Felipe Ortega was a whirlwind of activity Aug. 1 at his home in La Madera. He had just returned from helping local resident Victoria Sepulveda, whose well house had been flooded after a heavy rain the previous night.
“It’s her first summer here,” Ortega said. “She didn’t know what to expect.”
Ortega is one of 15 members of the Morada de Nuestro Señór de Esquipulas, a penitente order in La Madera. The penitentes are an integral part of life in the small communities of Northern New Mexico. They perform community service to whoever is in need, be it taking wood to those who need it, providing transportation to those who cannot drive themselves and other services to those who need help. In Sepulveda’s case, he found workers to help her clean up the mess the flood had left behind.
“They hadn’t eaten lunch, so I gave them lunch,” Ortega said. “We will help anyone who needs help.”
Ortega had to hurry and start making the bread that he had promised for a puberty ceremony the following day for a Jicarilla Apache relative in Dulce. He also started to mix the dough for focaccia bread that would be eaten that evening at Apache Drums, a community center and kitchen. After a farmers market selling local organic produce from Owl Peak Farm in nearby Petaca, the farm was having a dinner for its workers and apprentices. The farm had also been flooded by another storm July 20 and was in the process of cleaning up.
“Anywhere they need bread, I will bake bread,” Ortega said.
As storm clouds again gathered, Ortega hurried to start a fire in his horno before the rains came. Using scrap lumber, bark and newspapers, he started the fire.
“One man’s trash is another man’s treasure,’ he said.
The fire initially gave off more smoke than flame. Ortega had placed his outdoor hornos under a tin roof that was open to the sky to allow the smoke to flow up and away from his home. Despite the smoky start, there was soon a bed of glowing embers within the horno.
Gracious host
While hurrying to finish baking, Ortega still took time to welcome two visitors to his home, Marsha Hayes and her grandson Connor Claude Hayes. Marsha Hayes, from Kansas, told Ortega that she had bought a pot of his years ago and how much she loved it. Ortega is a world-famous potter. They had heard he had a home in the area and had stopped to see him. While the Hayeses were visiting, Sepulveda stopped by hoping she could borrow some tools to help with the cleanup. Ortega gladly lent her the tools and helped to load them in her vehicle.
“He will always help everybody,” Sepulveda said. “He’s a master potter, a master cook, he’s just amazing.”
Ortega proved a gracious host despite his situation and after placing the bread in separate pans to rise one more time, he checked the heat of the fire by placing a piece of paper towel on a metal rod and inserting it into the horno. The paper turned a dark brown, but did not burst into flame.
“That’s just right,” he said.
Using a long-handled wooden spatula, he carefully placed the loaves into the horno. Despite the heat, smoke and falling rain, Ortega was pleased as he checked the bread a few minutes later to see how all was going.
“They’re rising and browning, everything is going well,” he said.
The bread would have to bake for 45 minutes, then cool for an hour, finished just in time for the dinner at Apache Drums. Ortega had fulfilled his obligation. Like nearly all that he does, it was an obligation he took upon himself to fulfill.
Indebted to all
Ortega was born in debt. Indebtedness is what motivates his life.
It’s not the debt that one may owe on a mortgage or a credit card. For Ortega, it’s a debt he owes to all that surrounds him. From the clay from which he makes his pots to the flour with which he bakes his bread.
“From the moment I was conceived, I was indebted to my mother for giving me life,” he said. “In Apache, we are all interrelated with everything. Every breath that I take. Everything that I use.”
Just as the earth gives freely of the things that he uses, Ortega gives freely of that which he makes,
“If I keep looking at the world as monetary gain, what am I telling Mother Earth,” Ortega said.
The son of Carlos and Augustina Ortega, Felipe lives in a distinctive home of adobe bricks on his family’s compound in La Madera. The house seems to spring from the earth it rests on. It’s ancient walls have housed generations of the Ortega family.
“This was my grandmother’s house,” Ortega said sitting in one area of his home where the original three rooms were. “That was my uncle’s house (pointing to another part of his home). I built a dining room to connect them.”
Carlos Ortega was a Jicarilla Apache. From an early age, Felipe Ortega learned the meaning of giving without asking for money.
“My father (Carlos) would say in the morning, ‘You are going to go and hoe your uncle’s cornfield,’” Felipe Ortega said. “We never asked how much we were going to get paid. I enjoyed being part of an extended family.”
Now, Felipe Ortega gives back to his community whenever a meal is held or a fundraiser planned by the local schools and churches.
Master baker
Outside his home are three hornos he built himself. An horno is an outdoor oven made of adobe bricks that was used by Native Americans and later by Hispanic settlers to bake bread and other foods. Ortega’s hornos will hold 50 loaves, 30 loaves and a smaller horno is for family baking. He needs the larger hornos for the numerous requests that he bake bread, pies and cookies for annual religious ceremonies, social gatherings and fundraisers for local schools and churches.
“I learned to bake bread from my mother, who learned it from her mother,” Ortega said.
When asked to bake, Ortega does not say no, nor does he charge anything for his labor.
“It’s kind of stupid to think that I’d charge people who need bread,” he said.
His bread is simply made using unbleached flour, whole wheat flour, eggs, beer, salt, olive oil and yeast. It rises three times.
“A famous actress, Lauren Hutton, said my bread was among the top 10 breads in the world,” Ortega said.
El Rito resident Eddie Campos remembers Ortega’s generosity. When Campos was coaching the Mesa Vista High School volleyball team, they were trying to raise funds so the team could attend the New Mexico State University volleyball camp. When asked if he would provide bread to sell at a bake sale, Ortega donated 25 loaves of bread.
“He’s always willing to help,” Campos said. “He’s very giving.”
Being of Apache heritage, Ortega was asked to bake for a puberty rite performed upon Apache girls when they come of age. A relative of his will be undergoing the ritual.
“It’s a celebration for our young women,” Ortega said. “I’ll be there with bread, cookies, pies and chile.”
He also takes care of feeding the faithful during celebrations involving his Christian faith. He learned that from his mother, who is 94 and resides in a house nearby his own.
‘Every Sunday, we would get lots of people and my mother would feed them,” Ortega said. “She made stacks and stacks of tortillas. My grandmother made soap and she would give it to those who needed soap.”
That upbringing was the wellspring of Ortega’s generous nature.
“All these things were part and parcel of my growing up,” he said. “I saw these people being generous, even in their scarcity. That’s how I grew up and I continue to do that.”
Early life
La Madera, named after the Spanish word for timber, is a small village founded and settled in the18th century that follows the course of the Rio Vallecitos. Winters can be cold and snowy. The Rio Vallecitos provided water for the small orchards and grain fields along its valley. Local Hispanics graze cattle and sheep in the surrounding mountains, which yielded a bounty of logs for timber in the early 20th century. A railroad line ran into town, hauling lumber from a large mill cutting millions of board feet of ponderosa pine from Carson National Forest.
The town briefly boomed during that time, but now just 154 people reside there.
Ortega’s great-grandmother was an Jicarilla Apache orphan adopted in 1860 by Tata Diego Antonio Ortega. His family’s compound hugs County Road 437 as it follows the Rio Vallecitos toward its headwaters in the southern San Juan Mountains. Ortega was a member of the last graduating class of Ojo Caliente High School before several school districts were consolidated in 1969 to form the Mesa Vista Public Schools and the high school named Mesa Vista High School. When he was 13, an interest in the history of his culture would eventually lead to his career as an artist.
“I wanted to learn as much as I possibly could about olden days,” Ortega said. “I wasn’t supposed to be a potter.”
Ortega’s mother taught him how to gather limestone, heat it red hot in an horno and then grind it to mix with dried corn kernels to make posolé, a staple in Northern New Mexico. Another staple food was beans, which his mother cooked in a stainless steel pressure cooker. Felipe did not like the beans that his mother cooked. They were too salty to his taste.
“My mother told me that I needed to eat beans that had been cooked in a clay pot,” Ortega said. “From 1965 until 1969, I started looking for a clay pot.”
First pots
Before the advent of stainless steel, Apaches and the nearby pueblos traditionally cooked beans and other foods in clay pots. Pots made of micaceous clay, named for the flakes of mica that glitter in the clay, were superior to all others for cooking. They could be placed over an open flame without cracking and were impervious to water.
Finally, in 1969 a relative by marriage told Ortega of a woman who lived in Petaca, a village nearby. Jesusita Martinez did not have a pot to sell, but instructed him on how to make his own. The clay that was used came from a source in the nearby hills around La Madera where clay had been gathered for hundreds of years.
“That summer, I made several pots,” Ortega said. “The first ones I made all blew apart.”
When Ortega was finally able to make a pot that could be used for cooking beans, it was a revelation.
“They were the best beans I ever had,” he said.
Soon afterward, Ortega began to get requests to make pots for family members and friends.
“One said, ‘Make me one for yogurt,’” Ortega said. “Another said, ‘Make me one for lentils.’”
He attributes the taste of food cooked in clay pots to the alkaline nature and naturally high sodium content in the micaceous clay. The alkalinity balances the pH of the food by neutralizing the acid in it, while the sodium content makes the addition of salt unnecessary. Despite a predilection for high blood pressure and diabetes within his family, Ortega has been healthy .
“I have not been to a hospital the 63 years I’ve been alive,” Ortega said. “I attribute that to the clay.”
That was the root of his now flourishing career as an artist.
Masters degree
Having graduated from high school, Ortega began studying for the priesthhood with the Franciscan order. His schooling took him from Dayton, Ohio to Detroit, Mich. While away from home, Ortega still practiced the art of making pottery.
“I would transport the clay with me,” Ortega said.
In 1976, Ortega returned home after obtaining a master’s degree in Divinity and Theology.
“I started making pottery because it was the only skill I had,” he said.
Ortega eventually worked as a proof reader in Santa Fe because he was bilingual and also understood Latin legal terms. He returned in 1982 to study for the priesthood in San Antonio, where he was kicked out of the seminary.
“I wrote a paper saying that the Catholic mass didn’t seem to me like a celebration,” he said. “I don’t think they agreed with my philosophy.”
From 1982 until 1988, fe worked as an Artist in Residence for the Folk Art Division in Albuquerque. Returning to La Madera in 1988 because he was tired of paying rent, he moved into his present home when it was just three rooms. There was no electricity or running water. Ortega soon discovered that he could not live without these modern utilities and had them installed.
“I like hot showers,” he said. “I wanted to come home and continue doing my own pottery.”
Ortega built the connecting dining room, which now serves as a gathering place for the community when space is needed. During this time, his skill as a potter was growing. Ortega’s pottery was for sale at Café Pasquale’s restaurant and gallery in Santa Fe. Chefs there, a city noted for its fine dining, discovered the distinctive taste and advantages of cooking in clay pots.
“People buy them for cooking,” Ortega said. “There’s been a revolution in cooking with clay. To have resurrected the clay bean pot gives me great pleasure.”
People also wanted to learn how to make their own clay pots. In 1990, Ortega began offering classes to those who wished to apprentice as students under him. He opened his studio and began a bed and breakfast for his students, as well as those seeking to retreat to the quiet and slower pace of life at La Madera.
His students come from all over the country and the world. Some have gone on to establish themselves as artists. Debbie Carillo, a student of Ortega’s, was awarded a Lifetime Achievement honor at the 2014 Spanish Market in Santa Fe for her micaceous pottery.
“She was a student of mine,” Ortega said.
He makes about 7-to-10 pots a week in his studio. Not all of them are for sale.
“I probably donate about 80 pots a year,” Ortega said.
Some of those pots are given to fundraisers, but many of them are made to be broken. Four times a year, the Apaches hold a celebration called “Four Directions.” At the end of that ceremony, all the pots are broken.
Ortega also makes pots that are used in burial ceremonies. For these, he does not charge a fee.
“How can you charge the dead,” he said.
For those pots that are for sale, Ortega prices them by the size, charging $100-per-quart.
“I’m glad I’m self-employed,” he said.
It allows him the freedom to devote his life to his community.
Los penitentes
Since he was 17, Ortega has been a member of the penitentes. In 2000, he and other community members formed their own order of which Ortega is now a member. Unlike other Moradas, this one welcomes all who wish to attend, regardless of their religious affiliation.
“We’re not into whether you’re Catholic or not Catholic,”he said. “Everyone is invited to pray. All who are in need of sacrament are welcome.”
About 10 years ago, Ortega started a project to help those who wanted to sing and pray with the penitentes. Previously, the hymns and prayers were on hand-written texts in Spanish. Ortega himself had trouble reading them. In collaboration with his brother, Ernest, Ortega began the painstaking process of translating the hymns and prayers from Spanish to English. The completed text was then printed for easier reading. During this process, Felipe Ortega discovered new meaning in words he did not understand.
“He, they refer to a pelican,” Ortega said. “I could not understand why they referred to a pelican.”
On a trip to France, viewing the stained-glass windows in the old churches, he discovered the pelican was used as a symbol for Jesus in Christianity.
“When the mother pelican is feeding her young and runs out of food, she pierces her breast and feeds them her blood,” Ortega said.
The symbolism to the blood of Christ was a revelation to Ortega.
The book of penitente hymns and prayers is now available, enabling those who wish to sing and pray with the penitentes the opportunity to do so. The very first copies were given away. Now, all proceeds from the book are donated to the Morada.
“It was a work of love,” Ortega said. “We wanted to have a book. We encourage you to use the book and join us in prayer,”
Dinner
Ortega delivered the bread he had been baking Aug. 1 to the dinner at Apache Drums, which is owned by his brother Jimmy and sister Connie. He also delivered polenta he had prepared for the dinner. Residents of La Madera and nearby communities, along with members of Owl Peak Farm, gathered to partake of the meal. The youngest was infant Sophia Breedlove, daughter of Simona Gallegos.
“Felipe officiated at my wedding,” she said.
C. C. Culver is the president of the Owl Peak Farm Foundation, which grows organic food for the community kitchen, as well as for sale at the Farmer’s Market also held at Apache Drums. Ortega’s ability to handle situations and his generosity to all is changing La Madera.
“What he has encouraged is an opening up of the community,” Culver said. “Opening up what’s here instead of closing it off.”
Emergency medical technician Lynn Gudes said that after a long day, Ortega’s generosity always lifted her spirits.
“I joke with him that I would always end up at his house when he was cooking a meal,” she said.
Gudes’ husband Sebastian Gudes responded in kind.
“He’s just the cornerstone of this community,” he said. “He opens his house and feeds us.”
Ortega leaves the praise to those he helps, not seeking it for himself.
“I don’t want people to feel I’m driven by ego,” he said.
What drives him is giving back to the community that nourished him.
“My grandmother used to say, ‘What are you going to take with you when you die,’” he said.