Friday, January 30, 2009
Location: Espaniola, New Mexico

It seems waiting for my tripod parts delivery had a deeper purpose after all. In spending that little extra amount of time in Taos things lined up nicely for me in Espaniola. I finally got a hold of Santa Cruz Farm and Greenhouses owner and farmer Don Bustos. The energy that came through the phone was nothing but pure positivity which is always nice when I'm reaching out to someone new.

Upon arriving at Santa Cruz Farm I wandered down to the greenhouses that make up most of the winter produce production. Don's greenhouses are nice and big in some cases 90ft long and 30ft wide. He has installed radiant soil heating via piping throughout the entire complex of greenhouses and these are fueled by solar energy. He tells me this enables him to produce year-round. In the winter when it gets cold the frost on the outer frame keeps the heat in, there is also another ground level cover that keeps the plants warm in addition to storing the heat that is rises from the radiate heat tubing buried beneath the root systems. Although Don told me that he has scientists from local universities coming to examine his system, it was immeidatly clear to me from the abundant growth that the system is clearly working.

I spent the morning talking with Don's interns George and Seraphina about their various backgrounds and the importance of continuing to shape and spread the revolution in local sustainable agriculture. These young people that track down Don are definitely revolutionary thinkers in their own right and it gives me great hope in knowing that there are other young people out there trying to manifest change instead of continuing with the status quo.

After helping to clip some salad greens for the Santa Fe Market I finally had an opportunity to have a nice on-camera dialog with Don. Our conversation traveled back in time to ancestral farming methods to the present need to return to traditional ways of doing things while incorporating technology when it's simple and sensical. Don spoke to the idea that it's really important to develop markets as a farmer and constantly adapt to a changing market reality. And most importantly we need to rethink our system of agriculture to enable small local and sustainable farmers to reclaim greenbelts throughout the nation and develop green sustainable technology and then vertically integrate that technology and build a broader base of support for those methods and ideas. He spoke to the fact that he uses greenhouses and there could easily be someone who makes a living manufacturing and designing those smaller scale greenhouses so that more people can farm effectively and extend their grownign season. The potential for job creation in rebuilding/rethinking agriculture is tremendous. It seems to me basic math that smaller cluster-based local food producers would tend to involve a broader base of workers and therefore have a broader economic benefit to large industrial monoculture systems of farming.

After speakign with people like Don my gears begin to turn with visions of my own farm back in Canada. My grandfather left my family a nice place with a tremendous amount of untapped potential and one day I'm going to build an extraordinary place of food, community, and creative solutions. But until then my job is to gather knowledge and voices to help disseminate ideas about where we have been and where we are headed.

An elder I spent a lot of time with when I was younger used to always say, "Don't settle down, GROW UP!" Together with people like Don Bustos, George, and Seraphina I think we're all continuing to learn what it means not to settle for less than we deserve, healthy food is a human right not a privilage, and as we foster this ideal we find ourselves destined to GROW UP just fine.

peace,d