Year in review: The best of "Getting Down to Business"

Taos County may be rural, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty of action happening and livelihoods being made in the economic landscape. “Getting Down to Business” is a deep dive into those stories — hearing directly from the people who make it happen. Throughout the first half of 2016, we talked to an astrologer, a fish hatchery manager, a gas station owner, a hay farmer, a garlic farmer and greenhouse owner and more than one herbalist, Buddhist and all-around foodie.

Here’s a selection of “Getting Down to Business.”

Kai Harper

Sugar Nymphs Bistro owner, Peñasco

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As a Zen Buddhist, does Buddhism influence how you run the restaurant?

There’s a buzzword everyone’s using now — mindfulness. So I think that word translates as being awake and paying attention. I think we all have days when we’re not awake and not paying attention because we’re human beings.

In Buddhism, a lot of what you’re doing is serving people. At [my first restaurant in California], we were all about how we serve people, how we make them comfortable. That all plays into Zen. Asking people to be awake and pay attention is being able to be over there at the espresso machine making four drinks and if someone walks through the door, knowing to stop to say, “Hi, how are you today? Any more people in your party or can I seat you?” – and being able to do that with some kind of grace.

Alma Duran

Former owner of Costilla Gas and Grocery, Costilla

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How did you end up running a rural gas station for 24 years?

I moved back to the area because I got my first job out of college in Taos as a dental hygienist. My parents had been in business 15 years when my dad’s health started to fail. Out of five siblings, I was one who really enjoyed the store the most. I was always drawn here. I don’t know if it’s because I left while I was still in high school. And I lived in the area, my siblings didn’t, so I told them I’d buy it. It was their retirement and my livelihood from there on out.

Ilona Spruce and Noreen Mirabal

Tourism director and coordinator, respectively, Taos Pueblo

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Can you describe what it’s like to facilitate tourism at Taos Pueblo?

Mirabal: Visitors have been coming to our home since the 1920s, so we grew up always being in the spotlight, even in our daily lives. I’m very big on teaching the outside world about Native and Indigenous people, not only our people here at Taos Pueblo. A lot of people tend only to think of Native people in the romantic way, as relics of the past. It’s basically drilled into us to have pride in where we come from — more so the contemporary piece of where we’re going. So I got really excited to show people who we are, what we’re about and where we’re going.

Spruce: The Pueblo is very private in some instances, especially in our culture and our religion. A lot of the time, people take that as us being secretive. But the thing is, when the Spanish came into our community, we fought for that religion, we fought for that culture, we fought to continue to remain intact. That’s something we hold very high in our community.

It seems like a real push and pull between wanting to share the Taos Pueblo story and keeping private what ought to be kept private.

Spruce: It’s a fine line. There are different levels of what we can and can’t share. And the bottom line is this: Do we really want to share that? Or are there things, like traditional techniques, we want to keep to ourselves and our community so they aren’t exploited? Indigenous cultures are always exploited in some shape and form, especially the ones who have shared. And that’s the heartache for us. So we want to make sure we’re always telling our story from our perspective.

Mirabal: We are still a living community. We were never removed from our homeland, fortunately. This has always been our home, and we’ve been able to keep intact our way. We still maintain who we are as Taos Pueblo people. It’s important to us that there’s a level of sensitivity, of understanding of who we are.

Daniel Evans

Manager of Red River Fish Hatchery, Questa

In the most general of senses, what’s the purpose of a fish hatchery?

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That depends on the hatchery and their programs. There are six hatcheries in New Mexico, and each one has a little different goal. We are the largest facility in the state, and we are here — 100 percent — for the sportsmen and fishermen. We don’t do any of the restoration projects or any of the conservation programs. We put out 2.4 million fish in 2015.

How is fishing and the hatchery system important to the New Mexico economy?

It is very direct. We produce fish, that produces licenses, that brings money into the state government. We get way too many phone calls asking, “Where did you stock the fish?” For me, that’s the most direct sign that the public wants the fish. They want to buy the licenses and spend the money on the equipment. And that’s money for the state.

Bernie Torres

Hay farmer and transporter, Costilla

When it comes to actually making a livelihood, you must have seen this part of the San Luis Valley change a lot.

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I always tell people this: These areas have always been very depressed areas, just sometimes it’s a little bit better. Because people have lived here for a couple centuries, they know how to live and make things happen with very little, taking any job that comes into the area, the mine or [the old Ski Rio resort]. That’s why they do very many things.

Just since 1975, I’ve seen what would have been major employment. There was the Amalia Lumber Company. Between the mountain crew and sawmill, that was [more than 100] people from southern Colorado and northern Taos County. That sawmill was state of the art, probably the first computerized sawmill in the Southwest. Well, they lost their timber rights and closed in 1985, were only opened about 10 years. About the same time, the mine was sizing down — this last go-around laid off 300 workers.

This is where we wanted to live, and the hay business is what we found would make us a living here. I have hay fever, if you want to say that.

Cathy Hope

Herbalist and owner of Iris Herbal, El Rito

Do you work in a particular tradition of herbal healing?

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Human beings worked in their labs, which was usually your kitchen — unless you were a wealthy guy, some of who were borrowing – or stealing – from the root women and men, herbalists, midwives, the people who actually doctored the most people every day. Unfortunately for Westerners, our tradition got damaged during the Inquisition. A lot of those who got burned were herbalists, queers, midwives and Jews. If you were a curandera, you didn’t have a shingle because you paid money and got training and got letters after your name and were then legally allowed to do it. You were part of a tradition.

I learned just by experiment, reading, research, talking to people. And the more I did that, the more people would share their stories. That’s how I learned — through conversation. My tradition is very mixed.

Kristen Davenport Katz

Boxcar Farms owner, Llano

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Besides the agricultural work of growing garlic, you’re also doing the cultural work of keeping these garlic stories alive. Tell me about that.

I’ll tell you how we found the Chamisal garlic. The woman who ran the post office there for many years found out we grew garlic and said we should go down by the creek. She said, “There’s been garlic growing there since my grandpa was a boy, and we’d pick it in the summers.” So we went in August when our son was 1 or 2. It was like grass, the plants were so small. We dug up the little tiny bulbs and replanted them. Then, a few years back, we were trying to do a farmers market here in Peñasco and a woman from Chamisal came by. She said, “Oh, this is the garlic my grandma grew.” She brought some the next week from her garden and, yeah, it was the exact same garlic. You have this wild garlic by the ditch and you have it still growing in the gardens of the people of Chamisal. It’s the garlic that’s been growing in these mountains of New Mexico for 300 to 400 years.

Paul Cross

Charybda Farms and Chef’s Edition owner, Arroyo Hondo

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How did you go from computer programming to running a farm?

The time to reinvent yourself comes around every so often. I was with La Plaza [Taos’ early internet] for several years. Eventually, I had enough with technology. I was physically and emotionally exhausted from the politics of nonprofits in Taos, and by the time I quit that whole world, I’d already been doing computer programming for a couple of decades. So I decided, “I’ll start a farm.” That’s about as radically different as you could do. My first love was plants. I had 100 house plants growing up, so I thought to just go back to my childhood dream. What I’ve since learned is that if you want to work with plants, don’t open a nursery because you’ll never work with plants again. You become the business owner.

How do you keep agriculture alive in a rural place like this?

Part of that is farmers markets. But also those bigger networks going outside of Taos — export. If it’s snowing on a Saturday morning, people aren’t going to the farmers market. I can go deliver my product to a store whether it’s snowing or not. Maybe they won’t buy it that day, but they’ll buy it the next day. The biggest issue I see is about distribution. We only have so many people we can feed right here in Taos. We do need more local shoppers and more people just valuing food.

Ron Cooper

Artist and mezcal importer, Ranchos de Taos

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After 21 years, your mezcal (agave liquor) business has proved a success. But is it also a success in art?

This business started out as an art project, and I still call it my liquid art. A work of art is successful for me if, in the making of it, a question is generated and answering that question becomes the next work. That’s one aspect. Another is that art must have that “ah-ha” moment to be successful. I don’t care if it’s a nude or a sunset or a landscape or a pile of trash or words. It doesn’t matter, as long as it transforms the viewer. Mezcal is really successful because it transforms the imbiber. You have these wonderful, humorous thoughts going on in your head.

Lucy McCall

Astrologer, Ranchos de Taos

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How did you get into astrology?

Well, my aunt was an astrologer, and I started studying with her when I was 16. I had no idea my aunt was an astrologer. Nobody talked about it, probably because it was strange. I was very dyslexic. She sat me down and told me, “I’m not going to tell you what any of this means. You’re going to learn the math.” Her teaching me that math — which you don’t learn anymore as an astrologer because you just use a computer — actually healed a lot of my dyslexic problems.

What’s the hardest part of doing astrology as a business?

Being honest without hurting someone. Sometimes you have to tell people they are carrying around this dynamic that may be hurting them – this dynamic that isn’t fun. You have to say it if you want to help them – but without singeing their feathers. You want to say it in a way that can be heard and received. There’s no point in doing any of this unless you can get to the point.