruit from the tomato and chile plants. Fall also brings the arrival of squash, apples, alliums, sweet potatoes, and cooking greens. We start to shift from salads and grilling our summer bounty to baking and heating up our kitchens for comforting stews, casseroles, and cakes. In this edition of Cooking Fresh, we hope to inspire some new ideas for the ingredients you are finding in abundance at the markets and, perhaps, harvesting yourself.

Miso-Roasted Butternut Squash and Harvest Salad

Adapted from Simply Recipes

4 servings

Level: Easy | Prep time: 15 minutes; Cook time: 25 minutes; Total time: 40 minutes

Squash

1 small butternut squash (about 2 pounds), peeled, seeded, and chopped into 1/2-inch cubes

2 tablespoons yellow or white miso

1 tablespoon maple syrup

3 tablespoons olive oil, divided

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

Dressing

1 1/2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

1 teaspoon dijon mustard

1 tablespoon maple syrup

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Salt and pepper, to taste

Salad

4 cups arugula or other leafy greens

1 cup cooked whole grains, like wheat berries, farro, or wild rice

1 apple, cored and diced

1/4 cup dried cranberries

1/4 cup pepitas or piñon nuts

1/4 cup goat cheese, crumbled

Arils from 1 pomegranate

Although the caramelized squash in this recipe stands on its own, it takes the salad to a new level. This salad checks all the boxes for seasonality and layers of texture and flavor. It can serve as a side dish, a main course, or individual salads for a week’s worth of lunches. The ingredients in the salad are listed for inspiration—use any combination or use them all—but substitutions are absolutely acceptable, including different varieties of winter squash. Store the roasted butternut squash in the refrigerator for up to a week and toss with salad and dressing when ready to serve.

Squash

Preheat oven to 425°F. Lightly brush two baking sheets with 1 tablespoon of olive oil.

In a large bowl, whisk together the miso, maple syrup, remaining oil, salt, and pepper. Add butternut squash cubes and toss to coat.

Spread squash out onto baking sheets with plenty of room between pieces. Bake for 25 minutes or until golden brown and crispy at the edges, turning the squash at the 15-minute mark.

Dressing

Mix together all ingredients in a small jar and shake well to emulsify.

Salad

Toss the roasted squash (hot, warm, or cold), dressing, and remaining salad ingredients in a large bowl. Serve immediately.

Caramelized Garlic and Onion Bisque

8 servings

Level: Intermediate | Prep time: 20 minutes; Cook time: 60 minutes; Total time: 1 hour, 20 minutes

2 tablespoons salted butter

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1 cup garlic cloves, peeled

8 cups onions—a mixture of reds, yellows, whites, shallots, and leeks—thinly sliced

1 1/2 cups yellow potatoes, peeled and chopped into 1/2-inch cubes

1/4 cup sherry

1 tablespoon dried rosemary, crumbled

6 cups chicken or vegetable broth

1/2 cup whipping cream

1/2 cup sour cream

Salt

Freshly ground pepper

Using a variety of alliums makes the final dish subtly different each time you make it. Cooking the onions and garlic slowly over low heat allows them to caramelize, releasing the sugars and creating a lovely nutty flavor. This soup freezes well, so make extra.

In a dutch oven, melt butter with oil over low heat. Add onions and garlic, stirring occasionally for 35–40 minutes or until golden brown. Stir in potatoes, sherry, and rosemary; cook for 2 minutes. Add broth to the mixture and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, until potatoes are tender, about 20 minutes.

Puree mixture in batches in a blender and pour back into dutch oven. Over medium heat, return to a simmer. Stir in whipping cream and sour cream and cook for 1–2 minutes longer, being careful not to let the soup boil. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve immediately.

Note: For garnish, use crispy onions, rosemary, or edible flowers.

Sweet Potato “Noodles” with Chile Butter Sauce

4 servings as a side

Level: Easy | Prep time: 10 minutes; Cook time: 10 minutes; Total time: 20 minutes

2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and spiralized or julienned

4–5 garlic cloves, minced

3 tablespoons butter, divided

1 tablespoon Kinna’s chile paste*

1/2 cup vegetable broth

Sesame seeds, chopped cilantro, and fresh-cracked pepper for topping

This is a quick and easy solution for a main course or side. Garlicky strands of sweet potato replace traditional pasta for a nutrient-packed recipe. Be sure not to overcook the sweet potatoes—they should remain crisp. If you like spicy dishes, add more chile paste.

Melt 1 tablespoon butter in a medium skillet. Add sweet potatoes and stir-fry gently for about 2 minutes, until cooked through but still crisp. Set aside.

Melt the remaining butter in the same skillet, then add garlic and chile paste. Stir well and cook for 2 minutes, then add broth and simmer for another 2 minutes to thicken the sauce.

Add sweet potatoes back to the skillet with the sauce. Stir well to combine and cook for 2–3 minutes more. The “noodles” should be al dente; don’t overcook.

Serve immediately, topped with sesame seeds, cilantro, and black pepper.

*Note: Find Kinna’s Laos Chile Paste or Vegan Chile Paste at La Montañita Co-op on Rio Grande in Albuquerque, or substitute gochujang or sambal oelek.

Bread Soup with Swiss Chard

6–8 servings

Level: Intermediate | Prep time: 15 minutes; Cook time: 1 hour, 45 minutes; Total time: 2 hours

14 ounces day-old rustic bread, cut into 1-inch cubes

4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1 teaspoon garlic salt

1 tablespoon butter

2 cups red onion, sliced thin vertically, from tip to root

1 tablespoon garlic, minced

1 pound mushrooms, sliced 1/4-inch thick

2 bunches swiss chard (10–12 leaves), stems removed and leaves chopped

1/2 cup red wine

1 tablespoon honey

2 quarts stock (chicken, beef, or vegetable)

1 cup + 1 tablespoon Parmesan cheese, grated

1/2 teaspoon black pepper, freshly ground

1 1/2 teaspoons fresh thyme, minced

I am always on the lookout for recipes that will use the abundance of swiss chard growing in my fall garden; no matter how much I harvest, there always seems to be more than I can use. Although the consistency is more like a stew than a soup, this recipe is inspired by the sopas de pan from Chiapas, Mexico. Traditional versions of sopa de pan vary from family to family, but the base is always bread, vegetables, and broth.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Toss the cubed bread with 2 tablespoons of olive oil, and sprinkle with garlic salt. Arrange bread on a baking sheet and toast for 20–30 minutes (check often) or until nicely browned.

While the cubed bread is in the oven, heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil and the butter on medium heat in a large dutch oven. Add onions and stir to coat with the butter and oil. Cook gently, stirring occasionally, for 10–15 minutes or until lightly browned. If onions begin to dry out, lower the heat. Add garlic, cook for one minute more, and remove from heat.

While onions are browning, heat a large sauté pan on medium-high heat. Add sliced mushrooms and sauté them without any added fat until they release their moisture and are lightly browned. Remove from heat and reserve half the onions.

Layer half the mushrooms and chard on top of the onions in the bottom of the dutch oven. Put down a layer of half the toasted bread cubes. Add the remaining onions, chard, and mushrooms. Layer the remaining bread cubes on top.

Mix honey and wine until the honey dissolves. Pour over bread mixture. Pour broth over everything. Scatter the top evenly with 1 cup grated cheese. Cover the pot with foil (not the lid) and seal it around the edges. Cut 5 vent holes in the top. Bake in the oven for 1 hour, 15 minutes. Serve immediately and garnish with the additional cheese, pepper, and thyme.

Can a HOT DOG CHANGE the World?

OUR SALMON HOT DOGS ARE DELICIOUS, HEALTHY, AND SUSTAINABLE IN EVERY BITE!

Atapiño and Apple Cake

8–10 servings

Level: Intermediate | Prep time: 10 minutes; Cook time: 60 minutes; Total time (including cooling): 2 hours, 20 minutes

Cake

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup sugar

1 cup firmly packed brown sugar

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 cup vegetable oil

1/4 cup Atapiño Liqueur or Apple Brandy

2 teaspoons vanilla

3 eggs

3 cups apples, peeled and chopped

1 cup piñon nuts, divided

Brown butter glaze

1/4 cup butter

1 cup powdered sugar

2 tablespoons Atapiño Liqueur or Apple Brandy

Nothing is more indicative of fall than apples and the baked goods they are showcased in. This dessert is my twist on an apple brandy cake using Santa Fe Spirits Atapiño Liqueur. Santa Fe Spirits roasts piñon nuts and soaks them in a barrel of Silver Coyote single-malt white whiskey for six months to extract the essence of the piñon.

This cake is equally good with Santa Fe Spirits Apple Brandy and chopped pecans, and although you could cook it in a springform pan, I highly recommend using a Bundt pan. This pan style features an inner core that helps conduct heat into the center of the cake and executes a beautiful display of the finished cake.

Cake

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour a 12-cup Bundt pan or 10-inch tube pan.

Combine flour, sugars, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon in a large bowl. Add oil, liqueur, vanilla, and eggs. Stir with a wooden spoon until well blended. Fold in apples and 3/4 cup nuts. Pour and spread batter in greased and floured pan.

Bake for 50–60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool cake in the pan for 10 minutes. Invert the cake onto a serving plate—cool for 1 hour or until completely cooled.

Glaze

In a small saucepan, cook butter and the Atapiño Liqueur over medium heat until light golden brown, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Add powdered sugar; blend well.

Spoon glaze over the cooled cake, allowing some to run down the sides and garnish with remaining nuts.

EDIBLE INGREDIENT

Green Chile

SPONSORED BY

Photo by Stephanie Cameron

FERMENTED GREEN CHILE

Makes 4 quarts

In the fall, tempted by the aroma of roasting chile, we line up to get our bagfuls and prepare the chiles to freeze, extending the harvest as long as we can. This recipe provides an alternative method for preservation and is an opportunity to dip your toe into fermenting peppers. There are many possibilities, from the additional ingredients you choose to the salt concentration in your brine to the length of time you ferment your peppers—and fermenting peppers, of course, leads to developing hot sauces.

2 pounds fresh green chiles, rinsed and sliced

3 tablespoons fine-grain sea salt

1 quart unchlorinated water

4 cloves garlic, peeled

Pack pepper slices and garlic cloves tightly into 2 clean canning jars. They should reach the shoulder of the jar.

Dissolve salt in unchlorinated water. Pour your salt water over the peppers to cover. Leave at least 1 inch of headspace from the opening of the jar. The brine needs to cover all the peppers, so if you need more brine, make more at the same ratio of 3 tablespoons sea salt per quart of water.

Use a knife or chopstick to poke through as many air bubbles as possible and place a weight on top of the peppers to ensure they are completely submerged in the brine. (If you don’t have a weight, you can use a sterilized plastic bag filled with water.) Wipe the rim of the jar with a clean towel and close the jar.

Set in a dark place (a pantry is perfect) for 5–7 days, burping the ferment a couple of times daily by loosening and tightening the lid. After 5 days, try your ferment and choose to continue fermenting longer (up to a month) for a deeper, mellower flavor and softer texture, or refrigerate to stop the fermentation.

Your fermented peppers should smell peppery and pleasantly sour. They should taste tart, savory, and spicy. Never eat a ferment with mold growing on it. Fermented peppers will keep in the refrigerator for several months.

*Sourcing note: La Montañita Co-op carries fresh green chile from local producers Seco Spice, Silver Leaf Farms, Chavez Farms, and Frog Level Farm.

On Our Counter WITH

Making pickles, eating pickles—is there a better time than fall to consider pickles? Join leticia gonzales for a tour of locally fermented wonders in “Briny Objects,” a story from edible’s sister publication, The Bite. Meet the people making these fantastic pickles and ferments and check out more dining adventures from around the state at thebitenm.com.

BARRIO BRINERY

1413 B West Alameda, Santa Fe, barriobrinery.com

Products also available via Dr. Field Goods at Sawmill Market, Los Poblanos Farm Shop, New Mexico Harvest CSA, and Squash Blossom

FARM SHARK

farmsharkllc.com

Products available via Polk’s Folly Farm Butcher Shop and Farm Stand, The Mouse Hole Cheese Shop, and New Mexico Harvest CSA

THE PICKLE JAR

thepicklejarnm.com

Products available via the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market, the Downtown Growers’ Market in Albuquerque, and The Mouse Hole Cheese Shop

MIYOUNG’S FARM KOREAN SEOUL FOOD KIMCHI

@miyoungs_farm

Products available via Barrio Brinery, Reunity Resources, Los Poblanos Farm Shop, tiny grocer ABQ, Polk’s Folly Farm Butcher Shop and Farm Stand, and New Mexico Harvest CSA

FALL IN LOVE WITH FALL PLANTING

By Marisa Thompson

While “fall planting” doesn’t have the same ring as “spring planting,” it should. Benefits of fall planting include lower water requirements, roots that will be better equipped for hot weather next summer, and the ability to take advantage of fall sale events hosted by local gardening groups and retail nurseries. Plus, it’s a much more comfortable time to be working in the yard. If your planting schedule got held up by the heat wave that wore out its welcome this summer, now is a great time to make up for lost time.

Seasoned gardeners know that fall is prime time for planting many landscape ornamentals—and some winter-hearty vegetables too. Whether it’s trees or veggies, the first thing to watch out for with fall planting is if the plants you want are cold hardy enough to make it safely through this winter. After that, proper planting and diligent watering are the keys to success.

Fall foliage of golden currant. Photo by Marisa Thompson.

Landscape Ornamentals

Washington State University professor Dr. Linda Chalker-Scott summarized fall planting considerations in a helpful social media post: “If everything is ideal, fall planting is always better because it gives the roots extra time to establish before new leaves start making demands. Trees with established roots will show more crown growth than those without. The single drawback is cold winter temperatures that damage roots. This can be avoided by deep mulching with coarse organic material.” Note that Chalker-Scott opened her statement with the phrase “If everything is ideal”—which includes planting correctly, selecting healthy, adapted species that are cold hardy, and picking a good spot.

How do you find out if a plant is cold hardy or not? Consult the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map (planthardiness.ars.usda.gov). These zones indicate the average annual extreme cold temperatures for a fifteen-year period. In New Mexico, these zones range from 4b up in Eagle Nest to 9b just north of Hatch. Of course, you’ll want to also check the zone range recommended for any plant you’re considering for your landscape—check the nursery label, or just use the internet.

David Salman, a local horticulturalist who was a hero to many (gardeners and flowers alike), offered these selection considerations in “Tips for Fall Planting Perennials in Cold Winter Regions”: “Many cold-hardy perennials, shrubs and trees are excellent candidates for fall planting. In general, plants with USDA cold hardiness ratings of

3, 4, and 5, are the best candidates for fall transplanting in cold winter climates. If you’re not an experienced fall planter, be conservative and select plants that are one zone more cold hardy than your area. In zone 5, choose zone 3 and 4 plants. Zone 6? Go with plants hardy in zones 3–5. With experience and practice, I’m confident that you’ll do more of it in the future.”

Mike Halverson with Santa Ana Native Plants, a predominately wholesale nursery in Santa Ana Pueblo that supplies plants for reclamation as well as adapted species for landscape and farming, suggested cliff rose, Apache plume, chamisa, and piñon pine as regional plants that are well suited for fall planting in central New Mexico. Halverson was quick to add New Mexico olive (a.k.a. New Mexico privet), serviceberry, golden currant, and native grasses to this list. He also offered another way to gauge if a regionally native plant is cold hardy enough to plant in your yard in fall: If a plant is seen in parts of the state colder than your area, go for it; if it’s more commonly found in warmer regions, hold off and plant it in the spring.

Have you noticed that ocotillos are abundant in southern New Mexico, but as you drive north on I-25, you find fewer and fewer? This Chihuahuan and Sonoran Desert native can grow beautifully in the Albuquerque area, but as a plant suited for zones 7–10 (meaning it’s cold hardy to zone 7 and heat hardy to zone 10), it’s more likely to thrive in a protected spot with a warmer microclimate. This is an example of a marginally cold-hardy species for central New Mexico and, therefore, better suited for planting in spring or summer.

Top left: Chamisa. Bottom left: Apache plume. Right: Chinese pistache. Photos by Marisa Thompson.

Fall and Winter Veggies

In many parts of the state, leafy greens can be planted in fall and even into the winter. Arugula, bok choy, spinach, kale, swiss chard, and lettuce are just a few examples of cut-and-come-again, cold-hardy vegetables that can be lightly harvested for meals and keep growing, so you can enjoy them continually—and well past the first frost.

Garlic grows well in New Mexico when planted in fall too: September to October in northern areas and October to November in southern areas. Plan to harvest next summer, just in time for fresh salsa and gazpacho.

Depending on where you are and the intensity of the coming winter, you might also be able to plant beets, carrots, and other root vegetables in fall. For more tips on fall gardening, check out Bernalillo County Extension agriculture and natural resources agent John Garlisch’s webinar “Planning the Fall Vegetable Garden,” at desertblooms.nmsu.edu/grow.html

The upside to cooler temperatures and lighter winds is lower water demands by plants—especially for those that drop their leaves. Even after deciduous plants go dormant for the season, their roots are still able to grow actively as long as the soil isn’t frozen and they have water and oxygen. Water with care so that soil doesn’t dry out too much nor stay too soggy. Once plant roots are well established (that is, extending outward from the base beyond the canopy drip line after a few growing seasons), water trees, shrubs, vines, and other perennials to a depth of twenty-four inches every few weeks in late fall, and perhaps once every four to six weeks through the winter. Increase frequency as the weather warms and growth kicks back up in the spring.

Whether you have newly planted ornamentals or veggies, if a severe cold snap is forecasted, you’ll rest more easily after laying a nice thick layer of mulch on top of the soil to protect roots. It might seem like a good idea to plant trees, shrubs, and vines extra deep to protect from winter cold, but most species perform best when the topmost primary root is right at the soil surface after planting and after the soil has settled. Instead of planting deep, mulch! Woodchips, pine needles, and shredded bark are just a few great examples. Mulching helps slow soil moisture loss year-round, and just as it insulates soil in the summer from overheating, it acts like a blanket in the winter, keeping roots warmer.

Is there a bad time to plant? Not really—once you’ve considered cold hardiness. Yes, water needs are higher in spring and summer because of rapid aboveground growth and leaf expansion, higher transpiration rates with higher temperatures, and stronger winds. Still, planting can be successful even under these conditions. Landscape plants and veggies can thrive when well selected, planted, and irrigated. And as scary as it might seem to dig plants up and move them around in the yard, it can be successful when done correctly. The great Rosalee Doolittle stated clearly in her book Southwest Gardening, first published in 1953, “I never hesitate to transplant at any season.”

As Dr. Curtis Smith, retired New Mexico State University extension horticulture specialist and yet another local gardening hero, pointed out in a 2008 Southwest Yard & Garden column, “Of course, [fall] is also the time to plant spring flowering bulbs, so while you are planting the trees and shrubs, add some bulbs for early spring excitement in your landscape.”

You’ll be glad you did, and so will your friends and neighbors, including the pollinators.

Left: Kale, tatsoi, and spinach planted in fall and harvested in November and December. Middle: Leeks planted in fall and harvested in spring. Right: Purple tatsoi planted in September and harvested in November. Photos by Stephanie Cameron.

Guide to Planting Garlic in Raised Garden Beds

Year-round gardening tips from your friends at Grow Y’Own

Planting garlic in the fall in your raised garden bed is a great way to ensure a bountiful harvest the following summer. Proper care will reward you with flavorful and aromatic garlic bulbs for culinary delights throughout the year.

TIMING: In the southwest, the ideal time to plant garlic is in the fall, typically between mid-September and late October. This timing allows the cloves to establish roots before the colder winter months.

SOIL PREPARATION: Prepare a well-draining planting area in full sun. Sandy loam or loamy soil is ideal for garlic cultivation. Incorporate compost or well-rotted organic matter to improve soil fertility and structure.

PLANTING: Carefully break apart the garlic bulb into individual cloves. Use larger cloves for planting, as they tend to produce larger bulbs, and save the smaller cloves for culinary use. Plant the garlic cloves with the pointed end facing up and the basal plate (the flat end) facing down, about 2 inches deep and 4-6 inches apart.

WATERING: Raised garden beds provide excellent drainage, which is crucial for garlic. Garlic bulbs can rot if they sit in waterlogged

soil for prolonged periods. Grow Y’Own raised beds prevent water from accumulating around the garlic bulbs, reducing the risk of rot and fungal diseases.

FERTILIZATION: Garlic benefits from a balanced fertilizer application. Grow Y’own uses soil that provides all the nutrients, including nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, needed to grow garlic and other veggies in your raised beds.

HARVESTING: Raised beds tend to warm up faster in the spring than traditional in-ground planting—this is especially beneficial for garlic, as it helps stimulate root growth and early development, leading to larger bulbs. Garlic is typically ready for harvest in late spring to early summer. Harvest when the lower leaves have started to brown, but a few green leaves remain. Gently dig the bulbs from the soil, taking care not to damage them.

CURING AND STORING: After harvesting, allow the garlic bulbs to dry and cure in a well-ventilated, shaded area for about 2-3 weeks. Once the outer layers are dry and papery, brush off excess dirt and trim the roots and stems. Store the cured garlic in a cool, dry place with good airflow.

raised bed gardens

Grow year-round with hooped raised beds and seasonal covers. It is never too cold, and never too late to get started!

GROWING GRAINS IN THE HIGH DESERT

REESTABLISHING FOOD SOVEREIGNTY THROUGH LOCAL PARTNERSHIPS

By Jessica & André Kempton

“Basically, I want to grow things you do not need to refrigerate,” Daniel Hutchison says of the inspiration for Big Wheel Farm. “There are people who produce vegetables, meat, eggs, and dairy very well but no one was really doing grains. And grains are a cornerstone of our diet.” Raised in Questa, Hutchison established his sixty-acre farm farther north, in Costilla, in order to fill what he had come to perceive as a void in the regional agricultural system: growing grains and pulses (beans, lentils, and peas).

We first met Hutchison shortly after he purchased his land in 2019. When André approached him and asked if he would grow White Sonora wheat for us to use at Wild Leaven Bakery, Hutchison “figured that it’s good as anything.”

White Sonora wheat is a preindustrial grain brought by the Spanish to what are now the borderlands of Sonora and Arizona. In collaboration with André, Chris Pieper, and Jim Avery, Hutchison acquired his first one thousand pounds of White Sonora wheat seeds from Arizona.

In addition to this drought-tolerant grain, Hutchison grows lentils, field peas, quinoa, buckwheat, bolita beans, naked oats, and platinum hard white wheat. Due to its naturally milder, sweeter flavor, platinum hard white wheat is used for breads, tortillas, flatbreads, and some Asian noodles; White Sonora wheat’s buttery yellow color and sweet flavor make for delicious tortillas, cookies, and breads. We use Hutchinson’s White Sonora wheat and platinum hard white wheat flours in making our sourdough bread, pastries, and cookies.

Flood irrigation in the moonlight at Big Wheel Farm. Photo courtesy of Metate Mill Co-op.

“Wheat is one of the easiest things to grow, but marketing it is another menagerie of machines,” Hutchison says. “Most people don’t buy wheat berries even though they’re perfectly edible. Wheat is generally applied to the food system as flour, so it’s been another enterprise to have the mill running again and figure out the art of milling and packaging.”

The grain production, milling, and distribution are handled through the Metate Mill Co-op, which Hutchison created in 2020. As a continuation of the now-closed Sangre de Cristo Agricultural Producers Cooperative (SCAPC) that produced organic wheat in northern New Mexico for almost three decades, Metate Mill Co-op aims to provide power-packed foods for local people, reward small farmers who produce staple grains, and build food sovereignty in northern New Mexico.

“If I must sell my wheat into the commodities market, I will compete with big farmers. There is no way I can compete economically in the system as it exists,” Hutchison says. “You have to create a parallel system, and that’s what’s great about what you and André are doing. You are sourcing very deliberately and valuing that well above and beyond what your average value of wheat will be in the commodity market.”

Located in the southern tip of the largest alpine valley in the world, the San Luis Valley, Costilla’s dryness and elevation offers Hutchison favorable weather conditions to grow his wheat without the use of highly specialized equipment.

“Wheat needs about half the water that alfalfa needs. Here, it is not subject to many diseases since we live in a dry place,” the high-desert farmer explains. “At the elevation where the farm is, it creates premium wheat, the finest wheat you can grow in the world.”

For irrigation, Hutchison considers himself “lucky to be located on a good ditch that generally delivers a lot of water.” “Our mayordomo is excellent; he makes the best of drought years,” he says.

However, Hutchison also has to work with farm soil with no structure and very little organic matter. “If I were to add nitrogen in my field organically, there is no available organic feedlot or broiler house nearby where I can get manure. I must make all of that on my farm using cover crops and soil life because I’m in the middle of this desert,” he says. For him, it is not cost-effective to transport manure from somewhere else.

To build his farm soil over time, Hutchison is transitioning from a standard organic farming model to an organic regenerative approach. He wants to create a more holistic and sustainable ecosystem on his

Daniel Hutchison and André Kempton inspect the harvest at Big Wheel Farm. Photo courtesy of Metate Mill.

farm by utilizing cover crops, incorporating animals into the land, making use of more human labor and planting perennial fruits. Hutchison states that all these efforts “will make for less labor, more abundant crops, more efficient irrigation, and more dividends in terms of the farm business.”

Another challenge Hutchison faces is the absence of agricultural infrastructure in his area. “[Costilla] is a place that has a strong agriculture tradition but does not have a modern food distribution system to supply farms of any scale. There is no place where I can bring my grains and sell them. So I must set up the supply chain myself,” he says.

Tracing his farm experience to his youth work as the executive director of Localogy, a Questa-based nonprofit whose mission is to move people and communities from passive consumption to being active producers of local livelihoods and culture, Hutchison states, “The school programs and the summer camps I do always have an agricultural component to help students in their character development, to raise awareness of the food web, and to teach them practical skills.”

Over the years, he has hosted various partners and projects at Big Wheel Farm, such as a local charter school that maintains a community garden during the fall and spring. Localogy’s residential summer

camp, Sangre de Cristo Youth Ranch, harvests crops to sell at the Questa Farmers Market or to use in preparing their meals.

Hutchison partners with the Taos Farm to School program, whose staff test-bakes for school lunches with local flour, and produces flour for Cloud Cliff Bakery and Intergalactic Bread Company. He has also collaborated with his mentor and longtime SCAPC president Domingo Gallegos, whom he credits for donating some of his farm equipment.

Despite the challenges Hutchison may face, this LOR Foundation and Taos Community Foundation grant recipient is grateful for his support system and for those who understand the value of local food and are fighting against economic disincentives to small farming. Together with his local partners, he is working to reestablish a regionally self-sufficient food system.

Speaking of his overall farming philosophy, Hutchison states, “If you are what you eat, and you are a farmer, you are literally making your friends. So, what we choose to embody in terms of the calories we consume and how we produce these calories is the solution to climate change, fresh water, pollution, soil erosion. Agriculture has implications for fair labor, land use, and the entire ecosystem. You are what you eat. Be a local!”

Top left: Granite millstone at Metate Mill. Right: Daniel Hutchison dresses the granite millstone at Metate Mill. Photos courtesy of Metate Mill. Bottom left: Summer campers help irrigate the wheat at Big Wheel Farm, photo courtesy of Vida Day Camp.

The Kitchen Confidential

LUNCH AT SANTA FE’S WORST-KEPT SECRET

By

A few days ago, I mentioned to a friend that I was writing an article about The Kitchen at Plants of the Southwest. Only half-joking, she replied, “Could you not?” For over a decade, the seasonal restaurant has been called Santa Fe’s “best-kept secret.” However, fear that this article might let the cat out of the bag is probably unwarranted, since nearly everyone in town already seems to know and love it.

Nonetheless, this “hidden gem,” as it is also often described, does have an air of mystery about it. Its limited capacity and hours (one seating, Thursday–Saturday, April–October) makes scoring reservations difficult. Its vegetarian prix fixe menu changes daily. And its unique location, tucked away at the Plants of the Southwest nursery, makes it feel like a private lunch club. To eat at The Kitchen, book

Candolin Cook ∙ Photos by Stephanie Cameron

Chilled cucumber soup with dill.

October

Live Music, Silent and Live Auction! Live Music, Silent and Live Auction!

a reservation by texting its chef-owner, Olive Tyrrell, well in advance. Once you arrive at the nursery, follow the winding dirt path past rows of outdoor tables teeming with native plants (purple prairie clover, penstemon, cacti), beyond the sunny and stylish storefront, and finally to the one-room adobe farmhouse situated at the back of the property. At precisely noon, the restaurant’s glass doors will swing open, revealing a minimalist interior with rustic wood beams, brick floors, a charming open kitchen, and a dining room consisting of several two- and four-tops surrounding a large communal table.

On the balmy June afternoon I visited, the set menu began with a refreshing cup of gingery gazpacho made with summer squash, fresh corn, and yellow heirloom tomato, and topped with a chiffonade of fresh herbs and a drizzle of olive oil. Soon after, a heaping farm salad

arrived family style. The delicate salad greens came dressed in a light and tart vinaigrette and tossed with a colorful assortment of pickled peppers, cornichons, capers, currants, and sliced apples and nectarines. The leisurely paced third course featured a thick slab of toasted rye bread slathered with smashed avocado and peas and a sprinkle of fresh mint—and was served on a ceramic plate made by Tyrrell. The components of each dish exuded freshness, peak flavor, and the bounty of summer.

Tyrrell crafts her daily menu based on what local farmers and purveyors have available. “We want to support as many farms and local producers as we can,” she says, citing a roster that includes Western Family Farm, Ground Stone Farm, La Capilla Hops Farm, and Beep Beep Bakery. “I plan ahead weekly and then let myself free-fall. I often

Top left: Emelie Richardson and Olive Tyrrell.

Top right: Beep Beep Bakery bread. Bottom, left to right: Seasonal salad; brown butter plum cake; and fig walnut bread with whipped feta and dill.

change the day’s menu the morning of or during service, based on what I have or how I’m feeling. I’m an intuitive cook, and like to experiment in the moment.” Too, she values the interplay between the food and the plate, sourcing ceramic works from local potters in addition to creating them herself. “I believe the act of eating and drinking from handmade objects creates an even more profound dining experience,” Tyrell tells me.

The chef cut her culinary chops working in various restaurants in San Francisco for nearly two decades, but it wasn’t until she joined forces with Gail Haggard, owner of Plants of the Southwest, in 2009 that she was able to establish the kind of restaurant she wanted to helm. “We [both] wanted an uncomplicated, unfussy, vegetarian lunch spot that focused on locally grown food,” Tyrrell says. The collaboration with Haggard has “evolved over time,” she says, but their original vision has endured and proven mutually beneficial. “I think the benefits between the nursery and restaurant are sharing customers and furthering the discussion on plant-based foods and inspiring people to invest in the native plants that Gail provides.”

Tyrrell has also found a symbiotic relationship with in-house baker and server Emelie Richardson. Richardson follows a seasonal pattern with her desserts and incorporates many fruits and plants harvested on site. “Olive and I are both visual artists, and I think this was fundamental in creating a successful collaboration with one

another in the kitchen,” she says. “I was immediately attracted to the way in which Olive approaches food; she truly sees it as another art medium in which to express herself. Her dishes are uniquely hers and are always approached from an intuitive place. Working alongside her continues to inspire not only the way I bake but so many other aspects of daily life.”

In addition to the inspiration Richardson receives from Tyrrell, she says she enjoys the meditative process she finds working in a space surrounded by native plants, and “the general magic that exists in Gail’s nursery.” At meal’s end, she shared some of that magic in the form of a hearty slice of strawberry torte served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. The decadent and perfectly baked dessert was a satisfying way to end such a nutritious lunch.

When I later ask Tyrrell about her personal food philosophy, I’m delighted that the vegetarian chef offers a more permissive spin on Michael Pollan’s oft-quoted advice, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” “My food philosophy is to give pleasure,” she says. “Food is pleasure for me. Feeding people is to give joy and nourishment. To eat well, to eat more plants, and to indulge as well.” This certainly seems like a secret worth sharing.

3095 Agua Fria, Santa Fe. Pro tip: Text ahead to reserve at 505-913-1911; cash or check only.

Left: Gazpacho with summer squash, fresh corn, and yellow heirloom tomato. Right: Toasted rye bread with smashed avocado and peas.

IN THE TIME OF BEES

SHIFTING TEMPORALITIES OF HIVES AND HONEY MAKERS

By Mariko O. Thomas ∙ Photos by Douglas Merriam

Melanie Kirby holds a handful of bees.

“Hate to break it to you,” says Melanie Kirby of Truchas-based Zia Queenbees, “but the bee clock is nonstop during the season.”

I’m on the phone with her as she gets her oil changed on the way to the corn dances on a hot morning in July, thick tendrils of heat creeping through the window already at 8 am. I’m interested in the way that time works with beekeeping, curious about alternative ways of understanding the immense urgencies of our clocked world. Perhaps beekeeping is a more relaxing way of orienting? The answer is yes, and also, rather decidedly, no.

Kirby’s voice is warm, full of laughter, and radiates generosity. She tells me the life of bee relationships works for her because she herself identifies as a worker bee, and the dynamism of beekeeping keeps her invested—with each hive having a different personality and every bee season emerging with variation. A Native New Mexican with membership with Tortugas Pueblo, Kirby has kept bees professionally for twenty-seven years. In addition to running her nineteen-year-old queen-breeding operation, she teaches at the Institute of American Indian Arts (and all over New Mexico with other community partners) and has started a promising collective led by Indigenous matriarchs focusing on post-wildfire pollinator protection in northern New Mexico. Kirby gently puts me in my place concerning whatever misguided aspirations I had concerning beekeeping as relaxed. It’s much more nuanced than that. While it is true that it doesn’t operate like the Euro-Western work clock, it arguably moves in an interconnected, ever-shifting seasonal one.

Time in association with bees has several scales, Kirby explains. There’s the immediacy of the day-to-day acts of reactive care necessary for her practice, but also the wide-swathing stretch of past and future in human relations with bees, and the timescale of how bee genetics evolve from generation to generation, adapting to planetary changes. It’s a whole new way of making sense of years, but on the micro and macro level. As Kirby puts it, “The societal clock of humans falls away on the bee clock,” and that is a sentiment I’d hear multiple times while talking with beekeepers in northern New Mexico.

The bee clock is a way of orienting to time and space that beekeepers often adopt, allowing the bees and their intensely reactive intelligence, their sense of what should happen when, to take the lead, with human stewardship following their cues in reactive, cyclical care. Kirby explains that beekeeping has much to do with circadian rhythms and the presentations of equinoxes and solstices. The winter solstice starts the bee season, as after December 21, the bees (so in tune with the tilt of the planet) go into slow motion, shivering to stay warm. As the days get longer, they bulk up their queen with royal jelly, a nutrient-dense secretion that triggers the process of larvae developing into queens. By the spring equinox, they are built up in their hive to begin collecting nectar. Kirby says that this is a scientific art and an artistic science, allowing for a cyclical dance between plants, insects, and human stewardship. “The bees would be fine without us,” she remarks, “but we’re here, so what do we do with that? There is an importance in power, place, and purpose—and we have a responsibility to be good stewards in this time we are here.”

Kirby specializes in queen breeding, as opposed to honey or beeswax production, working to ensure the growth of healthy queens that can in turn help other humans start healthy hives with regionally specific queens who have uniquely adapted to the bioregion they come from. She teaches me that it takes twenty-one days from egg laying for worker bees to hatch and mature, fifteen and a half days for the queen to develop and mature, and thirty-eight days for a confirmed queen bee (a queen bee whose ovaries have developed and is considered a mated queen). Kirby is hyperattuned to the calendar of the bees because “when it’s related to their health, they won’t put things off for a day or week. They are on it.”

From her, I learn that of an estimated twenty thousand species of bees on Earth, eight make honey. The one most familiar to us is the Western or European honeybee ( Apis mellifera ), although to call it “one” is not quite right, given the immense diversity within this most commonly domesticated species. Some forty subspecies of honeybees have adapted to different regions, climates, and ecosystems, and it’s estimated that there are twenty-six subspecies of A. mellifera alone.

“The bees would be fine without us,” Melanie Kirby remarks, “but we’re here, so what do we do with that? There is an importance in power, place, and purpose—and we have a responsibility to be good stewards in this time we are here.”

Honeybees visit flowers and collect nectar from blossoms by pulling it out with their proboscises and then store it in their “honey stomach,’’ which helps condense the nectar into a more honey-like consistency. The bees pass the nectar into the mouths of other bees, whose bodies continue the process. The honey is deposited in honeycombs built by the bees, and they fan it furiously with their wings to continue the evaporation process until the individual hexagonal compartments filled with honey are capped with wax. It’s much more complicated than this, but these are the basic mechanics.

Considering the ways that humans have learned to put off meals, naps, doctor’s appointments, and more to do “work,” I wonder what we have to learn from honeybees, whose most important work is their survival.

a sense of time that many land-based peoples have found through work for community connection, land stewardship, and more-thanhuman relations. I’m trying to tap into a sense of touch and go that has little to do with the aggressive notions of time that most of us have to live by. Still, I don’t want to be rude.

There’s a sweep of gray clouds in a monsoon sky, the air pregnant with the possibility of raindrops, when I turn off Hondo Seco Road and park in the gravel outside Moira O’Hanlon’s house. All morning, I’ve been nervous that I was going to be late, trying to borrow from my experiences with beekeepers and sit with a different sort of timing,

O’Hanlon is standing outside with a broad smile and a can that looks like a steampunk teapot, which is emitting smoke with an earthy, grassy aroma. She pumps some of the smoke into her palm and then into mine, and when I ask her what makes the smoke, she grins again and says, “Horse manure!” She explains that the manure burns at a temperature and rate that makes it difficult to hurt the bees, and we will be using the smoker to wake them and encourage them to emerge. (According to some beekeepers, the smoke also keeps them from getting collectively aggressive and communicating danger to the hive.) I ask her how long she’s been doing this project and she fixes me with a wry smile: “This isn’t a project; it’s my life.” While O’Hanlon is known for Taos Bee’s enchantingly smooth lip balms, medicinal salves, and sprays, which she collects her own propolis and beeswax to make, her real calling seems to be more about the relationship with bees than the products.

Two other cars roll up, containing O’Hanlon’s assistant, who works with her to make and sell delectable skincare products and cares for the bees with her, and a girl of maybe nine or ten who just wants to

Left: Melanie Kirby of Zia Queenbees. Right: Mark Spitzburg and Melanie Kirby tending the bees in Vadito.

see the hives. She pulls out various parts of bee suits and we put the girl in a full suit, with O’Hanlon’s assistant and I donning shirts with long sleeves and netted hats. We wind around the electric fencing and O’Hanlon puffs smoke from the aforementioned smoker into the hive, but grimaces at the sky, acknowledging that bees are creatures of the sun and this is less than ideal weather for them. Her turquoise ring–covered hands gently pull up the vertical tray of a top bar hive (a type of hive with trays pulled out vertically). The bees scramble over the glistening hexagonal combs. I’ve never before had the privilege of seeing a hive up close, and I am blown away. What I anticipated as a potentially creepy moment—the beetle scene from The Mummy made a strong impression on me as a kid—is instead one of beauty and wonder. The bees tangle and crawl gently over one another, and the low hum they emit hits me deep in my bones with a reverberation of proportions I can only describe as spiritual. O’Hanlon tells us that propolis (used to seal the hives) is treasured, the smell so intoxicating that people will pay oodles to sleep on it. I roll a small piece in my hand, relishing the silky texture, before she stores it away in a glass jar. She will use it later to make propolis spray.

She then puts the bees away and tells us that it’s just not a good day for them, with the weather moving in. While I’m longing to see more, I appreciate this reactiveness, so contrary to expectations in the human world, where performance is expected regardless of

the weather, day, or type of sleep one has had. We watch as O’Hanlon lovingly replaces the bar hosting the honeycombs in her hives, and we walk away. It is the bee clock striking (or maybe humming?) again, and to be in commune is to be in tune with their ever-dynamic ebb and flow, deeply connected to the ecological forces at play on a given day.

My last stop is with Mike McMannon, the owner of Taos Honey Company. I drive to meet him at Sol Food in Arroyo Seco, still feeling heady and inebriated from the scent of propolis on my fingertips. I’m thinking about how O’Hanlon remarked that the bees are not chickens but rather wild things with their own agendas, reframing my entire conception of what it means to “keep” bees. It seems that this might be better articulated as “supporting” bees. I find myself comforted by the fact that bees are not truly domesticated but rather in a constant, tenuous relationship with humans. Much like New Mexico’s beloved oshá, they cannot be truly committed to a capitalist system of production.

McMannon drinks black coffee and has a clipboard of notes. I have a vague memory of him from the farmers market when I was

Moira O’Hanlon of Taos Bee in Arroyo Seco.

hugely pregnant a few years ago; he gave me a jar and said, “Free honey for mothers,” and it felt decadent and amazing to be gifted something so sweet and so difficult to make and collect.

Setting aside his clipboard, he tells me, candor and care in this voice, “I cannot take out a calendar and spec out all the timing on when I’m going to take on new queens, when I’m gonna check ’em, when I’m gonna feed them, or anything else. It can’t be more important to me to go to San Diego for the weekend. . . . I can’t do that, I choose not to. If I’m in San Diego that day and it’s time to do the queens, I don’t want to be there, I want to be here. And that is a thing that is a bigger deal than it’s ever been, because everyone is so mobile [except] when it comes to caring for animals and land stewardship.”

Taos Honey started as Taos Valley Honey, a company out of Questa where six people hanging out in a little room answered landline phone calls and took people’s orders from catalogs. When McMannon created Taos Honey, he also began to reinstate many of the partnerships that Taos Valley Honey had cultivated in the 1980s, circling back to relationships the way that is often only possible in places with a lot of familial connection to land.

Hives need to be spread around in clusters to support healthy pollinator populations, and the give-and-take model McMannon’s crew has with northern New Mexico farmers who host their hives feels like something from another era. The relationship they have

seems reciprocal rather than contractual. The land hosts the hives; McMannon’s people, led by general manager Jeffrey Vasquez, take care of them; the pollinators support the orchards and crops; and the farmers get a portion of Taos Honey’s yield, which varies from year to year. McMannon feels good about the distance his operation has from industrial agriculture, and the way that being in commune with the natural world determines the pace of his life.

“The timing is very traditional,” he says. “It makes you into an old-fashioned person. Like the people with water here, they go to the reparto, hear if they have water now or the next day. . . . they are living in the day-to-day.” McMannon’s approach is full of care and clarity about his relationship to animals—including human animals, as he makes it very clear that the operation is very dependent on his relationship with Vasquez. He articulates the crucial nature of stewardship as an interaction of time and space and relationship, and, resounding with wisdom similar to O’Hanlon’s and Kirby’s, states, “It’s important for the animals that you’re taking care of to be your top priority, not a hobby in the background.”

Despite their widely varied practices and goals for beekeeping, this seems to be a view—and a commitment and a philosophy—shared by all three beekeepers. To be in commune with bee populations is to live by the bee clock.

ziaqueenbees.com, taoshoney.com, taosbee.com

Left: Mike McMannon, owner of Taos Honey Company in El Prado. Right: Taos Honey Company honeycomb.

Top and bottom left: Bees in action at Taos Bee.

Bottom right: Cross section of honeycombs in a tree display at Taos Bee.

COOKING TOGETHER

FOOD ENTREPRENEURS BRIDGE BARRIERS WITH SHARED KITCHEN SPACES

By Cassidy A. Tawse-Garcia

Staff and participants talking formula in the Food Business Training Program at Three Sisters Kitchen. Photo courtesy of Three Sisters Kitchen.

Among the many ways the pandemic shifted how we relate to each other, the business of food—making it, selling it, and eating it—was certainly not spared. In fact, partly because of the rise of people ordering takeout, shared kitchens, both as ghost kitchens and as community kitchens, have boomed. These shared kitchen spaces, and especially community kitchens, fill a much-needed gap in the food business landscape. Nationally, the demand for commercial kitchen space from businesses ranging from food trucks to producers of manufactured foods has never been higher. In New Mexico, Albuquerque saw a 60 percent increase in requests for food truck permits from 2020 to 2022.

You see, to serve food directly to the public requires not only licensing from local and state governments but also cooking space that meets the standards of a commercial kitchen. For new food business entrepreneurs, starting off can be daunting, with some internet sources claiming that 60 percent or more of restaurants fail within their first year of operation. (The National Restaurant Association puts that average at 30 percent.) Success rates are even lower for selffunded businesses and those founded by persons of color. So accessing affordable, clean, and safe kitchen space can make or break a new food business entrepreneur.

“Just doing what we do is a lot of work. So we are trying to take small, incremental steps as we can,” says Albuquerque food entrepreneur Nick Fitzgerald. Along with Bobby Nolan, Fitzgerald co-owns Sunday Bagels, a sourdough bagel pop-up that started as a “Sunday project” for friends. In a city with very few bagel shops, Fitzgerald saw a need and moved to fill it with flavors inspired by the terroir of New Mexico—like the blue corn lavender that “smells just like breakfast” and the green chile cheddar that uses juice from the roasting process to hydrate the dough.

“Albuquerque is a place where people are open to new ideas and open to people bringing ideas and art here,” says Fitzgerald, emphasizing that while he and Nolan are transplants to the city, they have found the community nothing but supportive. When Sunday Bagels expanded from serving friends to hosting weekly pop-ups at Gravity Bound Brewing, lines often stretched around the block before they even opened. They now make around 1,700 bagels in a weekend, selling from a booth at the Downtown Growers’ Market that, with its smells of toasted sesame and swarms of loyal customers, is impossible to miss.

To make this happen, Fitzgerald and Nolan work out of a commercial commissary kitchen in downtown Albuquerque that rents sectioned-off spaces to caterers, food truck operators, and other small business entrepreneurs. This works for them, in part because they usually begin their workday at 3 or 4 am, when no one else is there. In July, within two years of starting their business, Sunday Bagels announced that they’d signed a lease on a building. No opening date is announced yet, but the Albuquerque-grown bagel shop is intending to stick around, and they want their own brick-and-mortar space to do so.

Until recently, most of the shared kitchen spaces in New Mexico were concentrated in Albuquerque. There are standard commissary kitchens, like the one Sunday Bagels used to grow their business, that rent kitchen and prep space by the hour, offering locker-style storage for dry goods and equipment. There are also incubator-style kitchens, run by Three Sisters Kitchen and the South Valley Economic Development Center, which focus not only on providing cooking and manufacturing space but also on providing the business, marketing, and product development skills essential to launching a successful food business. These nonprofit kitchens can have long waiting lists, as the appeal of commercial kitchen space alongside food business education is high—and until this year, there was nothing remotely comparable in the state capital.

“That’s how it all started; I was getting really busy [as a private chef] and there was no commercial kitchen in Santa Fe,” says Andrea Abedi, a Culinary Institute of America graduate, first-level sommelier, and co-owner with Hilary Kilpatric of The Kitchen Table Santa Fe, the newest shared kitchen space to open its doors in New Mexico. With a soft opening in May 2023, the state-of-the-art cooking and event space took five years to come to fruition. Developed out of a business accelerator program in Santa Fe, bizMIX, The Kitchen Table has been a project of tenacity.

“People didn’t believe in us,” says Kilpatric as the duo give me a tour of the new kitchens and prep spaces, the wall-to-wall stainless steel gleaming. Many people thought that they would give up—among other challenges, they had to work with the City of Santa Fe to write a new building code, as no such commercial space had existed before.

“F

For farmers, bakers, and micro-producers alike, having the resources to start out and the space to make fresh food and valueadded products safely (and legally) is essential to increasing their chances of success.

“What worked is that we didn’t [give up]. We found a way around, persevered, and we just kept taking the next right step,” says Kilpatric, whose background is in working with small artisan businesses to help them grow. “You can’t always see how you’re going to get to the end. . . . Sometimes you have to move at the micro levels, just keep taking the next right step and don’t give up.”

The space, a former high school, features three separate hot kitchens, two giant walk-in freezers, multiple cold storage spaces, ample dry food storage in its own room, a dehydrator, a classroom/event space with an open kitchen (in the former gymnasium), a courtyard that can be used for events, and even a space for employees to take a quick breather. With this state-of-the-art kitchen space, The Kitchen Table is giving a for-profit shared kitchen “accelerator” a go, buttressed with Abedi’s kitchen experience and Kilpatric’s business knowhow. The kitchen is currently shared by seventeen food businesses, including Tender Fire Kitchen, Brie & Baguette, and Chef Dakota Weiss’s popcorn business, Dakota’s Pop Parlor.

“Just coming into the kitchen, [businesses] already have a leg up. As soon as you come into the kitchen and cook here, you can then sell to the public. Most private chefs, like I was doing, are cooking from home, and that really limits my ability to sell to the public. So right off the bat, by being members, they can extend their reach,” says Abedi. “We’re not an incubator, but we do have connections . . . I mean channels for how to get your food permit, how to get your food manager’s card, we can

connect them with the economic department or health department— we’ve made a lot of those relationships, so we can make it easier for them, because it is overwhelming. It’s a mountain of paperwork.”

While Abedi and Kilpatric opted for a for-profit model, they’re a social enterprise. “We keep in mind the triple bottom line [people, prosperity, and planet],” Kilpatric says. They also consulted with nonprofit kitchens, including the Taos County Economic Development Corporation (TCEDC), as they worked to develop their membership model. The TCEDC, funded through the State of New Mexico Economic Development Department, is an example of a municipally supported incubator kitchen, and has heretofore been the shared kitchen resource in northern New Mexico. The kitchen is used by businesses across scale, from micro food businesses to global nonprofits; national disaster relief agencies used it to prepare food for residents and first responders in Mora County during the 2022 Calf Canyon / Hermit’s Peak Fire.

From dried okra chips, homemade ice cream, tamales, pickles, and more, nonprofit “incubator” kitchens are not only creating a space for food businesses to sprout, but they are also providing the resources and training necessary for them to succeed. The Food Business Training Program at Three Sisters Kitchen (TSK) prepares New Mexico food business entrepreneurs by providing financial stability and a creative

Preparing lemongrass tofu samples and testing pH levels in the Food Business Training Program at Three Sisters Kitchen. Photos courtesy of TSK.

space for them to explore their business model and goals among an annual cohort of fellow entrepreneurs. The training program was founded to fill a very specific hole in the food landscape: when entrepreneurs have innovative business concepts that are held back by a lack of seed funding and training.

“Being in a cohort with other people that are trying to do this too felt really supportive,” says farmer and food advocate Anita Adalja, who graduated from TSK’s Business Training Program in 2022. “It is so rare we pursue business ventures as a group.” She came to the program because she was seeking an avenue to process excess harvests of okra from Ashokra Farm, which she co-owns with Ash Abeyta. Adalja had a solid idea of wanting to make a dehydrated okra product, but needed to learn more about recipe testing, as well as access to commercial-grade dehydrators, to make her product scalable.

“As a former grower myself,” says TSK’s food business training director Amanda Rich, “I know that there are these points of peak abundance, when many farms have the same crops available, and sometimes food prices can drop at market, or sometimes food waste happens. . . . At the opposite end of the season, growers may not have any income during winter months and consumers cannot source local products. Creating shelf-stable, value-added products not only solves issues around peak harvest but also creates an additional income stream for farmers that could provide income year-round.”

TSK’s annual program cohort is made up of food business entrepreneurs who want to make manufactured products. This can include hot sauces, dried jujubes, granola, and more. The cohort meets twice weekly from winter through spring, working on business plan development, recipe testing, sourcing, safe food handling, packaging, marketing, and distribution pathways. Graduates are given a stipend for marketing and accounting expenses, as well as use of the fully equipped TSK production kitchen for one year.

“The whole point of this [business training] program is not to launch a hundred businesses but really to create a space where people can experiment and decide ‘Is this what I want to do?’ without sinking their savings and going into debt. It’s a way to create an entry point with a lower amount of risk,” says Rich.

“The work I do at Ashokra is making okra accessible to all types of palates and sharing that love of okra with more people,” Adalja says. So her idea for making dehydrated okra chips—now available at tiny grocer ABQ, The Mouse Hole Cheese Shop, and at Ashokra’s booth at the Downtown Growers’ Market—came from a vision of wanting to see folks reaching for a crispy, salty snack version of this climate-adaptable vegetable.

Nina Simon, owner of Mud Honey, an ice-cream pop-up, is another graduate of TSK’s business training program. Where others were seeking to grow their food businesses to full-time operations, Simon works full time in nonprofit consulting and makes ice cream

Left: Event space at The Kitchen Table. Right: Commercial kitchen at The Kitchen Table. Photos by Stephanie Cameron.

for the joy of it. “I like making beautiful food,” says Simon, whose delicate ice cream creations, from rosemary to salted caramel, feature flavors that speak to the seasons of the desert. The longtime Albuquerque resident spent years working in food service and coffee, and still finds her community in these spaces.

“I was shocked by the regulations,” says Simon, recounting all the ins and outs of licensing and permitting. “Especially as someone who is trying to make a product that people can access while also using really high-quality ingredients.” TSK played an integral role in helping her navigate the requirements so Simon could focus on what she loves: making ice cream. In the summer of 2022, she decided to ramp up her ice-cream business and start working half time at her day job. But the red tape of getting her business off the ground was frustrating, and this summer, she took a more focused approach, with Mud Honey ice cream featured in affogatos at Zendo and Slow Burn, and at monthly pop-ups at Gravity Bound Brewing. “There are so many hoops to jump around to even be able to do this,” she says.

Indeed, permitting food businesses is so complicated that Camille Vasquez of the South Valley Economic Development Center (SVEDC) refers to it as a journey—one that can be especially challenging for non-native English speakers and folks with limited computer skills. Still, Vasquez is quick to rattle off success stories from the SVEDC’s Mixing Bowl Incubation Program, which (along with their newer Mariposa program) also offers business training services alongside commercial kitchen space. Longtime Mixing Bowl participant Heidi Moir, who had been selling her gluten-free baked goods to coffee shops, recently opened her own storefront, The Bakehouse Off the Wheaten Path. Other success stories include Buen Provecho, who has been selling Costa Rican tamales and casados from a food pod at

El Vado since 2018, and Las Golondrinas Pie Company, who recently moved into its own space inside Barelas Coffee House.

All new businesses present risk, and food businesses can be especially vulnerable. Yet the market for packaged food in the United States was estimated at $1.03 trillion in 2021. A New Mexico Department of Agriculture report released in March 2023 found that the US food and agriculture sector “directly supports nearly 23 million jobs, provides $927 billion in wages, and is particularly vital to rural communities across America.” So while the risk is high, the market is there, and food entrepreneurs continue to jump in. For farmers, bakers, and micro-producers alike, having the resources to start out and the space to make fresh food and value-added products safely (and legally) is essential to increasing their chances of success.

Not every entrepreneur opts for the supportive incubator kitchen model. Some, like Sunday Bagels, prefer to self-fund and go the more traditional commissary route to secure space to cook. Others, like Mud Honey, are in it to make something delicious but not necessarily to fully support themselves from their food pursuits. For many entrepreneurs, the extensive permits and licensing required to operate can be enough to shut them down before their idea is even launched. In response, shared kitchen spaces are growing in New Mexico. Not only are they in high demand, but without them, the entry point to begin a food business would be too high for most. As Rich of TSK puts it, “If we want to start thinking about deep sustainability for our community and the farmers we rely on, we need to consider food preservation and manufacturing as a viable pathway to arrive there.”

Left: Ashokra Farm okra crisps, photo courtesy of Ashokra Farm. Right: Bagel prep at Sunday Bagels commissary kitchen, photo courtesy of Sunday Bagels.

“LET’S START A CO-OP”

A PRINCIPLED APPROACH TO COMMUNITY, FOOD, AND ECONOMY IN NEW MEXICO

By Shahid Mustafa

La Montañita Distribution Center truck making deliveries.

Photo courtesy of La Montañita Co-op.

“Let’s start a co-op, you know about co-ops.” These were the words of Samantha Yarrington to her friend, and at that time her midwife as she anticipated the birth of her child, Heather Rische. Thus began the Prickly Pear Food Co-op in Truth or Consequences, inspired by the 2020 closing of the community’s closest co-op, Mountain View Market Co-op in Las Cruces. Having worked at Mountain View Market for fifteen years, Rische recalls, “We literally sat down and cried when Mountain View Market closed. It was a community center. It was familiar and homey, and we were trying to make the world a better place. As the outreach coordinator, I was empowered to go out into the community with the intention of enriching the community . . . all that good stuff. It wasn’t just a grocery store, it was an educational hub.”

This is typical of the way member-owners and staff members think of their co-ops. Rische says she and Yarrington got in touch with the Food Co-op Initiative (FCI), which provides information, training, and technical assistance, as well as seed capital, and engages research to maintain and improve the development path for new food co-ops. Rische and Yarrington attended an online conference presented by FCI that was heavily focused on racial and food justice, the takeaway being “You’re not doing food justice unless you are doing it for everyone,” according to Rische.

The two began the work of starting a co-op by finding people in and around the Truth or Consequences community who would be supportive of the idea. Rische says they started with an online survey that got a few hundred responses from people saying they would support a co-op. They also started setting up a table at the Sierra County Farmers Market, where they asked people if they wanted to support a food co-op, ultimately gaining more support and recruiting volunteer workers. Next, they established a relationship with The Bountiful Alliance, a nonprofit that acts as an umbrella for community organizations serving the residents of Sierra County. Working with The Bountiful Alliance allows the young co-op to take donations as a fiscal partner. They are currently looking for grants and donations to support their effort.

After more than a year of work, Prickly Pear Food Co-op was incorporated in New Mexico in 2022. They currently operate similarly to a buying club, aggregating items that are available and purchasing them at a significant discount. They offer their members inventory options of bulk grains, packaged goods, and fresh produce from the Cooperative Distribution Center operated by La Montañita Co-op in Albuquerque, United Natural Foods Inc. in Denver, and Veritable Vegetable of San Francisco. Distribution takes place in the basement of a church every two weeks. Their first distributions were pretty small, but they now have seventy-four members who have paid an annual twenty-dollar fee. When asked why she has become so passionate about the business model, Rische responds, “I think the main appeal at the most basic level is that your community owns it, and it’s democratically run.”

I know what she means. Rische and I worked together at Mountain View Market when I was the general manager of that co-op, from 2006 through 2015. As she was the member outreach coordinator, we worked as a team on outreach and community building. Being connected to co-ops in the way that I have been has given me an opportunity to expand my perspective on community and the empowerment that can be harnessed through the efforts of the collective consciousness. I believe the cooperative model, as an economic and social development mechanism, is uniquely equipped to remedy conditions that may otherwise not be addressed by conventional business models.

A cooperative is defined as a user-owned business from which benefits are derived and distributed equitably on the basis of use or as a business owned and controlled by the people who use its services. The seven cooperative principles include open and voluntary membership; democratic member control; members’ economic participation; autonomy and independence; education, training, and information; cooperation among cooperatives; and concern for community.

Cooperatives exist in just about every sector of business, and many don’t necessarily promote themselves as such. Credit unions are cooperatives, as are retailers’ cooperatives that support individually owned stores, such as REI and Ace Hardware. (True Value operated as a cooperative for its first seventy years.) Agricultural co-ops have

The long and arduous task of starting a food co-op is often forgotten over the years as the enterprise evolves. That initial work is what creates what I would describe as the “funk” or “soul” that stays present regardless of aesthetics, expansion, or modernization.

thrived for decades throughout the world as a vehicle to aggregate resources for supplies, marketing, distribution, and capital. Housing cooperatives are also an alternative to privately owned apartment spaces, allowing members to own shares in apartment buildings; this reduces rental costs as the maintenance expense is collectively shared, usually based on the size of the unit. The first cooperative business registered in the United States was the Philadelphia Contributionship, a mutual fire insurance company founded in 1752 by Benjamin Franklin and some fellow firefighters. In 1969, civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer sought to economically empower Black Mississippians through the Freedom Farm Cooperative, a grassroots agricultural co-op that consisted of thirty individual family farms, sharecroppers, and another fifteen hundred community members. Probably the most familiar of all cooperatives are the consumer co-ops in the food sector. Food co-ops have thrived in the United States since the early twentieth century, but what is generally recognized today is the model that was bolstered by financial support provided by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal between 1933 and 1939. The goal was to encourage grassroots economic development by supporting rural and agricultural communities as well as cooperative utility, housing, and retail enterprises.

Although founded nearly a century later, the Mimbres Agricultural Cooperative (MAC) was formed with precisely these goals. Addressing food scarcity and population decrease are issues central to the goals of MAC, formed as an agricultural cooperative of local Mimbres Valley food producers and consumers. The average age in the valley is sixty-five. According to board member Valerie McCaffrey, “We are on the frontier, we don’t have a huge population in Mimbres, and we’ve lost more after the COVID-19 epidemic. The nearest grocery store is thirty to forty-five minutes away. With all that’s happening, we want to cooperate and build community again. We think the co-op structure where the members own and operate the enterprise is very important.” Modeling the principles of education and concern for community, their goal is to educate the local community on what was going on in the region’s agriculture historically, and demonstrate the best practices in agriculture in response to climate change. “We want to have a place where the people of our community can still get together,” she says.

La Montañita Co-op opened its first store in Albuquerque in 1976, during a period that is often referred to as the “new wave” era of co-ops, between 1969 and 1979. Many co-ops started within that period began with the intention of addressing socioeconomic and

Left: Prickly Pear Food Co-op in Truth or Consequences. Right: Paula McAllister and Myra Vandy at pickup day at Prickly Pear Food Co-op. Photos courtesy of Prickly Pear Food Co-op.

environmental concerns as well as providing an opportunity for less processed, chemical-free foods. La Montañita began by serving three hundred families, and now serves more than sixteen thousand families through its four locations in Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and Gallup.

La Montañita also operates a Distribution Center (DC), which supports a regional foodshed including more than forty independent producers throughout the state. The La Montañita DC began operations in 2008, to help fill the gap between supplier and retailer for our local agricultural sector. The DC is the largest food hub in New Mexico. Central to its mission is providing access and distribution to wholesale markets for farmers and vendors, and supporting the local economy. Demonstrating the sixth co-op principle of cooperation among cooperatives, the DC works with cooperative producers such as Organic Valley, a farmer-owned dairy cooperative headquartered in La Farge, Wisconsin, and Sweet Grass Cooperative, a collaboration of family-owned cattle ranches located in Colorado and New Mexico.

The DC receives and distributes hundreds of products from approximately thirty different vendors, ranging from produce and livestock to pecans and flour, from all over the state. It services around two hundred restaurants, commercial kitchens, grocers, and

other retailers in Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Taos, Gallup, Silver City, and Las Cruces. Among its retail partners are independent markets and other co-ops located throughout the state, such as the Silver City Food Co-op and, now, Prickly Pear in Truth or Consequences. In a video of a conversation explaining the spirit behind La Montañita’s DC venture, founding manager Michelle Franklin states, “Co-ops have this way of acting from the heart of the community, and I think the heart of the community is to support all of those around us. As a community, we come together, and this is what we do best. This is the value we want to make sure is present in our food that we’re eating. We want to be part of the success of other cooperative businesses and local producers.”

La Montañita’s location in Santa Fe was previously owned by an independent natural foods retailer who wanted to retire, and the Gallup location was a struggling food co-op that was taken in by La Montañita and continues to provide local and organic food to an underserved rural community. The Navajo Nation has some of the highest rates of food insecurity within the borders of the continental United States. Communities designated “food insecure” are also disproportionately impacted by related health issues such as diabetes, obesity, and heart disease. The relocation and displacement

Left: Heather Rische bagging carrots at the Prickly Pear Food Co-op. Right: Jessica Kumaala, Myra Vandy, and Paula McAllister celebrating the opening of the Prickly Pear Food Co-op. Photos courtesy of Prickly Pear Food Co-op.

of Indigenous peoples has led to poverty, addiction, lower rates of literacy, and the transition away from traditional farming practices to dependence on processed and nutritionally insufficient foods.

ToohBAA, formerly the Shiprock Traditional Farmers Cooperative, formed in 2020 with the stated purpose “to be able to provide produce to Indigenous communities and the Four Corners region.” They also seek to provide organic, healthy produce to their communities at reasonable cost. According to Gloria Ann Begay of the Diné Food Sovereignty Alliance, the co-op formed partly to work together in handling some of the logistical challenges of getting produce to market, such as cold storage and packaging.

In her book Collective Courage, political economist Jessica Gordon Nembhard shares a 1933 quote from civil rights activist W. E. B. Du Bois: “We can by consumers and producers co-operation . . . establish a progressively self-supporting economy that will weld the majority

of our people into an impregnable, economic phalanx.” This statement embodies what I believe to be the spirit that motivates communities to invest their time, energy, and resources in the cooperative economic model. In my experience working in the cooperative retail sector, I have always been impressed with the sense of ownership and purpose that members reflect. The long and arduous task of starting a food co-op is often forgotten over the years as the enterprise evolves into what appears to be a more conventional retail operation where membership is not required to shop. That initial work is what creates what I would describe as the “funk” or “soul” that stays present regardless of aesthetics, expansion, or modernization. Envisioning self-empowerment and embracing collective responsibility, the cooperative movement in New Mexico continues to grow and demonstrate to us all the capacity to effect change in our communities and food systems by utilizing the will, determination, and collective strength of the people.

Top: La Montañita Distribution Center, photos by Stephanie Cameron. Bottom: La Montañita Co-op in Nob Hill, photos courtesy of La Montañita.

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PINTO BEAN SOUP

Adapted from Beth Moncel

4 servings | $3.80 | $0.95 per serving

Beans are not only healthy, but they are also a great way to impact your grocery budget. The costs for this recipe are based on sourcing local pinto beans by the pound. If you purchase them in larger quantities, they will be even cheaper. Source local beans in the fall at farmers markets and year-round at outlets such as La Mexicana in Albuquerque, Polk’s Folly in the East Mountains, Village Greengrocer in Madrid, Kaune’s in Santa Fe, and FARMesilla in Las Cruces. Use dried pinto beans within 12 months for optimal flavor, nutrition, and freshness.

4 1/2 cups cooked pinto beans, liquid reserved ($2.50)

4 garlic cloves, minced ($0.35)

2 tablespoons olive oil ($0.30)

1/2 teaspoon red chile powder ($0.05)

1/4 teaspoon cumin ($0.02)

1/4 teaspoon dried oregano ($0.02)

1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper ($0.01)

2 cups vegetable broth ($0.55)

Pour half the beans with reserved liquid into a blender and puree until smooth; set aside.

Heat olive oil over medium heat in a large, heavybottomed pot or dutch oven. Add garlic and cook for 1 minute. Add the chile powder, cumin, oregano, and cayenne pepper, and continue to cook for 1 minute more.

Add the remaining pinto beans, pureed beans, and vegetable broth to the pot. Stir to combine. Turn the heat to high and bring the soup to a boil. Once boiling, reduce the heat and let the soup simmer (without a lid) for 15 minutes. The soup will thicken slightly.

Season with salt and pepper to taste. Garnish with avocado and cilantro and serve with tortillas and lime wedges (optional).

The Last Bite is brought to you by Rio Grande Credit Union and highlights recipes on a budget. Costs are estimated using online budget calculators or based on purchases for edible’s test kitchen.

Photo by Stephanie Cameron.

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