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ISSUE 39 · LATE SUMMER · AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2015
6 Sotol: A Spirit with the Taste and Smell of the Desert by Tom Barry
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ISSUE 45 · LATE SUMMER · AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2016
10 Fruit Forward: Freshies Farm by Mark DeRespinis
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16 A Taste of Love and Laughter: Aceto Balsamico of Monticello by Sarah Wentzel-Fisher
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Highways and byways THE ANNUAL TRAVEL ISSUE
ISSUE 55 · SPRING · APRIL / MAY 2018
36 Fracking in New Mexico Creates Uncertain Future for Land and People by Ted Talk by Candolin Cook 28 Michael J. Dax 22 Forged in Fire by Darren A. Raspa
46 Cowboys and Indian Truckstops by Willy Carleton 50 Food Fighters by Candolin Cook
54 #cheflife: Seven Badass Women Talk About Their Kitchens · Virginia Scharff, Moderator and Intro
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THE STORY OF LOCAL FOOD, SEASON BY SEASON IN NEW MEXICO
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62 A Hard Bill to Swallow: Farm Bill's SNAP Cuts Would Hurt New Mexico by Candolin Cook
68 Ahead of the Curve by Willy Carleton 74 Cowboy Up! by Candolin Cook
88 The Taste of Clay: Micaceous Pots of Northern New Mexico by Marjory Sweet
96 Corn, Soil, Tomorrow: Cultivating Resilience with the Flower Hill Institute by Briana Olson
80 Seed Stories by Briana Olson WWW.EDIBLENM.COM
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#SUPPORTLOCAL WE RELY ON SMALL BUSINESS SUPPORT in order for us to tell the story of local food. Without them, we would not be able to share the stories of the good food movement! Make it a priority, when everything has gone back to normal, to support these businesses! WHAT YOU CAN DO NOW—Support your local businesses by buying gift cards, merchandise, mail order, ANYTHING to get a little money in their coffers now, when they need it most. This goes for restaurants, bakeries and cafes, but also farms, farmstands, breweries, spirits shops, housewares, and more. Sign up NOW for a CSA. COMMIT TO THE FUTURE—When it has been deemed safe by officials and health safety experts, go out and patronize local small businesses and farmers with renewed commitment and urgency. Make it a local food BONANZA. Put your local farmers market’s schedule in your calendar so you can visit it every week.
If every reader of edible New Mexico committed to spending $25 on local today, they would put $1,925,000 back into our economy. What if you did that just once a week for the next year? #supportlocal and buy a gift card, order take out, pick up veggies from a farmer, order a csa, fill a growler . . .
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GRIST FOR THE MILL PUBLISHERS
In this special “Best of edible New Mexico” digital edition, we look back on a few of our favorite articles that we have published over the years, each of us choosing five articles that demonstrate the diverse approaches to food writing. This was a deceptively difficult task; over the past five years alone, we have published well over one hundred feature articles alongside even more smaller department pieces. These stories have ranged from profiles of local farmers, chefs, and artisans to articles on contemporary food and land policy, regional travel, and how various social movements affect our local food community. Looking back on the diversity of topics, we are reminded of how rich our local food system truly is. Through the evocative and empathetic storytelling, our writers have been able to bring out a rich sense of place in our local food, highlight the many levels of community such food relies on, and provide an informed and urgent call to protect the invaluable resources our food system depends on. There is little doubt that such writing will only continue to be critical going forward, and we look forward to continuing to bring you such stories in the years ahead. A note from Stephanie Cameron, publisher: I am lucky enough to get to meet the majority of folks we tell stories about in each issue because I do the majority of the photography. The opportunity to meet the faces of our food system is unquestionably the reason why Walt and I do what we do. The people who make up this community are truly inspiring. The stories I selected for this issue include some of the most fun photoshoots I’ve had. A note from Candolin Cook, editor: If you are reading this, I am willing to wager we have at least two things in common: we both love food and we both love New Mexico. The five stories I selected for this special edition of edible celebrate that commonality between you, me, and the talented, diverse individuals covered throughout these pages. Perhaps it is a cliche, but I truly believe connecting over food has the capacity to bridge divides, make us more empathetic, and foster understanding. I am proud to have worked on these stories, and am inspired by the writers who brought them to life. A note from Willy Carleton, editor: Learning about the many ways food connects us to our landscape and to each other never gets old to me. Each of these five writers helps deepen our understanding of this connection through creative, compassionate, and careful storytelling. From a variety of angles, they remind us that our food, and our collective commitment to it, is our future. Edible New Mexico will be back in print and on stands July 1 with our “Too Small to Fail” summer issue. We would like to remind everyone, as always, to support local. As our state begins to reopen, businesses will be doing their best to operate under new safety guidelines and, inevitably, there will be bumps along the way. Let’s all do our part to be patient, kind, and safe—and don’t forget to tip.
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Sotol
A SPIRIT WITH THE TASTE AND SMELL OF THE DESERT By Tom Barry
LATE SUMMER 2015 4VIEW ISSUE 39
Note from Willy Carleton: This was one of the first articles I worked on as Editor, and remains one of the most fascinating. This informative and entertaining narrative weaves elements of history and literature with descriptions of contemporary sotoleros to illustrate the rich sense of place that infuses this borderlands spirit.
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discovered the drink made from sotol, colloquially known as sereque in Mexico, on a visit to Janos, Chihuahua. While savoring my first copa of sotol, Celso Jácquez, founder and owner of Don Cuco distillery in Janos, explained that sotol could be rightly described as a desert lily. A member of the lily family, its seedling looks like a sprouting onion, nothing like a new yucca or agave, for which it is often mistaken. One of the most ornamental of desert plants, sotol has what it takes to survive in the extreme heat and hard freezes of the greater Chihuahuan Desert. Found growing as low as three thousand feet and on the slopes of the Sierra Madre Occidental as high as sixtyfive hundred feet, sotol thrives where little else will. “Sotol has all the hardy qualities of desert-born Chihuahuenses,” says Jácquez with pride. “Show me the worst of soils on rocky limestone slopes, and that’s where sotol will call home.” The hardiness, drought tolerance, and beauty of the sotol plant have made it a popular choice among landscapers throughout the arid reaches of the US Southwest, where it has become a standard feature in xeriscaped open spaces along highway medians, in front yards, and outside commercial buildings. South of the border, where the Chihuahuan Desert expands over the states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, and Durango, (and into northeastern reaches of Sonora), sotol is the region’s most pervasive evergreen and is best known as a drink. Many Chihuahuenses, however, will likely tell you deprecatingly that sotol is moonshine alcohol that only “indios” or poor rural mestizos still drink. They might also tell you—correctly—that sotol is central to the revolutionary tradition of Mexico’s arid north, noting that Pancho Villa and his army of rebels drank sotol both as an intoxicant and as a tonic. The ranchers and farmers who fenced in the southwestern grasslands from the malpais of southeastern Arizona and across New Mexico’s bootheel to the windswept expanses of West Texas didn’t look to the past. As white settlers occupied these arid lands, they rarely integrated the survival habits and wisdom of the original inhabitants. Drinking sotol never found a following in the culture of the US borderlands—until recently.
In Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses, sotol was doubtlessly one of the most prominent features of the stark Cole family landscape. But cheap whiskey was the drink of cowboys. Young John Grady Cole and his buddy Rawlins saw no future within the confines of the newly fenced-in West. They slipped away one night, crossing an unfenced border into Mexico in search of freedom, adventure, and a future on an open range. For fifty centavos, Cole and Rawlins filled up
their canteens with sotol and spent their first couple of days in Mexico intoxicated by a freedom and a spirit they had never before known. Although sotol spans across the international boundary, like John Grady Cole one must cross the border into Mexico to really know sotol. A new breed of sotoleros—in bars in Chihuahua City or in Janos, Madera, Nuevo Casas Grandes, or Aldama—is recovering the traditions of sotol and is sharing their vision of a new cross-border culture of sotol. The key part of the story of revival begins in Janos, a small town that sits astride Route 9, the two-lane border road that stretches from Ciudad Juárez to Tijuana. Directly south of New Mexico’s bootheel, Janos is a historical hotspot—an Apache settlement where Geronomo’s family was massacred; the Spanish manned a frontier military outpost; and the Franciscans established a mission. Yet passing through on your way to Nuevo Casas Grandes, the Paquimé ruins, or to the potters’ town of Mata Ortiz, you might notice only the Pemex gas station, the diesel-spewing trailer trucks parked along the highway, and taco stands. Celso Jácquez and his family love sotol. For the past two decades, they have tried to attract Mexican and US visitors to Janos and the Chihuahua–New Mexico borderlands. With their roots in Madera in the eastern foothills of the Sierra Madre, the Jácquez family has since the mid-1990s been at the forefront of sotol’s revival in Chihuahua. Constructing a modern distillery or vinata in Janos, Celso Jácquez has tapped the wild-harvesting, fermenting, and distilling techniques passed down through four generations to create two brands of sol: Sotol Las Generaciones and Don Cuco Sotol. Don Cuco Sotol is named in honor of Celso’s grandfather Refugio Pérez Marquez, while Las Generaciones refers to the five generations of sotoleros in the Jácquez-Pérez clan, the latest being their son Jacobo Jácquez and his siblings. Celso’s grandfather, known as Don Cuco, revived the dying tradition of sotol production in the late 1800s. In the mountains outside Madera, Don Cuco consulted with his Tarahumara neighbors and his own grandfather who had roasted the piña, or sotol heart, in stone-lined pits, fermented, and distilled the drink for his community since the mid-1900s. His rugged profile appears on the bottles of the Don Cuco brand, which include blanco, suave, reposado, añejo, and crema varieties. Don Cuco insisted on the high-quality of his sotol, making certain that the distilled liquor had the exactly right aroma and collar de perlas or necklace of bubbles when shaken and poured. “It is truly more of a spirit, like cognac,” explained Jacobo, describing reposado sotol the night of my first visit to Janos. I observed that sotol’s distinctive aroma and taste seemed to capture the essence of the Chihuahuan Desert after a long-awaited rain. Do you know the song “Viva Chihuahua”? asked Celso. I did, but hadn’t until then known WWW.EDIBLENM.COM
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the meaning of the verse he began singing: “Tierra que sabe a cariño, Tierra que huele a sotol.” Chihuahua, land that tastes like love, land that has the aroma of sotol. Don Cuco Sotol and various other brands produced by the Jácquez family have won gold prizes across the nation. Mike Morales, a selfstyled tequila journalist who consults nationally for liquor distributors and destination bars, told me of his first experience with sotol and the Jácquez family, much like my own. "I fell in love with this family's spirit as soon as I inhaled it!” Morales told me. “Don Cuco Sotol carries the best of all worlds. It opens up—blooms—so much that it demands to be treated like a fine wine. It has the smokiness of some of the best mescals, but the flavor is simultaneously reminiscent of the best tequilas and then, not at all.” Mixologists from San Francisco and Albuquerque to Mexico City and Chihuahua City now serve sotol either straight like a fine scotch or cognac, or as variety of mixed drinks. Katy Gerwin, the bar manager at Imbibe in Albuquerque’s Nob Hill district, recommends sotol: “Play around a little, slip it in your favorite tequila cocktail for a smoky robust and eco-friendly alternative, or sip it slowly like a fine scotch (especially the Don Cuco Reposado).” Morales contrasts the environmental and social integrity of artisanal sotol producers, especially the production models created by the Jácquez family, with what he calls the “lies of the liquor industry.” In contrast to the spurious claims of many liquor producers, including a Chihuahua City–based industrialized sotol producer and their unsustainable harvesting and production practices, the Jácquez sotol operation aims to follow the best of sotol traditions. Many sotol lovers regard the desert spirit as an elixir that is good for all that ails you, and one commonly hears while traveling in Chihuahua about sotol’s medicinal properties, especially for asthma, common cold, diabetes, and rheumatism. There’s no science (that I know of ) to back these beliefs. Yet having unabashedly fallen under the spell of sotol, I am not dismissive. When it comes to sotol, I have become a bit of a true believer. From my first meeting several years with the Jacquez family in Janos – and my first sip of sotol – I have been caught up in knowledge that, as Celso said on that first night holding up a bottle, that what I was drinking was “puro sotol.” In other words, the best of the sotoleros of Chihuahua, keeping to traditional practices, produce a drink that is “sotol and nothing but sotol,” as Jacobo echoed. Don Cuco Sotol and the other brands produced in its vinata in Janos are unadulterated: Pure desert plant that is baked, fermented and distilled without any water, sugar, or fermenting agents added. You might become a true believer, too, if, like me, you awake the next morning without a cruda or hangover. Celso and Jacobo explain that it’s part of the natural magic of sotol, but more scientifically it’s because sotol isn’t processed with added sugars like tequila or most other hard liquors. Many repeat occasions of drinking copa after copa in good company (perhaps that’s the secret ingredient) in Mexico have left me cruda-free. 8
edible New Mexico | EARLY SUMMER 2020
But there are limits to my faith in sotol, at least for now. I don’t, like many in the dispersed sotol community in Chihuahua, start my days with a copa de sotol to keep me in good health, and I haven’t yet tried to heal a cut or lower a fever with a sotol-soaked poultice. But, believe it or not, a few sips of sotol do seem to alter the mind, improve the spirit, and (at least temporarily) heal what ails you. With good reason, sotol aficionados while savoring a whiff of the Chihuahuan Desert when sipping a copa, will often make a point that sotol is “wild-harvested.” Wild means more than natural. When relishing the desert-imbued bouquet of sotol, you know that what comes out of the bottle is pure wild plant—not one that was planted in an irrigated plantation like the blue agave that produces tequila. Wild-harvesting sotol requires a burro, endurance, and technique—and the ability to accurately brandish a razor sharp machete on steep inclines. For the select number of sotoleros who are smart and think about sustainability, cutting out piñas is as much about propagating as harvesting. Without regard to sustainability, any rise in the production and consumption of wild-harvested sotol will empty the Chihuahuan Desert of the plant. Demand for wild-harvested sotol could mean that the only sotol left will be found amid the gravel of xeroscaped front yards in Albuquerque. Wild harvesting, then, doesn’t necessarily signify anything remotely natural or sustainable. Sotoleros like the Jácquez family in Janos are committed, heart, soul, and wallet, to sustainability in wild-harvesting sotol, which means taking care that their jimadores don’t kill the sotol caudex when harvesting the piña. But they are also realists. If sotol gains an increased share of the international liquor market, as tequila and mescal have, then the production of wild-harvested sotol will need to be sharply limited. According to University of Chihuahua agricultural scientist Jesús Miguel Olivas-García, sotol is threatened by increased sotol harvesting, land development, and intensifying periods of drought. Although sotol requires little water to flourish, regeneration requires periodic rains. Prolonged drought and resulting overgrazing dramatically slow the growth of the species, says Olivas-García, necessitating urgent measures to sustainably manage sotol regeneration. Working with agricultural scientists at the University of Chihuahua, a small group of forward-thinking sotoleros is participating in pilot projects to cultivate sotol seedlings to ensure a renewable crop of sotol plants. Although these cultivated sotol plants won’t be wild-harvested, they will remain natural products of the Chihuahuan Desert, requiring little water and no agrochemicals. Sotol is also a portal of sorts into our cross-border history—mostly unwritten, but one that archeologists, anthropologists, and regional historians are beginning to chart out. In recovering this past, we may find that despite the border security buildup and our ahistorical belief systems, an invigorating sense of our bio-cultural roots live on in the desert.
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Fruit Forward FRESHIES FARM
By Mark DeRespinis
LATE SUMMER 2016 4VIEW ISSUE 45
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Note from Stephanie Cameron: The resilience of farmers in New Mexico never ceases to amaze me. When Mark DeRespinis and I met up at Freshies Farm for the interview and photo shoot, my jaw dropped when I stared at their high tunnels packed with fruit trees. This farm and its farmers were the epitome of innovation.
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n a cloudy afternoon in early June, I visited Freshies Farm in Lyden, on the stretch of the Rio Grande just south of Velarde, to meet with owners Christopher and Taylor Bassett. We stood alongside rows of closely-ranked, v-shaped peach trees in full leaf, beholding a bountiful crop of downy green adolescent peaches. “This is our third full crop of peaches in eight years of running the farm,” Christopher said frankly, though with a gleam of delight in his eye. It was shaping up to be a really good year. By all accounts, raising an orchard in the northern mountains is a risky business. In the spring, warm spells coax dormant buds into bloom while nighttime temperatures still dip below freezing. Timing is everything, and orchardists are fanatical about the specifics of their zone and the patterns of the weather during bloom. A dip below twenty-eight degrees can devastate tender flowers. The precarious odds play out again and again, from valley bottom to mountain hillside: a good crop comes one in every three years for apples; one in every five years for peaches; and one in every ten years for apricots. Despite these challenges, in the middle of the last century, the Española Valley gained renown as one of the fruit baskets of the Southwest; every day, during harvest season, truck- and trainloads of fruit left for cities near and far. Christopher described the scene at Freshies during the peach bloom just two months earlier, when an Easter-time cold spell descended and killed off most of the stone fruit in the area. For times like these, when the orchard is most sensitive, the Bassetts have a dual strategy for protecting their precious flowers from the brutal extremes of mountain weather. A temperature sensor in the orchard sets off an alarm that could wake the dead, and the farmers spring into action. A forty-foot tall wind machine circulates warm air in the vicinity and keeps the cold from settling in among the trees. Meanwhile, a micro-sprinkler irrigation system coats the orchard in a thick layer of ice, protecting the buds and flowers until the sun comes out and warms the air, lifting the temperature out of the danger zone. Following the long orcharding tradition of the valley, these small farmers are finding ways to use technological innovations to their advantage as they attempt to rebuild local and regional markets and return quality artisanal production to their communities. Using these strategies, Freshies Farm has succeeded in bringing (at least some, and often many) peaches to market in all but two of the last eight years. And their apples, protected by the same systems, have been even more consistent.
The Bassetts took over this state-of-the-art orchard in 2008. The former owner, Walter Lee of Cottonwood Lane Orchards, had installed the orchard system eight years earlier, with the help of NMSU fruit specialist, Dr. Ron Walser. At the time, the orchard contained an acre of mature certified organic apple trees, an acre of mature certified organic peach trees, the irrigation system and wind machine, a row of Triple Crown blackberries, and several hundred feet of dike-side river frontage cottonwood bosque shade. Living in an old Airstream, they began working the orchard, building a home, and developing the farm’s infrastructure. Freshies showed up at the Santa Fe Farmers Market in 2010 and has been a mainstay there ever since. “We don’t grow a lot of crops,” Christopher said. “We grow six crops and we aim to grow a lot of them at the highest quality and at full flavor. Tree-ripened, vine-ripened, peak of flavor, ready for eating right now.” The Bassetts started with apples, peaches, and blackberries. In 2011, they lost their peach crop to a winter deep freeze that killed the buds on the trees before they even bloomed. Fortuitously, they had applied for a high tunnel grant from the Natural Resources Conservation Service that winter and were able to construct it and begin growing tomatoes and cucumbers. The same year, they started growing oyster mushrooms, taking over Desert Fungi from Danny Rhoads and assimilating it into their production schedule. After another lost peach crop in 2013, they expanded their oyster mushroom production and have since been supplying two hundred pounds a week to farmers market customers and local chefs. That year, they also experimented with a high-density cherry tree planting and found space on the edges of the mature orchard to do a pluot planting. They fit these expansions within their available land by reclaiming a driveway through the orchards for the high tunnel and tucking the mushroom house away in a shady cottonwood grove behind their chicken coop. This efficient use of the available growing space, high-density planting, and use of protected space to create ideal conditions for certain crops have all helped Freshies chart the way forward for fruit production in northern New Mexico. We toured the peach and apple orchards, peeked inside the mushroom shade house, and observed melons and Sungold tomatoes just beginning to climb their trellis in the high tunnel. The new land and its recent plantings beckoned, so we hopped in the car and drove about a mile down the road before the tunnel structure loomed into view, catching the mesa’s warm evening light on its patterned geometries. It is truly a majestic sight, a kind of temple of modern
Opposite page: A micro-sprinkler irrigation system at Freshies Farm coats the orchard in a thick layer of ice, protecting the buds and flowers until the sun comes out and warms the air, lifting the temperature out of the danger zone. Photo by Christopher Bassett. WWW.EDIBLENM.COM
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Top left, clockwise: Christopher shows off his orchard to Mark DeRespinis; oyster mushrooms growing out of mushroom bag; high tunnels house new fruit trees; high-tunnel arches up close; oyster mushroom house. Opposite page: Opposite page: Five adjacent tunnels, measuring 30’x300’ each, contain seemingly endless rows of fruit trees, with tomatoes and cucumbers planted in between. These photos attempt to capture the awe-inspiring structure. All photos by Stephanie Cameron. 12
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ris at the Mark and Ch nnels. end of the tu
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By all accounts, raising an orchard in the northern mountains is a risky business. In the spring, warm spells coax dormant buds into bloom while nighttime temperatures still dip below freezing. Timing is everything, and orchardists are fanatical about the specifics of their zone and the patterns of the weather during bloom. A dip below twentyeight degrees can devastate tender flowers. agriculture. Five adjacent tunnels, measuring thirty-feet by threehundred-feet each, contain seemingly endless rows of fruit trees, with tomatoes and cucumbers planted in between. The rows are not, in fact, endless, and, as Christopher explained, in their new acre of high-tunnel fruit production, the Bassetts planted according to the advice of leading fruit tree experts on planting orchards at high density to increase yield and speed up production. “There is a finite amount of irrigated land in New Mexico, a really low percentage—increasing the productivity of that land is what’s going to help us feed ourselves.” The trees stand in close and orderly ranks—three feet apart and trained to a series of trellis wires that promise to hold them as they climb towards the sky. Freshies just planted these trees in April and already they sported a healthy coat of leaves and new growth. The Bassetts have decided to focus on stone fruits in their high-tunnel orchard expansion, and Christopher excitedly detailed the varieties of apricots, plums, sweet cherries, and nectarines they have planted to enable the longest possible harvest window for each fruit. A core principle of the Freshies planting program is to provide the most delicious and ripe fruit for the longest possible season, using varieties that mature at different times. With the protection of the tunnels, Freshies will have a reliable crop of these precious summer fruits to sell throughout the region, adding an array of exciting new items to the menu of seasonal delicacies that enrich the lives of local food lovers. As we walked down the long rows, Christopher pointed to tomato and cucumber plants that would bear fruit in the next couple weeks,
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including their much-coveted Sungold tomatoes, heirlooms such as Cherokee Purple, and thin-skinned cucumbers. They planted the tomatoes and cucumbers between the orchard rows to make efficient use of the space while the trees are still small and don’t require tractor access for harvest. The experience of being in the tunnels was mesmerizing. I imagined the tomatoes reaching the top trellis wire at ten feet tall and the hedges of trees adorned with fragrant rosy blossoms, later hanging heavy with brightly colored fruits. We left the tunnels and looked out over an adjacent field planting. As we walked, we passed by recently composted and mulched rows of table grapes; blackberries; and red, black, and yellow raspberries—a bramble and vineyard planting that promised to bear many a berry in the years ahead. These diverse delights complete the roster of fruits that Freshies has planned for farmers market tables, the produce department of La Montañita Co-op, and the kitchens of chefs around the region. “They know when they get something from us, that it’s gonna be the best, and when you taste it, you say: these things are something special.” The future looks good for northern New Mexico locavore fruit lovers—no more waiting ten years for the taste of a ripe apricot fresh off the tree. And perhaps we can look forward to a time when the Española Valley will be revered as the fruit basket of the region once again. freshiesnm.com Below: Christopher and Taylor Bassett with their two children. Photo by Stephanie Cameron.
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A Taste of Love and Laughter ACETO BALSAMICO OF MONTICELLO
By Sarah Wentzel-Fisher · Photos by Stephanie Cameron
The acetaia houses the batteria: a dozen sets of barrels, seven or eight in each, where the Darlands’ vinegar patiently ferments and transpires.
“If your life's work can be accomplished in your lifetime, you're not thinking big enough.” Wes Jackson, The Land Institute. EARLY WINTER 2016 4VIEW ISSUE 47 16
edible New Mexico | EARLY SUMMER 2020
Note from Stephanie Cameron: Traveling with Sarah Wentzel-Fisher to Monticello was one of the most memorable and extraordinary experiences of my time with the magazine. The way the Darlands brought together their community over food to share stories and harvest the grapes that would be pressed and stored for twenty years to create an incredible aged balsamic vinegar was awe-inspiring. Anytime I taste their vinegar, I immediately teleport back to that stunning late summer weekend in 2016.
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ike the warm spring that feeds a perennial acequia through the Alamosa Creek Canyon, Jane and Steve Darland are a wellspring of craftsmanship, ideas, humor, and hospitality, fostering agriculture and community in the village of Monticello. On a bright day in September, Stephanie Cameron and I headed south to join the Darlands at their home and farm for the annual grape crush. Every year, close to the autumnal equinox, the Darlands, proprietors and producers of Aceto Balsamico of Monticello, invite a team of friends and family to pick and process grapes, to share in lively conversation around their table and in their gardens, and to break bread with them in celebration of the harvest. Over the course of two and a half days, we got a rare insider's view of one of the critical steps in making balsamic vinegar. We also made new friends and began to understand more deeply the relationship between taste and time. The grape crush provides the juice to feed the slow process of making balsamic vinegar, but it also nurtures a critical kind of community building that only these types of labor-intensive, multi-year projects can. The Darlands harvested their first grapes in 1997 and have enlisted support in the process ever since. Balsamic vinegar made in the tradition of Modena and Reggio Emilia, aged and evaporated in sequential wood barrels, comes of age at twelve years, after which it can be classified and labeled as traditional. This label may have as much to do with the people who come back year after year to participate, as with the vinegar. Shortly after our arrival, other guests and neighbors appeared, and conversation turned to preparation for harvest and speculation on who else would attend from years past. The first step was to remove row covers from the vines. Steve gave assignments, and, with the flourish of a master orator, embellished mundane tasks, like moving large storage containers, with stories, interesting grape and vinegar facts, and the occasional wry joke. Some pickers have attended the grape harvest for years; others, like Stephanie and I, were first-timers. While most who have helped before know the steps, everyone listened carefully to Steve. His presentation on how we would remove the cloth covering the ripe fruit to protect it from birds, bees, and hungry raccoons and skunks is part of the story and process of how these Trebbiano and Occhio di Gatto grapes become balsamic vinegar. In teams of two and three, we removed covers from vines laden with pungent fruit, then packed the cover materials into the storage barrels where they would stay until next fall. Many hands made short work, and the team celebrated a successful first step with libations and a walk before dinner. The next morning we would start picking early, but for this evening, we would eat and rest and enjoy one another’s
company. In an era when so much of our food production is automated, from harvest to processing to cooking, it's easy to forget the beauty of the slow and handmade. Tasks like making balsamic vinegar can be done with machines (most of the balsamic sold in the United States is dubbed industriale by the Italians who make and ship it to us, but do not use it; it’s actually illegal to label it “balsamic” in Italy since it’s just a mix of red wine vinegar and dark, thick sweeteners), but the conversation and all the food prepared to feed those who have worked wouldn’t be necessary—and so much more would be lost. While we uncovered grapes, Jane, her daughter Amy, and others wandered in and out of her kitchen, together preparing a simple, substantial, delicious meal—perfect for field work—comprised of a salad from her garden and a lasagna large enough to feed twice as many people as would eat. At a long table on a screened veranda, we ate and told more stories. We met a couple who had reconnected forty years after a teenage romance, only to find they were still madly in love; locals who raised pigs and eggs; and a family visiting from California. Convening neighbors from the village and visitors from afar provided fresh ideas and perspective for those who live there, and inspired commitment and investment from those who only visit occasionally. While Monticello is small (one hundred fifty people, including the town and canyon), this tradition brings people together, and has kept Monticello vibrant and captivating. In the morning, we assembled on the hillside above the vineyard, and again Steve talked us through the process while we listened and watched as if he were performing magic tricks. Armed with roncolas (curved pruning knives), we moved into the vines with baskets hung around our necks. We cut grapes and loaded our baskets, taking turns to unload and carry them out to larger crates for transport to the patio below the acetaia, or acid house, a large building on the north edge of the vineyard. Our hands patinaed with sugar and dust, we chatted for several hours between the vines and leaves, getting to know one another directly or by eavesdropping on the conversation a row over. Well before noon, we had cleaned the vines of their fruit—this year, about 2,500 pounds. As we moved to the next phase, Steve shared details about how this year’s harvest measured up. The yield was lower than in years past, probably due to the very hot summer, but the sugar content of the grapes was high—and when making balsamic, it's all about the sweetness. The acetaia, on its second floor, houses the batteria: a dozen sets of barrels, seven or eight in each, where the Darlands’ vinegar patiently ferments and transpires. Below, a cold room and storage area house all the processing equipment needed for the crush. Steve had assembled the destemmer, a juice press, and a series of large stainless B-grade heirloom tomato sauce. Photo by Stephanie Cameron WWW.EDIBLENM.COM 17
Top left, clockwise: Cutting grapes from the vines with roncolas; pressing the grapes; the crush begins as grapes are collected in baskets; sipping primo (the first juice) from the crushed grapes.
steel pots over large propane burners. A team loaded grapes first into the destemmer, then into the press. With Steve’s encouragement, everyone tasted a bit of the first juices, the mosto, from the press, which comes primarily from the intermediate membrane of the grape between the skin and the inner seed sac. Once extracted, the juice would sit overnight in a cold walk-in refrigerator to allow sediment to settle, before teams transferred the juice to the large steel vats. Again, while the field crew worked, some made their way into the kitchen to assist Jane in assembling a mezze lunch of so many different dishes that sampling them all was nearly impossible. Appetites whetted from work, the team loaded plates and settled on the lawn, patio, and veranda of a guest house for lunch and more conversation about how this year measured up. Steve explained that the high sugar content of this year’s grapes would make up for the lighter yield because the juice would need to 18
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be reduced less to get the sweetness required for the growth of the microorganisms that transform the mash to vinegar. The next step would involve reduction of the juice, over a number of days, to exactly the right brix (sugar content) level. At this point in the process, it has become mosto cotto, a thicker syrup that will be inoculated with a special blend of yeast and bacteria to start the fermentation process. By mid-afternoon, tired, full, and warm, we dispersed to our separate quarters for a short siesta, then made our way in small groups to the center of Monticello to appreciate the place that inspires the making of the delicate nectar that is Aceto Balsamico of Monticello. Carefully restored houses line the small park plaza at the center of town, but the landscape is also marked with dilapidated buildings of eras past—perhaps the most poignant being a Depression-era schoolhouse with elm trees rooted in cellar soil and branches extending to form the building’s only roof. This place, once home to enough young
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families to fill several classrooms, had, like the Darlands’ vinegar, changed over decades into something punctuated by a different character of community. We gathered twice more to celebrate the twentieth successful harvest, first for an evening meal of leftovers, then for a Southwest-inspired brunch. For each meal, the number of chairs at the table decreased and, like balsamic, the team slowly evaporated. The next few years will mark a new level of maturation of the Darlands’ balsamic, and the process and people involved in making it. After most have headed home, Steve and a few remaining guests will move the mosto cotto into carboys where it will further settle until February, when he will perform the rincalzo, or topping off of the barrels where the balsamic ages. As we said our goodbyes, Steve described a visit to Italy to taste balsamics. On this visit, he tasted a balsamic dating back to the 1660s (balsamic vinegar was first described in a papal document in 1046). Apparently, it tasted terrible. Since then Italy has been fraught with political unrest, a civil war, a bubonic plague epidemic, and two world wars. Perhaps these hardships helped build character in the region, and that is reflected somehow in the pungency of their vinegar. As we drove back toward Albuquerque through blooming chamisa under a cloudless sky, I daydreamt about how the quality of our conversations and the food we shared will impact the flavor of the future’s Aceto Balsamico of Monticello. I hope it will taste like love and laughter, a sweet and deep note on the back of the tongue. www.organicbalsamic.com
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Top left: Jane, Amy, and Steve Darland cooking brunch for their guests. Middle left: Stephen Humphry, Nancy Kinyanjui, and Steve Darland shake up gin fizzes for a toast over brunch. Bottom left: Mezze lunch for the hard-working crew.
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Forged in Fire BEATING SWORDS INTO PLOWSHARES WITH DESERT FORGE FOUNDATION
By Darren A. Raspa · Photos by Sergio Salvador
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FALL 2017 4VIEW ISSUE 52
Note from Willy Carleton: I have always enjoyed covering farming projects in our state, especially when the story is able to capture the spirit and humanity behind the farm. With a nice narrative flow and a deep sense of compassion, this article manages to bring to the fore the human-level struggle and beauty behind this inspiring organization.
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his story begins over seven thousand miles away, across an ocean, a sea, and a continent, at the convergence of three valleys. The soil of the Nijrab, the Tagab, and the Afghanya valleys has been known since before the days of Alexander the Great for its pomegranates and mulberries. The name of the local capital city translates roughly somewhere between acceptance, prayer, and fulfilled wish, but is known to westerners more by the Pashto name emblazoned across thousands of headlines and seared into millions of stricken hearts and minds: Kabul, Afghanistan. The pomegranates and mulberries of Kapisa Province were far from American Provincial Reconstruction Team engineer Victor Versace’s mind in 2010. Attached to the French army on a mission to connect Kabul to the hinterlands through electrification and water projects, Versace and his team took cover and returned fire as enemy rounds ricocheted nearby. As a combat veteran of the US Army’s 1st Armored Division Engineer Brigade in Iraq who had patrolled Baghdad for roadside bombs seven years earlier, he knew the rounds were too close. To his horror, Versace’s friends began to fall. “I thought I was done,” he remembers. He survived that day and returned to the States, but was mentally, physically, and emotionally shattered, his psyche carved out and desiccated, like so many others, by the uncaring blades of combat trauma. Cicadas are buzzing and, eerily, drums are playing when I meet Versace in a far different valley just south of Albuquerque. Despite the lateness of the day, the sun burns as it angles through the leaves of cottonwoods and clouds of mosquitoes on this midsummer’s evening on Virgin Farms, one of the rejuvenation project sites spawned from that bleak day in Afghanistan seven years earlier. Versace is a big man, not necessarily for his physical size, but for the energetic space he occupies. The rows of green chile that march into the distance before us are part of the Desert Forge Foundation’s Warrior Farmer Project, Versace’s project to restore emotional, mental, and physical health to veterans. The atmosphere is festive. The enemy in this field, bindweed, does not shoot back, but rather chokes, twisting around the roots of the peppers. Combat veterans and active-duty soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen bend beside non-veteran community members who show up for the training and stay for the sense of brotherhood, sisterhood, and healing. Tonight, Desert Forge is on debut for the community, and Versace’s pride shows. “I came out here looking for adventure,” Versace says as he squints into the setting sun and embraces old friends— “brothers and sisters” as he calls his fellow vets. Originally from
Poughkeepsie, in the Hudson River Valley of New York, Versace worked his way through an environmental engineering degree at New Mexico Tech as a ranch hand. “I cut hay, bucked hay, piled hay. For five years.” In 2002, he was working as an engineer for the Indian Health Service in Arizona when he received the call: It was a warning order for Iraq. Versace was a soldier with the Utah Army National Guard in a combat engineer unit out of Utah’s Four Corners, “where Navajo, and Mormons, and hillbillies, and rednecks all mix,” he remarks. “So we got a call and next thing we know, in April or May of 2003 we were in Iraq. And we were there fourteen months with the 1st Armored Division.” Versace pauses. “At month eight, we were broken.” Versace opens up as we walk the rows of Jemez, Sandia, AZ 88s, NM Heritage 6-4s, and New Mexico Big Jims. “A lot of us came home pretty messed up. I came home and I wasn’t doing good. I started going to behavioral health therapy, going to the VA. I drank, I lost my job, got divorced. You name the manifestation of PTSD and I had it.” His face brightens. “But I was still in the infantry and I was a leader and I recognized I had to get my life together. So in 2010, when I thought I was sufficiently healed, I went back. I went to Afghanistan as an advisor on a provincial reconstruction team.” Versace struggled with the mission. His family and friends back home were struggling from the recession. His brothers and sisters were being killed and injured. Then came the spring 2010 firefight in the Tagab Valley, where several comrades were wounded, and he knew he was done with war. Versace is a self-described book nerd and grunt. “If I was out in the bush, my friends knew if they didn’t see me, I’m in my tent, smoking my pipe, reading a book.” Back home he continued his studies. “I had been reading about food localization, and hearing the news as my friends committed suicide and died of strange, sudden diseases, and I’m thinking, ‘What we can do for New Mexico and help my brothers along the way?’” Versace dove into Michael Shuman’s Dreaming New Mexico Project report, “Prospects for Food Localization in New Mexico,” which revealed the startling statistic that ninety-eight percent of food consumed in the state is imported, with $4 billion of $6 billion total in local food dollars leaving the state annually. Stateside, wracked by chronic back pain and night terrors from his deployment experiences, Versace came up with an idea: Perhaps the best way to heal was the old-fashioned way, through sweat and shared experience. With land he’d purchased, he began recruiting his Army buddies to help out. Without the direction of the unit assignment and tasking, many combat veterans flounder in society. Perhaps returning soldiers needed a new mission. WWW.EDIBLENM.COM
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Richard Baca, Victor Versace, and Rick Gwilt with Baca's service dog.
“I’m an engineer, so I did the math,” Versace explains. “If we capture just twenty-five percent of the agricultural money leaving the state, $1 billion, that’s 10,000 new jobs at $37,500 per job, to include benefits. So I said, let’s start farming.” In 2011, Desert Forge was the solution, formed out of the furnace of the US War on Terror. “So I’m kind of an accidental farmer!” Since 2011, the small patch of land Versace and his friends initially worked has grown to include four farming sites: the Fresh Possibilities Project in Peña Blanca, the Steve Garcia Farm in the Atrisco area, the Rio Valley Greenhouses, and the Virgin Farms Project, the site I was touring with the Desert Forge team. While there, I had the chance to catch up with Rick Gwilt, Desert Forge’s director of operations, as he was cooking yak burgers for the assembled workers from the domesticated bovids on the farm across the street. “Chief Gwilt,” as the guys call him, is a tough, clear-eyed chief warrant officer with more than three and a half decades in the military—and also happens to be one of Versace’s former bosses in the Army. He imparts the feeling that they should be doing push-ups, sit-ups, or running drills. “I was the battalion maintenance officer for the unit we were in,” Chief Gwilt explains. “Versace was working in recon.” Gwilt has seen combat, and speaks of the unshakable brotherhood and sisterhood formed among men and women asked to do self-sacrificing, often terrible, tasks. “That tribe aspect, the connections, doesn't go away.” Gwilt pauses to flip the yak burgers on the flaming barbecue. 24
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“A lot of the problems guys have are [because] they no longer have that brotherhood. But it’s alive and well out here. We just don’t wear our uniforms anymore.” The land—and the yaks—are owned by entrepreneur, environmental scientist, and farmer Steve Moore, who realized that to grow good plants you need good soil. Moore toiled to create an organic, sustainable nutrient mix so pure it could be ladled and sipped. The efficacy of that mix is self-evident in the healthy peppers growing all around us. As Desert Forge moves forward, Moore, Gwilt, Versace, and their team hope to diversify to crops other than chile, their current primary staple. As a nonprofit organization, growth has been hard. Desert Forge sells for donations at growers markets around town, to include the Downtown Growers’ Market as well as the Rail Yards Market, both in Albuquerque. Desert Forge relies almost entirely on volunteer support and grants, with only four regularly paid staff members. One of those staff members is Richard Baca, a tall, bearded veteran with more than two and a half decades in the military who grew up in the South Valley raising, harvesting, and preserving fruit with his family. “After the chaos of the military, being away from your family, this is life. For veterans, this is a transformation.” Baca respects Versace for what he’s done and admires the mission of Desert Forge to make a difference. “These guys, they go from a position of taking life to giving life through the land. Therapeutic-wise, there is nothing like toiling in the land and then getting up and seeing what came from your hands.”
WWW.EDIBLENM.COM
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Steve Moore, owner of Virgin Farms, provides the host farm and mentorship for Desert Forge.
Baca stops mid-thought to shout at a man with a chest-length beard striding down a row of chiles. “Nate, come here, man!” Nate Lind is the owner and facilitator of Legendary Man, the nation’s largest all-natural beard care company, and is based out of Rio Rancho. A year and a half ago, Lind and his company were seeking a nonprofit that aligned with their vision and mission of empowering men and found that alignment in Versace’s group. Lind, who grew up farming in Kansas, explains that building brotherhood and providing an activity for people to work together are aspects which attracted him to Desert Forge. “Legendary Man’s mission is creating brotherhood and creating a community of guys who feel accepted, respected, admired, and inspired. Victor is doing that, too, so it was a natural bond.” As the sun dips below the horizon, the volunteers, who include members of CNM biology professor Dr. Paul Polechla’s anatomy and physiology class and other non-military workers, gather beneath the cottonwoods around long wooden tables filled with food grown mere feet away—the epitome of local. It seems the entire community is here tonight for Versace and Desert Forge. Potential buyer Cris DiGregory, of Albuquerque’s Standard Diner and Range Café; Albuquerque mayoral candidate Tim Keller; and members of the congressional Rural Coalition and the National Black Farmers Association sit side-by-side with combat veterans, eating, talking, laughing, all equally part of the brotherhood and sisterhood formed in the fields. I ask Versace the story behind the name Desert Forge. He hails Josh Stevens, a friend and former marine who heard about the project 26
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from an Army Ranger five years ago in Georgia at technical shooting school. “In Iraq, it’s so hot the temperature doesn’t mean anything anymore,” Stevens laughs. “The thermometer could say it’s 130 or even 150 degrees, but when you’re over there, you measure it by what’s happening to you. How many gallons of water can you drink and still be thirsty? How much diarrhea do you have from a lack of electrolytes? How many second degree burns do you have from opening door handles? The ground is sticky because your boots are melting. It’s beyond hot. It’s like a forge.” Over the course of my time at Virgin Farms, Versace has become a friend, a quality that made him a good NCO (non-commissioned officer) in the field and makes him the ideal tip of the spear for Desert Forge. In five years, he sees the foundation branching into an Albuquerque-based national training center for veterans to empower themselves by learning farming and connecting with jobs in local food. He has a lot of plans and a lot of hope, and it’s infectious. “Our mission is returning warriors and rebuilding community,” Versace says, as Baca prepares to bless the delicious meal before us. “We talk about revitalizing local food, agriculture, and our economy. How about people, too?” Baca begins. Hats come off. Heads bow low. “We have so many people fighting over there still,” Baca intones. “Bring everyone home safe.” Another prayer cast across an ocean, a sea, and a continent, the cicadas the only sound as the day’s last light fades. desertforge.org
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Ted Talk
TED TURNER TAKES CARE OF BUSINESS (AND BATS AND BISON) ON HIS NEW MEXICO RANCHES By Candolin Cook · Photos by Stephanie Cameron
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FALL 2017 4VIEW ISSUE 52
Note from Stephanie Cameron: I fell in love with Ted Turner’s work in 2014 the first time we (edible) visited Vermejo Park Ranch for a story on their program. The amount of land he has managed to keep in conservation in New Mexico and the applications to re-establish the state's past ecosystems is astonishing. Candolin Cook and I absolutely walked away from our experience on the Amendaris and Ladder Ranches wanting to "save everything."
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love that you are tailgating at the bat cave!” laughs microbat biologist Laura Kloepper while making her way across a field of lava rocks toward our dinner spread. “We don’t go anywhere without food,” shouts back edible publisher Stephanie Cameron. It is an early summer evening on the sprawling Armendaris Ranch, situated along the Rio Grande and Fra Cristobal mountain range in central New Mexico. Kloepper, a professor at St. Mary’s College in Indiana, has spent the last month studying bat bioacoustics here at the ranch’s Jornada Bat Caves, a system of collapsed lava tubes where, each night from June to September, one million Mexican free-tailed bats emerge to forage insects until dawn. The Armendaris is one of sixteen ranches (totaling 2.1 million acres) scattered across the greater American West belonging to billionaire businessman, humanitarian, environmentalist, and part-time New Mexican, Ted Turner.
In the nineties, Turner purchased three ranches in New Mexico after seeing their potential for private and commercial use, as well as for sites of ecological conservation and scientific study. The Armendaris and its companion ranch, the Ladder, flank the small town of Truth or Consequences, and together make up more than half-a-million acres of high-desert grasslands, mountains, canyons, wooded river beds, and working ranchland. Beginning in 2015, the self-described eco-capitalist opened the Armendaris and Ladder properties to the public through his eco-tourism outfit, Ted Turner Expeditions (TTX). Private tour options include sightseeing, hiking, biking, mountain climbing, hot air ballooning, and the Jornada Bat Cave flight. As TTX activities manager David Barfield explains, “It’s like having a national park all to yourself.” From our hotel room at Turner’s Sierra Grande Lodge & Spa in T or C, it takes an hour of four-wheel driving across rugged dirt roads to reach the remote cave. For another two hours, we wait, snack, and nervously survey the lava rocks for rattlesnakes. Then it happens. The smell of ammonia fills our nostrils as millions of tiny wings begin to kick up guano dust inside the cavern. As the bats begin to swirl furiously at the mouth of the cave, Kloepper yells to her colleague Paul Domski: “It’s time!” Reaching into a covered box, Domski pulls out Banshee, a magnificent Harris hawk wearing a custom go-pro and microphone. The falconer and Kloepper position themselves on opposite sides of the canyon leading to the cave. Suddenly the bats break from their eerie vortex and take to the sky. Kloepper raises a leather-gloved hand and the hawk sails toward her, swooping through the torrent of bats, recording their sights and sounds. For twenty solid minutes, Cameron and I stand in awe as the bats emerge from the cave, creating a black river that stretches for miles across the twilit sky.
Kloepper hopes the decibel readings her “biological drone” records will help her team refine techniques to gauge bat colony populations and, eventually, help fight bat epidemics like white-nose syndrome. But her work, made possible by Turner through special access to the caves, is just one of dozens of ongoing ecology-minded projects taking place on Turner’s ranches. With a mission statement to “save everything,” the Turner Endangered Species Fund (TESF) works with the US Fish and Wildlife Service and New Mexico Game and Fish Department to restore natural habitats and increase populations of endangered and threatened animals. At the Ladder and the Armendaris, these animals include the Bolson tortoise, Chupadera springsnail, Rio Grande cutthroat trout, Chiricahua leopard frog, and Mexican wolf, among others. Cassidi Cobos, a TESF biologist who breeds Chiricahua leopard frogs at the Ladder Ranch, says that the habitats she and her colleagues maintain are critical to the survival of this threatened species of frog, which faces challenges from drought, invasive species, disease, and environmental degradation. TTX guests are welcome to view the Chiricahua leopard frogs’ breeding tanks and stock water habitats from specially-built viewing platforms so not to disturb the frogs. Cobos says, “I live here, so sometimes I forget how unique it is, but it really is amazing for guests to witness these animals and see them thriving.” As Turner recently told a journalist, “TTX is a way for guests to . . . enjoy the lands, while knowing the money they’ve spent is going back into our environmental projects.” Not that Turner is against personally profiting from his lands. For instance, his 585,000-acre Vermejo Park Ranch near Raton generates income through exclusive lodging accommodations, hunting, fishing, bison ranching, solar energy, “responsible” forestry, and leases from heavily-regulated natural gas drilling. While environmentalists may criticize some of these practices, others might argue that in a time of the US government pulling its support from the Paris Agreement, making deep cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency, and introducing bills to roll back the Endangered Species Act, eco-conscious allies in the business world are imperative, even if imperfect. Turner writes in the forward to his biography Last Stand: Ted Turner’s Quest to Save a Troubled Planet, “On my lands, I have set out to prove that the polemic of environment versus economy is a false dichotomy, that you can be a tree hugger and still have your name appear in Forbes.. . .We need a new model for thinking about capitalism and our obligation as global citizens.”
WHERE THE BUFFALO ROAM Perhaps nothing embodies Turner’s convergence of conservation, capitalism, and a romanticized American West as aptly as his bison herds. According to his biography, Turner’s fascination with bison WWW.EDIBLENM.COM
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Top: Bat flight at Armendaris Ranch. Bottom, left: Laura Kloepper with her "biological Whole Wheat Yogurt Pancakes drone." Bottom, right: Chiricahua leopard frogs’ breeding tanks.
Left: Canyon at Ladder Ranch. Right: Petroglyph at Ladder Ranch.
started as a child watching westerns. “The cavalry or cowboys would be killing off Indians. What was it they did wrong? They were the victims, and I sympathized. Then I realized . . . that the same kind of thing happened to the bison.” Turner says he vowed to try and raise some bison if he “ever got some money.” By the end of the nineteenth century, the United States’ once mighty bison population of thirty million had been hunted to the brink of extinction—largely for their hides, but also as part of an effort by the US government to pacify Native tribes whose diet relied heavily on the animal. When Turner purchased his first three bison in 1976, the population had rebounded modestly to thirty thousand. Since entering the bison ranching industry in 1989, Turner, along with other ranchers, conservationists, federal programs, and the InterTribal Bison Cooperative, has increased the population to 500,000, according to the National Bison Association (NBA). With fifty-three thousand head, Turner is the largest private bison rancher in the world. There are eighteen hundred at the Armendaris and two thousand at Vermejo alone, including the extremely rare, genetically “pure” (free of cattle mtDNA) Castle Rock Herd—descendants from turn-of-the-century Yellowstone National Park bison. A major reason Turner’s western landholdings are so large is that bison require vast grasslands. As bison graze, they fertilize the land; create beneficial habitats for prairie dogs and other wildlife; and create less trampling, erosion, and water damage than cattle. But bison ranching is not without its controversies. Ninety percent of bison are 32
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raised for meat production and sold to retailers, such as Turner’s bison-focused restaurant chain, Ted’s Montana Grill. Raising bison for slaughter can make uneasy bedfellows of ranchers and preservationists. But true to his eco-capitalist brand, Turner believes that the most effective way to save the species is by marketing it. According to NBA Executive Director Dave Carter, “Bison represents the greatest success story in market-based restoration. The public’s growing love of bison meat is providing the incentive for us to build the herds.” Another controversial aspect of commercial production is that the majority of bison, even those grassfed like Turner’s, are finished with grain. While the health benefits of eating lean bison meat are a selling point for many consumers, Americans generally prefer proteins with a certain ratio of fat and a consistency of taste. To achieve that, ranchers will herd their bison into feedlots in the last three to six months before slaughter and introduce a diet of corn, oats, and hay. Feedlot practices have notoriously contributed to a host of environmental and public health problems, from pesticide use and monocropping to water contamination and disease outbreak. However, bison do spend less time in feedlots than grain-fed or finished cattle and, unlike beef, federal regulations prohibit antibiotic and growth hormone injections. “We recognize that our customers have high expectations on how we raise the animals and manage our herds,” says Carter. “Even as we expand production, we are working to make sure that we never turn bison into another ‘commodity’ product. We recognize that Mother Nature did a great job in perfecting this animal through thousands of years, so why do we want to mess that up?”
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Elk heard at Ladder Ranch.
Last year, US bison meat sales reached $350 million. This past July, Turner’s Flying D ranch in Bozeman, Montana, hosted the NBA’s largest-ever convergence of bison ranchers, where they rolled out their Bison 1 Million initiative. Through a collaboration with commercial ranchers, conservation herd managers, and tribal producers, the initiative seeks to raise the North American bison population to one million over the next ten to fifteen years. Carter says while this goal is ambitious, it is important for several reasons: to keep up with consumer demand; to help restore economic and cultural health on tribal lands; to offer a viable entry point for young and beginning ranchers; and to provide a more environmentally sustainable ranching alternative to cattle production. “Restoration is about much more than producing more bison meat,” he says. “More than thirty percent of the North American ecosystem is a native grassland environment. Those grasslands—which play a vital role in capturing carbon from the atmosphere and sequestering it in the soil—evolved through thousands of years of grazing by bison and other ruminants. Properly managed bison herds stimulate healthy grasslands and help build healthy soil. Bison are the perfect animals for regenerative agriculture.” To achieve their goal, the NBA is working with public and private entities to expand herds and open doors for new producers. They are also launching a media campaign branding Wednesdays “Bison Hump Day,” in the vein of Meatless Mondays or Taco Tuesdays. And, as they have for the last thirty years, the bison community is relying on Turner for support. “Ted has been a great asset to the bison business, and to the conservation of the species. Through the years, Ted has hired excellent people to run his ranches and manage his herds. And, he has encouraged those people to share their knowledge and experience with everyone else in the business. The mission statement for Ted’s ranches is to be both economically and environmentally sustainable. He and his people are continually exploring ways to make that happen and mentoring others,” says Carter. 34
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Unsurprisingly, visitors won’t see a single cow on a TTX tour. The day after our bat adventure, Barfield takes Cameron and me riding around the Ladder in a UTV. Within a few hours, we spot prairie dogs, burrowing owls, pronghorn, quail, Chiricahua leopard frogs, oryx, elk, and bison. “The biodiversity is what really sold Turner on the Ladder,” explains Barfield. “It’s as close as you’re going to get to an African safari in the United States,” says Turner Enterprises communications manager Baldwin H. Chambless. Notably, we don’t encounter another tourist. “We want to keep it pristine for the animals and special for the guests,” says Barfield. As we start to head back, creosote bushes and an impending monsoon fill the air with the scent of summer rain. A Swainson’s hawk clutching a rattlesnake in its talons flies overhead. Like the man himself, Turner’s ranches are both inspiring and complicated, but you will leave wanting to save everything.
MAKE A DIFFERENCE: Support the return of bison to Native land, diets, and economies by donating to the Tanka Fund: www.tankafund.org. To support efforts to build soil, biodiversity, and resilience on western working landscapes, donate to the Quivira Coalition: www.quiviracoalition.org. Visit the Turner Endangered Species Fund website to learn more about the organization’s conservation work in New Mexico: www.tesf.org. To book eco-tours through Ted Turner Expeditions, visit: www.tedturnerexpeditions.com.
1301 Cerrillos Rd ■ Santa Fe, NM 87505 ■ (505) 557-6654 ■ www.galleryethnica.com
Fracking in New Mexico CREATES UNCERTAIN FUTURE FOR LAND AND PEOPLE
By Michael J. Dax · Photos by Stephanie Cameron
LATE WINTER 2017 4VIEW ISSUE 53
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Note from Willy Carleton: Few articles we have published over the years have felt more important than this one. This highly informative and well-researched article helped bring the critical issue of fracking in New Mexico, and its potential impacts on our local food supply, to the forefront of many readers’ attention.
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n a brisk autumn day outside Counselor in New Mexico’s northwest corner, bluebirds dip and dive as cows lazily graze on sparse, late-season forage amid a sea of sagebrush. If not for the seesawing of a nearby pumpjack and the hum of a generator powering the rig, the scene might not warrant a second glance. Wide open vistas and occasional outcroppings of badlands once distinguished the stretch of US 550 between Cuba and Farmington; yet over the past decade, dozens of hydraulically fracked oil and gas wells, sitting just a stone’s throw from the road, have interrupted this once tranquil scene. Of course, the view from the highway is just the beginning. Forty thousand wells have been drilled in the San Juan Basin since oil and gas was first discovered at the turn of the twenty-first century, including four hundred new wells that have been drilled near Counselor since 2015. According to the San Juan Citizens Alliance, an environmental non-profit organization based in Durango, ninety-one percent of the public land surrounding Chaco Canyon National Historical Park has been leased for oil and gas exploration. Much of the remaining nine percent lies within a ten-mile radius of the park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that houses some of the most important Ancestral Puebloan ruins. If oil and gas companies have their way, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) could make these remaining parcels available for drilling in the near future. This worries Daniel Tso, who served on the Navajo Nation Council from 1986 to 1995. In addition to potentially destroying important archaeological sites, fracking threatens the health and well-being of the local Navajo residents who now populate the region. As part of his work to hold both the government and oil and gas companies accountable, Tso leads tours of fracking sites to show people, firsthand, the impact of this rampant development. With the cows looking on,
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he points to where escaped methane, one of the most harmful greenhouse gases, is being vented into the atmosphere. With oil tankers noisily streaming behind us, it is clear that fracking has become an inescapable part of life in northwest New Mexico. But what does that mean for the future of the San Juan Basin, the people, and the land upon which they depend? Hydraulic fracturing or fracking, as it is commonly known, is a process of extracting oil or natural gas by injecting a highly pressurized cocktail of water and chemicals into otherwise impermeable rock layers. The mix of chemicals and other particulates serves to break apart or fracture these formations and access fossil fuels not otherwise accessible through conventional drilling methods. Fracking was developed in the mid-twentieth century but until somewhat recently remained cost prohibitive because the technique requires far more resources than conventional drilling. As energy prices rose at the beginning of this century, fracking became profitable on a commercial scale for the first time. It has since been responsible for opening enormous geologic formations in North Dakota, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, and other states for large scale extraction of oil and natural gas. The resource-intensive nature of fracking has raised significant health concerns. According to the non-profit Earthworks, a single fracked well that requires as much as four million gallons of water to develop would also use anywhere from eighty to three hundred thirty tons of chemicals. In most states, this mix of chemicals is considered proprietary, and companies do not have to disclose what they are injecting into the ground. “The great unknown is the proprietary mix of these chemicals,” says Mike Eisenfield, the Energy and Climate Program Manager for the San Juan Citizens Alliance.
The resource-intensive nature of fracking has raised significant health concerns. According to the non-profit Earthworks, a single fracked well that requires as much as four million gallons of water to develop would also use anywhere from eighty to three hundred thirty tons of chemicals. WWW.EDIBLENM.COM
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Particular communities in Greater Chaco are dependent upon pastoral industry and the health of their livestock. Horses and cattle owned by the indigenous community are seen grazing on open and unprotected fracking pads. Many of these fracking pads have recorded spills of either fracking fluid, wastewater, or crude oil and pose health risks to the livestock grazing on potentially contaminated grasses and wastewater.
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According to the San Juan Citizens Alliance, ninety-one percent of public lands in northwest New Mexico are already leased for drilling—much of the last nine percent is in Greater Chaco, and now the BLM wants to frack for oil and gas there, too.
Entrance to Counselor Chapter House.
Still, chemicals commonly used in fracking are known; examples include benzene, ethylene glycol, arsenic, formaldehyde, lead, and mercury, in addition to dozens of other toxic chemicals. Much of this slurry returns to the surface, where it is captured and either treated or injected into deep disposal wells. However, some remains underground where, left to its own devices, it is no longer tracked nor controlled. For New Mexico, Tso and other activists are especially concerned with how these chemicals could negatively impact the health of local residents. The Navajo Nation’s Counselor Chapter is in the process of compiling a Health Impact Assessment to study how flaring and venting methane is affecting air quality, the impact of increased levels of dust due to heavy truck traffic on dirt roads, and whether wastewater has infiltrated stock ponds, surface water, or groundwater. Tso does not fault anyone who is benefitting from the industry either through jobs or by leasing subsurface mineral rights on their private land. “I don’t begrudge them because they might need that money,” he says. “Where the issue is, is I say ‘Let’s talk about the safety, let’s talk about the health.’ There can’t be any disagreement on that.” While this study is still being compiled, Tso has plenty of anecdotal evidence that fracking in the area is already taking a toll on residents’ health. In additional to general fatigue, Tso and others have reported 40
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numerous other health issues including neurological, respiratory, and gastro-intestinal incidents. Additionally, the Counselor Chapter Health Representative reported thirteen cases of cancer between 2015 and 2016 among the 1,700 Counselor Chapter residents, a rate slightly above the national average. Other anecdotal evidence abounds. Near a relatively new well pad, in an area west of Counselor known as the Cornfield, the namesake feature has clearly seen better days. Last year, Tso says the corn grew over five feet, but as we drive by, the tallest stalk in the thinly covered field barely reaches three feet. Elsewhere, Tso reports that family gardens are seeing smaller yields, which for rural residents without easy access to grocery stores can be devastating. On top of this, Tso doesn’t believe the government and the oil and gas companies are taking these concerns seriously. In 2014, Tso attended a lease sale where he watched representatives from the BLM and oil companies callously carve up lease sales on a map, paying little mind to how long-term residents could be impacted. “Your map is just a white paper with lines,” Tso emphasizes. “These are people who live here.” Fracking could also impact the area’s agriculture industry, both animal husbandry and traditional farming. Although reports in New
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The Four Corners recently earned the unfortunate distinction of having some of the highest concentrations of methane pollution in the United States.
A Western Refining (WPX) crude truck can be seen driving down the community road. These dirt roads were designed to support local community traffic and school buses, but are now heavily used by the fracking industry. Ninety-thousand pound oil field trucks haul the volatile crude oil through pastoral lands, endangering livestock and community members. Fracking companies continue to level dirt roads to accommodate the weight of their trucks. The practice cuts roads deep into the landscape. Roads in Greater Chaco now resemble trenches and make travel dangerous, block scenic views of ancestral land, and hinder the ability to monitor livestock and fracking development.
Mexico have been relatively limited until now, those from other states present cause for concern. In 2009 in Louisiana, seventeen cows died shortly after drinking from a fracking wastewater spill. The following year in Pennsylvania, after being exposed to leaking wastewater, twenty-eight cows gave birth to calves that were either stillborn or horribly deformed. Elsewhere, cattle that have come into contact with these chemicals have demonstrated similar symptoms. Tso has observed cattle wading in water adjacent to well pads in New Mexico, and although testing of local stock ponds has largely proven them safe, the potential has continued to be a source of consternation for ranchers who graze their cattle on lands that have been leased for oil and gas.
to be used in this capacity, but Sandia Labs is currently developing new technology to treat wastewater so that it can be employed for agricultural purposes—something Tso is nervously monitoring. Additionally, oil companies from California to North Dakota to Texas to Pennsylvania, fracking has raised a host of concerns relating to the health of the people and the land, but in northwest New Mexico, drilling has also raised fears for Chaco Canyon, which served as the cultural and agricultural epicenter for Ancestral Puebloans more than one thousand years ago.
Another basis of concern has been the potential to use treated wastewater for crop irrigation. This has become an increasingly common practice in California, and studies have shown that toxic chemicals can persist even when wastewater has been treated. In one example, methylene chloride remained present in treated wastewater at levels five to eleven times that legally permitted in drinking water.
At its peak, Chaco boasted dozens of great houses with roads leading in all directions to satellite and more distant communities that established the region as a cultural and trading center. The area was abandoned in the thirteenth century for reasons that remain hotly debated among archaeologists and modern Puebloan scholars, but both the park and the greater area have long been recognized as essential to understanding the history of the Southwest. Established as a national monument in 1907, the park continues to attract as many as fifty thousand visitors each year.
Despite this, in 2014, one agricultural area in California relied on treated fracking wastewater for half of a 45,000-irrigated-acre region. Cause for even further anxiety is that organic certification does not specifically prohibit the use of fracking wastewater for irrigation, as federal organic standards precede the technologies developed to treat fracking wastewater. In New Mexico, fracking wastewater has yet
Despite the area’s stature as an important historical site, the possibility of fracking in Greater Chaco remains a very real prospect. In 2003, the BLM completed its Resource Management Plan (RMP), a large-scale planning document that directs the agency in balancing different land uses. However, the 2003 RMP did not include or account for fracking in the Greater Chaco area. In 2014, the agency
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“We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.” —Aldo Leopold
This particular site caught fire on June 11, 2016, and was allowed to burn until July 14. The fracking fire and contaminants spread to areas north and south of the fracking pad, burning juniper trees within two hundred feet of residential buildings. This fire is not the only documented case in the Greater Chaco area where communities were disrupted and evacuated in the middle of the night. While community members remain concerned about their health, WPX reported that the incident was not an emergency and that no damage was caused to groundwater.
acknowledged this deficiency, and it is in the process of drafting an amendment to the RMP that will analyze the potential impacts of fracking in the area. In the meantime, the BLM continues to grant permits to drill. The BLM plans to hold its next lease sale, which will include parcels inside Chaco’s ten-mile buffer zone, in March 2018, and groups like San Juan Citizens Alliance are calling on the agency to suspend the sale until the amendment to the RMP is complete. “I don’t think the government really cares,” says Eisenfeld, who has been raising concerns about fracking for nearly thirty years. “We’re squandering our heritage.” 44
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At the moment, there are as many questions as there are answers surrounding the impacts of fracking in northwest New Mexico. The visual impacts are marked and obvious. How the region’s air, water, land, history, and people will ultimately fare remains to be seen, but all indications provide significant cause for concern. Back near Counselor, a woman on Tso’s tour asks him the bottomline question, “Can you live with it?” Tso takes a deep breath and thinks for a long moment before answering. “I don’t know,” he says solemnly. “I don’t think so.” www.sanjuancitizens.org
Looking forward to breaking bread with all of you again soon
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Cowboys and Indian Truckstops EATING LIKE A TRUCKER ON AMERICA’S MOTHER ROAD By Willy Carleton · Photos by Joshua Johnson
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Lakhbir Singh (far left) and the rest of the Taste of India kitchen crew at the Taste of India in San Jon, New Mexico. Opposite page: Bhan Kaur (left) cooking in the Truck Stop 40 kitchen and Raj Singh (right), owner of Truck Stop 40.
Tucked away in unassuming garages beside the windswept plains along America’s central artery, these highway eateries offer a quintessential American cuisine.
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SPRING 2018 4VIEW ISSUE 55
Note from Candolin Cook: I’ve always been such a fan of stories by my co-editor Willy Carleton, and this one is my favorite. Many of our nation’s essential workers are immigrants, and truckers are no exception. Catering to a large population of Punjabi truck drivers, truck stops along I-40 offer some real culinary gems. On my next road trip, I’m swapping out chicken nuggets for chicken biryani.
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y empty stomach filled with dread as I considered my options along the expansive stretch of I-40 approaching the Texas panhandle. But then I filled up with gas at the Truck Stop 40 in western Oklahoma, twenty-six miles from the Texas border, and stopped into an unassuming restaurant in a large red garage marked with only a small white sign in Hindi and the words “Indian food” below it. I ordered at the small kitchen window and, five minutes later, received a steaming, made-to-order, savory cauliflower paratha and a homemade chai that, despite its styrofoam cup, rivaled any coffeehouse chai I’d had. That truck stop restaurant, and several others serving north Indian cuisine that I frequented as I drove beside the historic Route 66 on I-40 from western Oklahoma to Gallup, New Mexico, upended my expectations of road food. A surefire way to a great meal on the road, I learned, is to eat like a trucker. A Punjabi trucker. The American highway, and the truck drivers who know it best, have long served as powerful cultural symbols in this nation. Ever since Walt Whitman’s “Song of the Open Road” on the eve of the American Civil War, Americans have cherished the opportunities of
“the long brown path” as central to national ideals of freedom. As post-WWII America bankrolled an interstate highway system and Americans put their shoulders to the wheel, Nat King Cole immortalized this classic western stretch of American asphalt in song. Route 66, the epitome of romance and youthful possibility, became the Mother Road, the Main Street of America. The American trucker has shared in the lore of the open road. In the popular imagination of the late twentieth-century, truckers had become modern iterations of the idealized hardworking, nomadic American cowboy. Like the cowboys of yore who drove herds from ranch to market along vast trails that cut across the West, the big-rig teamster symbolized independence and mobility. Countless country songs and popular films celebrated a stereotypically solitary and freewheeling owner-operator, a proud American working man who was always on the road. Just like cowboys, the trucker’s romantic appeal derived from a nostalgic sense that their way of life was vanishing at the hands of modern forces. By the late seventies, a host of writers had declared truck-driving men as “the last American cowboys.”
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Truck Stop 40 in Sayre, Oklahoma.
American truckers have not vanished, but their jobs, and demographics, have changed dramatically over the past four decades. The Teamsters union has lost its might and the percentage of single-truck owner-operators has steadily declined. Profit margins are tighter and hours on the road are longer than ever. Whereas in the 1970s the vast majority of truckers were US-born, today almost twenty percent of truckers are immigrants. This trend is increasing as trucking companies face more difficulty recruiting labor and, more than ever, recruit drivers from places like Punjab, India. Nearly thirty percent of foreign-born truckers come from either Asia or Europe, with most of the rest coming from Latin America. After my meal at the Oklahoma truckstop, I asked the owner, Raj Singh, about its backstory. Singh told me he worked as a truck driver before opening the restaurant ten years ago. He noticed that an increasing number of Punjabi truck drivers had no good food options along this highway stretch. “I drove I-80, I-10, and I-40 before I figured out this is the right spot,” Singh explained. He also realized that to serve the entire Punjabi trucking community, he needed two restaurants in two separate buildings. “A lot of religious guys don’t trust a building that cooks meat,” he explained. “So people who are really religious, the people who don’t want eggs or meat, they come here.” We stood in the restaurant that serves vegetarian food. He motioned his head toward a building on the other side of the gas pumps. “Those that want meat, they go across the street.” 48
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The following day I continued west and pit-stopped in San Jon, a tiny crossroads perched in the heart of dust-bowl country in far eastern New Mexico, where on all sides the distant horizon encircles a dry, brown, open landscape. San Jon is home to some of the best Punjabi food in New Mexico. As I stepped into the Taste of India in the Friends Truckstop, it felt like entering any gas station. But soon aromatic wafts of fenugreek, cardamom, cumin, ginger, and mustard from the steaming buffet greeted me. I looked down the aisles at rows of food products from India—multiple brands of ghee, bottles of bitter melon juice, and bags of fried lentil snacks—alongside gear oil and fan belts. Loud Punjabi music emanated from the TVs in the brightly lit dining section. There, truckers, mostly young men in their twenties and thirties, and mostly wearing sweatpants, sandals, and turbans, sat at the eight red booths, quietly eating their meals. I loaded a plate of lentils, potatoes, basmati rice, and curry at the buffet and sat at the last open booth. In addition to the buffet, which is open from 10am to 11pm daily, a set menu featuring lamb curry, garam masala, chicken biryani, and homemade chai is available twenty-four hours a day. The potato and cauliflower paratha is the “local” favorite. After my meal, Lakhbir Singh, co-owner of the truckstop and restaurant, told me why he chose this solitary desert town. “There are a lot of Punjabi Sikh truckers that are always on the road,” Singh explained, “They don’t have this kind of food otherwise.” Many drivers,
he told me, stop for a meal once or twice a week, as they crisscross the country. The majority of customers are Punjabi, he said, but truckers of all ethnicities and a steady stream of cross-country motorists frequent the spot. Singh strives to provide the best possible food for his customers. Originally a farmer in India, he grew mixed vegetables ranging from ginger and turmeric to beets, rice, sugarcane, wheat, and corn. He splits time in New Mexico with a co-owner, who otherwise lives in India, and when Singh is not in New Mexico, he tends to an almond farm he owns in California. He said he hopes to start growing vegetables in New Mexico for the local community and for his truckstop restaurant. “Two or three acres would be fine,” he said. “The local people here need good, locally produced food.” Continuing west, the next option for truckstop Punjabi fare is over three hundred miles away in Gallup. There, former truck driver Perminder Singh started the Bombay Restaurant and Grill at the USave Truckstop, off exit 16, in 2011. Although he started it to meet the demand from Punjabi truckers, he soon noticed that a diverse local clientele frequented the eatery. “People come from sixty miles around because it’s the only place to get Indian food.” Common to each truckstop, beyond the north Indian fare and large TVs with loud Punjabi programming, is a welcoming, receptive spirit from the owners and waitstaff. The owner of each restaurant I visited graciously took the time to sit and tell me his story, and the servers all offered genuine smiles as they picked up my dirty plates. The friendly vibe, sadly, felt novel in the gas-station atmosphere, filled largely with strangers from elsewhere going somewhere far away. A close look at this stretch of the Mother Road, beyond the nostalgic neon signs of long-gone burger shacks that still dot the old road, reveals new life on the same open road that has stretched before the American imagination for centuries. Tucked away in unassuming garages beside the windswept plains along America’s central artery, these highway eateries offer a quintessential American cuisine. They express our collective identity, despite current backlash, as a nation of immigrants, and illustrate the “profound lesson of reception” of Whitman’s open road. Next time you hit this stretch of asphalt, consider leaving the sandwiches at home and go get your kicks, and paratha, on Route 66.
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Food Fighters
CARLOS CONDIT AND ISRAEL RIVERA ON THEIR ROUGH-AND-TUMBLE PATHS INTO ALBUQUERQUE’S FOOD SCENE By Candolin Cook · Photos by Stephanie Cameron
Left to right: Israel Rivera and Carlos Condit at The Shop eating green chile cheeseburgers and drinking nitro coffee.
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S’mores Fro m Scratch
Israel Rivera laughs, then says seriously, “I’m most proud of the fact that I’m still alive. I could tell you all the stories in the world about my crazy childhood, but more than anything it was really dangerous. So the fact that I’m still alive and I’m not in jail, I wake up every day thankful for that. 50
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SPRING 2018 4VIEW ISSUE 55
Note from Candolin Cook: This may be the most fun I’ve had conducting an interview. Carlos, Israel (Izz), and I spoke for hours on everything from food trends to addiction to King of the Hill. They are both true Burqueños who exemplify what success looks like when you work hard, overcome tough circumstances, and have a good sense of humor along the way.
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year ago, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) welterweight Carlos Condit walked into Albuquerque restaurant The Shop and asked for an opportunity do some kitchen prep to expand his cooking skills. The Shop chef/owner Israel Rivera thought he was joking. “I knew exactly who he was. I’m a big UFC fan and a fan of Carlos. I thought, there’s no way this guy wants to come wash potatoes,” recalls Rivera. “He didn’t call me!” says Condit. “So a few days later I had to reach out again and tell him I was serious about wanting to learn from him.” The two became fast friends, bonding over shared passions for making great food and practicing mixed martial arts, as well as similar challenges they’ve faced with sobriety and growing up in Duke City. “It’s easier to get along with people who’ve had similar pasts,” says Rivera. “Plus, we’re both a little bit crazy. You’ve kinda got to be to fight or to [own] a restaurant. With both, you work all the time, break your body down—but you do it because you love it . . . and because you’re f—king weird.” Condit grew up on Albuquerque’s Westside, where he says his teenage activities mainly centered around “sports and debauchery.” He admits, “There wasn’t a whole lot to do on the Westside as a teenager, so there was a lot of drinking, getting high, driving fast in the desert.” He eventually channeled some of that reckless energy into combat sports. At fifteen, he found an ad in the Yellow Pages for Jackson’s Ground and Stick Fighting, and began to train in mixed martial arts (MMA). Condit explains, “Albuquerque was actually an early adopter of MMA,” stemming from its long-thriving boxing scene. “Fighting is a point of pride for our city; we don’t have any professional sports teams. These are our pro athletes,” he says, citing fighters like Johnny Tapia and Holly Holm. Beyond the infrastructure of world-class training facilities, Condit posits that a local penchant for fighting sports is a manifestation of New Mexico’s mythic “Wild West” mentality. Adds Rivera, “I think people here definitely have fighter spirits. We don’t take shit from each other. People walk around with a chip on their shoulder—which can be annoying—but at the same time it shows we are very resilient.” By eighteen, Condit competed in his first professional match—a cage fight in Juárez, Mexico. His fighting career quickly built momentum, moving from barns in Las Cruces to stadiums in Japan to securing the welterweight champion title in World Extreme Cagefighting in 2007. After his UFC debut in 2009, Condit garnered an impressive record of victories and the moniker “Natural Born Killer.” He became a fanfavorite for his skills inside the octagon as well as his humble demeanor outside of it. In 2012, he earned an interim UFC welterweight champion title. According to the L.A. Times, Condit’s 2016 match against
Robbie Lawler was widely referred to as the UFC "fight of the year"—a thin decision loss for Condit that many believe should have gone the other way. After threatening retirement in 2016, Condit is again active in the UFC, with a fight against Matt Brown lined up for April. Like Condit, Rivera encountered his fair share of trouble growing up in Albuquerque, acquiring a criminal record by fifteen. He says he initially started working in restaurants as a teenager because they didn’t require background checks. Rivera admits to being a sort of incidental chef. “I never thought this would be a career, I just thought it was an easy way to earn a paycheck so I could buy . . . well, booze.” But over time, his strong work ethic, innate cooking skills, and tutelage under a more senior chef encouraged him to start taking his craft seriously. For years, though, the pervasive relationship between alcohol use and the restaurant industry proved counterproductive. “I kept getting into trouble [with the law] and finally a judge said to me, ‘Every single offense you have is alcohol related. Do you think you have a problem?’ And I said, ‘No! I just like to drink and I get caught a lot!’” he says with a laugh. Unconvinced, the judge sentenced Rivera to a recovery program and regular drug and alcohol testing, which— after a few starts and setbacks—helped him forge a path toward sustained sobriety. “I started to put all the energy I used to put into getting f—ked up into making food.” His dedication paid off. The Shop, which features Southern and New Mexican–inspired breakfast and lunch options, has become a local favorite since opening in 2014. Since late last year, he has added a weekend dinner service offering some of the most exciting elevated comfort foods in the city. (Think buttermilk-brined fried chicken, duck fat roasted potatoes, and Brussels sprouts dressed in a maple-mustard vinaigrette.) Touching on his own battles with drug and alcohol abuse, Condit says, “My ability to go out and fight a person in a cage is probably closely related to me being an addict and alcoholic—it stems from the same [demons].” He says he initially got sober in 2011, and though the road hasn’t always been perfect, he’s found a great network of support in the recovery community, which now includes his friendship with Rivera. Condit says, “Part of [getting sober] is that you put a mirror up to your friends, because if you say that you have a problem and all your friends drink the same way . . .” Rivera jumps in: “People don’t like facing their reality, so a lot of them will shut you out.” Adds Condit, “When Izz and I hang out, we actually have to go do fun, engaging things in order to have a good time. You can’t just add alcohol to any situation—it’s a bummer!” (Both laugh.) Many of those fun things involve food, including collaborating on pop-up dinners, co-hosting the food-centric podcast Cast Iron Jabber Jaws, and judging edible’s 2017 Green Chile Cheeseburger WWW.EDIBLENM.COM
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Duck confit hash breakfast.
Smackdown. And while Rivera can often be found at the gym practicing mixed martial arts, last year Condit officially entered Rivera’s turf by co-founding a nitro-coffee business, Hundred Hands Coffee. Along with partners Kaitlin and Ryan Hoskinson, Condit saw a niche in Albuquerque’s booming third-wave coffee industry for cold, nitrogen-infused coffee—a frothy, silky, slightly sweet brew that pours like Guinness out of a tap. Currently, Albuquerqueans can find Hundred Hands’ ethically-sourced java at several local coffee shops, taprooms (“It’s really nice if you don’t drink that you can still join your friends at a brewery and enjoy something besides a Shirley Temple”), and restaurants, including The Shop. “I think the kind of people who enjoy Izz’s food are the same type who appreciate our craft coffee,” Condit says. But Condit’s favorite place to sell his cold brew is in person at the Downtown Growers Market. “I think I have some carny blood in me; I love calling people over to try it. Meeting tens of thousands of people over the years at autograph signings has helped.” Despite all their success, Condit and Rivera don’t cite their professional accolades as what they are most proud of. For Condit, it’s “doing something with my life that is unconventional and very 52
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improbable coming from where I came from. Turning some notawesome circumstances into something that, hopefully, inspires other people to follow their dreams.” He turns to Rivera with a wry smile: “Follow that.” Rivera laughs, then says seriously, “I’m most proud of the fact that I’m still alive. I could tell you all the stories in the world about my crazy childhood, but more than anything it was really dangerous. So the fact that I’m still alive and I’m not in jail, I wake up every day thankful for that. I’m proud that I’m in a place mentally and physically where I control my own life.” Condit nods approvingly and deadpans, “And you’ve got chickens.”
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Listen to our whole (uncensored) conversation with Condit and Rivera on their Cast Iron Jabber Jaws podcast, available on iTunes and SoundCloud.
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#CHEFLIFE
SEVEN BADASS WOMEN TALK ABOUT THEIR KITCHENS Virginia Scharff, Moderator and Introduction · Briana Olson, Transcription Photos by Stacey M. Adams
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Top left, clockwise: Marie Yniguez, Eliza Esparza, Jen Doughty, Nelle Bauer, Noela Figueroa, Carrie Eagle, Cristina Martinez, and Cherie Montoya.
It's that bond that women create in the kitchen. They're not just employees; you grow together, you move together, it's this cohesive family, this awesome dynamic that women bring. It kind of rocks the boat; people have to get their brains completely rewired. But once it happens, it's like, "Yes!" Rosé Granita
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Note from Candolin Cook: At the height of the #MeToo groundswell, edible gathered eight incredible chefs together for a discussion, led by distinguished professor of history Virginia Scharff, about the challenges and opportunities of being a woman in a male-dominated field. I love that this piece is a celebration of their talents and tenacity; and the event was as inspiring to witness as it is to read.
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n a balmy April afternoon, I sat down at Farm & Table in Albuquerque’s North Valley with a group of some the most accomplished chefs in New Mexico. We discussed a wide range of topics, from leadership skills to New Mexico’s food scene to what the #MeToo movement means for the restaurant business. Though their personalities, training, experience, and opinions vary widely, they share the thoughtfulness, professionalism, and drive for excellence that produces great food and memorable hospitality. As it happens, they are all women with a keen understanding of the challenges for success in the macho, buccaneering culture that is today’s #cheflife. They see what women bring to restaurant kitchens, even as they prefer to be known simply as “chefs,” cooking soulful food you’ll want to eat. —Virginia Scharff VIRGINIA SCHARFF, Distinguished Professor of History, University of New Mexico
CHERIE MONTOYA, Owner of Farm & Table in Albuquerque CARRIE EAGLE, Chef at Farm & Table in Albuquerque
ELIZA ESPARZA, Sous Chef at Farina Pizzeria in Albuquerque JEN DOUGHTY, Chef at the Palace Restaurant and Saloon in Santa Fe
NOELA FIGUEROA, Chef/owner of Bodega Prime in Santa Fe CRISTINA MARTINEZ, Chef at El Monte Sagrado in Taos MARIE YNIGUEZ, Chef/owner of Slow Roasted Bocadillos in Albuquerque NELLE BAUER, Co-owner and co-chef at Frenchish in Albuquerque VIRGINIA: What's your first food memory? NOELA: I cooked a scrambled egg. I think I was four because I pulled a chair up to the stove, and my mother snapped a picture of me, and I look horrified that she'd discovered me. MARIE: I was gonna say chorizo and eggs. My mom worked constantly so it was me and my sister and my brother. My sister used to make us flautas, tacos, just normal New Mexico cooking. . . . Or my mom and my grandma in the kitchen, making tortillas— CRISTINA: My grandma always had a stack of tortillas. Beans and chile going all the time, for anyone who dropped by. JEN: My first time eating real food—I grew up in a military family, so we had all this commissary-style food—but eating something for real was cabbage and sausage. But I'd say the most formative was
coming to New Mexico at seventeen, and the food drew me . . . and the culture and atmosphere that comes with the food. ELIZA: I would say red chile enchiladas; I even have a burn from trying to help my mom fry the tortillas. I recall just sitting on the stool, watching her. Making red chile took awhile so we'd hang out, talking. That's the first time I saw the love you put into food. CRISTINA: That's what's awesome—from the female perspective of cooking, it's so emotional. My grandma put love in, and my mom put love in; it's like the best part of having kids, for them, was the feeding time. VIRGINIA: It's interesting how you're talking about emotions, saying cooking is love, yet every one of you runs a business in the toughest business I know about. How do you find the will to persist? MARIE: It's a love-hate relationship. If you're lucky you've got friends and family who push you to keep going. And then you have those people that doubt you, that think you can't do this, and it's gonna push you, and you prove them wrong. And that's one thing for me that's a force. Being lesbian, being brown, being a single mom . . . it's been hard. When I read articles about people like you guys, I'm like, damn! NOELA: I've worked under male chefs in male kitchens for the majority of my career. Very rigorous environments where people would holler. The man I apprenticed under would wave knives and make people cry. . . . It was important to rewrite that dynamic in my own business because it was so heartbreaking and it would cause me to question why I was in this industry. Part of what keeps me going is that I feel I have a responsibility to my crew—it is a team. MARIE: You're not just feeding yourself, you're feeding all their families. JEN: And I think there's a need for the women superpowers to start taking control, putting our voices out in the community. We need more family atmosphere. CRISTINA: It's that bond that women create in the kitchen. They're not just employees; you grow together, you move together, it's this cohesive family, this awesome dynamic that women bring. It kind of rocks the boat; people have to get their brains completely rewired. But once it happens, it's like, "Yes!" CARRIE: And that's a huge part of our responsibility—passing along this sense of, yeah, we can be badasses, we can be the best crew around, and we can turn out the most beautiful plates, but it doesn't have to be a cutthroat environment. And the guys on our core crew— we tease them, it's the kitchen of brotherly love. WWW.EDIBLENM.COM
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Left to right: Eliza Esparza and Virginia Scharff.
VIRGINIA: What I'm hearing is there's a different style of leadership when women are in the lead. At the same time, I know my mom had a look she would give me when I was out of line. She didn't have to say a word, she'd just give me the look, and that was all I needed. So how do you lead while cultivating that more sensitive, egalitarian, family-driven, caring culture? NOELA: We have an open kitchen. NELLE: You can't throw things, you can't yell. NOELA: There's no reason for that kind of talk, and there is no discord between the front and back of the house because there's nowhere to hide. And when people get steamed up, I just look at them and say, "Go take a walk." MARIE: You give them the look! You know, you give them that look. CRISTINA: I have always just wanted respect. Don't stop listening because I'm a woman. It's our duty as chefs, and as women chefs, to teach. Teach people, teach cultures, teach respect. CARRIE: When you're in those moments, you know we talked about the guys with the sharpest knives—we have to rise to the occasion and show every male in our kitchens. And there is an element, of, yeah, I am a woman, and, yeah, I'm gonna push that much harder to drive the point home. But the skill has to be there. 56
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ELIZA: When I graduated culinary school, my friend got me a job at Farina, and the sous chef at the time, he was—he's my good friend now—but he's the one who I'd say lit the fire for me because he would pick at everything I did. In a way, he motivated me to grow a shell; when I first started, I was very timid and quiet, I was scared, and it was a lot of males, and the oven guy was known as the a-hole, and they were all kind of mean, and I'd like to give them credit. To a certain extent, they pushed me to rise up. JEN: And that's where I appreciate all those guys who talked the smack, who pushed and poked, until I was like, you know what, I'm just gonna start working circles around you. I think that's what makes us all better leaders. NOELA: I also think it's important—I know what I can do, what I'm capable of, as does my crew, but if I don't know something, I think it's okay to say, “I don't know, but I'm gonna find out” or “What do you know about that?” MARIE: I've had the guy with the sharpest knife in the kitchen and everything, and I'll say, okay, you do it your way and I'll do it my way, and we'll see which one comes out better. That's how you learn. I still learn every single day. I have an all-girl crew. We have one girl . . . [to Eliza] she's like you were, she's afraid to get her voice across because she doesn't want to be the mean one. CRISTINA: It takes time.
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CARRIE: It's that dance, that little gender dance . . . she's got to find her strength. JEN: I loved breaking that stigma as a line cook. I would not allow the guys to push me around, and I think that's how I got a lot of great gigs, with a lot of great chefs. I see a lot of young chefs, even men, they're intimidated—I'm like, no, you've got to be confident if you want thick skin in this. CRISTINA: I think the vulnerability, though, is something that's beautiful too. MARIE: You've got to be able to talk to each other. If somebody's going down on your time, on your line, they better say, “hey, I'm going down, come help me.” That's a problem with a lot of the egos that go around in the kitchen, they're like, “I can do this.” No—bro, you need help. NOELA: I always ask—and this is not typical from the male chefs I've experienced—but I ask, what do you need from me? How can we make this so that, when you're in the weeds, you can call me? MARIE: Sometimes you just gotta let ‘em go down. You let ‘em go down so you can say, okay, what did you do wrong.
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NELLE: It doesn't have to be a “what did you learn from this?” It can be me telling them, this is what happened, and then this happened, and this is what you needed to do, but you didn't, so this happened, and this was the bonfire. Because when you're in the middle of the weeds, you can't see anything. VIRGINIA: We have such a close food community in this state. How might working in New Mexico be different from other places you've worked? What does it mean to be here? JEN: Organization. I cooked in Oregon for a while, and the farm-to-table organization was incredible. Here I've found it harder to bridge that gap. It's easier for the public, but it's harder for a restaurant. [For example,] depending on that person to deliver your lamb every Tuesday.
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CARRIE: I think Albuquerque, our local farmers, everyone who participates in that Downtown Growers’ Market, they have dinners, they work together, they try to communicate so that not all six farms I'm ordering from in June have just braising greens. There's a greater collaborative effort coming from our small farmers, and it's getting better every single season. NOELA: We're doing that, with Beneficial [Farms CSA]. They're doing a dinner in a couple weeks, with industry professionals and farmers, because they cull from all over the state, and it's to have that conversation, how are we gonna plan for the coming season? CRISTINA: Albuquerque is amazing—everyone's connected in some way, and it's all kind of through food, and that's a beautiful part of the culture. In Taos, and it's not that far away, but it's like another world. Moving away made me gain appreciation for everyone that's impacting what's happening here.
Left to right: Noela Figueroa and Jen Doughty.
VIRGINIA: Eliza, you came out of CNM's culinary program, which is, I think, expanding. Is that making an impact, locally? CARRIE: We sat on a panel where we opened a dialogue on how do we get our students into your restaurant. A big issue is that if you have Cheddars offering eighteen dollars an hour because you have a culinary degree, that's not an applicant I can even look at. NOELA: I did an apprenticeship, and I worked and worked and worked, and I didn't go to culinary school. And I would get these kids out of a nine-month culinary school, and they were like, I'm a chef, and I'd say, actually, you're gonna be my plater. I felt sometimes the culinary programs were instilling ideas about what their career was going to be like without giving them the opportunity to hone their skills and prove themselves. JEN: When I have someone that's all fancy out of culinary school, I'm like, you're starting on dish, minimum wage. To humble them a little bit. That's how I started; in high school, I was a dishwasher. MARIE: Parents aren't teaching their kids how to go to work anymore; nobody's out there pulling weeds anymore. In culinary school, that's what they need to teach them, is this is how you work. ELIZA: I appreciated culinary school. I learned from the people I was with. They were like, I'm gonna graduate, I'm gonna be on the Food Network, I'm gonna be a star, and I was kinda like, I don't
think so. But I did get to network, I did get to meet some people working in the industry, and I got to learn from them. But I think the media, stardom, #cheflife, has a lot to do with kids graduating and not knowing that you have to work for some pretty crappy money, and go home achy, and not have a life, in order to be the #cheflife. JEN: I did culinary school as a woman cook, because I was having issues where I'd go in kitchens, and they'd put me on pastry. Oh, you're a chick, so you're gonna do pastry. But it got my foot in some doors, having that piece of paper and that self-discipline. CRISTINA: I went to Le Cordon Bleu and every day was a struggle with male instructors grading me lower just based off my being a female. That was the start of, wow, this is what I'm getting into, and it's too late, because I already signed that loan, so I'm gonna finish. But CNM offers an inexpensive program. They have beautiful facilities and great instructors. The only thing is they have these six-foot tables, and they have their own mixer‌ JEN: This is not reality. CRISTINA: You're gonna get used to duct tape, when you're a real chef. VIRGINIA: The biggest news in the business is all the bad behavior on the part of some of the celebrity chefs. How do you feel about this [#MeToo] moment? How do you advance WWW.EDIBLENM.COM
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Left to right: Cristina Martinez, Noela Figueroa, Jen Doughty, Eliza Esparza, Virginia Scharff, Carrie Eagle, Nelle Bauer, and Marie Yniguez.
the conversation about creating more power and more creative moments for women in the food business? JEN: Obviously, the cycle is a problem; we need to get clever to break that cycle. CRISTINA: I think it's amazing that people are finally being held responsible for what they've done. In this industry, men have been completely untouchable; you can go around as a man screaming and fondling and sexually harassing your staff, and that's just "the culture." In the real world, men can't go around grabbing women, but they're still doing that in kitchens. I don't think it should ever be forgotten. It should be constantly brought up so it will never happen again—so no matter how rich you are, no matter how many restaurants you have your name on, you will be held responsible. CARRIE: Fostering the sense of community and the collaborative environment we're talking about, and teaching our young men, who work for us—it's as important as bringing along the young female chefs because growing that awareness impacts everyone who interacts with it. NOELA: I used to work with this French, James Beard–award winner. He was big and he would come in and stare right at my breasts and say, “hello, Noela, how are you today,” and I'd say, “Well, Chef, I'm a little tired, but my breasts are fine.” JEN: That's what I mean about being clever . . . you're bringing humor and clarity to the situation. 60
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NELLE: I try to remind our staff that we're in the hospitality industry. To be welcoming and open to our guests—that's our job. If they're treating each other a certain way, it gives me pause, that they would treat our guests that way. We're not slinging something across a counter. You're feeding these people, nourishing them, and their experience has to be welcoming and loving and caring. Yes, we're in a kitchen, but that kitchen is part of a restaurant. VIRGINIA: So, what's next? What are you most interested in learning about food—a style, working with new ingredients, a technique, what's lighting your fire right now? NOELA: Butchery. I loved it right from the first time I started doing it. MARIE: I'm learning noodles right now. I'm in love with the noodle bowl. JEN: I love sauces. All the different moles, chiles . . . that's something [Mark] Miller taught me. He made me study a hundred different chiles before I could touch his sauces. I'm trying to continue to do that. . . . My chile is no joke. CRISTINA: My husband pushes me. He's also a chef, and he's crazy meticulous. His attention to detail, his food, is awe-inspiring to me— we push each other to try new things. CARRIE: We're losing our pastry chef, and I'm looking for someone, but in the interim, I'm looking forward to getting my hands back
WE ARE OPEN! Cherie Montoya, Marie Yniguez, Eliza Esparza, Jen Doughty, Cristina Martinez, Nelle Bauer, Noela Figueroa, and Carrie Eagle.
into making bread every day. On the other side, we end up with a surplus of local produce, and I want to extend our preserving and our pickle program. ELIZA: I'm working on a bar menu for Farina. I'm excited about the farms offering more produce so we can pickle more. I have a place in the walk-in, they call it Eliza's pickle shelf. Also, I bake our bread and mix our pizza dough on the weekends . . . I don't really have time to read, but when I do get time, I'd like to read more about baking. VIRGINIA: Is there anything we haven't talked about that you want to talk about? CARRIE: Looking around the table, I feel like everyone's in a strong moment. It feels like we're all in the stream of what makes us happy. CHERIE: I want to give a shout out to other women in the industry—I want to make sure we can remember to link arms. We need to help be that platform and help shore up other women. CRISTINA: I think it's our responsibility. I've been through a lot in this industry. When you start off young as a female, and you want to please everyone, you go through a lot, and I think if you make it out, and you feel stronger, it's your responsibility to share that. This discussion has been edited for brevity and clarity.
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A Hard Bill to Swallow
FARM BILL'S SNAP CUTS WOULD HURT NEW MEXICO By Candolin Cook
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Exchanging a WIC check at the Española Farmers Market. Photo courtesy of the New Mexico Farmers' Marketing Association.
The Farm Bill is one of the country’s most important and expensive pieces of legislation, yet many of us don’t have a clear understanding of what it does. The bill essentially has three main goals: to aid farmers in order to protect our food supply and economy; to protect the environment; and to feed the hungry.
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LATE SUMMER 2018 4VIEW ISSUE 57
Note from Willy Carleton: It is not easy to entice a casual reader to spend several minutes reading about the Farm Bill, but Candolin Cook certainly makes it seem otherwise. Through well-researched, entertaining, and precise prose, Candolin does the crucial but often underrated work of taking a complex and daunting subject feel approachable, understandable, and relevant to the everyday reader.
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n certain ways, Socorro County can be considered New Mexico’s heartland. It is in the center of the state, about fifty miles south of Albuquerque hugging I-25 and the Rio Grande. Like the majority of New Mexico, its communities are rural, with plenty of country charm exhibited at local events—rodeos, farmers markets, 4-H auctions. Well over one million acres of farmland are set aside for cattle, alfalfa, chile, wheat, corn, and other crops that feed bellies across the country. With such a strong agricultural identity, Socorro County residents should be paying close attention to ongoing ag policy debates in Congress over the new Farm Bill, which is set to replace the current bill when it expires in September. However, agricultural policy isn’t all they should be concerned about. Despite being surrounded by food production, twenty-two percent of Socorro’s population faces food insecurity and relies on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—a program that has been paid for by the Farm Bill, but is now in jeopardy. The Farm Bill is one of the country’s most important and expensive pieces of legislation, yet many of us don’t have a clear understanding of what it does. The bill essentially has three main goals: to aid farmers in order to protect our food supply and economy; to protect the environment; and to feed the hungry. The nutrition component dwarfs the others, with eighty percent of the Farm Bill’s $430 billion five-year budget going toward SNAP and other nutrition programs. The Farm Bill originated during the Great Depression and Dust Bowl with the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which helped stabilize crop prices and feed the poor. Over the years the Farm Bill has changed in size and scope: the Food Stamp Program was folded into the Farm Bill in 1977; Congress began including conservation measures in the 1980s; and in the 1990s and 2000s provisions for a greater focus on tribal and other underserved communities led to funding for land grant colleges, technical assistance, and outreach to help ensure the sustainability of the farms and the people who work the land. Every five years the Farm Bill expires and must be updated, debated, and passed through Congress. Both the Senate and House must draft and pass their own versions of the bill, then work together to reconcile the two before sending it to the president for signature. Historically, the bill has been a relatively bipartisan effort, with Republicans and Democrats compromising on issues such as farm subsidies, crop insurance, natural resource conservation, rural development, trade, energy, labor safety, and nutrition programs. This year, as with the last Farm Bill in 2014, partisan debate over SNAP spending has made the bill more divisive. On June 21, the House narrowly passed its Republican-led version of the 2018 Farm Bill, 213–211. All House Democrats and twenty
Republicans voted against the bill, and New Mexico Congressman and gubernatorial candidate Steve Pearce (R-NM) voted in favor. If enacted, the House bill would cut SNAP spending by an estimated $20 billion over the next decade, largely by limiting eligibility through stricter work requirements. Some one to two million people would be forced out of the program. About $8 billion of those savings would go toward work training programs and administrative costs. While House Republicans and President Trump claim the restrictions will lead to greater self-sufficiency, opponents point to research that suggests these short-term training programs have proven ineffective in helping the unemployed find work, and believe long-term solutions to unemployment are more likely to be found through training in high-demand sectors and access to affordable education, child care, and transportation. Under the existing 2014 Farm Bill, able-bodied adults without dependents (ABAWDs) between the ages of eighteen and forty-nine are already required to work part time or participate in a work-training program to receive food stamps, and must agree to accept a job if offered. Otherwise they will lose benefits after three months. The 2018 House bill will raise the maximum age to fifty-nine, with exceptions for pregnant women, caretakers of children under six, or persons with disabilities. (Critics argue the definition of those considered disabled is too narrow, often not including individuals with some mental illnesses, such as veterans suffering from undiagnosed PTSD.) New stipulations will punish anyone who fails to comply with the work requirements by dropping their coverage for one year for the first infraction, and three years for each subsequent violation. The House proposals would also drastically cut school free-lunch programs and remove waivers that currently allow states facing high unemployment rates to avoid federal penalties for noncompliance. New Mexico has the second-highest unemployment rate in the nation, doubling and tripling the national average in some rural counties. Our state is the third-highest food stamp user per capita. Forty-two million Americans use SNAP to buy groceries, including about 450,000 New Mexicans. Despite persistent misperceptions depicting food stamp users as “moochers” and “welfare queens,” the vast majority locally and nationally are elderly, disabled, or are children (forty percent of our state’s young children recieve SNAP). Despite the rhetoric one often hears, only seven percent of beneficiaries fall into the ABAWD category. About half of SNAP users come from working families. Maria Griego of the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty (NMCLP) explains: “For hundreds of thousands of New Mexicans, work does not itself guarantee steady or sufficient income to provide for families. SNAP helps one in seven workers in New WWW.EDIBLENM.COM
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Photo courtesy of the New Mexico Farmers' Marketing Association.
Mexico [who] turn to SNAP to supplement low and fluctuating pay and to help their families get by during spells of unemployment.” The average SNAP family in New Mexico uses the assistance for only fourteen months. Critics of the House Farm Bill say rigid twenty-hour-a-week work requirements are unrealistic for states like New Mexico where fulltime and living-wage jobs are difficult to come by. They say by removing the waivers and the state’s power to implement its own work and work-training criteria, many deserving individuals will go hungry. Griego says that “these types of requirements are particularly untenable for Native American nations who have their own governments that know best how to tackle food insecurity and workforce development in their own communities.” Under this plan, an estimated 120,000 New Mexicans could face termination of SNAP, and tens of thousands would see reduced benefits. According to gubernatorial candidate and Representative Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-NM), the new House stipulations and red tape (such as providing a monthly utility bill) would “further destabilize an already disjointed SNAP system in New Mexico.” The Congresswoman adds, “[These] draconian cuts to SNAP create an unfunded mandate [and would] waste $7.6 billion on creating an untested and unchecked workforce bureaucracy at the state level.” After the initial failure of the House Farm Bill in May, Representative Pearce said, “In New Mexico, too many are trapped in poverty, and we owe it to them to help provide a pathway to success and prosperity. The job training and work requirements added would have helped New Mexicans learn the skills needed to succeed 64
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and to lift themselves out of poverty.” After the subsequent passage of the House bill, Krysten Aguilar, Director of Operations and Policy Advocacy of La Semilla Food Center in Anthony, countered, “It is offensive when Pearce assumes that New Mexicans are not already trying to find work and enter job training programs. These [new] programs are not yet in place, and when Pearce brags that 116,800 New Mexicans would qualify for them, what that really means is that 116,800 might lose their benefits if New Mexico is not prepared to accept [them] into job training programs within a few months. Until that infrastructure is in place, it is irresponsible—and arguably cruel—to make people depend on them in order to eat. . . . If the Representative honestly wanted to create a ‘pathway to success and prosperity,’ he would increase access to food, not reduce it, and he would introduce a Healthy Food Financing Initiative for New Mexico.” She adds that Pearce’s support of the “devastating” bill shows that he is “deeply detached from the lives of his constituents.” Indeed, proposed cuts to SNAP funding would hit rural New Mexicans especially hard. In Representative Pearce’s District 2— which encompasses the largely rural southern half of the state including Socorro County—at least 162,393 New Mexicans participate in SNAP, according to the NMCLP. Certain aspects intrinsic to rural areas make it especially hard to comply with work and training mandates. Rural areas have been slower to recover from the 2008 recession and have experienced significant population loss in the last decade, prompting a decline in manufacturing, construction, and service jobs. Work-training programs are also less present in rural areas, requiring residents to travel great distances to participating offices. That travel may prove impossible for some because reliable public transit is nearly
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of “trickle-up” economics is critical in times of economic downturn, as poor households spend their money quickly, injecting it back into the community, as opposed to tax-break dollars given to wealthier Americans who are more likely to put it into savings.
Photo by Carole Topalian.
nonexistent in isolated areas. For Native American SNAP participants living on tribal lands, this may require moving away from family to more urban areas, something Native American food sovereignty lobbyists have likened to Relocation Policy. (Over seventy-five thousand SNAP participants in New Mexico are Native American.) Searching for employment is also greatly hindered by limited internet access. And for rural farm workers, the seasonal nature of agricultural work puts them at greater risk of violating short grace periods. SNAP dollars are also critical to the survival of rural grocery stores, which service populations experiencing higher rates of poverty. In Socorro, for example, there are only two supermarkets, Walmart and the locally-owned John Brooks SuperMart. Dan Smiel, operations manager for John Brooks in Socorro, says that SNAP dollars account for ten to fifteen percent of monthly sales, and they are “very important to all [John Brooks] stores.” He says without SNAP dollars the Socorro location would likely have to let go of five or six of their thirty-five to forty employees. According to the Rural Grocery Store Initiative out of Kansas State University, rural and small town grocers are already disappearing at an alarming rate. This increases shoppers’ travel times and expenditures, limits the amount of fresh foods consumed, and jeopardizes job opportunities. Last year, over $650 million in SNAP benefits was spent at New Mexico food retailers. But SNAP dollars don’t just result in increased food sales, they also allow families to spend more income on nonfood items and services, providing a much-needed economic boon to struggling communities. Studies have repeatedly shown that this type 66
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People often remark that the name Farm Bill is a misnomer because so much of the funding doesn’t directly go to farms. However, nutrition program dollars are good for farmers, too. One example in New Mexico is the SNAP incentive program, Double Up Food Bucks, which is funded through the Farm Bill, as well as the state and other partners. This program, first implemented in 2015, allows individuals to double their SNAP dollars when they spend them on locally grown fruits and vegetables at farmers markets. In surveys conducted by the New Mexico Farmers Market Association (NMFMA), seventy-three percent of local farmers say they have seen an increase in produce sales because of the program and seventy-eight percent of shoppers say they are buying and eating more fruits and vegetables. According to Sarah Lucero of the NMFMA, “SNAP cuts would have a huge economic impact on New Mexico. Every SNAP dollar spent generates $1.70 in economic activity . . . and Double Up Food Bucks doubles any amount of SNAP dollars spent at participating locations on New Mexico grown fruits and veggies—which helps farmers grow their small businesses and keep that extra $1.70 in the local economy.” In addition to forty participating farmers markets, in 2017, nine grocery stores, nine farm stands, and several mobile markets and CSAs also accepted Double Up Bucks. This includes MOGRO, a mobile grocery service that brings fresh produce boxes to food insecure areas such as Socorro. In addition to “struggling families trying to make ends meet,” Aguilar says Representative Pearce’s support of the House bill “shows a complete disregard for the wellbeing of farmers in his district.” Although the House plan has many Americans worried, on June 28 the Senate passed its own version of the 2018 Farm Bill, 86-11, which leaves the 2014 Farm Bill SNAP requirements intact. Though few find their bill perfect, the Senate’s self-proclaimed “bipartisan bill” has received praise from national and New Mexico food security advocates, including the Native Farm Bill Coalition and the NMCLP. Maria Griego says, “The final version of the Senate Farm Bill strengthens SNAP and protects millions of Americans’ access to healthy food.” All of this has set the stage for a showdown between the House and Senate in the coming weeks. By the time this issue goes to print, the two bills may be reconciled—or it is possible congressional debates will carry on past the September 30 deadline, leaving plenty of time for edible readers to contact their local representatives. Griego says, “Instead of trying to cut SNAP, lawmakers should focus on bipartisan legislation that grows income and employment opportunities for all New Mexicans through policies that actually work. We urge Steve Pearce and other lawmakers to stop supporting such damaging legislation and, instead, to strengthen SNAP and ensure families across New Mexico can meet their basic needs.” www.nmpovertylaw.org, www.lasemillafoodcenter.org, www.farmersmarketsnm.org
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Ahead of the Curve ELIZABETH SEBASTIAN DEFIED CONVENTIONS TO DIVERSIFY NORTHERN NEW MEXICO’S PALATE By Willy Carleton · Photos by Stephanie Cameron
Gate to the garden protected by the canyon walls of the Chama River valley.
Mark Kiffin, who worked closely with Sebastian at the Coyote Café, recalled: “When I first met [Elizabeth], I thought, here is a woman with an incredible history.” EARLY WINTER 2018 Carbon sequestration through photosynthesis means that plants also increase soil organic matter. 68
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Note from Stephanie Cameron: The drive away from Elizabeth Sebastian's property through the Chama river valley was harrowing and magnificent as I rounded every curve. While I followed the winding road up and down as the late afternoon sunset made everything glow, I couldn't stop asking myself, "Who is the Elizabeth Sebastian of today? Who will become the next legendary farmer to help revolutionize their local restaurant scene?”
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indows down, we drift out of cell phone service and slowly follow the rippling Chama River upstream through yellow-leaved cottonwoods and rust-red oaks. Ancient amphitheatres and whiteand red-striated cliffs tower on the horizon as a cloud of dust trails us. The immense quiet of the expansive canyon is broken only by the rocks beneath our tires. At the end of the sixteen-mile dirt road we find a small adobe house beside a vibrant garden with the initials “EB” carved into the gate. We’ve arrived at the Gallina Canyon Ranch, the home of Elizabeth Sebastian, formally known as Elizabeth Berry and known to others simply as the Bean Queen of New Mexico, who from this remote haven started one of the region’s most innovative and successful market farms that ran from 1986 to 2001. With a purple streak in her silver hair and a glow in her eye, Sebastian at eighty-one exudes a congenial warmth, a passion for growing vegetables, and an unmistakable fun-loving spirit. Over the course of the afternoon, she casually rattles off stories of immensely profitable seasons, dinners with celebrity chefs, a farm visit from Martha Stewart, and everyday moments of joy in the field that could inspire admiration, respect, and perhaps envy, in any fellow farmer. As a vegetable grower myself, I am eager to glean a few insights into how she got started, what sustained her, and what advice she might offer current growers pursuing a farming career. For Sebastian, the farming life began at age fifty, in 1985, when she introduced herself to her new neighbor in Santa Fe, chef Mark Miller. A California native who had split time between Santa Fe and the remote Gallina Canyon Ranch for several years prior, Sebastian told him about her land and offered to grow vegetables for his new restaurant, Coyote Café. Without access to reliable local produce, Miller seized the opportunity: he gave her a list of vegetables he wanted her to grow and, after she pressed her case, even agreed to pay her five hundred dollars up front. “I was lost,” she reflects of her life before farming, but that initial conversation with Miller, she explains, “changed my life forever.” As with all beginning farmers, the learning curve was steep. “I had no idea how to grow that stuff,” she admits. She met José Duran, originally from Guadalajara, who began to teach her some growing methods and helped her at the farm for eighteen years. The first year was a success. She made five thousand dollars, which she put towards buying a grand piano for the remote ranch. Working closely with several chefs, including Miller, she developed a crop plan that included many rare varieties of vegetables. She contacted Seed Savers Exchange, in Decorah, Iowa, and grew out six hundred varieties of their rare and, in some cases, endangered bean varieties. She ex-
perimented with many other vegetables and at one point planted eighty-two varieties of eggplant. Her formula for success did not emphasize maximum yields (though her yields hardly suffered), but rather maximum diversity and quality. Decades before the local-food craze fully hit the mainstream, she was producing large amounts of high-quality, rare-variety vegetables that local chefs seeking the besttasting ingredients could not otherwise source. The farm grew immensely over fifteen years. At its peak size, she employed fourteen workers, cultivated an additional ten acres in Abiquiu, and every day filled three hundred square feet of refrigerated space on the farm to store her produce. She supplied produce primarily to local restaurants and farmers markets, and once grossed $375,000 in a four-month period. “We were making money like crazy,” she recalls with an almost disbelieving laugh. A key moment in her farming career came in 1994, when she met her husband, Andrew Sebastian. He was twenty-one, she was fifty-nine. Previously married twice, she had “always believed in true love” but had never found it. “And then I met Andrew. He’s the true love of my life.” Working together, the farm grew in both size and profit margin. The success, however, had one drawback. “I never had trouble farming as a woman, and we got along with all our neighbors,” Sebastian recalls, “but the other farmers at the market just hated our guts.” Several approached her clients and tried to undercut her. “The other farmers were so jealous.” Many factors accounted for the farm’s success. Sebastian had an audacious willingness to experiment (“She wasn’t about to be told what couldn’t be grown in New Mexico,” Miller explains), she worked exceedingly hard (“We would be up for forty-eight hours without sleeping,” she recalls), and she did not sacrifice quality for quantity. Yet perhaps most importantly, she managed to enjoy herself as she did it. She has many fond memories of farm merriment, from everyday moments such as playing classical music for her plants to more singular events like hosting farm dinners for local chefs (no spouses allowed!). Often, her enjoyment derived from an irreverence for conventions. Her face especially lights up as she recalls how, because she charged a set price for bags of greens at the farmers market, she and Andrew would don plastic pig noses whenever a customer greedily packed down and over-stuffed their bags with greens. “It shamed them,” explains Andrew with a wry smile. “It was so much fun!” adds Elizabeth. Strong relationships with chefs also proved key to the farm’s success. Sebastian often met with chefs in the winter, seed catalog in hand, and demanded verbal contracts from every chef she worked with. In response to her dedication to providing consistent, highWWW.EDIBLENM.COM
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Top left: Anasazi Glamping Cabin sits high above the canyon floor and overlooks the Rio Gallina. Top right: Ranch Casita rental overlooking garden. Bottom left: Remote casita available for rent. Bottom right: Kale, chard, and other greens grow in the Sebastians' garden.
quality food just as they wanted it, chefs consistently bought large quantities. Some chefs did even more. Mark Miller, for example, not only supported her through his restaurant purchases but also occasionally took her to events such as Meals on Wheels Celebrity Chef Balls in Washington DC, New York, and Los Angeles to meet prominent chefs. Today, Miller keeps in touch and remembers to send her a note every year on her birthday. His appreciation for her work has not diminished after all these years. “The Coyote Café’s success was very dependent on Elizabeth, and her success was dependent on the Coyote Café,” he explains. “She helped us build a monument to the taste and cuisines of Southwest culture.” For Miller, the working relationship between Sebastian and the Coyote Café provided a model that contemporary farmers and chefs have thus far failed to fully maintain. “Her farming legacy is not being kept up,” laments Miller. “When is the last time you saw a farmer with one hundred varieties of beans at the farmers market?” In Miller’s view, however, the main problem is not a lack of good farmers, but a lack of chefs willing to fully commit to their farmers. “We [at Coyote Café] incorporated her into the life of the restaurant,” Miller explains. He worked closely with her in the off-season 70
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to develop a crop plan; he agreed to assume some of the financial risk in case of crop failure; and he cooked her meals in the restaurant to demonstrate how the vegetables tasted at varying stages of their life cycle. For Miller, being a good chef means actively bringing farmers into the discussion “about identity, sense of place and history, and the meaning of food, flavor, and dining in our society.” A strong culinary philosophy, Miller insists, should go much further than simply supporting local farmers when it is easy or convenient; it requires working closely with farmers year-round and bearing some of their risk. Sebastian hung up her farming hat in 2001, much to the distress of many local chefs. “When I started the The Compound I went to [Elizabeth] and said, okay, I'm ready for you,” Mark Kiffin recalls, “And she told me she had retired. I wanted to kill her! Where would I find the best arugula now?” Today, the Sebastians raise fifty head of cattle and run a small cabin rental business at the ranch. From May through October, they rent out two cabins, as well as an extravagant glamping pad, and supply fresh eggs and produce from their half-acre garden for cabin guests. In addition to hundreds of acres of private ranch land and the adjoining wilderness areas, the ranch
anasazi take-out menu Served from 12:00 PM to 7:00 PM Guacamole, Pico de Gallo, and Chips Tortilla Soup Roasted Corn, Asadero Cheese, Tortilla Strips
10 8 pint|12 quart
Romaine Hearts Spicy Caesar Dressing, Shaved Parmesan, Crunchy Breadcrumbs
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Wild Mushroom & Cheese Quesadilla Pico de Gallo
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Spinach Salad Tomatoes, Red Onion, Cucumbers, Bacon, Blue Cheese, Balsamic Vinaigrette
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Green Chile Cheeseburger Bacon, White Cheddar, Chipotle Mayonnaise, Potato Chips
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Anasazi Chicken Cobb Salad Grilled Chicken, Crispy Bacon, Tomato, Avocado, Blue Cheese, Black Beans, Roasted Corn, Egg, Chive, Jalapeno-Buttermilk Dressing
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Chicken BLT Sandwich Chipotle Mayonnaise, Chile Spiked French Fries
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Spinach and Mushroom Enchiladas Rice, Black Beans, Red Chile Sauce
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Chicken Fajitas Roasted Peppers, Onions, Flour Tortillas, Guacamole, Pico de Gallo
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Slow Roasted Scottish Salmon Green Chile Polenta, Wild Mushroom, Spinach Sauté, Salsa Verde
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Lemon-Garlic Roasted Chicken Sautéed Greens, Roasted Fingerling Potatoes, White Gravy
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Prime NY Strip Steak Creamed Spinach, Wild Mushroom, Chile Spiked French Fries
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KIDS MENU Mac N Cheese Hamburger with French Fries
10 12
DESSERTS Cowboy Bread Pudding with Warm Bourbon Sauce Cheesecake with Fresh Berries
10 10
BEVERAGE OPTIONS Canned Soft Drinks / Bottled Water
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Top left to right: Elizabeth and Andrew Sebastian; horno oven overlooking the garden. Below: Road to Sebastian's property.
“What Elizabeth did was amazing,” Miller sums up. “She is exemplary and should be revered.” offers kayaks for the river, a jungle gym and swings for children, and a large stock tank, positioned in an ancient pit-house, that serves as a summer swimming hole. Repeat customers and honeymooners often find a bottle of Champagne waiting in their cabins. The ranch also hosts retreats. Finding a more beautiful canyon to spend a few nights, or a few weeks, seems hard to imagine. Though the long days (and sometimes nights) of producing large amounts of produce are behind her, Sebastian still grows out several varieties of rare beans and her garden brims with well-tended 72
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produce. Visitors’ meals at the ranch thus contain small reminders of an important historical farm. Sebastian’s farming career, now largely unfamiliar to many younger farmers and chefs in the region, helped diversify northern New Mexico’s palate and still provides valuable lessons to the next generation of New Mexico farmers, chefs, and local food advocates. gallinacanyonranch.com
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Cowboy Up! VETERANS FIND A PLACE AT THE TABLE By Candolin Cook · Photos by Stephanie Cameron
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“We believe the creator gave us the horse as a gift of transcendence bridging the spiritual world with physical world,” says Rick Iannucci.
A few hours later, with the enticing smell of braised beef and baked apples in the air, we gather around the table to eat this special dinner. Rick Iannucci removes his cowboy hat and we all join hands as he gives the blessing—something that occurs before every meal at the ranch.
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EARLY WINTER 2018
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Note from Stephanie Cameron: The day Candolin Cook and I spent at Crossed Arrows Ranch with veteran soldiers was a real look into the human spirit—we got a glimpse into a world that we only know from the news and met some incredible people who fight for our freedoms. As the day unfolded from working with horses to cooking with local chefs, I was especially grateful for the opportunity to be a cowboy for a day and meet Rick and Nancy and the special place they created for the rehabilitation of the mind.
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hortly after dawn on a crisp October morning, I find myself partaking in a yoga class on the porch of a rustic bunkhouse just south of Santa Fe. The group’s sun salutations feel especially tranquil thanks to the soft, warm sunlight flooding over us from the east, the sound of water cascading down the rocks of a nearby fountain, and, oddly, the sweet smell of horse manure—a scent ubiquitous here at the Crossed Arrows Ranch. The half dozen participants surrounding me are not the typical Santa Fe yogis, but combat veterans, gathered here from across the country to participate in the Horses For Heroes Cowboy Up! program. This unique nonprofit utilizes horsemanship, ranch work, and other activities to promote healing and camaraderie, and to teach veterans how to incorporate or “restructure” the skills they learned in the military into their everyday lives. Our leader this morning is Maj. John Wojtowicz, a retired Iraq War vet who teaches yoga at a VA in Philadelphia. As he instructs the class to bend into downward dog, Wojtowicz encourages us to only stretch as far as we are comfortable, ever-mindful that this particular group may have chronic injuries preventing certain movements. “Everybody has their aches and pains, even if they’re not deemed ‘combat wounded’,” says Horse For Heroes co-founder and executive director Rick Iannucci, “and those pains aren’t always physical, of course.” Iannucci explains that up to eighty-nine percent of veterans sustain some form of combat trauma, either through physical injury or PTSD; yet many don’t qualify for wounded veteran programs. Iannucci, a former Green Beret and US Marshall, and ordained minister, and his wife Nancy De Santis, a certified riding instructor and gestalt coach with a background in veteran wellness and trauma, founded Horses For Heroes in 2008 because they wanted all veteran and active duty women and men to have an opportunity (free of charge) to “recuperate, recreate, and reintegrate into their communities.”
For a decade, Horses For Heroes has helped vets achieve these goals, in part, by fostering connections. Those connections may be between human and horse or between mind and body, as yoga teaches. It could be through a relationship to the land, or with God; Iannucci built a small chapel on-site and welcomes all faiths. Powerful connections are also established between participants, often through team work, such as cattle drives, or by swapping stories on the porch. This particular week is a special one at Crossed Arrows Ranch because it marks the first retreat that Iannucci and De Santis have designed to specifically center on connection through food—and is part of a new, larger initiative focused on “creative cognizance,” called the Resilient Warrior program.
Each afternoon, a different local chef prepares lunch for the group, then gives a hands-on cooking lesson, culminating in a bountiful dinner prepared by the veterans. “We want to give [our vets] practical and creative tools for their tool kit,” says Iannucci. “Learning some culinary skills so that they can go home and cook for their families and friends is a way for them [to demonstrate] belonging and gratitude.” Today’s chefs are Josh Baum, executive chef and owner of Santa Fe’s The Ranch House, and his sous chef/kitchen manager Rob Smilow. “It's rewarding for us to be able to share what we do and help Horses For Heroes in any way possible,” says Baum. “Rick and Nancy are pretty amazing. They have so much passion for what they are doing, it’s inspiring.” As Baum and Smilow begin prepping lunch, the vets head to the corral to groom, saddle, and practice groundwork exercises with their assigned horses. “Get your gig line straight,” De Santis instructs Kenny Szesnat, meaning to center himself and sit tall in the saddle. Using such military jargon and concepts to communicate is one way the program restructures the vets’ military knowledge and skills for civilian life. While most of the veterans here this week are returning participants, it is the first visit for Szesnat, a police officer from Florida and former Marine. His friend and fellow Marine Chris Mascari, who is about to begin a masters program in wildland biology in Montana, encouraged him to try the Cowboy Up! program—this is Mascari’s fourth visit. Both men are in their late twenties, husbands and fathers, and veterans of the 3/6 Marines known as the “Marjah Marines.” This regiment was part of the coalition deployed to the Taliban-held city of Marjah, Afghanistan, in 2010, as part of Operation Moshtarak. The offensive was the second-largest battle of the war in Afghanistan; its troops experienced considerable casualties and, tragically, they continue to suffer casualties because of deaths by suicide. While suicide prevention is essential to many veterans’ therapy programs, Iannucci tells me that diagnosing and treating those at risk is difficult because not everyone’s experience falls under the clinical definition of PTSD. He instead prefers the term “post-traumatic spiritual dissonance.” While Iannucci has a longer, more nuanced explanation, at its core this term means that a vet is experiencing an internal struggle stemming from military experience that leaves the afflicted feeling “disconnected” in some capacity. Iannucci and De Santis believe working with horses can be one effective way of combating this disconnect. “Breakthroughs don’t happen for everyone in a little white room,” says Iannucci. “It’s not about a horse ride,” says De Santis, “it’s about connecting with another [living creature], learning how to harness your energy, and being present in the moment.” Program volunteer and Army veteran WWW.EDIBLENM.COM
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Top: Kenny Szesnat, Chris Mascari, and John Wojtowicz. Bottom, left: Chris Mascari with Nancy De Santis. Bottom, right: Wojtowicz working his horse.
Brian Ray theorizes why that skill may be helpful to some veterans: “In my experience, if you’re anxious you’re worrying about the future. If you’re angry you’re thinking about the past. But if you’re calm you’re in the present.” Once horse work is done for the day, we head back to the bunkhouse to wash up and eat the cowboy-friendly smoked brisket and rib lunch that Baum and Smilow have prepared. Table talk begins by complimenting the fluffy, sweet cornbread and perfectly seasoned Yukon gold potato salad, and ends in a debate among the veterans over the best and worst MREs (meals ready to eat)—the mac and cheese is OK, the omelettes are disgusting. 76
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After we devour our meal, Baum and Smilow take the vets to the kitchen and walk them through the process of preparing tonight’s English-style braised short ribs, teach them how to safely chop onions and squash for calabacitas (fold those fingers under at the knuckle), and how to make a simple, delicious apple crisp that their kids will go crazy for. “All of these dishes are super approachable,” says Baum. “I want you guys to be able to recreate them at home and not feel intimidated in the kitchen.” The group is full of enthusiasm and questions—why do we add salt to pasta water? and sear the ribs before braising?—as well as gratitude for the chefs. “Everyone likes to say they support the troops,” says Iannucci, “but saying ‘thank you for your service’ is empty without
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Top, left: Josh Baum, chef and owner of The Ranch House, walks veterans through breaking down the meat they will eat for dinner. Top, right: Szesnat and Mascari engaged in the day's cooking session. Bottom, left: Chef Lane Warner of La Fonda instructs on roasting a whole lamb during the last day of a week of hands-on cooking instruction. Bottom, middle: Lunch courtesy of The Ranch House. Bottom, right: Rick Iannucci.
action. The chefs we have assembled here for this training are action guys, the real-deals.” A few hours later, with the enticing smell of braised beef and baked apples in the air, we gather around the table to eat this special dinner. Iannucci removes his cowboy hat and we all join hands as he gives the blessing—something that occurs before every meal at the ranch. The minister later tells me that “food and faith are woven together in every culture and faith tradition. Interestingly, the word faith is used less than three hundred times in the entire Bible, while the verb ‘to eat’ is used more than eight hundred times.” He says that “food, faith, fun, and family” are inextricably linked at his table, and there is a seat for everyone. horsesforheroes.org 78
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From left to right: Rick Iannucci, Brian Ray, John Wojtowicz, Kenny Szesnat, Josh Baum, Rob Smilow, Chris Mascari, and Nancy De Santis.
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Seed Stories SAVING THE ROOTS OF NATIVE TRUTH By Briana Olson · Photos by Douglas Merriam
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EARLY WINTER 2018
4VIEW ISSUE 59
Note from Candolin Cook: This story by Brianna Olson on Roxanne Swentzell’s efforts to reclaim Native foodways and promote food sovereignty is informative, inspiring, and beautifully written. In a time when we have seen such a breakdown in our food supply chain, Swentzell’s message of being connected to and knowledgeable about where all of our food comes from is more pertinent than ever.
W
hen I leave sculptor, seed saver, and permaculturist Roxanne Swentzell's home in Santa Clara Pueblo, my hands are so full that it's hard to open the car door. I'm trying to eat ripe figs picked from the tree that winds in front of the windows at the entryway and a cluster of sweet green grapes from the arbor that shades the patio while I clutch a jar of freshly canned applesauce made from fruit grown in her small orchard. None of these fruits would have been allowed during the Pueblo Food Experience (PFE) Swentzell undertook five years ago—participants limited themselves to eating foods that would have been available to their Pueblo tribes prior to the arrival of Spanish colonizers, and figs and apples, as well as most varieties of domestic grape, came to the Americas on European ships—but everything grown on her one-eighth-acre plot supports the broader mission behind the Pueblo Food Experience: food sovereignty, or, in Swentzell's words, "taking control of your food again.” “Let's make it a food revolution,” she says near the start of Return: Reclaiming Native Foodways for Health and Spirit. A short documentary by Karen Cantor, Return follows Swentzell and five other Native American women leading efforts to revitalize tradition, and health, in their tribal communities. Speaking of what she and other participants in the Pueblo Food Experience learned about Pueblo cultivation and the generational adaptations of crops to the Southwestern landscape and climate, Swentzell asserts, “We are the descendants of the people who figured this out.” This is no insignificant fact—and not just because one of those crops, corn, has become the biggest driver in the agricultural economy of the United States. By reclaiming traditions, these community leaders are reclaiming the value of Indigenous knowledge. As Tlingit nutritionist Desiree Jackson observes later in the film, traditional Native foods were associated with not having money, and thus a source of shame, “because they were something you harvested.” This might have a parallel to the broader twentieth-century shift away from small-scale farming, but for tribes, giving up traditions was not a
“A
choice; it resulted from forced relocation and multi-prong government strategies to enforce cultural assimilation. “Our lands were taken,” says Oglala Sioux nutritionist Kibbe Conti. “Our people were confined to reservations and our health began to suffer.” For Conti, as for the other women featured in the film, it's clear that going back—looking to the wisdom of grandmothers and ancestors—is the way forward. “All the crops have stories,” Swentzell tells me. “They help keep the stories alive.” We're sitting at her table, sipping the herbal tea she offered the moment I set foot inside, and I've asked her about the connection between cultural history and the way humans eat. She picks up a dried cob of blue-black corn and talks about how different the earlier varieties of corn were. Their kernels were spaced farther apart, she explains, and the plants looked more like grass. Culture is a byproduct of food, she says, so reviving the connection between cultural history and food is a byproduct of bringing it back home. The crops, Swentzell says, “are the gifts of my ancestors. It's my responsibility to carry them on.” Seeds passed down through generations carry a people's history, whereas “Walmart grapes don't have any meaning but what the price is.” The Pueblo Food Experience, like the other community work described in Return, was initially inspired by health issues. Processed food has negatively impacted all Americans, leading to a widespread increase in obesity, but it seems to have had a worse impact on Native Americans, who are twice as likely as white Americans to suffer from diabetes. And the fourteen participants in the Pueblo Food Experience achieved dramatic improvements in health—not simply, in Swentzell's view, because they'd switched to a natural, low-fat diet, but because of how these pre-contact, indigenous crops fit the people who had evolved along with them. Crops adapt to climate and soil over time, and Swentzell believes that people do, too; she describes the relationship between Pueblo peoples and crops as “a mutual coexistence for thousands of years.” In contrast, sugar, wheat, and oil—three in-
A people whose identity is bound to the crops it cultivates and the species it hunts is bound to protect the land and waters those species need to thrive. For a farming people, that responsibility extends to the seeds themselves. WWW.EDIBLENM.COM
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Left: Roxanne Swentzell in her kitchen. Right: Pueblo corn.
gredients that, she half-jokes, are found in almost every product you can buy in a store—were unknown to Indigenous peoples prior to colonization. The food list in the Pueblo Food Experience Cookbook includes animals, like rabbit, buffalo, and fish, that are low in fat, and gathered foods, like purslane and dandelion, that are low in sugar content, so participants had to develop strategies to resist grabbing candy bars and bags of chips from the convenience store shelves. For most, Swentzell says, sugar was the greatest challenge. As with any diet, they found that preparation was key: carrying snacks made from foods on the list (Swentzell swore by a trail mix of currants, pumpkin seeds, and piñons); using slow cookers to avoid relying on fast food for dinner after a busy day at work. The group also met for weekly potlucks, where they exchanged strategies—and stories. “Salt was like gold,” Swentzell says, recounting the group's poignant journey to the Estancia salt flats. On the way there, she says, they shared stories about the salt mother who'd been lost to the native peoples of New Mexico. After colonization, Natives forced into slavery were made to mine the flats, truckloads of the salt their cultures had honored were driven south and sold in what is now Mexico, and by the time the Spanish abandoned the salt flats, they'd come to represent sorrow and loss for the Pueblos. Reflecting on this, I recall the words of another 82
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woman featured in Return. “A Muckleshoot person without a plate of salmon,” says community educator Valerie Segrest, “doesn't exist.” While watching the film, I found myself questioning this statement. What if there are no salmon left, I wondered; what happens to the Muckleshoot when all the salmon is too tainted and toxic to eat? But that, of course, is part of the point. A people whose identity is bound to the crops it cultivates and the species it hunts is bound to protect the land and waters those species need to thrive. For a farming people, that responsibility extends to the seeds themselves. “Corn,” says Swentzell, “is a person just like everybody else in the tribe.” Behind her home, a small unlighted cellar contains troves of Puebloan history. Unassuming shelves cradle jars of the corn, beans, and squash seeds honored over many generations. The seed bank itself dates to 1982, when Swentzell started collecting seeds from “the original plants of our people here.” Her first seeds came from the ashes of a vandalized seed bank that burned down in Ohkay Owingeh. Seeds have a shelf life, so she works to keep them viable by growing out different varieties of ancestral crops. At one point, she laughs about trying to save “the last squash” and how heartbreaking it can be to watch people coming home from Walmart with their groceries. “It's lonely,” she says of seedkeeping. “I offer to share and no one comes!” That hasn't kept her from it, though. Over the years, she's developed
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Left: Dried squash. Right: Dried devil’s claw.
her own variety of chile, and through many seasons of selection has cultivated a sweet Hopi Supi corn. A few of its reddish cobs hang outside the seedbank. “The birds are eating it,” she says. This year, she raised half an acre of corn for chicos from this same seed, along with a good crop of squash, in a field owned by the Española Farmers Market. It's here, at the seed, that the distinction between food security and food sovereignty becomes clear. The global grassroots alliance of peasant farmers, La Via Campesina, introduced the term food sovereignty at the 1996 World Food Summit, and while both concepts have evolved since then, the concept of food security remains centered on “enough”: enough food, enough nutrition, enough culturally appropriate ingredients. Food sovereignty, in contrast, is about control. At the moment, three corporations control about fifty percent of the world's seed. Over the past century, three quarters of earth's seed diversity has been lost. Proponents of industrial agriculture and commercial plant breeding argue that their methods—increasing yield and resistance to pests and disease—are essential to ensuring food security, but food sovereignty activists argue that meaningful food security depends on local control of food production. In October, 84
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La Via Campesina called on family farmers and communities around the world to join their global seed campaign by adopting a seed—a challenge Swentzell, with her Supi corn, has already taken on. “Food is so disconnected from us,” she says when I ask how the locavore movement connects to all of this. For the majority of Americans, food production “is just some tractor in Illinois, so the gap is huge.” She sees eating locally as one step toward food sovereignty. Maybe first you start shopping at the co-op, the local store; next, you buy at the farmers market, so “you actually look at a farmer before you buy it”; then maybe you plant seeds in a community garden, harvest carrots, wash them yourself, “taste them right out of the ground.” Those are all good steps, Swentzell says, “but it can go all the way to being sacred again.” “When it comes all the way home,” she says— when you raise a chicken from birth to death, “when you remember a funny story about how it tripped over the water bucket . . . when you have to wait for the tomatoes to ripen—then you don't waste any of it.” I think of her chickens, penned in with the newly purchased goats who are still learning to eat the weeds that they'll turn into fertilizer for her ancestral corn and squash. “That's what we're missing, is the relationship; you appreciate [food you've raised yourself ] in a way
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you can't appreciate a cereal box.” And that's the cultural element, she says; that's when “you realize why we danced for rain. To me, that's the final food sovereignty.” She pauses, then, and adds, “And you understand why that gap is there; no one wants to remember it died, no one wants to kill their favorite pig. But maybe it's time we do remember someone died for it.” These days, Swentzell does not practice a pure form of the pre-contact diet. She sometimes eats things like chicken and grapes and domesticated strawberries that don't figure on the PFE food list, but she grows and gathers as much as she can. She practices a tenet of permaculture that may well have been appropriated from Indigenous peoples: Produce 86
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No Waste. Every spring, she participates in the Ówingeh Táh Pueblos y Semillas Gathering and Seed Exchange. “It's the only thing,” she says, “that honors everyone who lives in this valley.” I think, by everyone, she means not just every ethnic group, but every crop. The corn mothers as well as the farmers, the living as well as the ancestors. And no matter who you are or where you come from, Swentzell believes you can raise your own food and find your way to your own agricultural roots. Don't have enough land? “Tear out your lawn,” she suggests. “Instead of fancy ornamentals, grow fruit trees.” floweringtreepermaculture.net, returndocumentary.com
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The Taste of Clay MICACEOUS POTS OF NORTHERN NEW MEXICO By Marjory Sweet
Felipe Ortega micaceous pot. Photo by Douglas Merriam.
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Note from Candolin Cook: Edible New Mexico always tries to tell stories unique to our region, but this one on micaceous clay pottery, the artists who make it, and the local foods cooked inside couldn’t be more “New Mexico true.” Marjory Sweet convinces me over the course of these pages that not only do I need a micaceous pot but there is really no other vessel to prepare beans in.
I
t’s just after 6pm but it feels like midnight in La Madera. It is completely dark outside, except for the stars and a few strings of holiday lights. It is dim inside Johnny Ortiz’s farmhouse, too. A selection of bowls and cooking pots are laid out, and at first glance, they appear as dark as the winter night. I pick up one bowl, shockingly thin and lightweight for a ceramic piece, and turn it toward the glow of the fire. “Even tap water tastes better in one of these,” I’ve been told. A glittery surface shines in the light. Tiny flecks of what appears to be gold and silver are scattered throughout the matte black exterior. The glitter comes from local mica and the ashen surface from smoke. The optical effect is magical; just a hint of the extraordinary story these pots hold. Ortiz is the creator and chef of Shed, an ongoing dinner series based in La Madera that celebrates foraged and farmed ingredients native to northern New Mexico. The wild plums, honey mesquite, and heirloom white corn are not the only hand-crafted elements of the meal. “When I started Shed, I wanted to make my own ceramics,” Ortiz explains. Initially, this meant porcelain ware, which he learned how to create while living in California. When the dinners found a home in New Mexico, however, he wanted something that resonated with the place. “I’m from Taos Pueblo and we have a tradition of micaceous, pit-fired pottery, so it felt right.” Not only would it be economical for Ortiz to create his own plates and bowls from local materials, it would be an opportunity for him to honor this personally significant cultural practice. Micaceous clay runs through all aspects of Ortiz’s life and work. His cooking pots are micaceous, as are all of his serving dishes. (If you’ve attended a Shed dinner, you’ve eaten on one.) He soaks film in a watery solution of the clay and uses it to photograph his cooking, his animals, and the natural world around him. In the hallway hang gauzy, pinkish window curtains that get their color from a micaceous
“T
dye. His brother, Brandon, also works in micaceous. Even the most unlikely elements of the micaceous practice find purpose in Ortiz’s world. He prepares us a cocktail: mezcal, tonic, and a native threeleaf sumac berry. Instead of ice cubes, frozen rocks of rose quartz chill the drink. “I sifted them out of the clay,” he says of the stones. We later taste the mezcal, Del Maguey Chichicapa, on its own, in a small micaceous sipping cup. It tastes exceptionally floral. I can’t tell if it’s the quality of the mezcal or the clay itself. “It does change flavor pretty considerably,” Ortiz says of the mica-rich pottery. Food has “more depth” and is “more dynamic,” he says. “Acidic things become sweeter,” he adds, which could account for the highly palatable drink. The relationship between the clay and the food or beverage it contains is fundamental to understanding these special pots. It is what makes micaceous equally soulful and practical. “These are living, breathing things. If you pour liquid into it, you can see the water line from the outside,” says Sunshine Lawley, of Pasqual’s gallery in Santa Fe, where they feature micaceous pottery. “It’s not vitrified and it’s not glazed, so all of the flavors are literally traveling throughout the clay,” explains Yolanda Rawlings, who has been working in micaceous for more than ten years and currently teaches it at Santa Fe Community College. Rawlings studied closely with Felipe Ortega, who is widely considered a master of the micaceous tradition. You can’t talk about the legacy of micaceous in New Mexico without mentioning Ortega, a Jicarilla Apache potter, who is widely credited for reviving and popularizing the tradition. When he was a kid, he told his mother he didn’t like the taste of beans. “You will like beans if you eat them from your grandmother’s pot,” she insisted. Unfortunately, this pot was the only one of its kind, and the last remaining village resident who knew how to make these valuable vessels was ninety years old and blind. Ortega went to her immediately, determined to learn the craft. His first five pots broke in the fire, but the sixth one survived.
The relationship between the clay and the food or beverage it contains is fundamental to understanding these special pots. It is what makes micaceous equally soulful and practical. LATE WINTER 2019
4VIEW ISSUE 60
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Micaceous plate created and photographed by Johnny Ortiz.
This small success defined the trajectory of his life. Ortega devoted himself to the micaceous tradition and shared that knowledge with locals and the world. He became a kind of micaceous missionary. “He shipped five hundred pounds of clay to Switzerland for a workshop,” says Katherine Kagel, the owner of Pasqual’s and an early, enthusiastic champion of Ortega’s work. She still recalls the taste of her first meal cooked in micaceous. It was local lamb, stewed in one of Ortega’s own pots, and the experience was life-changing. Her kitchen is now fully stocked in micaceous, as is her gallery. Ortega, who passed away last year, was an artist and a teacher, but above all he was a cook. Eating and gathering were central to his teaching career and he was constantly hosting groups at his studio in La Madera. “It wouldn’t be out of place for him to feed one hundred people . . . enchiladas, beans, rice, posole,” recalls Rawlings. “Turkey baked in a huge micaceous pots, in the horno. My favorite were his handmade corn tortillas.” She says, “The reason I was most drawn to micaceous was for the community. And I’ve tried to keep up Felipe’s legacy of building community around micaceous.” Evidence of micaceous clay pottery dates back to at least AD 1300 in New Mexico. Mica-rich deposits are commonly found in volcanic, high-elevation regions such as the northern Rio Grande area. The tradition is most closely associated with the Taos and Picuris pueblos, but it was also used by the Jicarilla Apaches and other Native communities. Though in recent decades it has gained recognition as an art object, and contemporary Native artists are now working in micaceous, it is still predominantly considered a utilitarian craft. Techni90
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cally, all micaceous pots are cooking pots, so you could use that ten thousand dollar gallery piece for making beans. Clay cooking is an ancient custom worldwide, but the mica-rich earth is uniquely well-suited to the task. Mica is extremely durable, conducts heat very evenly, and holds heat long after it’s been removed from the flame. It acts more like a little clay oven than a sauce pot. You can cook your beans or adovada over an open flame and then serve them at the table from the same, still-warm pot. For many home cooks in New Mexico, micaceous pots are synonymous with beloved, regional dishes. “Green chile stew, pinto beans,” says Rawlings. “Anything that relies on a slow cooking process.” Now, many pots even come with a lid that conveniently doubles as a tortilla warmer at the table. (Traditionally, the curve of the pot was designed to control liquid in a way that made a lid unnecessary.) They work just as well, though, for a Thai curry or Bolognese ragù. Ortiz hands me a shallow, heavy micaceous casserole that he likes for slow-roasting chickens. The micaceous bean pot, in the style of Felipe Ortega, remains the quintessential example: wide, open neck, curving into a rounded set of “shoulders,” then tapering to a base. Typically, they are a glittery burnt orange color with a few smoky marks, “fire clouds” as they are called. “It’s not that you can’t find micaceous other places,” Rawlings says, “but it’s prevalent here and it has a history.” She hands me a pot from her shelf, saying, “I mean, it’s literally from the Land of Enchantment!” Unlike a lot of traditional Pueblo pottery, micaceous pots are not decorated with painted designs. Even the most elaborate pieces find their
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Yolanda Rawlings micaceous pottery. Photos by Stephanie Cameron.
beauty solely in form, smoke marks, and the texture and appearance of the mica-abundant clay. These utilitarian pieces become imprinted with the marks of life in a home kitchen. Oil stains, fire scorch, and the small chips along a paper thin edge all become part of each pot’s story. Most modern kitchen tools are designed to be used, dirtied, and then thoroughly cleaned to look new again, but you couldn’t put a micaceous pot in the dishwasher even if you wanted to. Perhaps because they are so rigorously hand-made (the clay is hand harvested and the pots are hand built, never wheel thrown) and culturally symbolic, micaceous pots seem to inspire the kind of appreciation and intimacy one might feel toward a family heirloom. Rawlings seems to know each of her micaceous pieces intimately and points out that her chai pot, for example, “was originally my first bean pot.” She says, “I always say if you can afford it, you should have one for sweet and one for savory. Certain pots I gravitate to because I’ve had success cooking in them before. Do they have a memory? Some people believe they do. I’m not sure it can be proven . . . but it’s nice to think that way, right?” 92
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Ortiz describes his micaceous process the same way a farmer might describe a season in the field. “In the spring, I dig the clay. In the winter, I process it and build as much as I can when I can’t farm or forage. I fire in the spring when it’s warm and the pit is dry.” There is a strong kinship between micaceous pottery and the natural world. Rawlings also resonates with the agricultural-like spirit of the work. “I really believe in all the ceremony around it because I have that connection to nature.” Her cycle of work echoes Ortiz’s. “We harvest clay in the warmer months, once the earth has thawed. We only take what we need, maybe one truck-bed’s load.” Then begins the laborious process of mixing, sifting, and kneading the clay. Each artist approaches these steps somewhat differently, but the end result is a pliable clay, free of impurities, tempered by some quantity of mica. “The clay is eighty percent clay and twenty percent mica, and the slip [a slurry of clay that takes the place of a glaze in micaceous work] is the reverse, eighty percent mica and twenty percent clay,” Rawlings explains. She begins each pot by patting out a flat even circle of clay, handling it like dough. “We start with a ‘tortilla,’” she says affectionately. She builds the pot from the base up with coils of
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Micaceous pottery created and photographed by Johnny Ortiz.
clay that are stacked and then smoothed. “Whenever I’m coiling I give thanks to the four directions, the spirit of the clay, and whatever my intentions are on that particular day,” she says. “That’s my commitment to Felipe. He was very concerned that the craft was going to go away, because it almost did.” Traditionally, micaceous work is always pit-fired, but for consistency and ease, some artists choose to fire in a kiln. Different firing techniques produce a different appearance on the exterior. “You develop a relationship with Clay Mother. And that’s really what Felipe taught us. She was going to teach us about ourselves more than he ever could. And more than we ever could.” Micaceous pottery is always fired at a low temperature, so the clay remains porous and intermingles with its contents in a way that just isn’t possible in most cookware. It’s like the clay itself becomes another ingredient in whatever dish you’re preparing. “When you’re using metal to cook, the transfer of heat is rapid and it’s shocking to your food, whereas when you’re cooking with micaceous clay, it’s more of a slow, even heat. It lasts longer and it retains more flavor,” says Rawl94
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ings. Ask anyone who is familiar with micaceous cooking and the first thing they will tell you is that everything tastes better cooked in mica. The clay itself is alkaline and much of our food is acidic, so when the two combine, it’s possible that we experience a perfectly balanced flavor note. Another theory claims the alkalinity of the clay, mixed with the acidity of the mica itself, is what creates the enhanced flavor. Whatever the exact science may be, there is little doubt about its effect on food. “Many people believe that there is a sweeter taste from the clay. I just think it draws out flavor . . . and yes, the vessels are going to acquire a taste. Sometimes I will make cups without the slip, just so [the drink] can travel faster into the earthen clay,” Rawlings tells me. “Felipe used to have one pot just for beans and another for the tomato sauce—the clay really evened out the acidity.” Then again, the flavor might simply be a byproduct of the emotional experience of eating from a micaceous pot. “It just makes sense,” says Rawlings. “Your food comes from this earth, you should eat it out of something that also comes from the earth. It completes that cycle.”
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Corn, Soil, Tomorrow CULTIVATING RESILIENCE WITH THE FLOWER HILL INSTITUTE By Briana Olson · Photos by Stephanie Cameron
Red-walled canyons of the Jemez.
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Note from Willy Carleton: Over the years, Briana Olson has consistently woven evocative descriptions, rich dialogue, and thoughtful insight in her writing to bring life to the important work of local organizations, such as the Flower Hill Institute detailed here. The long-sighted and critical work of agricultural and cultural preservation outlined in this well-told article has only gained new urgency during the current crisis.
“T
he natural thing to do,” says Roger Fragua of Flower Hill Institute, “would be to write about us as thousand-year-old farmers, planting thousand-year-old seeds.”
It would be true, for one, and it would make for a story we can all feel good about—Pueblo farmers raising corn and chile on Pueblo-owned land, proving that, at least in New Mexico, we’ve done something right. It would read like the story of a small but meaningful victory against the machines that can't be beat. “But what we’re doing,” Fragua tells me, “is so much bigger than our pueblos, than New Mexico.” He holds up a hand-drawn map of the US, pointing out the regions and peoples and Indigenous foods represented on Flower Hill’s board of directors, from the whale-hunting, salmon-fishing Makaw of the Northwest to the wild-rice harvesting Oneida of the Great Lakes Region. Partnership is central to Flower Hill’s mission, and the experimental farm we’re going to visit is just one of the nonprofit’s projects. Besides, as Fragua likes to say, what they’re growing in Flower Hill’s 4.5-acre plot on Jemez Pueblo isn’t really corn—it’s soil. Soil: that dynamic network of organic matter, clay, sand, gas, water, microbes, and tiny life forms that over time develops at the surface of the earth. “Earth people came out of the earth. Everything that’s part of the earth is part of you,” says Brophy Toledo, cultural leader, musician, and co-founder, with Fragua, of Flower Hill. One afternoon, Fragua has told me, he and Toledo were together at a sacred site, a place where many paths come together and whose name translates as Flower Hill. There, Toledo said to Fragua, “I am so tired of hearing, and talking,” so when they came down, they decided to act. That was the beginning of the Flower Hill Institute: a native-owned, community directed nonprofit dedicated to cultural preservation and tribal stability. Four years later, as we walk along red rock and sand to a point overlooking
the red-walled canyon behind Fragua’s home, Toledo identifies one medicinal plant after another: there’s cota, for the gut, and the tonic leaves of the aspen tree. I stop at a cluster of small, slender-stalked white flowers, and Toledo touches their thick, partially exposed roots, explaining that the roots can be dried and used for tea. Toledo’s training as a healer began when he was eleven years old. He learned from elders, and now he teaches young people, using the Towa language to root their study of the sciences to their cultural traditions. “The fox taught us how to hunt,” Toledo says as we near the overlook, demonstrating the quiet of the fox walk, cupping a hand to his ear, listening. He is an engaging, charismatic teacher. As we turn to walk back down, he talks about the quiet flight and the night vision of owls, laughingly demonstrates a human attempt to turn his neck as far back as an owl can. Back inside, he shows me a photo of a model fieldhouse, a site situated near a spring that would have served as base camp for summer hunting and agriculture. “Farming is cultural preservation,” Fragua says, often. So, too, is language. En route to the field, we talk about protecting the Towa language. Traditional law prohibits its transcription into writing to prevent exploitation. Towa, with roughly 3,800 Towa speakers alive today, remains important to ceremonies, prayers for clouds, rain, crops, and healthy people. As he steers his truck past rows of native white corn, Fragua recites what sounds like a mantra: “If you don’t have the language, you don’t have the song; if you don’t have the song, you don’t have the dance; if you don’t have the dance, you don’t have the ceremony.” For their science camps, Flower Hill partners with the South-Central Science Climate Center, UNM, and others to bring STEM curriculum to the pueblo. Toledo interprets the science instructors, adding context from Pueblo tradition, language, and history. The idea—in addition to building science skills—is to impress students with knowledge of their own people’s
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What they’re growing in Flower Hill’s 4.5-acre plot on Jemez Pueblo isn’t really corn—it’s soil. Soil: that dynamic network of organic matter, clay, sand, gas, water, microbes, and tiny life forms that over time develops at the surface of the earth. FALL 2019
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Left: Brophy Toledo and Roger Fragua of Flower Hill Institute. Right: Growing soil at Flower Hill farm.
history as caretakers of the land, and to inspire them to take up the calling. “I tell them one of you needs to be a hydrologist,” Toledo explains, “because we’re not taking care of that memory. We need to do more water-shedding.” The farm, too, is a medium meant to inspire young people to conserve tribal knowledge—and to grow their own food. Corn, Fragua has told me, is “the very material and essence that we use to wake up every morning with.” Ceremonial use, he says, is the first priority for heirloom corn grown on Pueblo lands. This is one reason that, when the idea of a ten-tribe food hub was proposed, they found that there was no corn that was not being used. According to Fragua, Jemez Pueblo has gone from 1,400 to 400 irrigated acres. Forty-some miles from the nearest grocery store (not counting the gas station convenience store near the federally-owned recreation area), the pueblo, once characterized by orchards, wheat fields, and sheep, is now one of the stranger offshoots of industrial agriculture: a rural food desert. Part of Fragua’s refrain is well-known: Farming is hard; Walmart is easy. Nationwide, farmers are retiring with no one to take their place. In New Mexico, Fragua says, “We lay claim to the oldest farmers in the country.” It’s almost noon by the time we pile out of the truck, and no one has to ask why a young adult might choose to huddle over a screen in a cool room when they could be out here, risking failure in the hot sun. 98
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And yet. As we talk about methods they’re experimenting with to conserve water and build soil, the beauty of the valley asserts itself. Toledo shares his thrill at having seen a swallowtail and then a monarch, one right after the other, while he was out here a couple days earlier. “I was singing to the plants about butterflies,” he says, gazing over the corn. There’s a mix of manure and humates at the head of each row, so the water runs through, becoming liquid fertilizer on its way to the plants. In one row, oblong mesh bags of the same mixture—“manure teabags,” Fragua calls them—are positioned at three-foot intervals, a test in slowing the water and carrying fertilizer all the way down. Their experiments in sustainable methods are a blend of modern (like the use of humates) and traditional (the burial of fish parts when planting the corn). They’ve adopted no-till practices, known to prevent erosion and slow the decomposition of organic matter, in turn decreasing the release of carbon dioxide. They’re also using cover crops, a seven-seed blend of legumes, which support the soil ecosystem in similar ways, as well as conserving moisture, supporting microorganisms, and helping the nutrient cycle stay healthy. “We’re lay people,” Fragua emphasizes, mentioning a plan to partner with NMSU to do more soil testing. He tells us how the day before, a couple guys were out here, gathering pollen. All parts of the plant are used in ceremonies—a practice the Soil Science Society of America refers to as cultural ecosystem services.
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“We’re cultural preservationists,” Fragua says later, sitting at his kitchen table. He’s concerned about climate change, but he’s also concerned about economic self-sufficiency on tribal lands. Fragua is careful to state that the tribes’ work to protect sacred spaces is not an opposition to energy, “but we don’t want energy in our church, our graveyard, or our water. Energy development doesn’t have to happen at Chaco Canyon.” Flower Hill also hopes to help limit extraction in Bears Ears and Pecos, to which Jemez Pueblo is historically tied (the two pueblos are legally merged) and where Comexico now wants to drill, not far from a mine site that spilled toxic metals into Pecos River in the early 1990s. These, too, might be called cultural ecosystem services—sacred services the earth provides to a people, and that the people then cycle back to the earth. In May, Flower Hill participated in the second annual conference on climate change hosted by the New Mexico Tribal Resilience Action Network (NMTRAN), titled “Climate Rezilience: The Power of Corn.” NMTRAN grew out of the Southwest Water and Climate Change Working Group, of which Flower Hill is a founding member. “Folks started talking from a Pueblo perspective,” Fragua says. “‘When corn dies, we die’ was a phrase that was getting thrown around.” Like the youth camps, NMTRAN brings science and tradition together. “I’d say there’s a pretty widespread understanding [in the pueblos] that the climate is changing,” Fragua says, “and I think more rapidly than we ever expected.” With extended droughts, flooding has worsened, and Jemez is near the sites of two of the largest fires in New Mexico history. “Try irrigating with black water,” Fragua says. “After that fire, all that comes downstream, and our rivers have gone black. . . . How do you irrigate with that?” At one point during our visit, Toledo tells a story about a harvest dance. “Man, it started raining,” he says. “See it go by,” he says he told the younger people, “we can’t bring it back because it’s already passed us.” At the time, I find the lesson a bit cryptic, perhaps meaning something along the lines of carpe diem—seize the day, own your life. But water is more than metaphor. Water must be present to be conserved—a statement of the obvious, yes, and also a fact that is ignored every day by a significant percentage of earth’s human population. This is why Toledo wants to inspire young people to become farmers, to become hydrologists, to feel the soil and know where they come from. “Some people say the youth are our future,” Fragua says, “but I have four children, and I’m never going to look like them again. No,” he says, “the elders are the future. And that puts the responsibility, this burden, and this challenge on us.” It’s an unusual take, one that demands a moment of reflection, a cognitive somersault. “Nobody’s taking land when we go on to the next stage of existence—that’s the general concept,” he says, regarding Pueblo views on land ownership. Nor can new soil simply replace the old. Healthy soil is mature, the result of long years of collaboration. The elders—all elders of all tribes of earth people—will leave the earth for the youth. Its condition will be our legacy. As Fragua says, “We’ve got to act fast.” flowerhill.institute 100
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Top: Cota, aka Indian tea. Bottom: Cornfield at Flower Hill's farm.
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