Hidden behind his home off Upper San Pedro Road, Steve Jaramillo grows an astonishing variety of vegetables that he sells to local businesses like the Española Community Market, La Montañita Cooperative in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, Los Alamos Co-op Market, Cid’s Food Market in Taos and soon at the Española Farmers Market. On a cool and blustery day May 21, he walks toward a hoop house where he is now able to grow crops year-around.
Like most farmers, the first thing he commented on was the weather. Snow blanketed the higher elevations of the Sangre de Cristo mountains to the east and had fallen recently in the Jemez mountains to the west.
“I’ve never seen a May like this, crazy weather,” he said. “Every year around Memorial Day, there would be a little bit of snow in the mountains. Not the whole range like now.”
That crazy weather is what prompted Jaramillo to build his hoop house
“I saw an opportunity to be able to get a little bit of a head start on the season,” Jaramillo said. “To be able to grow fresh greens over the winter. There’s a market for fresh greens.”
Inside Jaramillo’s 30-foot by 72-foot hoop house, he was cleaning up his winter crop of chard, spinach, lettuce and kale.
“I planted the lettuce in October and started harvesting it in January,” he said.
By carefully harvesting the outer leaves of spinach, lettuce and chard, while leaving the inner leaves intact, Jaramillo is able to extend his harvest for four months.
“You have to leave some leaves for photosynthesis,” he said.
Once those greens are harvested, Jaramillo tills the soil, then plants a cover crop containing buckwheat that will grow during the summer. In the fall before planting his winter crops, he’ll turn the buckwheat back into the soil to enrich it.
He also grew turnips, beets and radishes, which had all been harvested by May 21, in the hoop house. The primary crops that are grown in the hoop house are cold season crops which can stand freezing to below-freezing temperatures, to which the temperature can drop during the winter months. Even then, Jaramillo still has to roll up the sides of the hoop house to prevent the crops from growing too quickly and bolting to seed if the temperature gets too warm in the hoop house.
“It gets rather warm in here,” he said. “Even in February and March.”
The 42 tomato plants that Jaramillo has in the hoop house are not cold tolerant. They were planted several weeks earlier in the space where Jaramillo harvested turnips and beets. The rows of tomatoes also have small wire supports upon which Jaramillo can use row covers to protect the tender tomato plants from freezing temperatures which can occur in May. The hoop house also allows Jaramillo to extend the tomato harvest in the fall.
“We usually get our first frost October 10,” he said. “I’m able to keep the tomato plants alive for a few more weeks.”
A row of healthy carrot plants along one side of the hoop house is also where Jaramillo had planted his radishes. By planting two crops in the same space, he is able to make better use of that area.
“You plant radishes in the same bed as the carrots,” Jaramillo said. “The radishes grow quick. You pull them out and it leaves room for the carrots to take off.”
The crops that Jaramillo grows in his hoop house are not those that his family grew up planting. Food trends have recently brought certain varieties of greens, such as the kale that Jaramillo grows, into the limelight.
“Kale all of a sudden became kind of like a super-food,” he said. “We didn’t grow greens and stuff.”
The hoop house was constructed utilizing funds from a grant by the National Resources Conservation Service. This is the second year that Jaramillo has grown crops in his hoop house.
“The government is realizing the importance of small farms,” Jaramillo said. “The importance of having more local food.”
Jaramillo grew up in El Guache as part of a large family of five sons and five daughters. They always had a garden and orchard while he was growing up. Jaramillo remembers cleaning apples that had been stored during the winter in a root cellar when the state basketball tournament was being held in March. His memories are often associated with sporting events.
“In 1960, we were out in the orchard picking apples,” He said. “We had a radio that we turned on and hung up in a tree. We were listening to the World Series. That’s when Bill Mazeroski hit a home run and the (Pittsburgh) Pirates beat the (New York) Yankees. I hated the Yankees.”
While growing up, Jaramillo remembers that families in the Española Valley used to depend more upon agriculture. Pantry shelves were lined with canned goods that the family had put up. Homes had root cellars where apples, potatoes and winter squash would be stored. People grew their own corn and made their own chicos and posolé, which Jaramillo still does. They depended on the land to provide much of what they needed.
That all changed with the opening of nearby Los Alamos National Laboratory and its new jobs.
“This used to be a very productive agricultural area,” Jaramillo said. “People had to raise their own food to survive. With the opening of the Laboratory, people began to go out and work, rather than rely on the land to provide for them.”
Jaramillo was one of those. After being drafted into the United States Army, he attended electronics school.
“They offered to send us to the school of our choice if we would volunteer for another year,” he said.
After serving a year in Vietnam and leaving the Army, Jaramillo worked for the Lab as an electro-optic technician. He retired from there eight years ago.
“I really didn’t plan on getting into this eight years ago,” Jaramillo said. “You have to have something to do. We had the land and I’d grown up planting a garden. I started increasing the garden, transitioning from alfalfa to row crops. Pretty soon I couldn’t possibly eat or give away all I was growing and I started to sell the excess. Before you know it, I was planting more and more.”
Jaramillo’s land in San Pedro was planted to alfalfa. He began converting more of it to vegetables. Beyond the hoop house was one of three outdoor fields that Jaramillo has planted. Here there was another row of radishes and a row of 75 tomato plants, which had recently been planted. Jaramillo grows seven varieties of tomatoes, including an heirloom tomato, Brandywine. Heirloom tomatoes have become increasingly popular and are featured in salads by upscale restaurants. They are touted as having superior flavor to the modern, hybrid varieties of tomatoes. He also grows an early-ripening tomato called Early Girl and another early tomato called Moskvich.
Also in the rows of tomatoes were transplanted eggplants. He grows two varieties of eggplants.
Another nearby field is where Jaramillo plants melons and cucumbers. He grows three varieties of cucumbers. Lemon cucumbers, which are small, yellow and round. Hence the name. He also grows a pickling variety and a traditional slicing variety named Marketmore.
Among the melon varieties that Jaramillo grows are an heirloom, orange-fleshed cantaloupe and a yellow-fleshed watermelon.
“A man who used to work with me had been saving the cantaloupe seed,” Jaramillo said. “He used to take cantaloupes to work to share with us. I’ve been saving the seed for quite a while.”
There is a story behind the yellow-fleshed watermelon, as well.
“I was at the Harvest Festival at Rancho de las Golondrinas (a working museum of a traditional hacienda south of Santa Fe),” Jaramillo said. “I was given a slice of yellow watermelon and saved the seed in a napkin. I planted it and have been planting them ever since. They do very well in this soil.”
The idea of saving seeds appeals to Jaramillo. Heirloom varieties are open-pollinated, meaning that they reproduce naturally from pollen spread by either insects or by the wind to other plants. They reproduce true to the variety.
“When you save your seeds, you don’t have to be buying them every year,” he said.
The third field is where Jaramillo plants his potatoes. He grows three varieties, including Yukon Gold, German Butterball and Purple Majesty. They had been planted just two weeks ago and were just starting to poke their way through the soil. Potatoes are not grown from seed. A portion of the potato crop is set aside to provide the “seed” potatoes for the following season. The seed potatoes can be planted whole or cut into pieces as long as each piece contains an “eye” from which the new plants will sprout.
Jaramillo also grows corn from which he will make chicos, from kernels which are cut from the cob while still soft and then dried. Chicos, along with dried beans, were staples that helped people survive over the winter before electricity. He also grows blue corn which he lets dry, then grinds into atolé. Last year, he made blue corn posolé, utilizing lime water to remove the tough skins from the blue corn kernels.
While the hoop house is watered with a modern drip-irrigation system, the open fields are watered by the traditional method of flooding the rows with irrigation water from the system of acequias (irrigation canals) that are fed by water diverted from the Santa Cruz River, the Rio Grande and the Chama River. Native Americans were the first to utilize an acequia system, which was expanded and improved when Spanish settlers came to New Mexico from Mexico.
“That’s the way its been done for centuries,” Jaramillo said.
Although some have criticized the old method of flood irrigation from acequias as being wasteful, it has been proven to provide benefits that drip irrigation does not.
“As much as people complain, most of the water (from flood irrigation) returns back to the river and back into the water table,” Jaramillo said. “New Mexico State University did a scientific study and found most of the water goes back into the river. It’s been proven scientifically.”
Jaramillo is planning to install a drip irrigation system in one of his open fields.
“Two years ago, it was pretty dry and they were rationing water, sometimes one day a week,” he said. “It’s hard to irrigate everything in just one day. Drip irrigation would make things easier. I think we’ll see more seasons like that. Everybody’s predicting a warmer climate.”
Jaramillo has served as a commissioner for the Garcia acequia, which draws water from the Santa Cruz river. While serving as commissioner, he became a member of the New Mexico Acequia Association. He learned the importance of keeping the acequia system in operation. The acequia systems have rights to a certain amount of water that is divided among their parciantes (participants) according to the number of acres they irrigate.
“I went to a lot of workshops and one of the things they promoted was keeping your water rights,” Jaramillo said. “The best way to keep your water rights is to use them.”
The Acequia Association also educates the commissions of the acequias throughout the state how to keep their water rights legally.
“They showed us how to update our bylaws to defend ourselves,” Jaramillo said. ‘More and more entities are after water rights that they can then transfer to develop land somewhere else.”
Jaramillo currently president of the Española Farmer’s Market Board which helps to dictate policy for the Farmer’s Market. He considers the Market not just an outlet for farmers to sell their produce, but a way to provide citizens of Española a place to buy fresh produce, including those living on a low or fixed income.
“It’s a good outlet for growers,” Jaramillo said. “There’s a lot of need here. People with SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) and WIC (Women, Infants and Children) programs can bring their coupons and take advantage of being able to buy fresh, local produce. It serves the community.”
The program that allows SNAP and WIC participants to shop at farmers markets in Española and around the state has been expanded to provide even more opportunities for low-income people to buy locally-produced fresh vegetables and fruits, according to Española Farmers Market manager Sabra Moore.
“This year, people using SNAP cards get a double bonus,” Moore said. “They can use $20 worth of coupons to buy $40 worth of fresh produce. The tokens can be used at any farmers market in the state. The money goes to the people that need it and to farmers.”
Moore estimates people using the various federal programs spent $28,000 at the Española Farmers Market last year.
She asked Jaramillo to serve on the Board.
“He’s a person I rely on,” Moore said. “He’s got really good judgment.”
Jaramillo is 65, which is typical of many small farmers (the average age of farmers is 65, according to Jaramillo). He feels there are opportunities for younger people to take up agriculture.
“There are many young people whose parents have so much unused land,” he said. “All it takes is for a young person to get ambitious and start working the land. I go to a lot of meetings and I see more and more young people attending.”
Moore has seen a small but growing number of young farmers at the Española Market.
“It’s changing,” she said. “I see more young farmers selling at the Market.”
One of the things that is encouraging younger people to find out more and perhaps become participants in agriculture is a growing movement to purchase local food. Although he is not certified organic, Jaramillo practices organic growing with his crops.
“I know what I’m eating,” Jaramillo said. “It wasn’t exposed to pesticides or herbicides. People are just now finding out what big agriculture is putting on their products. The government is denying people the right to know what they’re eating by not labeling products made with GMO’s (Genetically-Modified Organisms).”
In more than 60 countries, there are restrictions or outright bans on the production and sale of GMO’s. GMO’s are created by adding a gene to an organism’s DNA from another organism to create desirable characteristics in the newly-created organism. Many GMO’s are created by large agricultural chemical companies to create varieties of seed of agricultural crops that are resistant to the herbicides or pesticides, also manufactured by large agricultural companies. The large agricultural companies then patent the varieties they have created, making it illegal for anyone else to produce that seed.
“They want to be able to control the sale of seeds,” Jaramillo said.
By supporting local growers that grow heirloom varieties of seed that are not patented and can be saved by or exchanged among small farmers, people are supporting local crops and genetic diversity.
“The buying local movement is growing,” Jaramillo said. “People want to know where their food comes from and how it was grown. The demand is there.”
Jaramillo belongs to La Cosecha (The Harvest) del Norte Cooperative of 10 growers, formed to enable small farmers to sell to larger markets.
“To be able to aggregate our product to sell to bigger buyers,” he said. “Any one of us, say, couldn’t supply 100 pounds of lettuce. Together, we can.”
The Cooperative is able to buy fertilizer in large quantities. Jaramillo uses blood meal, bone meal and compost to fertilize his fields. They are approved for organic farming. The Cooperative buys a semi-tractor trailer of compost in Albuquerque to use as fertilizer.
“We buy it at $34 a cubic-yard, then sell it to ourselves at $45 a cubic-yard to make money for the Cooperative,” Jaramillo said.
Cooperative board member Camilla Trujillo said Jaramillo is vital to the group’s forward progress.
“Steve is the vice president and we’re all working together to create a co-op of farming families,” Trujillo said. “Our goal is to plant crops together so that we’ll have enough food to contract with schools or senior centers.”
Trujillo said the 10 family farmers coordinate crops to make a bulk sell possible. But they’re also still local farmers.
“We all sell at the farmers markets, but we’re beyond farmers market,” Trujillo said.
She said Jaramillo had just completed the documentation requesting Santa Fe School District purchase bulk fresh vegetables from the Cooperative.
“They’re already buying regionally,” she said. “We hope to get a contract with them.”
Jaramillo cultivates a little over two acres, by his estimate. He is the first to admit that you will not get rich as a small farmer, but feels you can make a living as long as you can establish a good market.
“First you have to grow good quality produce and start selling it to people,” Jaramillo said. “Once they get to know you, you can call them up and tell them what you have. They like to buy from local people.”