Saturday, May 23, 2015
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
The past few years, I've been working as a commissioner with our farmland preservation commission here in the village of Corrales to save farmland from development by purchasing conservation easements. We use a combination of federal grant money and money from a bond fund we were successful in getting passed by voters a few years ago. We were also able to purchase 5 1/2 acres of historic farmland right in the middle of the village. This is land that was farmed by the ancestors of pueblo Indians for centuries, and then became part of the Spanish land grant back in the 16th Century when Corrales was founded by the King of Spain. With the easement in place, this land will forever be farmland and open space. To celebrate, we had over 200 Corrales schoolchildren, along with Augie's third grade class, turn out on May 15, the feast day of San Ysidro, Saint Isidore, the patron saint of farmers and of the Village of Corrales. The priest from San Ysidro parish came out and blessed the field; a Navajo woman told the story of how Spider Woman brought rain and bounty to the Navajos' fields. And the children planted an entire field. Blue corn is considered sacred by the Navajo and Pueblo, and has been cultivated here for thousands of years. My old farming partner, Lisa and I, will farm and irrigate the field all summer, then in the fall, at harvest, the kids will return to harvest their blue corn and grind it into flour. It was a beautiful day, for after all the prayers and planting, the rains came, a good long female rain, that fell slowly all afternoon and into the night.
Friday, May 15, 2015
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