Dragonfly and Infinity Farms, New Mexico

We’ve been living off the earth and learning what it means to farm organic vegetables in this corner of New Mexico. It means a passion for growing things. It means knowing whether a lonesome cloud in the sky signals a thunderstorm with hail or just an aesthetic change. It means living enmeshed in the local environment. Both partners, Sheilah and Armand, moved to Ribera from the North East to join a neighbourhood of mostly white and some hispanic people living in their valley. The biggest annoyance in their lives at the moment is a landowner who has won the right to close part of the county road for his private use. This road is used by the public and they are outraged. It is a convoluted issue involving a local bully, nepotism and racism. We’ve had a good dose of local politics with our dinner on a few occasions. Along with a good dose of good ‘ole laffs.

I am really enjoying this experience. I love the naturalness of a daily routine which has in-built exercise and a good cycle of a big appetite and satisfying meals. The work is physically challenging and at times mentally too. I’ve used a power drill for three different tasks on three different settings – a first. It is fun to look up from your work to see a bird swooping low over the trees in the golden light of late afternoon. There are bugs in the earth and plants of every colour in the rainbow. The earth is dry as bones without irrigation and thorns and burrs proliferate. Sheilah and Armand grow nine varieties of tomato: big beef, yellow taxi, newgirls, Japanese blacks, orange blossoms, green zebra, amana oranges, German striped, Cherokee purple. Most of these are heirloom varieties. These are carted off to three different markets every week, accompanied by many other vegetables in Armand’s zebra striped van. When the supply outweighs demand, they bottle ‘summer sauce’. We had a very rainy day yesterday and helped with cooking and bottling the tomatoes.

Our week has ended with eight vegetable beds picked, weeded, turned over and stripped of irrigation tape and two new greenhouses erected. We’ve worked the ground when it was hard as a rock and, after the storm, as muddy as the Somme. We’ve been to market and to the river. We’ve met Spanish-speaking neighbours and Italian-Americans from Massachusetts. We’ve shared life with good people and we are bigger for it.

Now for Costa Rica – via South New Mexico and Houston, Texas. We return to Houston on 9th November.

R