 David and Rebecca Gutierrez received help from New MexiCare, offered through the state’s Aging and Long-Term Services Department, a program that became available in all 33 counties in September, 2025. (Leah Romero for Source NM) When David Gutierrez of Laguna had surgery to remove his gallbladder earlier this year, he and his wife of 45 years Rebecca Gutierrez thought his recovery would be simple and straightforward. Instead, several complications left the couple worrying about his care and their rapidly shrinking funds.
Rebecca Gutierrez previously worked at her local senior center in Laguna, where she interacted with many people who, she told Source New Mexico, worried about being unable to afford to leave their jobs or care for aging parents on their own. Then she attended one of the New Mexico Aging and Long-Term Services Department’s annual Conference of Aging and learned about New MexiCare, a program that helps fill the gaps for seniors who have cognitive or physical limitations and don’t qualify for Medicaid, but have limited financial means. After receiving funding during the 2024 legislative session, the program rolled out as a pilot that year, but only in limited counties and not in Cibola County, where the couple lived. NewMexiCare later expanded to 31 of the state’s 33 counties — everywhere but Bernalillo and Doña Ana counties —and, as of this month, became available statewide According to a Sept. 16 news release from the ALTSD, 285 New Mexicans have been enrolled in New MexiCare since its official launch in October 2024, and over $1.2 million in financial assistance has been distributed. While at the 2025 Annual Conference on Aging in Glorieta last week, Aging Secretary Emily Kaltenbach told Source that enrollment numbers have tripled since she took over the department last fall. “The challenge ahead of us is money,” she said. “People get on the program, but attrition is not at the same rate as people coming on. And so, that’s going to be something we’re going to have to tackle at a legislative level. We have to show how impactful it is so that we can get additional funding.” The Gutierrezes were two of more than 1,400 senior New Mexicans and caregivers who attended the conference this week, and made a point to share their story with Kaltenbach. After David Gutierrez became sick with gallstones in April 2025, he underwent surgery to remove his gallbladder and Rebecca became his primary caregiver. But he didn’t improve after the surgery. “We went home and he’s not getting any better,” she told Source. “He still hurts and doctors would say, ‘You know, he’s older. He’s 71 years old, it takes longer [to heal].’” David ended up back in the emergency room and doctors discovered that fluid had formed where his gallbladder had been, and he had developed an abscess on his liver. The medical team asked if the couple could travel 45 minutes from their home to Albuquerque frequently for treatment, but the travel costs would have compounded their financial situation. “I’ve already used my resources taking care of him,” Rebecca said. She called New MexiCare and arranged an appointment for organizers to interview the two of them in their home to assess their needs. During the two-week wait, David’s situation remained complicated. “One week he had seven doctor’s appointments,” she said. And because of the toll the surgery and subsequent complications took on his body, David was weaker than he had ever been and had trouble getting around. He had to use a walker for the first time in his life. After the assessment, he was approved for New MexiCare, including 17 hours a week for in-home care and four-and-a-half hours of transportation. The couple told Source that before they received a check from New MexiCare, their savings were almost completely used up. They said they were worried about how they would pay for the copays for all of David’s appointments. “I’ve always advocated for the caregivers, but to become one was totally different,” Rebecca said. With help and financial assistance from New MexiCare and Social Security, the couple have been able to focus on David’s recovery. And Rebecca said she recently became the president of the advisory group in Laguna for seniors. “I told them, ‘I’m going to educate you guys how to take advantage of this opportunity that we finally have,’” she said.
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By Karima Alavi All photos, compliments of Rehana Archuleta One comment was all it took: It all began when a Sufi Sheikh in Santa Barbara, California, mentioned something unusual to Hakim and Hafsa Archuletta: a group of American Muslims were planning to build an Islamic mosque and madressah (school) in a small New Mexico town called Abiquiu. Shortly thereafter, Hakim and Hafsa gathered their three small children, including the oldest, Rehana, and moved to New Mexico. They first lived in a home that is now on the Hunt property, before moving to a mobile home along county road 155. Eventually they moved to one of the homes on the property of Dar al Islam, where the family would grow to include seven children in all.
Childhood memories of Abiquiu bring up thoughts of freedom, joy, and pretty much a childhood paradise when Rehana thinks back to what it was like to grow up on the grounds of Dar al Islam. There were mountains to explore, arroyos to swim in, other children to play with, especially after Dar al Islam developed an onsite elementary school that served the many Muslim families who had moved to Abiquiu and the surrounding area to be part of the exciting project of developing the mosque and school. All was well. Then the teenage years hit. Along with the boredom, came a determination to move away. At the age of 18, Rehana left for Santa Fe where she found a job at a restaurant. However, it was not just any restaurant. She had landed at the prestigious Bistro 315, now called the 315 Restaurant and Wine Bar. The owner of the French restaurant, still located on Santa Fe Trail, sent Rehana on a New York tour of high-end eateries. From that point on, she was hooked; it was the food service industry for her. Except for one slight detour, when everything turned into a circus. Literally. A slight five-year detour: It was another twist of fate, or perhaps one could say a twisted ankle, that threw Rehana’s life in another direction. For a while, at least. While visiting Abiquiu, Rehana had a nasty fall and broke a foot. Working all day in a restaurant became impossible. She had a friend who was leaving her position in the ticket office for Cirque Hawaii, a performance-based circus modeled on Cirque du Soleil. Rehana got the job, but it didn’t last long. She quickly worked her way up to Operations Manager and spent the next five years working from Hawaii, with mostly Russian performers. Rehana’s job was to transport shipping containers filled with costumes, equipment, lighting, and props to seaports from where they’d be delivered to wherever the performers and staff were settling. The crew would stay at a variety of places, each for a few days at a time, before moving on to the next town. Once the company morphed into Cirque Polynesia, Rehana’s responsibilities were to get cast, crew, and equipment to places like the Philippines, Guam, Saipan, Malaysia, Japan, and other far-off lands where audiences awaited the arrival of the circus.  Rehana (center) with circus performers. Back to New Mexico: Rehana eventually returned to New Mexico and jumped right back into the world of food services with an assistant manager position at Bistro 315. She learned even more about the business side of restaurants when she became the manager of Mu Du Noodles. In the meantime, she married an Afghani man and learned the intricate details of Middle Eastern foods from her (now former) mother-in-law. She puts her own twist on traditional eastern foods, making them healthier and well-suited for the American palate. Rehana’s father, Hakim, is also an excellent cook who’d been teaching her how to make her way around a kitchen, since she was quite young. As seen in my April 12, 2015 article for Abiquiu News, the Archuletta family is continuing the tradition of passing these skills down the family line, with Rehana’s daughter, Hadiyyah, learning to cook and bring comfort to others through food. All these experiences led Rehana to conclude that she was ready to start her own business. Food trucks were becoming a trend in Santa Fe. At that exact same time, Meow Wolf was bringing a new center of experiential art to the city. Rehana lucked out. Meow Wolf was more than happy to join forces with Rehana and have her serve delicious meals from her food truck, Kebab Caravan, that was settled in their parking lot. Even with the success of her food truck, Rehana wanted to move on to something else—a catering business. She sold the food truck and got ready to expand, ready to bring food to weddings, business events, retreats. Then… Covid hit. She wasn’t going anywhere. By shifting gears, she was able to sell take-out meals that she cooked at home.
Afghan Resettlement Project:
Another project Rehana has been active with is the Asheyana Project, an effort to assist refugee women who are trying to find their way in their new lives in the Santa Fe area. Rehana provided job training for some of these women who were part of the rising tide of refugee families who arrived in New Mexico after the fall of the Afghan government. The word Asheyana is a Dari word that means “a place where people live, where they feel comfort and support; a place where they can come together.” Having suffered oppression under Taliban rule, many of these women had never earned their own money. Few had gone to school, and none of them knew how to drive. With Rehana’s assistance, several Afghani women learned how to drive, and eventually received driver’s licenses. Initially, these efforts received funding assistance from Las Cumbres Community Services, a Santa Fe organization that helps newly relocated families integrate into communities. Recently, federal support for such efforts has suffered significant cuts. The Afghan Resettlement Project has not been able to continue their services, though Rehana still manages to train a few individuals and assist them with their search for permanent employment. Las Cumbres Community Services continues to offer immigrant and refugee services in the Santa Fe area. If you would like to support their STAR program, (Support for Trauma-Affected Refugees) you can donate here by scrolling down to “How to get involved”: https://www.lascumbres-nm.org/star In the end, it has been a wild ride for the child who grew up in Abiquiu, traveled much of the world, and returned to her New Mexico roots in the end. Many of us are waiting to see where her next adventure will take her. Interested in tasting some of Rehana’s dishes? Stop by Dar al Islam during the Abiquiu Studio Tour on October 11 & 12 (not open on Monday, 10/13). Her food was quite a hit last year, and is sure to please visitors again as they make their way through beautiful autumn scenery, and browse the offerings of Abiquiu’s artists. Interview with Dick Lumaghi By Jessica Rath  Image credit: Jessica Rath. “The Abiquiú What?”, you may ask, if you’ve moved here after 2007. Some other readers may fondly remember classes they took with Dick Lumaghi at his pottery studio. I was one of those fortunate people and still have bowls, tea pots, plates, vases, and other things I made under Dick’s skillful guidance. I absolutely loved the feeling of centering the clay: you kick the wheel to get it spinning at a comfortable speed (or you’d switch an electric wheel on; Dick had several of both), throw your cone of wedged clay in the center of the spinning wheel, wet your hands, place them on the sides of the clay, and squeeze inwards. The clay is wobbly at first and it’s a fine line between applying too much pressure (which may throw the clay off the wheel) and not enough – it just keeps wobbling. When the center of the clay somehow fuses with your own center, and the clay’s transformation syncs harmoniously with your movements: out of this world. Because of family and health reasons, Dick and his wife Bonnie moved to California in 2007. They divide their time between San Francisco, where they have an apartment in North Beach, and Potter Valley in Mendocino County. What’s he up to these days? I was curious and scheduled a Zoom interview. He was happy to re-connect with Abiquiú News’ readership. We started with a bit of background: Dick actually used to live in California before he moved to Abiquiú in 1993. He was a philosophy professor at Dominican College in San Rafael. How did you get into pottery, I asked him.  Image credit: Jessica Rath. “Well, I was in my first semester of teaching and one of my students had just started taking up a pottery class,” Dick explained. “She sat me down at a pottery wheel, and I was just immediately hooked. So it became at first a hobby, but soon I spent three months of my summer vacation back at the school, making pots in the pot shop. I did that for ten years, and during that time, I built a pottery wheel and a kiln and set up a little studio at home in Marin County, where I was living. After ten years of teaching I took a year’s leave of absence. I tested the waters, and did just fine making pots, and I loved it. So I gave up a tenured position at the age of 40, and never looked back.” For about twelve years Dick had a full time pottery studio in San Rafael, and he began making plans to move to New Mexico. A friend owned some land in Abiquiú, and when Dick visited and saw it, he fell in love with it, bought the property and built his house. He moved in the winter of 1993 and started to establish his pottery studio, “Abiquiú Pottery”. I remembered that he had always been part of the Studio Tour, so I asked what year he joined.  Image credit: Jessica Rath. “I was right there at the beginning,” Dick told me. “I think the first one was in the fall of 94, and I was involved with it from the very beginning. It grew and grew and became just super popular. Towards my last years in Abiquiú I was often making more than a third of my yearly income on one weekend. It just got so big. It was a wonderful thing for me. After I moved to California I still returned for the studio tour, for about seven or eight years. I would rent the house out for nine months, work for two or three, and do the tour. But then I sort of got tired of going back and forth! I was 40 years old when I started with pottery. So by that time, I was in my 70s, and it was a lot of work, driving back and forth. So I concentrated on staying in California.” “Now I am still making pots,” Dick went on, “but I've slowed down considerably. When I left California in 1993 I had my clientele sales at home, and I was doing fairs and exhibits, and wholesaling. But since coming back, it's just basically been wholesaling. I sell to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, and to various little shops, but on the whole I'm scaling back.”  Image credit: Jessica Rath. I bet it's nice to slow down a bit, and what do you do with the rest of your time? I wanted to know. I learned something new when Dick answered: “Well, I had a second job since 1980 when my family was served by a Hospice Program, and I was so impressed with the care that we got from the Hospice people. I became a patient care volunteer, and I did that for ten years in the San Francisco area. Then I moved to Santa Barbara on the way to New Mexico, and I took a paid job with the Hospice in Santa Barbara, coordinating a bereavement program. I worked about twenty hours a week. When I moved to New Mexico and I was just starting the pottery, I needed more income at the front end, so I had an almost full time job with the Visiting Nurse Service Hospice based in Santa Fe, but I was at their Espanola office. I did that until I left in 2007.” “When I came back to California, I took a job with the Hospice in Ukiah, right near Potter Valley,” Dick continued. “I did that in a half-time position for five years, and now I'm more or less retired. But I keep myself plenty busy. During Covid I started reading a lot more, because I had nothing else to do – all of my suppliers had dried up. So I built what they call a ‘Tiny Library’, and it's on the side of our apartment here in North Beach. A lot of people walk by here, and they put things in the library and they take them out. So, my reading has gotten a lot more interesting. For instance, I discovered that there's an author called Virginia Woolf [he chuckles]. People have been saying for a hundred years that she's a great writer, but I didn't know that until I read her work. So, I'm reading a lot more and enjoying it.” My next question: Now that your life is divided between being in San Francisco and in Potter Valley, how much time do you spend in each location?  Image credit: Jessica Rath. “When we first arrived and I was doing more pottery, it was like three weeks up there and one week here,” Dick explained. “Now it's more like two weeks each way, or sometimes more here in San Francisco. Bonnie and I have developed a real social life here in the city, and in the country there's just not much of it. There's my friend who has the vineyard and there are a couple of neighbors, but it's really pretty quiet. When we walk our dog, there's only one other dog. When we walk our dog in San Francisco, there are fifty dogs! And there are all the cultural events, and restaurants here.” Did you have any trouble getting used to city life after Abiquiú, I wanted to know. “No, I took to it like a duck to water,” Dick answered. “Bonnie has pointed out that when I'm with people, I kind of light up and I'm more available. I think I'm actually happier. When I was working, I just worked, and pottery for me has always been a fairly quiet pursuit. I love music, and I think, in retrospect, it was a chance to listen to music all day long, music that I chose. One time I walked into my studio in Mill Valley and a young apprentice had put on some music, but I told him, No. I choose good music, and that’s that. So, I generally have a far richer life here in the city, going to bookstores, lectures, museums, movies, all this kind of stuff. And when I’m in Potter Valley my life is more isolated, but it's a beautiful valley, there’s great food, there’s lots of vegetables growing there, and they have a terrific Farmers’ Market. ” Did you ever visit your old College in San Rafael, did you ever go back there to see what it has become, I asked next. “Bonnie and I went once or twice when the fellow that replaced me gave some lectures there,” Dick replied. “But they're scaling back dramatically on the humanities, just like everywhere, about 70% of their students are business majors now. So it really changed. I thought about doing a pottery demonstration, but they had basically closed down the pottery studio where I learned and started."  Image credit: Jessica Rath. Dick continued: “I forgot to mention that as part of my retirement I give pottery demonstrations at a couple of senior centers, and also at colleges. There are two or three really big pottery studios in San Francisco, where lots of people are working. Pottery is kind of having a thing right now, it’s quite popular. Something funny happened recently: We live in a really quiet part of North Beach which is one of the entertainment centers in San Francisco, but we live in a very quiet corner of it. Somebody opened up a pastry shop just up the block from us, and it's hugely popular. It's run by a young woman, and she's very savvy with social media and Tiktok and Instagram. There's a line outside, sometimes with 200 or even 300 people wrapped around our apartment for two hours waiting to buy a $6 pastry. So I walked in there right after they opened and they have a little shelf with T-shirts and sweat clothes with their logo on it. And they had some machine-made pottery. So I asked the young woman whether she’d like to have some handmade pottery? She said, ‘Well, sure, let's try’. I started selling mugs and little espresso cups with saucers to her. About once every month or two I bring them a pot. I even made a little logo for them and she liked it so much, she got a tattoo with the logo!”  Image credit: Dick Lumaghi. “Bonnie and I have had a meditation practice for the whole time we've known one another, about 25 years or so,” Dick said, “and our meditation group here was live until Covid hit, and now it's on Zoom. So we sit with them every day, for five days a week. It's connected with the Zen Center in San Francisco, and I'm making pots for their gift store. They also have a place down in the country, the Tassahara Zen Center, and they also have a little gift shop. I like that connection of my life with my work. It's organic, it evolves from where you go and what you are involved with. It's not like some big order from somebody you don't know. It's all very kind of personal in a way.” Early on in his career Dick participated in a big fair organized by the American Crafts Council and got a huge order from Macy's for their famous store in New York. He sent 32 boxes of pottery to Macy's and it sold right away, so they ordered more. But he didn’t really like working with them, it was too impersonal, plus, they took two months to pay. So he didn’t continue. His step son-in-law, who became a potter after an internship with Dick and who lives in Asheville/North Carolina with his wife, just does wholesale work and loves it. It’s great that there are so many ways to do pottery, Dick said. Before he moved to Abiquiú Dick drove to about ten or twelve weekend shows a year, and he had two sales at home, that was enough. But once he was in Abiquiu, this rhythm changed somewhat. He had joined the San Francisco Potters Association, a juried, prestigious organization with high standards. They had one very successful sale a year, and Dick drove first to San Francisco and then to Palo Alto, after they moved the show there. It was worth the effort it took, loading up his station wagon and driving all the way to California and back, and he continued with this one show for about ten years.  Image credit: Dick Lumaghi. “Everything about pottery is hard,” Dick reminisced. “Setting up a 10 by 10 foot booth at a fair took me at least three hours. I used to look with longing at the booth next to me which was empty until 15 minutes before the beginning of the fair. A guy would show up with a folding table, a folding chair and a briefcase. He’d open up the briefcase and sit there and make lots of money, he was selling silver jewelry. And I thought, I should have done that… But then one day he got held up at gunpoint at the end of the fair. The guy with the gun took his money and his jewelry. And I thought, nobody has ever held up a potter, ‘Hand me that tea pot or I’ll shoot you!’, so I'm going to keep being a potter.” It certainly doesn’t sound boring – what an exciting memory! Dick added how fondly he thinks of his time in Abiquiú. “I greatly appreciate the people I've met and came to love in Abiquiú, my classes and all my neighbors. It was a wonderful experience. Our home there is now for sale, and it's under contract. So I think this interview is a bittersweet goodbye to Abiquiú, particularly to the Bondys and their wonderful newsletter.” Dick sent an email to add the following:  Image credit: Jessica Rath. “You asked a question in the interview concerning how one aspect of my life has affected or connected with another. I mentioned the pottery connection I’ve made with my meditation practice. A further “meeting” of aspects of my careers would be this: In my teaching, I was most drawn to the interdisciplinary mode of teaching the Humanities. In retrospect, my pottery life was a rather solitary pursuit: I always had helpers or apprentices, never any real collaboration in the actual making of pots. In my Hospice career, however, it was the interdisciplinary format of Hospice care that drew me from the beginning—how rewarding it was to work closely with nurses, aides, social workers, volunteers, chaplains, etc. in a mutually supportive atmosphere of compassionate professionalism. That really sustained me over the years as a healthy counterbalance to the alone time in the studio. I’m remembering as I write this that in addition to working with Hospice in Espanola, I also taught for a few years at the Elizabeth Kubler Ross Hospice Training Institute at the College in El Rito—a great experience with students from around the country and Europe. Looking back at the arc of my work life, then, I see that Hospice enabled me to ground the important concerns of Philosophy in the actual practice of working with people and their helpers at a significant time in anyone’s life, the end of life. Hospice remains the only community service work I have ever done—(I don’t count my 3 years in the military as really a service freely given: The draft was on and my ‘service’ was, frankly, compelled, not voluntary).”  Image credit: Dick Lumaghi. I want to thank Dick for this interview; I bet his former students as well as the neighbors and many friends he and Bonnie had here in Abiquiú enjoy hearing from him and learning what he’s doing these days. If, however, you’ve never heard of Dick Lumaghi, you just may have wondered forever what the life of a potter is all about. Well, now you know!
You may find Dick Lumaghi’s beautiful and functional pottery ware at Nest Gallery in Barranca. Scope, number of troops still being determined, guard leader says By:Patrick Lohmann Source New Mexico  New Mexico National Guard’s Adjutant General Miguel Aguilar told a legislative committee Monday that the National Guard will come to Española to assist local law enforcement in the near future. (Patrick Lohmann / Source NM) New Mexico’s National Guard Adjutant General announced Monday that guardsmen will soon be deployed to Española, a town of roughly 10,000 people in Northern New Mexico whose leaders recently asked for state help dealing with a crime, drug and housing crisis.
Española will be the second New Mexico city to receive National Guard troops. Albuquerque, the state’s biggest city, has seen a monthslong troop deployment in support of the Albuquerque Police Department. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham authorized the deployments to both cities in emergency orders that cite rising crime and short-staffed law enforcement agencies. The governor’s Aug. 13 emergency order for the Española area authorized National Guard deployments, along with funding for emergency housing or healthcare help. Her office stressed at the time that there were no imminent plans to deploy National Guard troops to Española. According to the executive order, police calls in the Española area have doubled in the last two years, and police dispatches to businesses have quadrupled in that same period. She also cited Rio Arriba County’s high overdose death rate, “with residents struggling with addiction to fentanyl and other illicit substances.” Lujan Grisham’s order also authorized $750,000 in emergency spending. Last week, the state health department reported Rio Arriba County is one of three in Northern New Mexico with surging overdose deaths and overdose emergency room visits. While the decision has now been made to send them, the number of troops, as well as their assignment, is still being determined, Miguel Aguilar told Source New Mexico on Monday after presenting in Albuquerque to the interim Courts, Corrections and Criminal Justice committee of the Legislature. “We don’t even know what the number is going to be,” Aguilar told Source. “It’s just a matter of what the scope is.” Aguilar and Española Police Chief Mizel Garcia presented to the committee to answer questions about the role the guard could play in Española and elsewhere, and to address swirling controversy about President Donald Trump’s use of the National Guard in American cities, including Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles. Aguilar said his troops’ presence in Albuquerque since April has freed up Albuquerque police to make more arrests. The National Guard has taken some administrative tasks off police officers’ hands, including compiling case files for prosecutors, directing traffic and monitoring surveillance cameras. Garcia said the guard will be useful in his town, assisting an under-staffed police department in some form. But he acknowledged that their deployment could face public opposition. “My biggest concern right now is fear,” he said. “Because of the cultural background that we have in Espanola, there’s always been a fear of the National Guard coming in.” He said he and his staff had multiple community meetings in recent weeks, in which they sought to reassure the community that police and the guard are working together “as a team.” Garcia said the troops’ arrival could occur as soon as early October. Several lawmakers said they were concerned about the prospect of an expanded military presence in New Mexico communities, especially given Trump’s use of the guard. Rep. Andrea Romero (D-Santa Fe) said defining a mission for the guard’s deployment in Española is vital, as is more clarity about who is in charge and who is accountable. “I’m currently not understanding the strategy, even looking to Albuquerque as a way in which I can try to understand what’s going to happen in Española,” she said. The committee invited Naureen Shah, an expert and attorney for the national American Civil Liberties Union, to lay out her concerns about civil rights for civilians who are increasingly interacting with domestic military forces. She said that, while she does not pretend to understand all the local forces that might be used to justify the guard’s presence in New Mexico, deploying the guard here gives Trump cover. “This administration wants to be able to deploy the military at the president’s whim as a tool against his political opponents,” she said. “And the more that happens at a state level, the more it normalizes it for the Trump administration.” Interview with Umami Gardens’ owners Jessi and Hendrix Johnston. By Jessica Rath  Image credit: Umami Gardens. Umami – you’ve probably seen the word enough times to have some idea what it means. But for this interview, I wanted to dig a bit deeper: did you know that it has been officially recognized as the fifth taste, distinct from sweet, salty, sour, and bitter? It has its own taste receptors or taste buds, which respond to glutamate, an amino acid, and several nucleotides, organic molecules which are the building blocks of all life forms. Usually umami (a Japanese word) is translated as ‘delicious taste’, is associated with a savory flavor, and is known as a flavor enhancer. But there’s another important aspect of umami that researchers discovered: it relies on the harmonious combination of several ingredients, all acting in concert. Take tomatoes and cheese, especially Parmesan cheese for example: the perfect pizza. Or the Japanese soup stock dashi, made with seaweed, miso, and dried Bonito flakes (katsuobushi): the result is a rich, satisfying, complex taste. I believe it’s this aspect of umami, the collaborative, synergistic factor, that made Jessi and Hendrix Johnston choose the name. Jessi grew up in Southern Illinois, she told me, in an agricultural town among corn fields and soy beans. Both her grandmother and her mother kept a garden. “When I was in college, I was interested: what diet is trending among people my age? Is it vegan, vegetarian, or pescetarian? And I found that local food was the most environmentally friendly food. So I became really interested in local food because I tried to pick out what diet I was going to follow in college.” Her husband Hendrix, on the other hand, comes from Abiquiú. His grandmother lives in Abiquiú, and his mother lives right next door to them. He and Jessi met in Taos, where his Mom lived at the time, and where Hendrix farmed his mother’s land. But then she wanted to leave Taos, and Jessi and Hendrix decided to seriously get into farming, which meant that they’d need more land. So they looked around Abiquiú, because it has a bit of a longer growing season, and also because that’s where his family lived. Eventually they all moved down here, and Jessi and Hendrix planned to farm a piece of land in Abiquiú, but there wasn’t any water. Their neighbors put them in touch with Lisa Faithorn and Djann Hoffman who own Farside Farm and were looking for somebody who could put their irrigated field and two hoophouses to use.  Image credit: Umami Gardens. When I interviewed Lisa and Djann about a year ago, they had told me about the young couple who had leased part of their land, was growing vegetables for the Taos and Santa Fe Farmers Markets, and was providing several restaurants with fresh produce. They had nothing but the highest praise for the two, who are actually three now – Baby Jet is part of the family, and I can’t begin to imagine how much work it all must be. Then again, when you enjoy what you’re doing, it’s also fun, and Jessi and Hendrix definitely love farming. The way they’re doing it also benefits the environment, which is a huge factor for them. Locally produced items are the most environmentally friendly, Jessi told me: “You hear about strawberries in California getting trucked to Northern California for the winter and then trucked back down south so that they'll continuously produce fruit. And then they get trucked across the country. It’s pretty crazy.”  Image credit: Umami Gardens. What kind of vegetables do you grow, I wanted to know. “We do a variety: loose greens, salad, arugula, spinach, Asian greens; we do cooking mixes and raw mixes; we do bunch greens like chard, kale, different types of Asian greens like Tokyo Bekana, Bok choy; we do brassicas; we do cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage; broccolini is a really fun one that's a fan favorite, broccolini instead of broccoli. And then in the summer we do all the hot crops, like cucumbers, tomatoes, okra, and eggplant. And then we do roots: carrots, radishes, watermelon radishes, beets, turnips, squash – we try to grow a little bit of everything.” Wow! What an amazing selection! “This is our sixth year of growing, so we're starting to try some new things,” Jessi continued. “We have a base of established produce, we know how to grow this. And we're gonna keep growing this, but it's still fun to try some new stuff every year.” Did you find any vegetable that was really, really difficult to grow and you gave up on, I asked. “Winter squash,” Jessi answered. “We had too many squash bugs out in our field, and they're just killing the crop. In our first year we had a good crop, but then we got squash bugs towards the end of the season, and now we can’t harvest any squash. Last year I was pregnant with Jet, and I reseeded our winter squash three different times. It's 900 feet of squash, and we reseeded three times, but it didn't take. If we don't grow winter squash for a while, for a few years, they might die off, and then maybe we can try again.” Hendrix had just joined us, and he added: “You know, farming is a gamble, it's a risky business. You're never really guaranteed a harvest.” That’s not an easy way of life. How does it feel to be living on the edge, because you're never sure whether it will pay off, I enquired. “A lot of the things we do, a lot of the infrastructure we put up, like the greenhouses and irrigation infrastructure, the insect netting, all the tools and techniques make it more probable that we're going to succeed,” Hendrix answered. “It's never a sure thing, though. Also, we're a ‘diversified vegetable garden’, and diversity is key. We're not counting on just the winter squash to pay the bills. If one crop fails, we just do something else. We've got 39 other crops out there.”  Image credit: Umami Gardens. Next, I asked about flowers. Some farmers like to grow flowers and sell them at the farmers market. Jessi answered: “I was just going to mention that too, for pest control, that's a goal we have. I've been planting a lot of perennial type flowers. But it's been a little tricky for us. We are a vegetable farm first. And flower farming is a separate career. I would like to do more flowers but we're hesitant to go full force with them. I would like to invest more in perennials because you plant them once and then you’re done. But we're on rented land. So there's a balance between how much we want to invest.” “Also, flowers are a funny thing, especially right now, where we're at economically,” Jessi continued. “Money is tight and not many people buy flowers. I see a lot of bouquets go back home with the sellers at the Farmers’ Market on Saturdays. If we could sell flowers for five bucks, they would sell, but there's no money in selling flowers for even $10.” “I have a flower farmer friend in town, and I would like to model our flower business after hers. She does something like a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) with the restaurants in Taos. Every week she goes by and changes all the little bouquets on the tables, and then she leaves them with a couple of big bouquets for the host stand, for example. I would like to do something similar. And the flowers are good for beneficial insects and birds. That's part of the bio-diverse, bio-dynamic growing that we pursue. But how do we implement this in a financially realistic way on rented land?”  Image credit: Umami Gardens. When Jessi mentioned biodynamic farming, I had to ask whether they followed any special philosophy or technique, like permaculture or biodynamic, or anything like that. “We're not biodynamic in that sense, but we think it's a great set of words,” Hendrix answered. “The dynamics of the biosphere. But the terms we more identify with are No Till and Regenerative Agriculture. Like when you go in with a tractor, and you turn the soil six inches or deeper, you mess up all the worms, all the bacteria, all the mushrooms, everything that is in the top soil. No Till is a tool in the greater scheme of regenerating, to get the soil back to its more original state. We're really just trying to mimic what nature does. Nature does not till in the sense that we know it. Nature doesn't use big tractors and machinery that come in and turn everything to a pulp. It's more a style of layering organic matter and compost, and letting the worms, letting the biology, move that stuff throughout the dirt.”  Image credit: Umami Gardens. This reminded me of the understory, the layer of vegetation in a forest or wooded area which includes fungi and their root-like structure of mycelia. They form symbiotic associations with plants, and exchange resources. It means the soil is full of life, and if I understand Hendrix correctly, their technique not only doesn't hurt the soil by breaking this all up and disturbing it, but they do more: they add compost so that it can regenerate. They want to help the soil, help the Earth. This seems so important. Jessi confirmed: “It also eventually will cut down how many amendments we need to add. Regenerative agriculture really does have an effect on your local environment. And eventually it could go bigger than that. Less mining, less shipping, less trucking, fewer deliveries, this could have a huge impact.”  Image credit: Umami Gardens. This seems like important work to me, work that matters and that makes a difference. Impressive, isn’t it. “We can't fix the big problems that the world has, we can't,” Hendrix added. “But we can impact this little, tiny piece that we're working on, by growing healthy, nutrient-dense food for our family and our community. That feels incredible.” Jessi agreed. “Learning from a lot of the conversations in our community, in every community that I'm a part of – like the city community, our farming community, the town community, – in all these different little pockets that you're a part of in social groups, I sense that there’s a lot of hopelessness. But on the farm I can just be in our little bubble and know that this is a real thing. This is action that we're doing, it’s not radical, but it's real, it's something.” “It's real, and it's definitely radical,” Hendrix confirmed. “The food system as we know it, is completely broken, it's out of control. Why are we shipping cabbages across the country, or strawberries, for example? Small scale growing is a really radical movement, I feel, and it has the power to change the world. Imagine if everybody was farming like us, if agriculture was based on small scale growers. And if everybody would shop at their Farmers’ Markets. If that's where you got your groceries, instead of driving to these big supermarkets, Kroger and Walmart and such. People are so disconnected from their food. They have no idea where it comes from, and they just expect it to be there.”  Image credit: Umami Gardens. “The food system in America is so backwards,” Hendrix continued. “With monocultures like in Iowa where they grow the same thing over and over again. They go from corn to soy and then back to corn again. And all that stuff is getting sprayed with herbicides and pesticides, and the soil is completely dead. There's nothing in there.” Jessi added: “The plant is only there because they’re giving it chemicals to sprout, and then they add hormones. Those are not nutrients, nothing like that. I hear all the time that the tomatoes taste like nothing, like cardboard. So this is another future goal of ours, and another passion that we want to bring to life: getting people to the farm for Chef’s Tables, and bringing people together over delicious food, and having beautiful conversations over this beautiful food. Just getting people to taste real food again. Giving recipes out and sharing recipes, having guest Chefs come in, having Hendrix's Grandma come in and cook a meal, or our neighbor's Grandma. Just having more community, based on real food and nourishment on so many levels.” Isn’t that a fabulous idea! Jessi and Hendrix show that there's value in good food, in nutritious food. When one buys groceries at the supermarket, there's no real value, there's no care. There's no life in the commercially grown produce. It's all dead, really. And then people are getting more and more unhealthy. Jessi continues: “If we have to spend our time doing something, we might as well eat good food and have good conversation and feel healthy and good about it! Maybe someday, who knows, this will become a bigger movement.” How often do you go to the Farmers Market, was my next question. I imagine all of that must be a lot of work. They do the farming, they do the harvesting, they prepare land, and then they drive to Santa Fe and to Taos for the Farmers’ Markets. And all this with a little baby!  Image credit: Umami Gardens. “The market definitely feels like our whole life,” Jessi told me. “Our whole schedule, our whole home routine and everything revolves around it. On Saturdays I go up to Taos with Jet, and Hendrix goes down to Santa Fe. He goes year round. And the Taos market lasts six months, six months out of the year.”
I'm so glad I had the chance to chat with Jessi and Hendrix. They farm with a new sort of awareness, they’re doing this with a purpose that goes beyond just making money or taking care of themselves. I think that's what we need these days: people who take the state of the Earth and of our environment seriously. Thank you for taking the time to talk with me. I want to close with a statement of theirs which I found at the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market website: “We believe that happy soil leads to happy plants, and happy plants lead to happy people.” That’s it in a nutshell.  by NM Political Report New Mexico’s congressional delegation is demanding the Trump administration exclude the state from efforts to rescind federal protections for roadless areas in national forests, citing economic and safety concerns. U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, the ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, led the effort alongside Sen. Ben Ray Luján and Reps. Melanie Stansbury, Gabe Vasquez and Teresa Leger Fernandez in a letter to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins.  We are concerned that rolling back this rule would hurt our state’s economy, diminish its wildlife, and endanger its residents,” the lawmakers wrote.
The 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule protects nearly 1.6 million acres of national forest land in New Mexico from new permanent road construction. The rule was developed after decades of debate, more than 600 public meetings and 1.6 million public comments, according to a press release. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, outdoor recreation generates $3.2 billion annually in New Mexico and supports nearly 30,000 jobs. The lawmakers argued that many visitors specifically seek out the state for backcountry activities that would be diminished by new road construction. The delegation also highlighted wildfire risks, noting that New Mexico has a higher wildfire risk profile than 82% of the United States. Multiple federal studies have confirmed that wildfires are less likely to ignite in roadless areas, they said. “The administration’s goal of faster deployment of suppression resources must be compared against the reality that more fires will ignite when roads are added,” the letter stated. The lawmakers noted that roads also damage wildlife habitat and are associated with higher mortality rates and lower reproduction among species, including deer, elk, black bears and bighorn sheep. Heinrich gave a floor speech last week, criticizing the administration’s efforts and encouraging public participation in the comment process.  Office of the Governor
SANTA FE – New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham on Monday announced new satellite data showing New Mexico’s methane rules cut oil and gas facility emissions in the Permian Basin by half compared to neighboring Texas. The findings, released during U.S. Climate Week, demonstrate significant economic and public health benefits from the state’s environmental policies. Nine separate satellite observations collected and aggregated during 2024-2025 across the Permian Basin, including the Delaware sub-basin, showed New Mexico’s methane intensity is 1.2% compared to Texas’s 3.1% in the Delaware sub-basin. Methane intensity measures the amount of natural gas that escapes into the atmosphere during production relative to total output. Since 2020, oil and gas production in this region of the Permian has increased approximately 20% in Texas and more than 100% in New Mexico, yet overall methane intensity has declined significantly in New Mexico. The methane captured in New Mexico is valued at $125 million in additional natural gas production and $27 million in tax and royalty revenue, creating additional economic opportunity for New Mexican families and returning money to taxpayers. “New Mexico’s methane regulations demonstrate that we can lead the nation in both energy production and environmental stewardship,” said Lujan Grisham. “These smart environmental policies generate revenue for our state while protecting our air and fighting climate change.” Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that has more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide during its first 20 years in the atmosphere. New Mexico enacted comprehensive methane rules in 2021 that Texas lacks. The rules require operators to minimize venting and flaring, use cleaner air-driven equipment, conduct regular leak detection and repair, and develop gas capture infrastructure. These science-based improvements appear to be the primary factor identified in achieving these emission reductions and economic benefits, with the satellite data showing clear performance differences between states with and without comprehensive methane rules. Economic advantagesThe $125 million in captured natural gas represents energy that would otherwise be wasted. The additional tax and royalty revenue flows directly to state programs and local communities. “This data proves science-based environmental regulations deliver tangible economic benefits,” said James C. Kenney, cabinet secretary of the New Mexico Environment Department. “New Mexico’s methane rules demonstrate that protecting air quality and reducing emissions protect New Mexicans and strengthen our energy sector.” “This satellite data provides the clearest evidence yet that well-designed methane regulations are both cost-effective and protective,” said Jon Goldstein, associate vice president for Energy Transition at Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). “New Mexico’s success under Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s leadership demonstrates that cutting methane pollution and waste delivers economic benefits while protecting air quality and our climate.” Advanced satellite technologyThe findings are the result of orbital sensing technology and analytics developed by MethaneSAT, a subsidiary of EDF, supported by the Bezos Earth Fund, enabling high precision, high-resolution measurement of methane emissions over large areas. An interactive website at www.methanesat.org provides detailed analysis of the satellite findings across the region.  Sarita Nair, secretary for the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions, speaks at the New Mexico Housing Summit on Thursday in Albuquerque. (Photo by Patrick Lohmann / Source NM) New Mexico lacks more than 90,000 housing units across the state — a much larger shortage than previous estimates — according to a keynote presentation Thursday at the ongoing New Mexico Housing Summit in Albuquerque.
Previous estimates in statewide needs assessments have been less than half that. A 2022 Mortgage Finance Authority analysis said the state lacked 32,000 affordable housing units. Todd Clarke, an apartment investment broker in New Mexico for more than 30 years and self-described “data geek and policy wonk,” asserted the higher figure during a breakfast presentation at the summit.. After walking through what he sees as four previous statewide housing shortages — those caused by tuberculosis patient arrivals or post World War II expansion, for example — he said the state is in its fifth-ever housing shortage, one that presents a multi-billion-dollar challenge for housing policymakers and developers. “We hear numbers about this much demand for affordable housing; this much demand for Northern New Mexico; this much demand for Southern New Mexico, but all in, personally, I believe that number is closer to about 91,000 units,” he said. He based that number on research he’s doing with the help of a database of all apartment complexes across New Mexico that have at least two units, along with estimates of job and population growth in certain areas across the state, including in counties experiencing oil and gas development booms, he said. Couple that with jobs from tech expansion from Amazon, Facebook, Netflix and others in the Albuquerque area, and the shortage is huge, he said. Clarke expects Albuquerque’s housing shortage to be as high as 25,000 units in the near future, he said. “Certainly there are some counties that are not growing or actually shrinking, but for every one or two of those, there’s five or six other ones that are absolutely growing gangbusters, particularly those related to oil and extraction of minerals from our state,” Clarke said. Assuming a $300,000 per unit cost, that means the state faces a $27 billion problem, he said. Clarke’s presentation tracks with other signals that seem to point to an acute housing crisis in New Mexico: Median rents are increasing at rates much higher than the national average, and so is homelessness. Housing officials tasked with responding to the crisis seemed to accept Clark’s estimate and incorporated it into their descriptions of the state’s challenges and opportunities related to housing. “That’s a huge number,” said Isidoro “Izzy” Hernandez, director of the New Mexico Mortgage Finance Authority, during a “State of Housing” presentation Thursday morning. “And if you look at the number of permits that we’re issuing annually here in the state, we’ve got a long road ahead.” The housing shortage was one of many indicators that Hernandez said “are all over the map” in New Mexico, when it comes to inventory, prices and trends. “I don’t envision that at the end of the session, we’re going to solve all the problems,” Hernandez said. “But I can tell you that there is a lot of progress being made in a lot of effort to solve the problem, and to do more for the housing needs across the state.” Department of Workforce Solutions Secretary Sarita Nair, whose agency contains the newly created state Office of Housing, touted recent spending of more than $80 million across the state with funds the Legislature approved earlier this year, part of record housing-related spending by the Legislature in recent years. The funding went primarily to Albuquerque, including for homelessness services, converting an old hotel into affordable apartments and helping new developments break ground. Unlike other states, Nair noted, the state does have one advantage in tackling the growing problem, which is that the state has “a lot of money” to spend to both build more housing and make it affordable to people who need it. “That makes us very unique in the United States. I mean, when I talk to my peers from the other states, they’re cutting. Colorado is cutting budgets. California is cutting budgets. All over the country, they’re cutting budgets,” she said. “We’re not.” By Los Alamos Reporter  An artist’s rendering of the IMAP spacecraft, which will explore and chart the boundaries of the heliosphere. NASA/Princeton/Patrick McPike LANL NEWS RELEASE
On Wednesday, two scientific instruments developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory launched into space aboard a NASA spacecraft that will explore and chart the boundaries of the heliosphere — the bubble surrounding the sun and planets inflated by solar wind — and study how it interacts with the galactic neighborhood beyond. Called IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe), the NASA mission will help researchers better understand the enormous and complex space environment of the sun, the Earth’s place in the stellar region, and how the interaction of solar and stellar winds form barriers against harmful cosmic rays, thereby helping to protect life on Earth and astronauts. IMAP will travel 1 million miles towards the sun, where it will continuously sample the passing solar wind and will also remotely observe the distant, roiling interaction of solar wind with the interstellar medium. “We’ve been remotely studying the distant heliosphere for the last 17 years with another spacecraft called IBEX,” said Herb Funsten, a space scientist at Los Alamos and instrument lead for the IMAP-Hi instrument, which was developed at the Laboratory and is onboard IMAP. “We’ve learned a lot about this region of space where the sun’s space environment ends and the rest of our galaxy begins. But IMAP is so much more sophisticated. It will be like going from looking at Christmas lights in broad daylight to looking at them in the dark of night, wearing prescription glasses, and in more colors. We’ll be able to see things we’ve never seen before.” IMAP-Hi collects, counts, measures and maps invisible particles called energetic neutral atoms (ENAs), which are formed when the more abundant energetic charged atoms — flying outward from the sun or coming in from interstellar space — interact with the tenuous interstellar gas atoms that permeate the heliosphere. These fast-moving charged particles grab electrons from the neutral ones, thus becoming energetic neutral atoms. “Measuring ENAs allows us to map the otherwise invisible boundary at the distant reaches of the heliosphere — without having to go there ourselves,” Funsten said. Dan Reisenfeld, also a Los Alamos space scientist and deputy instrument lead on IMAP-Hi, agrees with Funsten that IMAP will allow for a more detailed picture of the heliosphere. “This is like going from the Hubble Telescope to the James Webb Telescope. The IBEX mission posed a lot of questions and gave us a better understanding of how our solar system interacts with the rest of the galaxy, and how the heliosphere doesn’t just protect our spacecraft from damaging radiation but the Earth, too, and, ultimately, our DNA from dangerous mutations because of radiation. But we have a lot more to learn.” IMAP will draw a map of Earth’s nearby galactic neighborhood, and advance what is known about neutral atoms and space dust that have traveled that neighborhood, bringing clues about the solar system’s origins. Additionally, the 10 scientific instruments aboard IMAP are equipped to observe a vast range of particle energies and types in interplanetary space to simultaneously investigate two of the most important overarching issues in heliophysics: the energization of charged particles from the sun and interaction of that solar wind with the winds from other stars and other material that fills the galaxy. “We’re looking at particles coming from the sun that will make their way to the boundary of the heliosphere and affect the formation of neutral atoms,” said Ruth Skoug, a Los Alamos space scientist and instrument lead for the Solar Wind Electron (SWE) instrument, which collects and counts electrons from the solar wind. SWE and the other charged particle instruments on IMAP will provide real-time observations of the solar wind and energetic particles coming towards the Earth, which interact with the Earth’s environment and can cause geomagnetic storms that produce auroras but may pose a hazard to satellites or power systems on Earth. “The position of IMAP will be about 1% of the way from the Earth to the sun, giving us about a half hour warning of space weather before it reaches Earth, or any spacecraft close to Earth,” said Skoug.
 Florence Jaramillo, “Mrs. J”, beloved owner of Rancho de Chimayó
Restaurante, passed away on the morning of September 22, 2025 at her home in Chimayo, New Mexico. She was 94. Florence Jaramillo was a mother, grandmother, friend, visionary, businesswomen, author, philanthropist, and community leader. She leaves a legacy of generosity and a passion for life. She changed the way we gather to share and celebrate through a love of food, culture, and tradition. Among her numerous achievements, she was named a New Mexico Culinary Treasure in 2014, and was awarded the 2016 James Beard Foundation America's Classics Award. The James Beard Awards recognizes culinary professionals for excellence and achievement in their fields and further the Foundation’s mission to celebrate, nurture, and honor America’s diverse culinary heritage through programs that educate and inspire. She worked tirelessly to preserve the traditions and culture of her family and community. Her impact on the world will be felt for generations to come. She always said“God blessed me with one child, but gave me thousands of children to raise.” She leaves behind her treasured Rancho de Chimayó Restaurante, which is about to celebrate its 60th Birthday Anniversary in October. She opened the restaurant in 1965, along with her former husband, Arturo Jaramillo, and daughter, Laura, in the restored home of Arturo’s grandparents, Hermenegildo and Trinidad Jaramillo. Even as a nonagenarian, and up until about a month ago, “Mrs. J.”, as she was fondly known by her customers and staff, was still at the restaurant daily greeting her long-time customers, meeting new ones, and ensuring that the restaurant ran according to her standards all with a radiant smile. Funeral arrangements and a celebration of Mrs. J’s life are pending, and will be announced soon. |
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