In Dixon, federal funds fuel innovation

A cooperative grocery store, a vineyard, a construction company and an organic farm producing fresh apple cider and a blue corn atole mix are among the other projects that won grants and loans from the USDA’s rural economic development program. Those funds have led to an estimated 30 new jobs in an area hard-pressed for work.

“At a time when so many New Mexico communities are looking for solutions, for how to do things better and how to get access to federal funding, we’re trying to hold up Dixon as an example where that’s worked,” said Terry Brunner, the USDA’s state director for rural development.

“What’s unique about Dixon is there is a lot of community involvement and leadership,” Brunner added. “They never seem to run out of ideas and things they want to do and ways to innovate.”

Dixon is a quaint village of small farms just off N.M. 68, the low road winding along the Rio Grande to Taos. Rocky, juniper-covered hills cup verdant river land in the valley and a collection of old adobe homes, trailers and newer houses along the one road through town.

Dixon is home to artists, small-business owners and people who commute to work in Los Alamos, Taos and Santa Fe. It’s near the site of a 13th-century pueblo ruin. Spanish land grant settlers called it El Puerto del Embudo de Nuestro Señor San Antonio until it was renamed Dixon, after a school teacher, around 1900.

The town made headlines in the 1940s and caused a decadeslong rift between Protestants and Catholics in New Mexico after a Presbyterian in the town filed a lawsuit against the state to prevent Catholic nuns from teaching religion in publicly funded schools. It made the news again in 1999 when the two churches chose the village as the site for a formal reconciliation.

The new Embudo Valley Library is across the street from the Dixon Elementary School and next to the Dixon Cooperative Market. A Dixon school kid can leave class, head across the street to do homework at the library and pick up a snack at the deli on the way.

Leaders in Dixon learned that federal funds have advantages over private loans for rural communities. Federal loans have low interest rates and are sometimes available for extended payback periods, with little to no money down. Grants don’t have to be paid back.

In 2002, Dixon residents and library supporters raised $200,000 to buy the acre and a half and the old adobe building that became the market. A few years later, the library qualified for a $115,000 USDA loan and matching grant to build a new library, expand its book collection and triple the number of computer stations to 12. The library had 18,000 visitors last year from communities stretched along the valley, Neymark said.

A USDA rural business enterprise grant helped the village repair the Dixon Market’s roof, upgrade the restroom and install plumbing for running water. Another grant helped the village add a deli. “Once something like that is successful, it breeds more success,” said Nelson Rhodes, a general manager at the market. “People gain confidence in the ability to get grants and complete projects. It inspires them to think of what they can do next.”

In an example of innovative financial thinking, the library rents the building to the cooperative market for 2 percent of the grocery store’s sales. “The money goes to support the library,” said Neymark, chairman of the library board. “The better the co-op does, the better the library does.”

In 2015, the Embudo Valley Library was named one of the five best libraries in the nation by the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Past Dixon a couple of miles and down a rough, dirt road is La Mesa Organic Farm, owned by Mesa and Molly Ruiz. The couple worked for two early summer months — “when we should have been planting,” they said — on the application for their $49,500 USDA Value Added Producer Grant.

The money will help the couple expand their family farm with an apple cider processing facility and to hire two or three people to help increase the market for their apple cider, blue corn atole and blue corn chocolate elixir. “We’ve been finding a lot of positive response to these products at the farmers markets,” said Mesa Ruiz.

Ruiz said the grant was worth the extra effort, and he credits Brunner’s staff with helping them finish it when they were ready to give up. “The grant is structured really well,” he said. “It forces us as a business to use that money in the community to hire new employees.”

The blue corn products are a niche. Ruiz said a blue corn mash that is used to make a hot cereal has been well received by locals. His blue corn elixir mixed with chocolate and chile is another experimental product.

Since Ruiz isn’t yet selling to stores, in order to get the USDA grant he had to get customers to write letters saying they would buy the products.

Winning the grant award didn’t immediately put cash in the Ruizes’ pocket. They have to pay for their equipment, supplies and employees’ wages up front, then submit the receipts to the USDA to get reimbursed.

Like other small-scale New Mexico farmers, Ruiz has taken advantage of federal grants when he can apply for them. In 2013, he obtained a grant from the Natural Resources Conservation Service to build a high tunnel greenhouse where he raised vegetables commercially. He’s now thinking about experimenting with the tunnel to grow fruit trees.

Not far from Ruiz’s farm is Vivác Winery, another business that’s tapped into the USDA grants. Brothers Chris and Jesse Padberg, Dixon natives, opened Vivác Winery 14 years ago. “Each year, we grow a little bit and we do a little better,” Chris Padberg said.

But it hasn’t been easy going. “Many times over the years, we weren’t sure we were going to make it through the winter,” he said.

The Padbergs have kept at it, and now they’ve invented a small keg in which to store and distribute their red and white wines to restaurants. “It cuts our production costs by half. We pass that savings on to restaurants, and they pass that savings on to their customers,” Chris Padberg said.

The USDA Value Added Producer Grant they’ve been awarded will help them double in size over the next three years, he said. They plan to add three more employees to their seven-person staff to help with distribution.

Brunner said wineries and craft breweries are among the fastest-growing industries in New Mexico and do the best job of utilizing USDA programs. Santa Fe Brewing Co. and Taos Mountain Brewing also have recently received Value Added Producer Grants for their beer.

In other USDA awards to Dixon, Los Ebanistas construction company tapped into a USDA rural energy program to pay for part of a solar energy system that will offset its power costs.

Brunner said supporting “local small businesses is essential to the state’s economic development. We see a lot of job growth around one-on-one small-business development efforts where you take a small two-, three- four-person business and add two or three jobs.”

“More than 90 percent of businesses in New Mexico are small,” he said.

Finally, one resident in the valley received a grant to refurbish her old house in Dixon where she raised 14 children. The grant helped her pay to repair the roof and install a handicapped-accessible ramp and a shower stall, install a water closet and fix walls.

USDA Rural Development loan specialist Samantha Jo Soto said the grant is one type of financial help the agency can provide to people in rural communities. In 2015, a total of 64 New Mexico families received grants or loans totaling $483,000 to repair their homes. Another 84 residents received low-interest loans from the USDA to buy qualifying homes.

Brunner expects support of the USDA rural development program to continue under a Republican-controlled White House and Congress. “USDA is one of those rare agencies that has bipartisan support from Congress. I think that will continue. Whether you are on one side or another, you support rural communities.”

The Santa Fe New Mexican is a sister-paper of The Taos News. Contact Staci Matlock at 505-986-3055 or smatlock@sfnewmexican. Follow her on Twitter @stacimatlock.