Well folks we are a bit overdue for an update so here goes: There is some good news and some frustrating news. The good news is the farm is going strong, we have a herd of goats now that are kidding out which is great fun, we got a new red waddle boar and have resumed breeding even more sows than we were previously, we’ve spread compost on over five acres of pasture, the field trials on compost application on rangeland has been developed into a paper and the results will hopefully be published in a peer reviewed scientific journal soon, we are working hard to purchase the shop building to be able to ensure that we will be a permanent fixture on this mountain, and shockingly we are actually making some headway in getting the county to address the problem of unchecked suburban sprawl in the face of rapidly dwindling water supplies!
The frustrating news is that the shop as it was previously operating will not be reopening anytime soon. I would guess we will be into the fall before we are fully reopened. The harsh reality is that paying local farmers a fair price for the food they produce and selling it to regular people is not a terribly economically viable business model at our scale. We have made it work over the last couple years by subsidizing it with our time and energy, and often quite literally our blood, sweat and tears. But it is not a sustainable way to run a business. We have been struggling towards expanding our processing capacity to increase efficiency and adding in higher margin products as a means to address these challenges, and feel like we are up against a wall with the county when it comes to getting permits to do that. More about that below. In the meantime we are opting to keep our powder dry so to speak and try to maintain and do the best we can with what we have.
The current plan is to try to start reopening the shop in April one or two days a week with more focus on meat and dry goods, limited amounts of produce, dairy, and other more perishable items, and hopefully including some prepared foods (bringing back the sausage cart and Pete’s wonder burgers!!). This should allow us to keep the lights and provide some degree of local food access to our customers while we keep trying to get through all the red tape. We are also going to continue to pressure the county to stop discriminating against farmers and local food producers (and small businesses in general really) and change the laws to support a local food system and a functional local economy, and would appreciate your help with that (if you don’t have time to read this whole novella the details on that are at the bottom).
But given how long it takes to get the county to change anything we are going to try to do the paperwork and keep jumping through the never ending hoops they keep throwing at us as well. It’s quite frustrating as the previous position the county took was that we needed a conditional use permit, not a special use permit, and we are 95% done with the conditional use permit. Now it looks like we have to start over on a special use permit. The requirements for what red tape we need to cut through to do business change almost every time we speak with the county. It’s quite infuriating.
We have been asking the county for the last three years to amend the relevant zoning rules to give us and anyone who wants to process and sell locally grown food and beverages a clear legal entitlement to do so. The rules currently place severe restrictions on food processing, and small businesses in general. This is really the core of why New Mexico exports 95% of the food we produce as cheap commodity crops (which is also where nearly 80% of our water gets used) and then buy back processed foods from big corporations to feed ourselves. Any sort of commercial food processing is only allowed in industrial areas and is generally discouraged. Basically local food systems have been marginalized by restrictive regulations (and really it has as much to do with the interpretation of the regulations as the regulations themselves) to give a monopoly to the industrialized, globalized commodity food system. In our case we are being told that we can only do specialty processing for direct retail, but cannot expand our capacity or engage in wholesaling, aggregation and distribution, or any other sort of value add processes unless we get special permission.
In late December I asked our commissioner for a meeting, and in January we sat down and I asked him for support in addressing three issues. (I’ve learned that the county always says no to something so if you ask for something hard along with something easy you’re more likely to get an affirmative answer). I asked him to do something to address the water crisis in the East Mountains and ensure that any new development has a long term water supply to support it, to amend the loop hole in the law that currently allows folks to alter their property lines in the middle of a sale and not have to inform the buyers, and lastly to make a small tweak to one of the zoning laws so we can move forward with our expansion process without getting bogged down in drawn out complex permitting processes.
Strangely the response was the opposite of what I anticipated. The county staff recognizes the severity of the water issue in the East Mountains and is willing to make changes to the subdivision rules to try to check unsustainable sprawl. They are very hesitant to close the loophole in the law that they claim leaves us with no legal recourse after being brazenly defrauded when we purchased the warehouse building next to the shop, but are willing to let it come to a vote. Hard no on making a minor change to the zoning laws to allow us to move forward without jumping through any more hoops. The truth is always stranger than fiction.
After nearly two months of run around, we had a meeting with the county staff yesterday to discuss permitting. We were told that any change or expansion will require a special use permit, regardless if what we want to do is listed as permissive use. We were also told that amending the laws to allow or encourage the development of a local food system and supporting local agriculture is “not a priority for the county”. As frustrating as that was to hear, it was also probably the most refreshingly honest statement I have heard from a county bureaucrat in years.
The zoning rules on our property list food and beverage manufacturing, craft alcohol production in conjunction with a restaurant, and retail sales all as permissive use. Yet we were told that if we want to operate a retail shop and serve food in one building and do craft alcoholic beverage production and food and beverage manufacturing in the adjacent building it is for some reason not permissive use. The county contends that ‘in conjunction’ means it has to be in the same building, though they can’t point to anything in writing to support that. They said it had something to do with the state law, and that it was the state that required that craft alcohol production has to happen in the same building as a restaurant! Which is so nonsensical I could not even muster a response. It’s painfully obvious that they just don’t want us doing business here. We have previously been told that the special use process takes an average of two years and is an ‘uphill battle with a low likelihood of success’. And that seems to be a more accurate description based on every story I’ve ever heard about it than the new contention that this is a ‘reasonable and immediate solution to getting your business permitted’.
The message we are getting from the county could not be more clear. They are willing to allow us to operate on the condition that we continue to jump through their endless hoops but they are certainly not willing to support the development of a local food system or support local agricultural businesses. Even if we change our business to fit into the boxes that they prescribe and reinvent the shop as a restaurant/craft alcohol business with a retail component we are still going to get treated like a special case. While we are going to continue trying to jump through the hoops it is deeply discouraging to continue running into this entrenched opposition to allowing the development of a local food system. The long term success of our business is very much tied to whether or not a strong community of similar businesses can also emerge and create a critical mass needed to support the auxiliary support enterprises that we need to make this feasible, like feed mills, slaughter houses, etc.
I have to remind myself that it’s not all doom and gloom and we really are starting to see some changes. While it took years to do we did get the sale of raw milk and ungraded eggs legalized, the reality of dwindling water supplies is now getting official recognition and the conversation about what to do about it is beginning, and the state and federal government are pouring literally billions of dollars into supporting the things we have been trying to do for the better part of a decade now. There are multiple new USDA inspected facilities in the works and one in particular in Taos that will likely be operational by this fall and may have capacity to do mobile harvest! We got the State Meat Inspection program reauthorized and the livestock board is promising to use the program to provide technical assistance to processors and help local ranchers gain market access instead of just buying trucks for their primos. I’m not totally holding my breath on that but it is at least additional recognition that the challenges we face are very real and need to be addressed. While we are still very much in the thick of it with the county I fully believe that if we keep pushing that we can affect real change and grow a sustainable economy around agriculture that will also ensure a long term supply of food and water.
The silver lining to our current situation is that the planning initiatives that the county is prioritizing include supporting our commissioner in trying to address the bigger water issue facing our community. No word on exactly when those amendments might be coming up but it will likely be some time around the end of March or in April. Strangely this might actually mean that we are succeeding in moving towards the long term goal that drives our business while being stuck in the weeds on actually operating the business. Our goal is not only to create a business that supports us, our farm, and local agriculture, but we want to catalyze change in the way that we do agriculture to the end of reducing unsustainable groundwater pumping while preserving our ability to produce food. Addressing the issue of subdivision and suburban sprawl that is driving much of the unsustainable groundwater extraction going on in this area would be a huge win in moving towards a more sustainable path for our community. It may also help spur greater effort to address the regulatory obstacles to diversifying our economy away from total dependence on residential development towards having more small businesses and especially regenerative farm businesses.
We are going to shoot to have the shop back up and running in some capacity by April. We will not be able to fully reopen the shop and continue expanding until we get the county to either amend the zoning laws to allow us to move forward with producing and selling alcohol and scaling up our food processing capacity, or until we can get through a special use permitting process and expand our operation, or find some other way to make it pencil out. One interesting possibility that just came up yesterday is the potential of partnering with another farm that is operating a couple of very similar businesses in the valley, which might be a bit of a hack to find a way to scale up through a collaborative partnership with a more experienced retail operator. Combining our supply chains could be a game changer. We already have a federal wine license and a state license can be obtained in around 6 weeks once we get a letter of approval from the county, and we already have the cidery built out and ready to go. So if we can get this special use permit through or get them to recognize what we are doing is permissive use we should be up and running full bore again by the fall.
If you would like to express your support for what we are trying to do to the county there are a few ways to do so. The primary decision maker and the guy who is most opposed to us being able to move forward is the head of the planning department. His name is Nick Hamm. His number is 505-314-0388. His email address is nhamm@bernco.gov. My perception is that his opposition to our operation is probably the primary reason we have been stuck for the last three years in moving forward on the expansion. I suspect that is partially driven by him being somehow connected with our crazy neighbor who is violently opposed to us expanding our business into the adjacent warehouse building. He would be the guy to address comments regarding our specific business permitting. I will encourage everyone to be polite and respectful, though I will say that is not at all how I would characterize the treatment we have received from this gentleman over the years.
I would also encourage you all to reach out to the county commission more generally and ask them to support Commissoner Olivas’ in amending the subdivision ordinance to start addressing water challenges in the East Mountains, to help protect county residents from fraud in real estate transactions, and to prioritize revisions in the county ordinances that will reduce regulatory obstacles and encourage the development of a local food system and help support local farmers and ranchers.
Some facts you might bring up to support this are:
-Ground water levels in the Sandia sub-basin are dropping at an average of more than two and a half feet per year. The Office of the state engineer has closed the basin to new commercial water right applications because that level of draw down means we are less than 40 years from more than 80% well failure.
-There are over 7000 vacant lots in Bernalillo county approved for development with only these rapidly dwindling water supplies to support them, and any lot over 4 acres can be subdivided down into two acre parcels, each of which then become automatically eligible for another house and another well.
-The Estancia basin ground water is dropping at more than a foot per year, the Estancia basin has been closed to new water right applications for a long time, and they estimate the basin drying up in less than 60 years if we keep pumping at the rate we are now.
-Private water utilities are buying up agricultural water rights in the Estancia basin and shutting down farms, and reselling water to residential users in the Sandia sub basin and even pumping water to the City of Santa Fe, allowing short term development to move forward with no long term plan for how to supply water to the people in those areas, or any regard for the future of the agricultural communities in the Estancia Basin.
-Increasing agricultural processing capacity can shorten supply chains and direct more of the consumers dollar back to the farmers and ranchers which can allow them to adopt practices that can reduce water use, while keeping money and food in our communities.
-Current regulations at the county as well as the culture of governance at Bernalillo county pose serious challenges to farmers and ranchers trying to grow and develop a localized food system
Info on how to email the commissioners in the link below:
https://www.bernco.gov/government/talk-to-us/email-a-commissioner/
Or if you want to email all five of them at once you can use the address: commission@bernco.gov
I will also say that Commissioner Olivias is doing an absolutely outstanding job. He is really the one responsible for us being able to sell eggs and milk at our store, and is working hard to tackle the tough issues facing our community in a thoughtful and appropriate way. It is incredibly encouraging to see an elected official ignore all the partisan BS and just work to serve the people he was elected to represent. I do not think he gets nearly enough recognition for what an outstanding job he is doing representing our district, so if you get a chance you might pass along some gratitude. Just an fyi commissioners cannot discuss matters related to permitting or be involved in the process at all so any comments to the commission will be better received if they are addressing general issues instead of the specifics of our situation, though using us as an example is fine.
I am sure there are lots of things I am forgetting. Love you all.
-The Polk’s Folly Crew
