San Isidro Labrador, Patron Saint of the Farmer

MAY 15 IS OBSERVED THROUGHOUT THE RIO ARRIBA

SAN LUIS,CO. It is May 15, and I am back at the farm in Colorado to mend and rebuild fences before we start planting our maiz de concha and bolita beans. Later this afternoon, Father Pat Valdez of the Sangre de Cristo Parish will lead our annual procession followed by mass and dinner to mark the Feast Day of San Isidro Labrador, the Patron Saint of the Farmer, a 12th century well-digger in Madrid.

The good Father will use Holy Water to bless the acequias and the farm fields that will soon bear the harvest of organic heirloom corn, bean, beet, squash, haba, pea, cilantro, and the other delightful crops that sustain our local food system in the Rio Culebra watershed.

Spring in the southern Rocky Mountains this year is still locked in a bit of winter's chill. We all agree that it looks like the sun and warmth this year are running 2 to 3 weeks late. Instead of complaining, we adapt our schedules to nature's slow beckoning of the seasonal transition.

We'll plant a bit later this year than originally planned and that is OK for there is plenty of other work to be done. I am reminded of San Isidro's life, an ascetic one, to be sure, but also a life inspired and filled with the passion that comes from being connected to something larger than your own being. Getting water from the source to the farm fields, that was his mission in life.

This season it will be no different for us in the Culebra watershed: The work will be done with our neighbors. Labor is scarce, so we have to depend on one another to keep something larger than ourselves alive. The work involved is the usual: Preparing the acequias for the irrigation season; planting the crops and new orchard trees and brambles; repairing and constructing fences; getting equipment serviced and prepped for work; and exchanging seed with friends.

Soon, our time will be occupied with irrigating and changing water. Cultivation will require long hours in the fields. Eventually, the aspen will start turning to fall colors and harvest time will be upon us. This shift brings the after-harvest work of adobe oven-roasting of our white concha corn to make chicos. October means preparing seed for winter storage and drying out elk meat.

The result of this tequio, this collective work, is perhaps a bit unusual: It is this place - the Culebra acequia farm lands that have been nurtured over the generations by families that know how to follow "original instructions." This place is a whole bigger than the sum of its parts. It remains one of those rare places in the United States where neighbors don't wait for crisis to lend a helping hand.

It is the sort of place I imagine San Isidro would have found familiar and inhabited happily. He would have been a great parciante and a good vecino. In a way, he does inhabit this place: His spirit of charity lives today in our mutual aid and other cooperative traditions.

The people of the Culebra acequia farm communities appreciate the Creation for what it is: A responsibility to connect as co-inhabitants of a miraculous planet whose purpose is the continuing cycle of life, death, and rebirth.