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Eero Ruuttila, Seeds of Change Farm Manager
"Water is Life" is the title of a CD by a Saharan Tuareg guitar band a few of us at the farm have been listening to following a concert in Taos in mid-April. The farm interns (5) were recently arrived, and although they came on the heels of two measurable snowfalls, the farm fields were already dry. This year's farm staff of eight are all non-resident desert dwellers with the exception of an Arizona xeriscaper. We are learning that spring mud season is not a season in the desert highlands of New Mexico's upper Rio Grande. The first measurable precipitation of the spring came last night, all of a third of an inch, and unirrigated fields are certainly demonstrating that "water is life" (without it they're konked!!)
 The farm's stationary pumps are located next to a community maintained acequia ditch funneling Rio Grande water, which is the farm's lifeline. The earliest of the outdoor tasks of the season was clearing the farm's own acequia ditches so that they would be ready to receive water for overhead irrigation, traditional field flooding, and eventually drip lines.
Chris Bell, the farm's physical plant technician, and Joe Martinez, a long standing local resident and semi-retired farm employee, have invested considerable hours trenching, repairing winter- damaged buried PVC lines, replacing above-ground risers & plugging gopher holes along the farm's acequia ditches to get the farm's water system up and running.
Automated water is now flowing where the service is easy. Direct-seeded carrots, spinach, and lettuce, as well as new asparagus, over-wintered garlic, transplanted onions, hand-planted potatoes & nearly-ready-to-pick strawberries are lining up for their necessary water sips. Coming from many years of vegetable cropping experience in moist New England, I've begun to realize that the standard weekly inch of water recommended for vegetable crops is inadequate in this region. I guess you can blame it on all of the glorious New Mexican sunshine and intense spring winds.
We are now on the midst of hand transplanting the majority of our two heated greenhouses' vegetable flats. John Steiner, my intrepid assistant, has single-handedly seeded and pricked out the entire stock of greenhouse plants since late January. Our crew of determined interns are now providing the muscle to get the plants into the ground.
Tomatoes went in last week, between uncut strips of over-wintered triticale. The still-growing triticale strips provide a wind buffer for the single rows of tomatoes, mitigating transplant shock. In a week the triticale will be flail-mowed and as a straw mulch it will be placed around the adjacent tomato plants to conserve moisture & suppress weeds. Onions went in nearly a month earlier, and off the farm, corn for trials at New Mexico State's Alcalde Research Station were hand-planted during a crisp morning the first week of May in the middle of the university's certified organic fields. Available room for wide-spaced crops is limited at the farm so the intern "boys" (JD & Jake) drove to the Tesuque Pueblo with staff breeder Richard Bernard where a field had been donated to plant into. This year's winter squash grow-out will require a little commuting time to monitor and nurture.
Meanwhile, the all-power-girls (interns, all): Allison, Justine & Sarah, moved drop-latch irrigation pipe into a two-acre field of dry-land legume candidates for future soil buffing and green-manuring (green manure crops use a combination of grains and legumes to build soil fertility.) They changed the oil on a 9 horsepower pump, cleared acequia screens, re-dug the hole for the suction line and generally mucked around until water was generously sprinkling on 12 different dry-land legumes nursed with oats. In my biased and maybe not so humble opinion, this field in particular will provide the most important information for the farm's future.
If water is life then soil fertility follows, and soil fertility up here in the high desert of northern New Mexico needs tough guys to hold their own when the pumps fail and the rain drops are splattering ridgetops in the far distance. Maybe Hykon clover or chickling vetch or crotoaria or sesbania or Papago cowpeas will demonstrate a will towards biomass and an inclination for scant water. Finding the appropriate legume for our farm's desert environment is one of the mysteries we hope to unlock this very busy and exciting summer season.
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