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R.
Gerard
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Mutual Support: Farmers & Native Species Benefiting
From Each Other:
No Cattle Co., NM
In the ten years that Michael Alexander and Sharlene Grunerud have been
farming in the Mimbres Valley of Southwestern New Mexico, native plants
and animals have always been considered essential. Bat boxes have been installed
to attract Mexican free tail and big brown bats, perches for birds such
as the ash throated flycatcher are present on the sides of fields, wild
thickets of false indigo and wild plums are allowed to grow for bee forage,
and brush piles of apple prunings have been left for Gambel’s quail
refuge. Around the field margins and near the greenhouses, windbreaks of
Arizona cypress and piñon pine have been planted.
Bears, collared peccaries, ring-tailed cats, tree-climbing gray foxes,
mountain lions, bobcats, deer, rabbit, quail, lizards, snakes and other
animals are frequent visitors to their apple orchards and vegetable, grain,
and flower fields. The bear and coyotes eat fallen apples that often contain
codling moth larvae. The bats that roost in the bat boxes feed on coddling
moths in the orchards, and cucumber beetles and corn earworm moths in
the fields. Their main terrestrial pests are pocket gophers and deer.
The coyotes and ravens have helped alleviate the gopher problems, and
the deer, which eat their peppers, are dissuaded by a hot pepper mixture
sprayed on the plants.
The farm is an important refuge for the rare Mexican black hawk. Because
of concern for its survival in this area, The Nature Conservancy has bought
the land immediately upriver from "No Cattle Company." In the
uplands of the farm, an arroyo is an important point of migration for
animals such as collared peccaries and black bears that move from the
mountains down to the river.
Due to the lack of grazing on the farm that is atypical of this watershed,
there is a healthy stand of cottonwoods and resurgence of native alder
trees along the river. Active management includes removing the non-native
invasive Siberian elms and "trees of heaven," and replacing
them with the native willows. In a small dam along the river are found
Chiricahua leopard frogs, a federally threatened species.
Summer rains often augment the flood irrigation water drawn from the ancient
"acequia" or ditch system that diverts river water from upstream.
In an effort to use water efficiently, the vegetable and flower production
area has been laser-leveled. Water conservation in New Mexico is a tough
issue due to the "use it or lose it" law that puts sustainable
farmers in a "catch 22" situation. If they conserve water in
one part of the farm, they better use all their allocation on the other
part, or they stand to lose it, and in this arid southwestern state, it
is unthinkable. Alexander and Grunerud farm with the health of the Mimbres
Valley and all its members in mind, while producing spring vegetable starts
for community gardeners and a smorgasbord of food and flowers for farmers
markets and retail outlets.
For information on No Cattle Co., write to HC 15, Box 845, Hanover, NM
88041
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