Winter Marketing in New Mexico

Winter Marketing in New Mexico
by Catherine Gordon

Making the turn-around to local food is so easy in August and September and October. Those tasty tomatoes and summer squash and piquant peppers - everything you need to make you a confirmed locavore. There's all that positive energy at the market when the sun is warm, the kids are dancing, and you're bumping into neighbors and friends you haven't seen for so long you've forgotten their names. Even the farmers who have had to work double-time and over-time to bring that beautiful summer harvest to market are smiling. We all feel like grasshoppers - fiddling away. Then November - and most of us wish we were ants, with piles of winter squash and potatoes and big bags of dried beans stowed away - all that lovely picked-when-ripe fruit that you would have put up in September, if you'd found the time, lining the cupboard shelves or in neat stacks in the freezer. If you're like me, you're trying to find a place to store the empty jars that you bought at a great discount, when you were optimistic about finding more time - between work and family and what-all - to can.

So, what is a tentatively confirmed locavore to do? This is when we learn that the challenge of going local - like so many of the challenges facing us - is really a matter of changing our thinking about the food we eat and where it comes from. The good news is it's easy! We can make it through the winter keeping our local economic/agrarian/conservationist principles firmly intact. Put down that bag of frozen green beans! Step away from the bananas! - and go to market!

Yes, Virginia, there are markets after October. It takes a little more organizing than just rolling out of bed every Saturday morning in July and deciding which seasonal market to visit this weekend. You do have to dress with scarf and hat and gloves - but just think, you won't need the snowshoes. Perhaps it's not so easy as in mid-Summer, but the rewards of winter marketing are great.

In the Albuquerque area, the first step is to mark your calendars. The Corrales winter market is the first Sunday of each month - at a new time: 11 am to 1 pm. Los Ranchos is the second Saturday of every month, 10 am to Noon. December 11 at Los Ranchos is the Holiday Cheer market, with special music, book signing, great gift ideas, and winter produce. Both markets operate every month from November through April to get you through the winter. Look for persimmons and pomegranates. There's spinach, salad greens, and sauté mixes - along with arugula and mustard and chard. And there are the roots, potatoes, carrots, beets, and a generous selection of garlic. And then there are the surprises, just like in summer. There are prepared foods for gift giving and family treating. There are trees for trimming, wreaths and ristras for hanging, and bells for jing-jingling.

Okay, I get carried away, but in the north, the vendors at the Los Alamos holiday markets will serve up a truly bountiful fall/winter harvest, take care of your holiday gift shopping, decorate your home for the festivities, and provide what you need for the winter hearth and home - December 9 and 16, 8 am to 2 pm, get cozy inside at the Fuller Lodge. They have locally grown and jerked yak! Would Uncle Frank get a kick out of some yak jerky stuffed into his stocking? Then there's the feasting - turkeys, tamales, and posole and all the fixins for your homemade feast - and the decorating - wreaths and ristras. After the holidays, Los Alamos will go back to its regular winter schedule, second Thursday of the month through April, same place, 8 am to noon. The Santa Fe market is also open every Saturday from 8 am to 1 pm at their indoor market hall. Look for a wide variety of root vegetables, greens, greenhouse-grown tomatoes, meats, cheeses, apples, cider, and more. In addition to the great food and conversation, you can also hear live music.

Also up north, there's a new winter market at Taos Pueblo every Wednesday, 10 am to 6 pm, also indoors, in the Red Willow Center. Find your winter squash, onions, cabbage, garlic, basil, bread, and tortillas - a lot more promised for January and February.

Down south - well, that's even simpler. Thanks to the addition of new hoop houses in the area, the Alamogordo Otero County Farmers' Market has begun a new winter market this year. They will be open every Saturday except Christmas and New Year weekends, 9:30 to 11 am. Hungry customers can expect to find tomatoes, cucumbers, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, celery, turnips, salad and cooking greens, and eggs. Otero County growers are also growing a variety of Asian vegetables such as pak choi, Chinese broccoli, mustard greens, and cress. Las Cruces is also year-round, Wednesdays and Saturdays, 8 am to 12:30 pm. Down south, in addition to the supply of winter squash, roots, and other winter goodies, look for apples from the nearby mountain orchards.

And smack in the middle of the State? Good news - Socorro will have a winter market this year, every Saturday, 9 to 11 am, through mid to late February - also indoors, at the new community kitchen on Park Street, on the south side of the Finley Gym complex. Look for the root veggies, all kinds of greens, winter squash, fresh baked bread, eggs, and more.

You can get everything you need - everything - and stay firmly local and in season all through the winter. You don't have to live entirely on potatoes and pintos. Stop pining for the tender greens of spring. They're waiting for you at the winter market!

Maybe I'm not sorry to be a grasshopper after all.


Catherine Gordon is a free-lance food activist and a member of the New Mexico Farmers' Marketing Association Board of Directors. She welcomes your feedback at catgordon555@gmail.com.