Chili Picking in New Mexico

As Christine mentioned in her post, two Wednesdays ago Scott, Christine, Christine’s three children, and I visited Robert Castillo’s organic farm and home in southern Albuquerque. On the way there a couple of things immediately impressed me. I knew I lived less than five minutes from downtown Albuquerque. I didn’t realize that five minutes on Interstate 25 heading south put me in a totally different and rural environment. On the ride to Robert’s we passed open pastures, roadside signs advertising alfalfa for sale, and shops selling both live chickens, venison cutlets, and (strangely enough) Brazilian waxes which have little to do with the rural environment but interested me nonetheless. I was pleased to see a CNM campus out in the south valley as well.

I enjoyed seeing Robert’s two horses, the acequia, and Scott’s excitement over a flock of Sandhill cranes rising out of the Rio Grande river basin. More than anything else, however, I enjoyed harvesting the chilies. After our tour and in the fading October light, we picked a giant bushel of chilies.

At the end of the growing season, when the chilies turn from green to dark red and orange, Robert boils them down with garlic, onions, and other spices and then minces the mixture in a blender. He preserves the sauce and uses it on top of nearly everything--- it’s the New Mexican way he says.

There is something about harvesting fruits and vegetables on my knees in a field that makes me feel like I’m a kid again. Having Christine’s wonderful children along accentuated this feeling. I dig the grunt work of a farm hand at an organic farm outside of Boulder, CO this summer. The other farm hands and I often commented that coming into work felt like going back to our childhoods, which was strange because none of us grew up on a farm or a ranch.

I think this feeling has something to do with the basic fact that when we are children, we’re hardly ever in a rush and we spend a lot of time close to the ground observing the underside of leaves and the underbellies of insects. We observe less the higher we ascend into the troposphere. When I think about it like this growing up saddens me and makes me want to somehow get back to that field with those chilies.

(I put some of the most beautiful and unusual chilies onto the light table in the Printmaking Studio on campus. I tweaked the colors to make it look more "painterly.")