The Abiquiu News was not able to interview Bernadette Gallegos but was provided by this interview style statement

By Bernadette Gallegos
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Question: So why is Tres Semillas selling its land?

Bernadette Gallegos:  We decided, after a lot of discussion, that we needed to get back to what we were founded to do.  This goes way back: in about 2007 Karl Bode wanted to sell some parcels of land, the land that now belongs to Tres Semillas.  That was around the time that the El Sueno ranch closed and its owners, the Hunt family, moved. We had the Boys and Girls Club and Regalos in the hopper at the time, and they didn’t have a home of their own. The idea grew out of this basic need.  By the time we got the land bought, the Boys and Girls Club was tucked safe and sound at the school.  This brought home the need to focus on economic endeavors. We knew others had the same idea of starting their own, that was clear from the beginning from community meetings.  We never did want to run a business.

Question: We do remember there were community meetings and an effort to reach out. 

Bernadette:  Yes, it was contentious at times. Everybody had their own ideas about how the property could best be used.  But the focus was never just about the property.  It was about how we could use it as a vehicle to promote economic opportunity.  The Tres Semillas charter says we are focused on “economic development.” 

Question:  What was the strategy?  How did that work out? 

Bernadette: We had a lot of ideas presented to us, but the footing for this property was always to build a “Tenant Shared Space”. There are some very successful tenant shared spaces that I visited whereby the tenants shared the responsibility of caring for the property and buildings, with shared resources of expertise, equipment and shared missions. The other strategy was to have for-profit ventures that would support non-profit efforts. 

Question: So what changed?

Bernadette: We supported a number of enterprises and non-profits over the years. We never did move into a full “Tenant Shared Space” mode of operation.  But we are so happy to see that the non-profits Northern Youth Project and the Abiquiu Farmers Market are doing well on their own.  Both are now thriving. But they were heavily subsidized by Tres Semillas with free use of the property or such low rent that it really didn’t support taking care of the property.  The Frosty Cow and Studio 84 are doing very well, I think.  Over time we realized that we were running a public park or an industrial park without the money or staff to do that.  And we had taken our eye off the ball.  It was time to reboot, and financially we could not continue as we were. 

Question:  So what about Northern Youth Project, the Farmers Market and your other tenants?

Bernadette: Well that’s really up to them. They are their own enterprises with their own missions, which are not the same as ours. NYP has had 15 years to solidify and grow their organization.  We wish them well and will do what we can to help them in this time of transition.  We have kept everyone up to date about our thinking and we are in no rush, so we’ve tried to be as accommodating as possible.  Some are interested in buying the land, which would be great. 

Question:  How much do you expect to sell the land for, and what will you do with the money? 
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Bernadette:  We have listed the property for $610,000, on the advice of Real Estate Advisors of Santa Fe.  Anyone interested in buying the property can contact them.  We are restricted in what we can do with the final proceeds of the sale by the laws governing non-profits but we want to do something meaningful and something that affects more people in need than we now do.  

Water and wildfire risk reduction brings communities together with a common focus
​Tracy Farley and Zachary Behrens
Office of Communication and Carson National Forest 

This is the second of two stories featuring the Carson National Forest’s Enchanted Circle Landscape, part of the USDA Forest Service’s Wildfire Crisis Strategy, which focuses on water restoration and wildfire risk reduction. Read part one.

“’Water Is life,’ like everybody says, but when you actually get into it, it's true,” said Ames Austin, Mayordomo for the Vigil y Romo Acequia on the southwest end of Taos, New Mexico. “It is one of the most important aspects of our existence, and it's the main way we revitalize the land and grow food for ourselves in such an arid, dry desert. It brings life to the land.”
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In the high desert of Northern New Mexico, water is everything. Because of the unique historic cultural system of irrigation ditches, or acequias, communities can fully use the snowpack from the upper elevations on the Carson National Forest. The ongoing wildfire risk reduction work on the Enchanted Circle Landscape not only provides a healthier forest, but also can potentially increase the amount of water that flows downstream to family farms and communities.

“It is very important that we make sure our acequia is ready for when the snow comes down. We keep an eye on that snowpack to know how long we have irrigation for, when we can plant our crops, what types of crops we can plant and how long we can keep those plants going,” said Ames. “We need that snowpack runoff to come down and then be diverted into our acequia to water our crops so we can plant gardens and bring together our community. Because we live in this dry basin, it's a really big deal.”

Reviving the Vigil y Romo AcequiaAmes and his parciantes, who are members of an acequia that hold water rights, are working to revive the Vigil y Romo Acequia, which was in disuse for years. One of their first missions is weed mitigation.

Acequia law requires that all persons with irrigation rights participate in the annual maintenance of the community ditch including the annual springtime ditch cleanup, known as the limpieza y saca de acequia.

“The cover crops will eventually choke out those noxious weeds and then create a forest of green shrubbery, as opposed to a bunch of weeds and a dry field,” said Ames.

One of Ames’s parciantes is Jim Johnston and his colleagues at the Taos Land Trust, where he is the working lands director. He said the food grown at the trust’s Rio Fernando Park ends up in a local high school’s lunch program.

Bringing the Community Together

The Rio Fernando Collaborative is another example of how the community has joined together to use water originating from the Enchanted Circle Landscape.
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Maya Anthony manages this group of agencies, organizations, nonprofits and individuals in Taos County that work together for the improvement of the Rio Fernando de Taos that runs through the center of town and the broader Rio Fernando watershed.

“Seeing where people interface with that river and ecosystem and how many different trails and agricultural interests are along this river; it's a vital part of the community,” said Maya, standing next to the acequia that runs through her backyard in San Cristobal, NM. “I'm helping bring the group together and facilitate some of our work through having a joint issue that truly unites the community around some shared goals for this river and watershed.”

“From a personal standpoint, having federal agencies, along with nonprofits and different community members in the area, it's just nice to see those conversations happening in some way. People may have disagreements, but they are working through it to a point where we can all work together,” said Maya.

The collaborative is working through a water smart grant from the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation that is helping the group plan and implement restoration efforts.“We're using nature’s tools as a way to enhance the ecosystem that hopefully creates more ways to store water higher up and release water more slowly throughout the year,” explained Maya. “Benefiting agriculture is very high up there on the list for us, because there is such a deep importance and connection to the land through agriculture. Our water-sharing models of this community in the southwest are of vital importance for us to protect.”

“With less water, there comes a lot of challenges, but finding ways to keep the fabric of community at the forefront of this is what I think makes the collaborative strong and is something that we're looking at as one of our strengths,” continued Maya. “Hopefully that benefits the community, to see where the efforts are going and see more creative water storage and stormwater infrastructure.”
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Water is life- Carson National Forest Enchanted Circle shows the synergy of collaboration with a multitude of partners about reducing wildfire risk and providing life giving water coming from snowpack on the forest, supplying families, schools and communities with food, water, fuelwood. Members of the Taos Land Trust Rio Fernando Park are no different than others in their community, as they flood their field with water from the nearby acequias, a traditional irrigation ditch, to get their crops growing with much needed hydration. (USDA Forest Service photo by Preston Keres)

Water is Life

“The communal acequia model of bringing water throughout communities and centering around days or nights that you get water for whatever you would like to use on your land has a really special place in my heart,” said Maya. “It's very special seeing how people just get together around that. And it breaks down barriers between fences and property boundaries. There's very much a collective sense of, ‘This water is for everybody.’ And we try and share it as best we can with the water that's available."
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“Water is life,” said Maya. “It serves as a humbling reminder of our humanity and how much it connects us and how much we are in a position to protect that fragile balance as much as we can. If we can see ourselves as part of something, then we realize and appreciate water as not just something that comes out of the tap every time you want, but it really holds such a vital balance.”

By Zach Hively

​I wrote last week about being very, very busy. I lean into the busyness for effect, but also, it’s true that I have been feeling very, very busy.

Or more precisely, it is true that I have been feeling the pressures of there being a great deal to do—because there is a great deal to do.

And no matter how much of it I do, there will always be more to do.

The Great Escape from this vicious cycle—for me, anyway—is embracing the absolute freedom in knowing that I cannot get everything done no matter what I do, so all I can do is what I can do, and that does NOT mean stuffing every pore of my life’s spongecake with Things To Do.
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No matter how tempting that is, this stuffing of the spongecake.
No matter how sweetly those Things To Do threaten my brain if they don’t get done.
No matter what.

This is why dogs are magical. They force me back into the things that actually matter, which is far more stepping outside the door and somewhat less SEO optimization.

This is also why poetry matters.

To all the people I encounter (and you are many) who confess you don’t know how to read poetry, I want to offer this: Read it slowly. This is not a words-per-minute game. Poetry is a bonbon, best eaten slowly, allowing for a moment of delight and recognition with what’s inside.
Frankly, I don’t “know how to read poetry” either. I either feel something, or I don’t. And this is okay! You can’t possibly eat every chocolate in the shop. And when I find a poem, or a piece of one, that makes me feel something, whatever, anything at all—there’s a piece of myself reflected there. My own taste.

No one says they don’t know how to eat candy. There’s just candy you want to savor, and candy you want to guzzle, and candy you want to throw back into the bucket on Halloween.
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Same goes for poetry. Same goes for anything--especially the Things That Don’t Need Done, But We Do Them Anyway.

And with that a poem

​Sometimes
 
Sometimes all I need
to remember myself
is a nighthawk slicing
 
across my map,
a light rain masking
what time it is,
 
a warm bagel and
an americano sitting
me down, a dog
 
climbing over
my lap, rosemary
bushing in a pot.

And who is “we”, you might ask? Well, I’m talking about Abiquiú’s very own and unique Northern Youth Project (NYP). NYP is a non-profit designed by and for Teens in Rio Arriba County, providing free programs and paid internships in the arts, traditional agriculture, community service and leadership projects that honor the past and look to the future.
 
To learn more about their background, here is a little blurb from their Facebook page:
“In the summer of 2009, a group of six kids, aged 13 to 16, along with the help of an adult sponsor, banded together and advocated for services for the teens of their community. They dreamt of a place to be together, feel safe and be themselves,  Surrounded by positive friends and role models with programs that supported the physical, emotional and academic needs of rural northern New Mexico teens. NYP serves youth ages 12-21 from Abiquiú, El Rito, Gallina, Cañones, and Medanales”.

​Doesn’t this sound absolutely wonderful? If you’re not an old-timer who grew up here or who has lived here for 20 years or more, you may not know that there is nothing to do for young people around here. No basketball or soccer field, no gathering place to hang out, no clubs where one can learn something – at least, not in 2009.  Leona Hillary, who is currently Director of Education at the Santa Fe Children’s Museum, was the founder and first Program Director.

One of the unique qualities of NYP is the fact that they offer internships to young people aged 16 to 21 who otherwise have limited job prospects or are seeking first time employment. The interns are responsible for garden care from start to finish, Spring-Fall and learn about various agricultural topics such as soil health, permaculture practices, safe tool use, plant identification, traditional flood irrigation and Acequia maintenance, growing / cooking /eating/seed saving of regional heirloom and other crops of their choosing, and community engagement at the Abiquiu Farmers Market. They explore a number of artistic media and farming styles via field trips and individual site-based apprenticeships with local mentors, and gain important leadership skills through these hands-on experiential learning opportunities.
 
A young person who commits to the full internship schedule will earn $17 per hour in 2024. Think about it: this is an invaluable arrangement which prepares teenagers and young adults for the future. They acquire skills, learn to cooperate and be responsible community members, plus – they have fun and get paid!

Since its beginnings, NYP has become a strong presence in Abiquiú and the surrounding communities. Their annual events include the Plant Sale and Seed Exchange, which even made it through the pandemic in 2020 when it was entirely online. There were several Harvest Brunches, Art Exhibits, and Teen Salsa Contests. From 2020-2023, NYP facilitated the Bridge Program to include youth under 12, providing a safe outdoor learning environment and support for siblings of Interns and their families during a challenging time.

And then there is the amazing film, THE LOVE OF LAND PROJECT. It started with a trash cleanup day in 2017, when a number of NYP teens organized and cleaned up local acequias. What to do with all the rubbish they collected? Well, they decided to turn it into an art project. And they made a film of the whole process. 

Watch the Preview Below

​Every week at the Abiquiú Farmers’ Market during the Spring & Summer internship (May-July), NYP mans a booth where they offer seedlings and produce for a donation. I recently spoke with one of the interns who help out there, Samantha, or Sam.

She told me  that they’ve been doing a lot of  fundraising recently. The land where NYP was growing their garden and operating from is likely to be sold, and they need to find a new home.

“We could always come here and hang out and have fun. It was so calming, a different environment. I've come here for about five years. In the summer when school is out and there’s nowhere to go,  something  is planned for the day here.

 We do so many different things, and a lot of it is community-based. We're a community-based  program for teens”.
 
What are some of the activities you do here, I asked Sam.

“We have different workshops. For example, a couple of weeks ago, we did a soil workshop. Our soil in New Mexico is still really brittle, and it's mostly sand. It's not very nutritious, it doesn’t have many enzymes.Our instructor had brought us some soil that she had bought at another farmers’ market, and it was really rich. We soaked it in water, and we added nutrients and minerals, and poured it all over the plants. They bloomed in a couple of days!”
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They are planting and harvesting many things right now: various medicinal plants and perennial herbs including rosemary, sage, and thyme, and annual vegetables such as greens, carrots, eggplant,corn, beans, squash, tomatoes, potatoes, and  melons​

“We were doing a whole bunch of dye plants in one row so that we can have another workshop”, Sam continued.  “We take all those plants and flowers  and we turn them into dyes, and then we bring our T-shirts and tie them and just tie dye them in all kinds of different colors”.
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They also offer the flowers they have grown at the Farmers’ Market to get donations.  And I see bags filled with rosemary that had just been picked and was really fresh. Plus, they had lots of cherries. I hope people will be generous with their donations. If NYP has to buy a plot of land or adjust their programs so they can continue to exist, they’ll need an enormous amount of money.

Their current Executive Director, Ru Stempien, has this to say: “I came on at NYP to work in collaboration with our youth because there is no other program like this available in the County. To give our young people a chance to stay local, we need to provide meaningful opportunities economically via job & leadership skill development, as well as through the way we as adults connect with them by building trust and support through our mentorships. Most folks in the community probably don’t know about our broader positive impact beyond our programs, but most of the money we bring into the organization goes to running programs by employing local interns, staff, and mentors. NYP in 2024 alone has brought in $160,000 and a total of $900,000 in funding since 2015, that has gone almost entirely back into the local economy. We are grateful to our long time grantors and donors for making this possible! The most impactful way the community can support NYP at this time is to become a recurring donor today and share with your networks this opportunity to support the future of this work.”

Here is the link to donate:
Your Gift Supports Our Mission.

You may also show your support by taking a brief survey made by the Teens to gather information on NYP’s community impact here:
Share Your Northern Youth Project Story!
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I hope they’ll find some generous sponsors who will help. It’s unthinkable to lose such an effective and useful program. What better way for the community to guarantee a bright future than to invest in our young people. The skills they learn at NYP benefit all of us.

Wildfire risk reduction restores water—Co-stewardship is the key
Tracy Farley and Zachary Behrens
Office of Communication and Carson National Forest

I’m the project overseer,” said Mayordomo Vicente Fernandez humbly when asked specifically about his mayordomo title. Vicente is the community manager of a 71-acre parcel in the Carson National Forest near Taos, New Mexico, where he and a group of volunteers are reducing hazardous fuels while improving water quality and quantity. Like his distinctive title, the project itself is unique. It’s called the Rio Don Fernando Cañon Leñero Project, which has been in existence for centuries, if not longer.
It’s all about the approach. The project is modeled on acequias, pronounced “uh·say·key-ah,” which are communally managed irrigation ditches. Spanish settlers brought the tradition into the area in the late 1500s and adopted enhancements influenced by the local Indigenous peoples from the local Pueblo tribes, who were already using irrigation methods to farm the arid land. Acequias are legally recognized subdivisions and are as much alive today as they were centuries ago. Now, an elected mayordomo oversees annual maintenance and water allocation.
The Rio Don Fernando project takes the acequia model and applies it upstream to a forest thinning unit. “Our watershed is our life. This project, our watershed here is so important because a lot of people's lives depend on it,” said Vicente. “We are the smallest watershed in the valley and it's very, very important to us and what we're doing here, thinning out the forest.”

The volunteers, or leñeros, which means “woodcutters” in Spanish, work in Vicente’s mayordomo unit, which is located in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service’s Wildfire Crisis Strategy’s Enchanted Circle Landscape. They thin trees under a prescription to reduce the threat of wildfire and make more ground moisture available. In the short term, the leñeros keep the thinned timber as personal fuelwood for cooking, or to heat their homes in the winter, while also earning a modest stipend. Long term, the leñeros’ thinning work improves the forest and watershed health that ultimately benefits their farms downstream. Their work also ensures they can carry on their traditional ways of life for generations.
“Having local community members, or government leaders such as our acequia mayordomos, managing projects like this, gives them the stewardship of that ground most critical to their values,” said Camino Real District Ranger Michael Lujan. “This type of stewardship by the community is going to help to keep that portion of the watershed sustainable for years to come, regardless of changes to mission or funding.”
“It just makes sense to have them steward that piece of ground that's going to connect that water to the communities like it has for the last 200 or 300 years, into time immemorial,” Lujan added.

Snowpack feeds water into the acequias, which frequently begin on the national forest. A gate or a diversion directs the flow of water in the irrigation ditch. Many ditches branch off into different areas of the community, and each one may have a mayordomo that manages each one. It eventually becomes a neighborhood or community acequia.
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Many acequias provide a primary source of water for farming and ranching, and more than 700 acequias in northern New Mexico continue to function. In New Mexico, by state statute, acequias are registered bodies and as such must have three commissioners and a mayordomo.
This Rio Don Fernando project is part of the larger Pueblo Ridge Project, which is just under 10,000 acres of restoration work for watershed improvement, forest health management and ultimately reducing wildfire risk.

“This is really exciting because the Pueblo Ridge Project is critical to protecting tribal lands and providing clean water. The water that you see running down the canyon and into the community of Taos, is critical to the lifestyle and the traditional uses here,” said Lujan.

Vicente and his leñeros work directly with the Forest Service to manage this portion of the forest.

“The collaboration between the executive, the leñero, and the Forest Service is there. It’s tight,” said Vicente. “We couldn't have started this program without their help. We have had their foresters out here. They've helped me walk the whole perimeter of the area. We've marked the trees. As you can see, they’re all marked and it's a good education for me that I can give to my leñeros.”

“We were born in these mountains. We were raised in these mountains. And we want to keep these mountains not just for us, but for our grandchildren and for people to enjoy,” Vicente said, “Because when you look at it, it's all our responsibility, not just the Forest Service. It's the community’s. It's our responsibility to take care of this.”
Definitions

• Acequia-Acequias, or community ditches, are recognized under New Mexico law as political subdivisions of the state. Many of the state's acequia associations have been in existence since the Spanish colonization period of the 17th and 18th centuries. Pronounced uh·say·key-ah.
• Enchanted Circle – a geographic region in Northern New Mexico and also the 1.5-million-acre designated Wildfire Crisis landscape, where a special emphasis has been placed to increase the pace and scale of wildfire risk reduction. The landscape covers land managed by the Forest Service, tribes, state government and thousands of private landowners. Much of the landscape is within some of the highest risk firesheds in the nation.
• Mayordomo – The mayordomo plays an esteemed role in the acequia and has traditionally been a highly revered community member. He or she displays a distinguished knowledge of their acequia and its surrounding community. The mayordomo is the “ditch boss” who works to ensure equitable water distribution and makes him/herself available to address issues that come up throughout the growing season, as well as observing the activities of the surrounding environment during the off-season, such as snowpack, beaver dams, ditch repair and cleaning.

This is the first of two stories featuring the Carson National Forest’s Enchanted Circle Landscape, part of the USDA Forest Service’s Wildfire Crisis Strategy, which focuses on water restoration and wildfire risk reduction.   Read Part next week