Home and commercial waste being collected and composted at Reunity Resources.
Since 2019, this program, administered through the state’s Department of Agriculture, has awarded over $783,000 in grants to New Mexico farmers, ranchers, pueblos, and other eligible entities. For example, in Melrose, Kimberly and Toby Bostwick of Barnhouse Farms, who have been farming for twenty-five years, were alarmed as they watched “the soil blow away, crops wither and die in the field, combines run[ning] through the field knowing our yield wouldn’t cover our expenses, and heavy rainfall running out of our field.” Their grant enabled them to plant cover crops, begin the practice of no-till planting directly into those cover crops, and introduce rotational grazing, a practice in which cows are allowed to graze intensively—and stomp manure into the soil—in a given area for a limited amount of time and then moved on, which stimulates a strong regrowth response from grasses. 56
edible New Mexico | SPRING 2022
In just one year, Kimberly notes in an article for the New Mexico Healthy Soil Working Group’s Soil Stories series, “We have already seen improvements to our farmland because it is covered, and it is not blowing as the surrounding fields are. On our rangeland last year, we saw significant gains in turf as well as impressive grass regrowth just by utilizing a rotational grazing system.” Another example of these grants in action comes from a “microfarm” in Belen, established in 2019 by Amelia Vogel and Jason Schilberg, two Washington, DC, transplants who decided to try their hand at farming. Rocket Punch Farm, sitting on just one acre, is modeled after the urban farms, community gardens, and school gardens that Vogel worked with as a federal employee back in DC. One of the key practices Vogel and Schilberg put to work on their farm was sheet mulching, a practice in which layers of organic material