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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Farming small - but smart
  • Date: Sat, 23 Sep 2006 17:09:46 -0600


Have to pass this on. From the Santa Fe New Mexican. A lot of what we've
been saying all along.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net
-----------

Farming small - but smart
http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/47846.html
By Staci Matlock | The New Mexican
August 14, 2006
The Romeros and the Moons are bucking a national trend.

They're 40-something and younger, and making a living on their small-scale
farms at a time when American agriculture is headed toward larger corporate
farms with fewer producers, according to a recent U.S. Department of Labor
report.

In 2002, there were 1.9 million family or individually run farms, down more
than 20,000 farms from 1997, according to the National Agricultural
Statistics Service.

In New Mexico, the number of farms shrank from 17,876 in 1997 to 15,170 in
2002, according to the service. The number of cattle farms and ranches in
the state decreased from 9,992 to 6,845 in the same period.

But Rio Arriba, Santa Fe, Bernalillo and Valencia counties all saw an
increase in small farms from 1992 to 2002, according to the service,
bucking the trend.

Family farms are finding relief in niche markets that involve horticulture,
organic farming and small-scale operations that market directly to
customers, the Labor Department report says. Those niches, an understanding
of the traditional skills and new knowledge needed to run a successful
operation, and a deep love for life on the land are what drive the Romeros
and the Moons.

Chef to farmer

Matthew Romero enjoys the art and science of farming. Romero, 48, operates
three fields in Alcalde and Dixon along the Rio Grande with help from his
wife, Emily, 34, and one full-time worker. They grow year-round and harvest
more than 30 kinds of produce, from chiles to Japanese eggplant. They are
the largest producer selling at the Santa Fe Farmers Market, and he's made
a comfortable enough living to buy a farm in Dixon.

Not bad for a nonfarmer who put down his chef's hat and started harvesting
fields barely six years ago.

``It has a lot to do with independence, about being your own boss,''
Matthew Romero said. ``But you have to be very resourceful to do this for a
living.''

He and Emily don't force their three kids -- Sage, 12; Tyler, 10; and Lily,
6 -- to farm. ``I don't want them to do too much too young,'' he said. ``I
want them to come to it on their own.''

Romero, who grew up in Espanola, is the son of a woman who grew up on a
farm but hated farming. He tried it early on and failed. ``I couldn't even
grow a garden,'' Romero said.

He made his living as a chef in Denver restaurants, Santa Fe's Coyote Cafe,
and most recently as executive chef at the Ohkay Owingeh casino. Six years
ago, he began caretaking 10 acres in Velarde for his wife's grandmother.
``It was heaven,'' he said.

Romero quit his chef's job, sold his house and started loading a Volkswagen
bug with produce to sell in Los Alamos. ``If I made $75 in the whole day, I
was happy,'' he said.

A new dad by then, he leased an orchard and started hauling apples up to
Colorado, selling hand-picked, hand-polished apples for $20 a bushel,
making $10,000 in one fall.

Then an uncle offered him three acres of Alcalde land plus some farming
lessons. When he wasn't farming, Romero was reading about planting and
harvesting practices, drip irrigation and soil fertility. ``My uncle has
seen me go from not knowing anything to one of the best farmers around,''
he said.

At the farmers market, Romero put his experience as a high-end chef and
food manager to use. He trains his employees on safe food handling for the
market and prints up recipes to give visitors. He's identified unusual
crops such as bok choy that sell well to Los Alamos' Asian residents.
``I've grown into niches that other people haven't filled,'' he said.

Romero said making every minute count is a key to success. He has made his
watering system highly efficient with a combination of flood irrigation,
drip irrigation and sprinklers.

Romero said with the right plan, farmers can make a good living in
agriculture. ``It is possible to grow $40,000 to $50,000 worth of
vegetables on an acre of land,'' he said.

Back on the ranch

On top of Rowe Mesa, 20 miles down a rutted, single-lane dirt road and more
than 60 miles from the nearest grocery store in Santa Fe, Michael and Dawn
Moon are raising a family and trying to help a nonprofit organization build
a profitable, wildlife-friendly cattle ranch.

The ranch in San Miguel County is the Rowe Mesa Grassbank, run by the
Quivira Coalition, a Santa Fe nonprofit founded by two Sierra Club members
and a rancher. The group is devoted to proving good ranching is better for
land and wildlife than driving ranchers out of business. The grass bank is
leased from the Santa Fe National Forest and provides a place where
public-land ranchers can bring their cattle while resting their grazing
allotments.

The Moons took on the ranch-management job a year and a half ago in the
middle of winter, a few months before their fourth child, Eli, was born.
Michael Moon spent the next few months trying to make the ranch house
livable for his family. The 1,800-foot-deep well is 14 miles from the
house, and it took him three months to get the water working.

Summer rains and winter snows sometimes make the ranch road impassable for
days. They live so far from the closest bus stop that home schooling became
the logical choice. They have a computer with Internet access, but only a
cell phone with spotty service and no land line.

``They're incredibly patient. Many things that would drive other people
screaming from the place, they just seem to take it in stride,'' said Craig
Conley, associate director of the Quivira Coalition.

Dawn, 36, handles the children's studies while Michael, 39, is out fixing
fences, training horses and managing cattle on the 36,000-acre leased
ranch. The older kids -- Aidan, 9; Ruth, 5; and Cole, 3 -- help with
feeding chickens, dogs, cats and livestock.

Turning a grant-dependent ranch into a self-sustaining one is a big
challenge when even private ranching is only a marginal moneymaker, Moon
said. Whether private or nonprofit, ``to ranch well today, you can't be an
idiot. There's a lot of ranchers and cowboys who don't do it well,'' Moon
said. ``To me, it's a balance between head and hands.''

Michael Moon grew up on what he calls a ``lifestyle ranch'' in Mariposa,
Calif., the son of ranch-bred parents from Roy, N.M. He earned a degree in
history of music and the humanities from the University of Redlands and
spent a year in Scotland. He considered law school but instead got a job
working on a ranch. ``I thought, `Cool, I can get paid for riding horses
and playing guitar.' ''

Dawn Moon was raised in Cleveland, far from Western ranch life. After
earning a political science degree and studying in Germany, she headed to
Colorado to work as a waitress at a dude ranch, where she met Michael. Over
time, she learned to ride horses and move cows. ``One friend joked, `How
many times do I have to tell you the difference between a cow and a
heifer?' '' Dawn Moon said.

After they married, the couple spent eight months with the Peace Corps in
Ecuador before Michael took a job managing a 60,000-acre Montana ranch for
the Nature Conservancy near the small town of Malta. ``All those farm and
ranch kids went off to do cool things all over the world,'' Moon said.
``People think all these hick kids will fail in the big city. They do
great.''

Michael Moon calls himself a bit of a ``ranching addict.''

``I'm not a strict traditionalist, but I love the culture,'' he said.

Ranch life agrees with the kids as well. ``I like it,'' Aidan said. ``I get
to herd cows, ride horses. I have lots of jobs. There's no difference
living in town or here when you're inside the house. But when you're
outside here, you don't hear cars, you don't have to worry about getting
hit by a car.''

Michael and Dawn think hard work on the ranch will benefit their kids no
matter what they choose to do in the future. ``I think there's a huge hole
in the American experience, not being on the land, not working with
animals,'' Michael Moon said.

Room to grow

The Labor Department lays out the challenges that small farm operations
face today. They include unpredictable weather, rising fuel costs and low
commodity price. Add to that the potential devastation by insects or
disease in a single growing season and, in New Mexico, the problem of a
highly variable water supply.

But ``for those who enter farming or ranching, the disadvantages are
counterbalanced by the quality of life in a rural area, working outdoors,
being self-employed and making a living off the land,'' the Labor
Department report said.

Romero said there's plenty of room for new growers in an ever-expanding
market. But to succeed, farmers need to get away from the subsistence idea
of farming. ``What we need now are new generation farmers who can learn
from the old and apply the new,'' he said.

Michael Moon says money can be made in agriculture, and he opposes
government subsidies to ranchers and farmers. ``The reason people don't
make money is because they're not farming or ranching smart,'' Moon said.
``They're going into debt.''


Contact Staci Matlock at 470-9843 or smatlock@sfnewmexican.com .





  • [Livingontheland] Farming small - but smart, Tradingpost, 09/23/2006

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