9/3/09
The smell of roasting green chile permeated the air and the roar of the gas-fired roasters was loud in the parking lot at Center Market as the green chile crop from southern New Mexico began to arrive at local grocery stores in mid-August.
The big sacks of chile come primarily from the area around Hatch, a town in southern New Mexico just below Elephant Butte Lake in the Rio Grande Valley. The name of the town and its famous agricultural product have become synonymous.
When it comes to Northern New Mexicans, however, don’t ever try to pass off the green chile from Hatch as “local” chile.
“People here will call you out in a heartbeat if you try to tell them it’s local chile when it isn’t,” Don Bustos of Santa Cruz Farms said. “People up here know their chile.”
Bustos knows the difference because he grows both local chile and the variety of chile grown in Hatch on his 3.5 organically-certified acres in El Llano.
“It has an earthy taste to it because its grown where it originated,” Bustos said. “You can taste the difference in the chile by the region it was grown.”
He walked past rows of colorful lettuce shining green and red in the late evening sunset last month to his stand of local chile. He refers to it as Santa Cruz chile, carefully making the distinction between chile grown in Chimayó or Velarde.
“I think people that like good chile gravitate to the heirloom varieties like we grow in Santa Cruz,” Bustos said. “It’s acclimated to the bioregion, the climate, the soil.”
Heirloom varieties are those where the seed has been saved from year to year and replanted to propagate that particular strain for its desirable qualities. Farmers in different areas of the Española Valley have saved their seed for generations, and several heirloom varieties are named for the region where they are grown.
“Medanales, Chimayó, Santa Cruz,” Bustos said. There are probably seven or eight viable strains of local chile and there could be more.”
As he inspected the yield on his local chile, Bustos pointed out several chile peppers on one of the plants that have already started to turn red.
“That’s another advantage of local chile,” he said. “It matures faster and gives you plenty to make ristras and plenty to save for seed.”
Bustos then moved over to where the “Hatch” chile was being grown. The two patches were grown in separate parts of the garden to prevent cross pollination. Bustos saves the seed from the Santa Cruz strain and to do so the chiles must be allowed to fully ripen on the plant. The Farm has its own beehives for pollination purposes.
“The Mesilla Valley (area of New Mexico around Hatch) thrives on this chile,” Bustos said as he shows off the large , smooth pods of Big Jim chile.
It is noticeably larger than the Santa Cruz strain with bigger pods. The Big Jim variety was developed at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces for growing in the Hatch and Mesilla Valley areas.
“Because it has thicker flesh and is bigger,” it’s popular for dishes like rellenos, casseroles and stews, where volume is important,” Bustos said.
Bustos has incorporated modern farming techniques at Santa Cruz. Greenhouses and drip irrigation waters some of the crops, but the chile is still irrigated by flooding the rows of chile with water from the acequia that runs through the farm.
“The ancient infrastructure still works,” Bustos said. “ We’ll never give that up.”
Bustos sells his chile locally at farmers’ markets. Buying local chile is good for the local economy.
“When you buy local, that dollar gets circulated locally,” Rio Arriba County Agricultural Agent Tony Valdez said. “The farmer gets the money without a middleman and he then spends it locally.”
Rudy Cordova, of Hernandez, plants about a half-acre using seed passed down from his father.
“I’ve had it for I don’t know how many years,” Cordova said. “It has a different flavor. I sell at the farmers’ markets and I have people I sell to regularly. They like the chile, the flavor.”
Cordova has no problem asking for a premium price for his chile, especially his ground red chile powder.
“I can sell it for $15-a-pound when chile from the south is $3-a-pound, and I don’t have any trouble selling it,” he said.
Cordova reports that this year’s growing conditions were not ideal
“First it was too cold, then it was too hot,” he said. “I’ve had better years.”
Cordova, 79, said the number of chile growers is declining because it is hard work and farmland is being gobbled up for other uses.
“You have to plant it, thin it, harvest it all by hand,” he said. “There’s more trailers on the farmland now; pretty soon there’s not going to be any farmland.”
Don Bustos’ Santa Cruz Farms and Rudy Cordova’s Farm in Hernandez are typical of Rio Arriba County chile producers, which total just 56 farms averaging one acre in size, according to the 2007 Department of Agriculture Census, which is done every five years. Only six Rio Arriba farms produce chile peppers for processing, while all 56 produce chile for the fresh market.
The value of all vegetable crops in Rio Arriba County was $714,000 in 2007, or 12th highest in New Mexico.
Doña Ana County, where Hatch is located, has 69 farms producing $8,581,000 of chile on 3,607 acres.