Farming Small in Big Farm Country

Farming Small in Big Farm Country

It’s 100 degrees Fahrenheit in Socorro, a West Texas border town wedged between Mexico and I-10 as it runs north into the white gypsum sands of New Mexico. Not a bird, bug, or lizard is stirring. Several humans, however, are sweating quietly in the shed that comprises Bodega Loya. Honeydew, honeycrisp, piel de sapo, white snow leopard — Ralph Loya, the bodega’s mustachioed proprietor, rattles off the names of melons he’s grown on his 7-acre farm out back as he pulls several from the fridge to slice into pale orange and green wedges.

Eileen Candelaria is among those gathered in the shed nibbling chilled fruit. A childhood friend of Loya’s, she wandered over after hearing that, since he retired from his staff job at the University of Texas, he’s been growing stone fruits and radishes; okra and tomatillos; Apache red sugarcane, several kinds of chiles, and a type of Piro Indian corn whose seeds were passed down through Loya’s ancestors for 400 years. Loya’s farm, inherited from his in-laws, is a rarity in the middle of the Chihuahuan Desert, where large-scale cotton farms dominate.

“Back in the day there was little farms everywhere and everybody would sell their stuff on the side of the road,” Candelaria remembers. These days, Loya’s is the only one, and it’s attracting customers from miles around. “We can’t seem to grow enough. The more we grow the more we sell,” said Loya.

Small farm advocates are prone to rattling off the virtues of these sorts of operations: Small farms can feed their neighbors; small farms can revitalize rural communities; small farms can help turn the tide on diet-related diseases and nutrition insecurity. These optimistic talking points are in evidence at Loya’s. He employs several farmhands and his bodega carries duck eggs from a local guy, pistachios grown by a retired dentist down the road, asadero cheese from a nearby dairy — allowing him to sell a range of whole foods in a town mostly served by Walmart.