Spring 2020: Farm-to-Market

IN ITS SECOND YEAR, FARMESILLA EYES CHANGES BIG AND SMALL

By Katie Goetz · Photos by Stephanie Cameron

Shawna Runyan is light on her feet around FARMesilla, the farmto-market store she and her husband TJ opened on the edge of Mesilla in 2018. Today, she’s updating her point-of-sale software to incorporate new items made to order in the onsite kitchen.

Shawna Runyan, owner of FARMesilla in Las Cruces.

FARMesilla just hired a new chef. Becky Windels moved to New Mexico last summer after twenty years in the restaurant and catering business in and around Phoenix. On her first visit to FARMesilla last fall, she bought local pumpkins, pinto beans, and green chile sausage, then brought the resulting dishes in to share with Shawna. The pair started talking about how they might partner, which culminated in Chef Windels’s hiring right around Valentine’s Day—a day made more memorable at FARMesilla this year when a customer proposed to his girlfriend on the patio. She said yes.

Chocolate Bread Pudding French Toast.

Today, Windels brings out what she calls Little Casa Ensalada: a bed of greens topped with pickled red onions grown by Shiloh Produce in Hatch; feta crumbles from Tucumcari Mountain Cheese; pepitas candied with bourbon from nearby Dry Point Distillers; and a vinaigrette featuring FARMesilla’s own Mesilla Sunrise cold-pressed juice of carrot, apple, lime, and ginger.

Little Casa Ensalada with Mesilla Sunrise Vinaigrette.

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