southwest edible colorado Ink on paper since 2010
No. 26
Fa ll 2016
SONNIE GUSTAMANTES:The Art of Shearing The Revolution in the Orchard Chai Muffins Bone Broth Palisade's Migrant Safety Net
CONTENTS 4
SOUTHWEST FARM FRESH KEEPS ON TRUCKING By Becca James
6
8
10
DIRTY CHAI MUFFINS
By Bonni Pacheco
FEELING FINE ON ELDERBERRY ... COUGH SYRUP By Kate Husted Sonora to Palisade, part 1 721 PEACH AVENUE By Sharon Sullivan
14
Sonora to Palisade, part ii ADOLFO JEBISMEA JUPO By Sharon Sullivan
16
SONNIE GUSTAMANTES:
The Art of Shearing By Katie Klingsporn
24
BONE BROTH: NATURE'S MULTI-VITAMIN By Rachel Turiel
28
THE REVOLUTION IN THE ORCHARD By Sarah Syverson
No, it is neither a digitized Pixar character nor an alien. It is a freshly shorn alpaca outside of Sawpit, CO. See the story of this alpaca's barber on page 16. Photo by Rick Scibelli, Jr.
EDITOR'S LETTER
A
t the Ute Coffee Shop in Cortez, Colorado, it is apparent that the regulars don’t exactly trust me. “What magazine?” one says. “This magazine,” I say. I place it on their table. Out of an 8-top of retired farmers, ranchers and oil workers, nobody reaches for it. “I don’t want to be in a magazine,” the steel-jawed rancher with sod busting hands and eyes made red by the four-corners dust says politely but resolutely, refusing to give me his name. “I don’t blame you, but the story here is interesting,” I reply. The Ute Coffee Shop has sat in a football-field-sized dirt lot at the west end of 160 since 1952. It has a truck stop vibe without the semis. Some of the guys I am talking to right now ate hamburgers here when Eisenhower was president. Same guys, same table, although there have been some small reconfigurations over the years which still haven’t been forgiven by this group. “You guys went to high school over there (I point across the street to where the high school used to reside). How does that feel … to know each other that long?” I am wishing I could snatch these wimpy words back as they fall out of my mouth. There is an uncomfortable silence. They can smell city on me (and city, for these boys, means Durango). Lord, in my next life, make me a plumber. “I don’t understand your question,” Jonny Green says. If this were an Italian restaurant (that served a popular ranch dressing made from a secret recipe), and we were in the south end of Boston and not the west end of Cortez, Jonny Green would be the Godfather. In overalls. The Ute has been owned by Donna Bowling more than once, but since 1991 for the latest stint. Donna, who will be 77 this year, still makes the cinnamon rolls and the pies. Her daughter Bonnie Ellis manages the place. She pulled her first shift when she was ten, in the ’70s. Troylene Torres, another daughter, has run the kitchen since she returned home from Montrose 14 years ago. Jenny Martinez has prepped in the kitchen for 14 years. Today she is making frybread. Her son works here in the summer. Justin Lewis has been cooking here full time for 18 years. He started in high school. It’s the only
job he has ever had. His mom, his grandmom and his grandad all worked here, too. And Mary Chico, the now-retired dishwasher, used to drive all the way from Shiprock for 31 years before she went home to take care of her husband. “This place doesn’t change,” says the tattooed Troylene as she prepares a “5-cup salad,” its marshmallows and red grapes catapulting me back to my childhood summers in south Texas and my summertime best friend who I can still see and hear but cannot remember his name. “It must be something about that generation,” Sunny Warren says. Sunny’s mother-in-law is Jenny (the one currently sizzling frybread in the kitchen). Or, it is just something about The Ute Coffee Shop. Sunny has waited tables at the diner for 13 years. “I don’t have friends like that. I have like one. And she is my boss.” While it is quite comforting to consider that Sunny, a native of Cortez, and I may be in the same boat, anecdotal evidence observed by this reporter contradicts Sunny’s self-perception. “It's like that show ‘Happy Days,’ but it is 2016,” Bonnie says. The next night, I am at a cider-tasting party where 20 locals, including vintners, orchardists and artists, gather on a beautiful wrap-around porch on fertile farmland between Mancos and Dolores (read the story on page 28). The moon is one day from full. We sip private reserves noting nuances like cider sommeliers. “Do I taste molasses, or is it caramel?” It was all quite lovely but privately I was a little tortured by the paradox. Where do I fit? I smelled city on myself (with a hint of suburbs). I knew that if I had any hope of ever writing the story of the Ute Coffee Shop, I could never let the Godfather find out that I was sipping small-batch cider. I never did scratch out a story for this issue. I couldn’t sculpt a tangible question from what existed as a yearning. I was asking rooted trees to describe the forest – the same forest I have spent a lifetime frantically running from in search of the next thing. Like the infamous 19th-century children’s fable, I am the tiger chasing the tiger until I turn into butter. Meanwhile, this coffee shop and its people simply use that butter for pancakes. – Rick Scibelli, Jr.
ON THE COVER 'Sonnie (Gustamantes), a reticent man, isn’t keen to chat with a reporter right now; there are 12 animals still to shear. But on a break to fish out a new razor for the clippers (he carries an ammo can filled with razors he hand-sharpens in the sun, along with an oil can reminiscent of the Tin Man’s in “Wizard of Oz”) he reflects for a moment on what it takes to be a good shearer ...' by Katie Klingsporn. See page 16
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Southwest Farm Fresh Co-op Keeps on Trucking By Becca James
I
t’s a sunny Thursday afternoon at the Smiley Building in Durango. People bundle back to their cars, arms dripping with juice-tight tomatoes, impossibly sweet carrots, and blushing lettuces. A CSA pick up, yes, but not your ordinary CSA. This one draws from 19 farms in the local area, providing the greatest diversity possible in a Southwest Colorado CSA. Southwest Farm Fresh Cooperative is the force behind getting this bounty into the hands of hungry locavores. Vegetables may be supplemented with local meats, cheeses, and bakery items, making a trip to the grocery store nearly unnecessary. Southwest Farm Fresh Cooperative brings together the food products of 19 different member farms; distributing this exceptionally fresh, local food to CSA members and wholesale customers alike.
Ole Bye making a delivery in 2013.
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SOUTHWEST COLORADO FALL 2016
The CSA portion of Southwest Farm Fresh is the newest vehicle for dispersing four corners bounty to hungry households. The cooperative focused on wholesale customers for its first four years, servicing restaurants and natural food markets in the region. The co-op knits together the needs of many farmers and is different in structure than typical co-ops. This is a producer’s co-op where the focus is on supporting the farmers through logistical help, group ordering of supplies, and collective marketing. Commonly, co-ops are consumer cooperatives where the focus is squarely on consumer benefit. When it comes to local food production, having a specific entity facilitating the intricacies of orders, deliveries, marketing, and supplies allows the farmers to really focus on food production during our precarious Rocky Mountain growing season thus benefiting the whole community. Ole Bye manages this cooperative with calm conviction and remarkable organization. He thinks that “The concept of autonomous and viable small farms really has the potential to be a bedrock for a new, more just economy.” Bye says “I think that it [food production] is the biggest economic sector in this country and changing even a small part of it has real, lasting benefits to our society. Just to have 19 farms come together in a single co-op is impressive, I think.” The real story here is the burgeoning of a new food economy. We have a very efficient national food system in place that delivers low-cost food reliably, so why do Bye and others believe so deeply in supporting an arguably less-efficient local food system? The answer in Bye’s words is that “The current industrial model does not satisfy many of the values that people are realizing are important. Some of those values include the quality of the food and how it’s produced and who gets paid for that food.” According to Bye, efficiency cannot be the only measure of value in our food system. Our current model has externalized values such as quality, freshness (have you every kept a farmers’ market-fresh cucumber in your fridge for two weeks? It can be done with ease and crispness), taste, nutrition, local economic health, and community. The service farmers render for the community at large by maintaining open spaces and biodiversity is not often considered but may be one of the most enduring reasons to source your food locally. Beyond supporting a wider local food economy, the cooperative exists to buttress farmers as they try to get their products from the soil to plates. Especially for farmers in outlying areas where population is sparse, help getting their produce to markets is invaluable. It can be hard initially for farmers to cut prices to accommodate the service of the cooperative. Experiences from other regions suggest
that, in the end, participating in a group allows farmers to grow more and the distributor to move more thus creating a deeper, healthier, more vibrant food economy that ultimately nourishes the whole community. Linley Dixon, owner of Adobe House Farms and one of the co-op’s members, believes deeply in the value of having a distributor that really cares about the food and the farms. She diverts a large portion of her production to SWFF. By exclusively wholesaling her produce through the co-op, she has lost several restaurant accounts that do not use Southwest Farm Fresh. Telluride chefs have more readily embraced the service the co-op offers and she has gained accounts there. She is committed to the values of this model for local food distribution and therefore hopes that Durango restaurants will follow Telluride’s example and use the cooperative as their supplier. Dixon knows that, “This benefits everybody. More farmers will succeed in the area if we can take the burden of marketing away and they can just focus on growing.” Bye demonstrates the organization’s commitment to its farmers, saying, “I think the most important delivery our truck makes is bringing the money back to our farms.” In the end, Southwest Farm Fresh is working hard to address the viability of producing food on a smaller scale and closer to home with resources that are appropriate to our area. Farmers benefit, restaurants benefit and we the consumers get sun-drenched tomato juice running down our chins and an undeniable sense of place. [
Dirty Chai Muffins (gluten-free and grain-free versions) Text and Image by Bonni Pacheco
W
hat will it be this morning, espresso or chai? Sometimes I cannot decide which one to sip on, having a profound appreciation for both. Thanks to the creativity of baristas and hot beverage connoisseurs, there has been much experimentation combining the two, creating the Dirty Chai. Let’s switch the topic to baked goods. How about a Dirty Chai Muffin? Imagine muffins that contain espresso and spiced chai, with both the bitter attributes of espresso and the spiced chai notes that warm us from the inside out. Good news! Here is a muffin that has it all in gluten-free and grain-free versions.
INGREDIENTS
(GRAIN-FREE)
1 1/2 cups almond flour 1/2 cup coconut flour 1/3 cup brown sugar 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder 3/4 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon ground ginger (or 1 tablespoon fresh ginger)
3/4 teaspoon fresh ground cardamom 3/4 teaspoon cinnamon 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves 2 eggs 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 3/8 cup milk (or half and half) 3/8 cup strong-brewed espresso 1/2 cup coconut oil (or your oil preference)
INGREDIENTS
(ICING)
1 cup powdered sugar 2 teaspoons hot milk (or half and half) 3 teaspoons strong-brewed espresso Fresh or ground nutmeg for garnish
INGREDIENTS
(GLUTEN-FREE)
1 3/4 cups Pamela’s Gluten-Free Pancake & Baking M ix (Note: for an option with gluten, substitute Pamela’s
M ix with all -purpose flour 1:1)
1/2 cup brown sugar 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder 3/4 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon ground ginger (or 1 tablespoon fresh ginger)
3/4 teaspoon fresh ground cardamom 3/4 teaspoon cinnamon 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves 1 egg 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 3/8 cup milk (or half and half) 3/8 cup strong-brewed espresso 1/3 cup coconut oil (or your oil preference)
METHOD Preheat oven to 400°. Grease small muffin tin or line with muffin cups. In a large mixing bowl, mix gluten-free mix, sugar, spices, baking powder and salt. (For grain-free version, mix flours, sugar, spices, baking powder and salt.) Create a well in the center of the dry mixture. Mix egg, milk, vanilla extract, prepared espresso and coconut oil together in a separate bowl. Add egg mixture into the center of the flour mixture. Stir ingredients together until well moistened. The mixture will have lumps in it. Fill muffin tins 2/3 full. Bake for 15-25 minutes or until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. For the icing, combine the brewed espresso and hot milk. Add the powdered sugar slowly, using an electric mixer to combine. Mix for about a minute, or until lumps disappear. Ice muffins when they are still slightly hot. Garnish with dashes of nutmeg. Dip in hot coffee if you wish. Eat up!
southwest edible colorado
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Feeling Fine on Elderberry Wine ... Syrup By Kate Husted
F
all is an ideal time to prepare for cold and flu season. Colds and flus hit rundown, stressed, and weak immune systems. When we get sick, it’s one way our bodies force us to take the downtime we need. If we go through the entire cycle of becoming ill, resting, and recovering, our immune systems come out much stronger for it. Oftentimes, when we feel like we’re coming down with something, we try to kill the invading bacteria or virus with a strong antimicrobial herb like Echinacea. Even if you do “beat” the bug at this point, you haven’t dealt with the underlying cause. You’ve put off resting and rebuilding, and your defenses will still be compromised the next time your immune system meets a challenge. Elderberry is my favorite herb for strengthening the body’s resistance to pathogens before it’s exposed to them. It makes a great tonic for those with chronically weak immune systems, and who get sick often. It has an affinity for the respiratory tract, helping our bodies deal with coughs, croup, asthma, bronchitis, pneumonia, and sinusitis. It’s a strong regulator of viral infections, so it’s helpful in cases of herpes or the flu. Elderberry is a friendly herb that is appropriate for most people in most cases. However, if you have an autoimmune disorder, check with your healthcare professional before indulging. For the not-currently-sick among us, it can be a valuable ally in the
effort to stay that way. Although a native Elder, Sambucus racemosa, grows in the mountains of southwest Colorado, its berries are red and toxic. We can, however, use its flowers for immunostimulation, respiratory complaints, troublesome fevers, and topically for burns and rashes. The black berries of Sambucus nigra are most commonly used in medicine, and can be easily found in herb shops and some health food stores. Elderberry is one of the sweeter tasting medicinal herbs, and turning it into a syrup is a popular way to ingest it. There are probably as many recipes for elderberry syrup as there are herbalists, but most of them contain honey and a decoction, which is a very strong herbal tea. The honey helps to preserve the mixture, though some choose to add alcohol (at least 20%) for increased shelf life. It is delicious and makes a great medicine for children, but it’s contraindicated for those under one year of age, because it contains honey. Once you have made the syrup, you can take it by the tablespoon 1-2 times a day for prevention, or up to 5 times a day for acute illness. Kids can take 1-2 teaspoons, depending on their size.
METHOD
elderberry syrup INGREDIENTS (makes 1 pint. Ounces measured by volume) 6 ounces dried elderberries
12 ounces water
6 ounces raw honey
Place berries and water in a pot on the stove and simmer slowly, until the water volume reduces by half (making 6 ounces). If you pass this point by accident, you can add more water and simmer the mixture some more, until you have the right volume. Now you have made a decoction. Strain the berries through cheesecloth or a metal strainer, squeezing them to get the strong juicy parts. Mix together the decoction and honey. They should be close to equal parts by volume. Store in the refrigerator. It will keep through the winter season. Shake well before taking.
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Sonora to Palisade, Part I
721 Peach Avenue By Sharon Sullivan
Photo by Michelle Ellis
K
aralyn Dorn is known as “the mother of all the farm workers,” in the small western Colorado town of Palisade, just east of Grand Junction. The former Peace Corps volunteer and Spanish-speaking executive director of Child and Migrant Services (CMS) tends to the needs of seasonal farm workers who are far from home and family. The nonprofit organization was founded around a kitchen table in 1954 by the wives of three Palisade farmers. These wives sought to provide basic services like food and clothing for their farm workers at a time when treatment of migrant farm workers in the United States was often dismal. Housed in an old Victorian at 721 Peach Avenue – called the Hospitality Center – CMS has expanded its services over the years and changed its mission somewhat, as more men without their families come than in the past. These days, the center offers English language tutoring, helps farm workers access medical and dental services, and connects workers to other community resources. Dorn accomplishes all this on a shoestring budget with part-time employees – community health worker Richard Maestas and kitchen manager 10 edible
SOUTHWEST COLORADO FALL 2016
and cook Maria Lopez – plus 80 volunteers annually. “We like to think of Child and Migrant Services as a home away from home,” says Dorn. “We speak the language of food. The most important thing we offer now is home-style food – like what they’d get at home – and a warm welcome. We’re getting to know them by offering food and being here to respond to their needs.” Three times a week, authentic Mexican-style meals are served to farm workers in the center’s front room dining area. Typically, 60 to 70 men – and occasionally women and children – come for the free meals after harvesting or packing fruit for 10 hours. If someone wanders in at closing time, Maria Lopez, who has cooked for CMS for the past seven years, finds a way to feed that person, says longtime volunteer Nancy Angle. “We have to take care of each other in this world and feeding people is one of the most fundamental things we can do,” she says. Angle, 79, arrives at noon and begins peeling and scooping out the seeds of six cantaloupes. She places the chunks of fruit in a blender with water and a little sugar. The fruit water, or another cold
Image by Bonni Pacheco Photography
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drink like lemonade or ice water, awaits workers when they arrive. Familiar foods like chicken mole, or tostados with hamburger and potatoes, soups and stews, along with always some kind of salad, are made from scratch using local Food Bank and other community food donations. Meals always include homemade salsa, refried beans and tortillas. “Maria wants to treat the workers as great as possible. It’s important to her that the food be hearty, filling and like their mom’s food,” Dorn says. Peach grower Bruce Talbott, whose grandmother Margaret was one of the founders, says CMS is “very unique” and strives to create a community where workers want to return. CMS serves more than 300 individuals, plus some families, with funding from local businesses, United Way of Mesa County, Colorado foundations, an annual outdoor Latin jazz concert held in Palisade each summer, and the Tamale Project. Maria Frausto, “the other Maria” essential to CMS, volunteers during the summer making tamales for the Tamale Project (proceeds go back to CMS) in between her fruit-packing and housecleaning jobs. It’s a two-day process that begins with buying cornhusks at the “Mexican store” because you get more for less money, then proceeding to the grocery store where she purchases the other ingredients: masa, chili, garlic, chicken, pork, tomatillos, cilantro, jalapenos, mushrooms, carrots, potatoes and zucchinis. At 7:00 the following morning, Frausto begins cooking the meat and preparing the vegetables and salsa. By 11 am, the shredded meat, prepped veggies, and pre-soaked cornhusks are placed on the dining room’s long metal tables, where about 10 volunteers help fill and wrap the cornhusks into 400-plus tamales. Frausto then steams the tamales for two hours. When cooled, they’re bagged and placed in the freezer, ready to be sold. When CMS shuts down its meal program at the end of harvest season, Maria Lopez returns to Mexico for the winter. Maria Frausto, a 32-year-old permanent resident, takes over in the kitchen as a part-time employee making tamales and cooking for occasional special events. She emigrated from Mexico 13 years ago “for a better future, better pay, more work.” Her parents, an aunt and uncle, four sisters, her husband, and a teenage son have all worked in the Palisade orchards at various times. “I know how the workers feel at the end of the day of hard work and what it’s like to get a hot meal,” says Frausto. “That’s why I like to come here. I know how they feel.” [
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Adolfo Yebismea Jupa.
14 edible
SOUTHWEST COLORADO FALL 2016
Photo by Michelle Ellis
Sonora to Palisade, Part II
Adolfo Yebismea Jupa By Sharon Sullivan
O
n a blue-sky August morning, there’s a tinge of fall in the air; the sun has emerged over the flat-topped mountain east of Palisade, casting warm sunlight over Thomas Cameron’s peach orchard. Migrant farm worker Adolfo Yebismea Jupa carefully places peaches in a plastic crate, called a “lug,” which he carries via a canvas harness draped across his shoulders. The distinguished-looking, baseball-loving 46-year-old Mayo Indian is from a village in Sonora, Mexico, and spends a good part of each year working at the Palisade orchard. He wears a blue Yankees baseball cap, and a long-sleeved shirt that protects his arms from the intense itching caused when peach fuzz falls on the skin during harvesting. His black work boots glisten with moisture from walking across the irrigated rows. He and the other half-dozen peach pickers carry ladders from tree to tree, climbing up and down, touching the fruit for ripeness, plucking only the peaches that are ready. There’s an organized randomness to the harvesting. Cameron says he gave up trying to orchestrate where and how they pick. “The workers communicate between themselves,” he says. “They know what needs to be done.” Jupa showed up at Cameron’s Rancho Durazno (Spanish for “peach farm”) a decade ago, after walking across the Arizona desert for 10 days, during which he ran out of water. He risked the journey for the chance to make significantly more money than the $10-$15 per day he earned fishing off Mexico’s gulf coast. Fishing used to be good, says Jupa, speaking in Spanish. “But now, there’s lots of competition; there are big factory ships.” An organic fruit grower for 35 years, Cameron appreciated Jupa’s “cheerfulness and his readiness to jump in anytime of the day.” That’s why, at the end of that first season, he drove Jupa safely back to Mexico to reduce his risk of being apprehended, deported and banned from reentering the United States. “We talked about getting the H2A visa on the drive back,” says Cameron. “When I took him home, I realized how important he was to his village. For our busi-
ness to be dependent on people taking that kind of risk is kind of unconscionable.” Cameron completed the paperwork and costly process that would allow him to hire H2A visa temporary farm workers the next year. Back in Mexico, Jupa traveled to the city of Monterrey to apply for the work visa, and pay his own associated fees so he could legally work in the United States. He leaves by bus each February, making the 36-hour journey with three dozen other men bound for higher wages. In November, Jupa returns to Mexico, where grandmothers, cousins, nephews and nieces gather with his immediate family for a large welcome-home party. At Rancho Durazno, Jupa plants, prunes, weeds, and thins blossoms from the trees. During harvest time, he’s in the fields from 6:30 am to 4:30 pm picking – at various times – peaches, apricots, sweet cherries, nectarines, and plums. “I really like working, it is beautiful work to get good fresh fruit to people,” Jupa says. “It’s also rewarding to be able to help and support my family.” In July, the trailer Jupa lives in on the edge of the orchard is full of family visiting from Mexico. His wife, Asteria, daughters Reina and Marina, son-in-law Luis and a toddler grandson all gather in the living room and kitchen area. Since Jupa’s oldest daughter finished college and became a teacher, their “professional status” has allowed the entire family to obtain tourist visas, allowing them a two-week visit for the last couple of summers. “It was hard with his absence, solving problems, health issues; he wasn’t there to talk to,” says his wife. “The first time he came to the United States, he had to walk and I was afraid.” Marina mentions missed graduations and other family events as her father listens, his eyes slightly downcast. But it was for “something better” she adds. Adolfo smiles. “That worker in the field is not just ‘that worker in the field’,” Cameron says. “His family is in his thoughts constantly – that’s why he’s here.” [
Sonnie Gustamantes shears an alpaca on Hastings Mesa outside of Sawpit, Colorado.
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SOUTHWEST COLORADO FALL 2016
SONNIE GUSTAMANTES: The Art of Shearing By Katie Klingsporn Photos by Rick Scibelli, Jr.
I
t’s the first weekend in June, and the rolling toplands of Hastings Mesa in southwestern Colorado are exploding with the early greens of summer. A meadowlark shatters the sky with its ballad, and the leaves unfurling in a small stand of aspens are chartreuse to the point of lurid. On a small ranch located near the mesa’s lip, 13 alpacas in various shades of white, brown and black stand mewling in a pen, their giant eyes and graceful necks giving them a girlish femininity. Sonnie Gustamantes — a diminutive 78-year-old man in Wranglers who keeps his silver ponytail in place under a rolled-up bandana — and a small crew of helpers sandwich the animals, one by one, on a table-like contraption outside the pen and tie down their limbs. Once an alpaca is still, Gustamantes fires up his heavy-duty steel clippers, the handle of which he says has molded to his hand with five decades of use, and shears its supple coat. Tufts of downy fur peel away from the neck, stomach and back of the animal as Gustamantes works the shears deftly around its body. Smaller fluffs drift through the air to fall lightly on the dirt, and the alpaca shrinks before my eyes. Within minutes, the newly-sheared alpaca, looking comically skinny and self-conscious, is led into a separate paddock on the hillside to graze under the watchful eye of a large white dog named Ivar, while the fiber is swept into garbage bags for sorting, cleaning and eventual sale.
Sonnie Gustamantes and his grandson, Jules 'Little Bear' Slowman, shear on Hastings Mesa.
Gustamantes, a reticent man, isn’t keen to chat with a reporter right now: there are 12 animals still to shear. But on a break to fish out a new razor for the clippers (he carries an ammo can filled with razors he hand-sharpens in the sun, along with an oil can reminiscent of the Tin Man’s in “Wizard of Oz”), he reflects for a moment on what it takes to be a good shearer. “It’s just a feel,” he says, “and it’s all about having the right help.” Later, when every alpaca is naked of its winter coat and the crew has settled in the shade to dine on sandwiches and sodas, Gustamantes sits down to recall a life spent traveling the West shearing animals. It soon becomes clear to me that it takes more than “just a feel.” For Gustamantes, who comes from a line of Apache and Basque men who built their lives around the cycles and herding patterns of stock animals, it’s in the blood. His father was a sheep shearer, as was his grandfather and great-grandfather too. He passed the skill to two sons and four grandsons, two of which — he calls them Fish and Little Bear — work alongside him today. He’s been tending herds since he was a teenager, when he spent summers high up in the Aldasoro ranchlands outside of Telluride. It’s all he’s ever known, and all he’s ever wanted to do. These days, he’s pushing 80 and still maintains a busy spring schedule of what is indisputably hard, dirty and dangerous work. He’s had his fair share of kicks and bites dealing with unruly animals and been spit on plenty. He’s never gotten rich doing it. In recent 18 edible
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years, he’s had two strokes, which has left his speech slurred. And yet, after 64 years of shearing, Gustamantes has no plans to stop. “I’m not going to retire,” Gustamantes, who is exceedingly polite, tells me. “If I retire, ma’am, I’ll be dead within a year.” Gustamantes’ great-grandfather was full-blooded Apache, his great-grandmother Basque. (Family lore has it that he saw her working in a garden, kidnapped her, and made her his wife.) However it went down, they settled in the White Mountains of Arizona, and he sheared sheep. By the time his grandson, Sonnie, was born in 1939 at Roswell, New Mexico, the trade had been passed down through the generations to Sonnie’s father, Richard. Gustamantes grew up with four brothers and two half-sisters in a family that moved to Cortez in 1946. He picked up the trade himself at age 14, in 1953. “I didn’t want to go to school,” he says. “My dad said I had to make a living, so he taught me how to shear.” Two years later, his dad insisted he hire himself out as a shepherd, he says, “so I wouldn’t stay in town and get in trouble, drinking firewater.” Gustamantes herded sheep from Cortez to Aldasoro and spent solitary summers looking after them. Before long, tending and shearing animals was integral to his life. When he served in the Army, from 1962 to 1969, he took his furloughs during the spring so he could shear. And it was on a farm outside of Cortez that he met his wife of 50 years, Priscilla, whose father had hired Gustamantes to shear his sheep.
'Once an alpaca is still, Sonnie fires up his heavy-duty steel clippers, the handle of which he says has molded to his hand with five decades of use, and shears its supple coat.'
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In his heyday, Gustamantes chased work across the country, driving through The Dakotas, up to the Canadian border and across to Nevada in a season, shearing as many as 40,000 head of sheep in 15 days. He would start on February 1 and wouldn’t return home until August, wearing out a pickup truck every two years. The work has slowed down, but Gustamantes is still in demand in the Four Corners.“He does a good job, he’s reliable and he likes doing it,” says Gale Chappel, who has hired Gustamantes to shear his alpacas for about a dozen years — since realizing it was too difficult to do alone. “He makes it look easy, but I know how hard it is. It’s a rough business.” The job seems pretty basic: cut the hair off of an animal. But when you spend a little time with Gustamantes, you see there is a touch, a sense, an intuition to getting a good shear. A shearer must see the contours of an animal — which is often attempting to wriggle away — with his hands while steering a 10-pound vibrating blade. Just holding the shears made my forearm tired. In the way only years of experience can cultivate, Gustamantes makes it look easy. But he insists that a good crew is also necessary. Today, he is accompanied by Fish, born Azril Wright, who is 9, and Little Bear, born Jules Slowman, who is 14. They are on a shearing tour with their grandpa, driving around the West in a Chevrolet Horizon van they camp in, towing Gustamantes’ worktable behind them as they travel from job to job. The job allows the boys to travel, hang out with a man they clearly love, meet people and make a little money. But for Gustamantes, it’s also about something bigger: passing on his legacy. Because, aside from the fact that the work is hard, the hours long, and the travel demanding, the industry is also changing. The shearer is going the way of milkmen. There are fewer ranches these days, Gustamantes says, and the sheep shearer is a diminishing breed. “Not many young people want to learn this trade because it’s hard work,” Gustamantes says. But unlike milk deliveries, shearing isn’t something that can be replaced by technological progress. “There will always be sheep to shear,” he says. “I’m hoping these two, that they’ll be sheep shearers.” Fish, who has large, earnest black eyes, intends to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps. He plans to go into the military before coming home to shear. “So I can keep the family thing going,” he says, adding somberly, “He depends on us.” I tell Gustamantes that I’m out of questions. “OK,” he answers. “Then I’ll go back to work.” [
Jules 'Little Bear' Slowman, 14, and Azril 'Fish' Wright, 9.
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Bone Broth, Nature's Multi-Vitamin By Rachel Turiel
M
aking your first batch of bone broth may conjure images of Wilma Flintstone hacking apart a brontosaurus while a cauldron of water bubbles over the hearth. There on your countertop sits a pile of femur chunks: blood-speckled, packed with creamy marrow, and undeniably reminiscent of someone’s former skeletal frame. You may confront delicately curved ribs, joints rubbery with cartilage, and neck bones stacked pleasingly like a toddler’s puzzle. A thin flap of tendon will hang off a white, slippery bone like a flag on a flagpole and you will nod approvingly, knowing what it will bestow to your own weary connective tissue. Bone broth, like a distant planetary moon, has always been around, though is just now orbiting back into view, thanks to the rising Paleo movement. Before it was the distinct purview of modern Brooklyn bistros (1 cup “hearth broth,” $10 at Brodo), it was every farm wife’s task to boil down animal bones into a rich, nutritious broth. (Chicken soup is not known as “Jewish Penicillin” because of a natural chicken flavoring packet). Uber-nurse Florence Nightingale fed it to convalescents. 12th century physician Maimonides prescribed it for mental disorders, most notably “melancholy.” Lewis and Clark took 193 pounds of dried broth on their westward expedition. And, really, given that every (vertebrate) animal has a skeleton, and that this mineralized tissue contains vital nutrients, creating bone broth seems like the “all of the above” answer to a multiple choice question about health and sustainability. 24 edible
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There is currently a massive movement to bring bones to the people. The people who have joint pain and digestive issues; the people who suffer from food allergies, rheumatoid arthritis and other auto-immune disorders; or simply the people for whom extreme athleticism (not dropping any names, but Kobe Bryant and the entire Los Angeles Lakers team come to mind) is a full-time pursuit. Joe Wheeling manages the beef operation at James Ranch in Durango along with his wife, Jennifer, and in-laws Kay and Dave James. He’s been selling bones for the past five years, but in the last two years they’ve “really taken off.” They even sell a “bone broth package,” with an assortment of knuckle bones (joint bones), marrow bones and soup bones for optimizing nutrition. Before modern bone-mania hit, Steve Suess, food safety coordinator at Sunnyside Meat Processing Plant, says they used to throw many bones “right into the trash.” Cover your ears, Paleo-aficionados! The uptick in culinary bone interest began about 3 to 4 years ago, according to Suess, whose favorite bone broth, incidentally, is a pho (traditional Vietnamese soup) he once made from elk neck and leg bones. If you see an entire animal as a sort of whole multivitamin broken down into distinct parts (liver: Vitamin A; brains: essential fatty acids; heart: coenzyme Q10), the bones, cartilage, tendons, skin and ligaments have their own unique nutritional profile. Within the hard, white bone matrix, minerals like calcium, magnesium, potas-
sium, and phosphorus abound. These are unlocked by adding an acid like vinegar or lemon juice to the water in which the bones simmer for two full days. Yes, 48 hours. While you are mundanely sleeping, texting your daughter’s soccer coach, and ignoring laundry, animal bones could be flinging gelatin, protein, fat, collagen, minerals and other health promoting goodies into a pot of broth on your stove. Here’s the breakdown. The collagen within the bone, tendons and ligaments dissolves into gelatin via heat. Gelatin, jiggly and, well, gelatinous, is full of amino acids. These, plus naturally-occurring glucosamine and chondroitin (remember the hundreds of dollars in supplements you bought for your aging dog’s joints? Yup, found here) provide raw material to rebuild your own connective tissues, those elasticized connections between bone and bone (ligaments) or muscle and bone (tendons), which wear down with use much like the belts in our cars. Gelatin also repairs “leaky gut” or intestinal hyperpermeability, a condition which allows undigested food particles to slip through the gut lining and pass directly into the bloodstream, causing your immune system to mount an attack on your body (thus, the term: autoimmune disorder, believed to be a contributor to food allergies). Dr Michelle Hemingway, a Durango doctor who specializes in chronic and autoimmune disorders, has had “great success” using bone broth for soothing and healing the GI tract. She says “the gut can be affected by antibiotics, stress, surgery, poor nutrition and other issues which create swelling in the space between gut cells, allowing whole proteins into the bloodstream and creating inflammation. The gelatin, minerals and other substances in bone broth are some of the best things I know for healing the gut cells and decreasing inflammation throughout the body.” Out of the 296 pages of the book Nourishing Broth by Sally Fallon Morell and Kaayla P. Daniel, PhD, 139 pages are devoted to scientific studies (and numerous heartwarming anecdotes making copious use of exclamation points: “My husband has virtually cured his sciatic nerve pain with bone broth!”) regarding bone broth’s ability to aid in healing ailments for which most doctors would hand you a sympathetic frown and a prescription. Osteoarthritis gets a whole chapter. Also rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, eczema, mental health, sports and fitness, and digestive disorders. The amino acid glycine found in gelatin has been shown to aid digestion by increasing stomach acid which is necessary to break down food. Interestingly, Fallon believes that despite billions of dollars spent annually on antacids, a lack of stomach acid (common
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as we age) is often the problem, leading to undigested food creeping up the esophagus. Glycine and glutamine (another amino acid in gelatin) have also been shown to improve sleep and calm the nervous system by acting as a precursor to the neurotransmitter GABA. And finally, collagen is known to protect against the effects of sunlight on aging skin, i.e. wrinkles. Drinking bone broth may be preferable to the cosmetic practice of injecting bovine collagen directly into one’s face. Ouch. But, how does it taste, you ask? Do you enjoy the rich, savory taste of chicken soup? Enough said. Beef and wild game broth can range from mild to a stronger, more intense flavor. Nicola St. Mary is a naturopathic doctor in Durango who prescribes bone broth for gut issues, inflammation and athletic injuries. She recommends using broth to cook grains, “I don’t care how you get it in, just get it in,” she insists. St Mary says that on the spectrum of bones, wild game is “most nutritious.” Broth can be a base for your favorite soup (see recipes for Thai Curry and Spicy Moroccan on Edible SW Colorado website). And if you don’t want to mess with bones and their attendant boniness, Wild Mesa Farm in Lewis, Colorado (outside of Cortez), sells broth made from their grass-fed and pasture-raised animals. Move over, Brooklyn. When you complete your first batch of bone broth, it’s a bit like cutting into a layer cake. When cold, the top layer is a cap of solid fat. Next is the gelatin substrata, and below that, a lake of flavorful broth with (if you’ve used bones with meat attached) tender meat chunks lurking at the bottom; each disparate layer representing nutrients Sally Fallon Morell believes you desperately need. Heat it up and it all melts and integrates into a homogenous liquid. As you’re serving broth-based soup, only you need to know about the (somewhat creepy) gelatin layer, though any bone broth fan knows that’s where the medicine lies. After three years of regular bone broth consumption, no one has commented on my radiant hair or skin, but I do have my own heartwarming anecdote. My blurb in Morell’s book might say: After decades of chronic knee pain, I’ve become a regular (albeit awkward) runner! So, channel your inner Wilma and Betty. Organize a turkey carcass drop-off site post-Thanksgiving. Experiment with recipes. Let your elk-hunting and chicken-raising friends know that every bone is sacred. And then, you can share your own heartwarming anecdotes at your next party, amber bone broth flowing from the keg. [
GENERAL BONE BROTH RECIPE Roast bones in oven for 30 minutes at 350F for extra flavor (this step optional). Place bones in soup pot and cover with water plus an extra two inches of water above the bones. Add a few capfuls of apple cider vinegar to extract minerals and let sit for one hour for beef/lamb/elk bones. Thirty minutes for chicken or turkey bones. On stovetop, turn heat to high and once the water is boiling, skim off the brown “scum” that will form on surface of water. Turn heat down to lowest stovetop or crock pot setting. Simmer beef, lamb, elk bones for 48 hours, chicken and turkey for 24 hours, fish for 12. Extract warm bone marrow with a chopstick and leave in broth. Strain warm broth through fine mesh strainer or simply pull out and discard bones. Broth can be stored in fridge for 2-4 weeks. TIPS *Add vegetables and herbs for flavor and nutrition. (Consider saving onion skins and celery and carrot ends/peels for the broth by adding them to a container in the freezer until ready). Vegetables will become very mushy and may need to be pureed or discarded later. *Use broth as a base for soup. Once strained, add vegetables and meat. Broth can also be used to make gravy and sauces or used as a replacement for water when cooking rice or other grains to add more nutrition and flavor. *Simmer dried mushrooms along with bones for flavor and nutrition. *Drink a cup of broth daily before meals to aid digestion. *Consider starting with chicken bone broth, which is considered most digestible and palatable. *If you can, include fish heads, chicken and turkey feet.
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The Revolution in the Orchard By Sarah Syverson Photos by Rick Scibelli, Jr.
Sutcliffe head vintner, Joe Buckel, center, Jesus Castillo, left, and David Culliton get ready to bottle a barrel of aged cider at the McElmo Canyon vineyard.
O
n a balmy Wednesday morning in August, Joe Buckel, Sutcliffe Vineyard’s vintner, and Sam Perry, local orchard wizard, are bottling up their first combined batch of hard cider pressed from the fruit of apple orchards scattered around Montezuma County. Some apples come from Joe’s own backyard trees. Pulling cider from an oak barrel into glass bottles through small clear tubing, the guys work quietly and precisely with co-workers Jesus and David, occasionally cracking jokes while carefully watching cider levels in each vessel. The sound of country music plays in the background. They are doing a secondary fermentation process. Four sets of hands
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touch each cider bottle from barrel to locking the cap in this step of the process, never mind the growing, picking, crushing and first round of fermentation. Perry, who has researched cider tree collections across the country, has 700 newly-grafted apple trees sitting in pots waiting to go into the ground this fall. Cider orchards take 5 to 7 years before they produce any actual fruits. Then there is the harvest, crushing, fermenting, and bottling, which can take an additional year or more. Both Perry and Buckel are clearly in it for the long haul. If there were an Olympic race in patience, they would tie for the gold medal.
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Mancos vintner Daniel MacNeill, left, leads a recent cider-tasting party near Dolores.
The art of cider making has been around since homesteaders first carted their wagons over the mountains headed west in search of new territories. Orchards were one of the first things planted and were generally from seed. Planting from seed meant most of the apples were “spitters,” meaning they tasted terrible when eaten fresh, but rocked as hard cider. And hard cider was an easy way to put up the apple harvest. Wild fermentations could easily be created with the apples on hand and a little sugar or honey. The result was a drink safer than water and certainly more fun to consume. Mid-winter, when things were looking bitter and bleak, homesteaders could roll out a barrel of hard cider and life turned merry and bright in quick order. Unfortunately, Prohibition put a stop to homesteaders’ merry cider making. According to Natasha Geiling’s article in Smithsonian Magazine (November 2014), “During Prohibition, apple trees that produced sour, bitter apples used for cider were often chopped down by FBI agents.” This practice wiped out most American cider orchards and the industry never really recovered. Until now. According to Jeff Schwartz, owner of Big B’s Hard Ciders out of Paonia, Colorado, the first gathering of the US Association of Cider Makers in 2010 hosted a mere 40 people. By 2016, there were well over 1000 in attendance – a quantum leap in the cider industry and a clear indication of where things are headed.
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Dusty Teal of Teal Cider in Dolores, Colorado, has a strong sense that Montezuma County “could be home to the next Napa Valley [of hard cider].” All the vintners that are rising to the surface will readily tell you that the world has not seen cider like what is and will be coming out of Montezuma County and Roaring Fork Valley barrels. There is a special convergence of old, rare apple varieties, a climate that is pre-destined to grow great apples, and award-winning cider makers. Pair that ensemble with a growing foodie culture that appreciates local cider artists and orchardists creating veritable Rembrandts in a bottle and one starts to look at those roadside apple trees in a whole new light. Is that the next Picasso of cider trees? Certainly Sam Perry with his 700 trees gathered from across the nation starts to look like a modern-day Johnny Appleseed. In terms of taste, there’s many a palate that would turn up its nose at the thought of hard cider. Most consumers have only tried sugary mass-produced versions. In truth, a realm of locally-crafted possibilities awaits interested palates from dry to sweet along with a plethora of flavor profiles. It is as varied and diverse as the vintners, orchardists, apple trees and terroir (environmental conditions) that create it. So what are the ingredients to a successful cider? According to Mancos vintner Daniel MacNeill, it’s about being “personally connected to the whole process.” He says, “Only 30% of cider
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The Teal's orchard makers nationally grow their own fruit.” Clearly the Southwest is an exception to that statistic. Most local vintners are co-creating with orchardists, and in some cases are orchardists themselves. That personal relationship results in a passion and intimacy that becomes one of the main ingredients in the cider. MacNeill works with Mancos Valley orchardist Sara Miller to create ciders from her rare and diverse heritage orchard. MacNeill’s Cider House will open in Durango in the late winter/early spring of 2017. Beyond the vital connection to local apple orchards and orchardists, Big B’s owner Jeff Schwartz attributes part of his hard cider success to a focus on creating “American Farmstead Hard Cider” flavor profiles. Instead of trying to mimic English or Spanish styles of hard cider, Schwartz creates hard ciders that are unique to America and the Southwest. That means combining regional apple varieties that are available seasonally with other ingredients such as sour pie cherries, hops, pears or apricots, among other options. The soil and climate of the region influence the flavors, and the fermentation and aging processes continue developing unique profiles. Walk into Big B’s Cider House tasting room and you’ll see a lineup of more than a dozen medals the family has received since they began seriously producing hard ciders 6 years ago with Head Cider Maker Shawn Larson. Over that time, they’ve developed more than eight flavor profiles from a crisp, dry Grizzly Brand Hard Cider aged in used bourbon barrels to their Cherry Daze Cider that is beautifully tart with a soft reveal of cherry tones. If there is a dark underbelly to the art of cider, it is in the multitude of details that can turn a potentially exquisite drink into a bottle of vinegar or a mess of discombobulated flavors. From orchard crop failures, ingredient choices and types of yeasts added at the start to bottling techniques, length of fermentation, oxygen seep-
age, exploding bottles and temperature variations, anything can go wrong at any time. Ask the vintners about these issues and they’ll say that it’s part of the game you play when you sign up to make hard cider. Failure is just another notch on your apple tree of experience; an opportunity to empty the bottles and try again. Martha Teal, vintner for Teal Cider, readily admits that her first batch of cider was unpalatable. But that’s just part of the learning curve. The Teals, along with friend and co-vintner Jared Scott, have been blending hard ciders since 2012 from their orchard stock of heritage tree antiquity varieties that date back as far as the 1700s. Their bottles of High, Rim Rider, and Rockslide Ciders won the prestigious Great Lakes International Cider and Perry Competition bronze medals. And they haven’t even opened for business yet. There’s something spectacularly unique and extraordinary in the burgeoning regional hard cider movement. Beyond the exceptional orchards and terroir that cider makers can pull from and the techniques they use to get from orchard to bottle, a supportive camaraderie among vintners and orchardists about the craft from start to finish is present. Fellow cider makers help each other with storage needs, bottling days, loaning yeast mixtures, and perhaps most importantly, discussing the highs and lows of their cider making experiPhoto by Michelle Ellis ences. Something in that kind of unified action speaks to the quality of the cider. These are people who care about the craft. They want to make a great cider. MacNeill says, “I just make everything with love. That’s what’s going on.” You get the feeling that each individual cider speaks tones to its vintners, orchardists and the orchards themselves. Their moods, dreams and aspirations are bottled up for you to taste and ponder. And that kind of liquid alchemy is priceless. [
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Mesa Verde Country 2000 Years of Local Foods
1870 BEEF:
20 A.D. CORN: Planted by Ancient Puebloans. Today: Ute Mountain Ute Tribe farms 3,000 acres of Bow and Arrow cornmeal.
1930’s egGs: 258,965 dozen milk: 2,104,339 gallons produced annually. wheat: Blue Bird Flour launched.
established. Today: 15,000 head raised annually.
1904 McElmo Canyon PEACHES: Win national awards at the Saint Louis World’s Fair. Today: U-Pick at heritage Orchards.
2015 farm to table restaurants vineyards, pubs, and more...
1972 Cortez Farmers Market opens. Today: Five local markets, winter through fall.
1,200 Farms 5 Farmers Markets 3 Vineyards/Wineries 4 Brew Pubs 1 Distillery 5 School Gardens
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