Agricultural Profile: Christopher Bassett: Freshies of New Mexico Farm, Velarde, New Mexico
Christopher Bassett with his very shy daughter, Luna
When you arrive at Freshies of New Mexico farm, owned by Christopher and Taylor Bassett, in Velarde, you encounter the most bucolic scene, one that is almost magical. The Rio Grande borders the dirt road on the south that leads into the property. Beaver and ducks, among other wildlife, make the river their home. Located near the gate is a tree house with a marvelous view of the river, and then a living quarters, a pump house with greenhouse for starting new plants, and a storage area. All the buildings are surrounded by lush vegetation with orchard sitting to the north.
It’s such a idyllic scene that one is easily tempted to think that this can’t be more perfect, that this is what the agricultural life is all about. But Mother Nature occasionally taps you on the shoulder and reminds you that you are not in control.
The Bassetts took the orchard over in 2008 from Walter and Betty Lee. At that time the Lees had the name of the farm as Cottonwood Lane, which references the drive in along the dirt road bordering the river. One acre of peaches and one acre of apples. Each acre holds about 350 trees. On one of the trees you notice Leroy Trujillo up on a tall ladder thinning out peaches. It’s a bumper crop this year and they need to protect the branches from breaking, and increase the size of the fruit, by removing excess. That’s what Trujillo is doing now, leaving a swath of small, thin peaches in his wake on the orchard floor.
“We hand thin the crop, so that each fruit can size up more and become a better peach. Basically if you let them over-crop, they’ll break branches, you’ll end up with a bunch of peaches that size up to about the size of an apricot, instead of having those nice big, three to a pound or two to a pound. peaches,” Bassett says while explaining the thinning Trujillo is performing. “This is actually our second pass going. Leroy’s going back to make a second pass. It takes about 200 man-hours or something and now we’re going a second pass on it.”
“In the first year in 2009, our first crop, we did it exactly as Walt did,” Bassett explains. “And then after that we kinda reassessed it and tweaking it and making it our own.”
Bassett originally grew up in New Hampshire and worked on an apple orchard next to his parents’ home as a child. When he started college he found he was more interested in the local organic farm than in his college studies.
“It wasn’t until I was like 18 and moved to Washington state to go to college,” Bassett explains. “Whitman College in Wallawalla, Wash. I was studying cross-cultural philosophy, religions and stuff… I lasted about five semesters there and just connected more with the local organic farm and just went out there and started learning in that environment. The nitty gritty of soil health and production.”
He worked on farms in Washington, Oregon, California and Colorado before settling in New Mexico.
His wife, Taylor, is an elementary school teacher and taught in the Española school district for two years.
They were renting a house and finally found the farm and purchased it.
The Lee’s had the farm certified organic and the Bassetts have continued that certification.
“The organic program in New Mexico is part of the NMDA (New Mexico Department of Agriculture) and basically there’s a lot of record keg about what we use for fertility, for pest control, for disease control,” Bassett explains. “Records need to be kept so that our certifiers can verify that we are keeping good records of what we apply and when we apply them. There are other stipulations as far as when you can add raw manure to a crop, things that could cross-contaminate for food borne illnesses and stuff like that. You can use pesticides; they need to be approved for organic use. We do control for the coddling moth, the worm in the apple, which is the number onepest here. But we use products that have less residues and aren’t as lethal and more targeted t specific pests, rather than broad-spectrum pesticides.”
He pauses and then continues, “The reason we hold the certification is for our wholesale markets because we get a much better price, than not being certified organic. Direct sales at Farmers Markets, it’s not as important because I have a personal relationship with everybody. They can ask me, do I use this…the whole sale, like the co-op puts them in their grocery store, I’m not there for people to ask so it’s a way for people to know that we are conforming to the standards of organic practices. As far as flavor, I think you can be an organic grower and still have poorly tasting fruit.
“And as far as petro chemical conventional forming, it’s a direct offshoot form the war industry basically. There are a lot of the same chemical compounds that were used in war as biological warfare that we’re mounting on our land and that’s not how I steward the land. I’m looking to steward the land in a way that is low impact, as far as moving forward in time. Our pond here you can see fish and turtles and the biggest bullfrogs you’ve ever seen. You know if we were spraying Diazinon those are dead. Those are indicator species, is it a live system, is it life producing, is it full of vitality… or is it this model of agriculture that we are imposing on the landscape and have no sensitivity to the larger picture. That’s very important to us. WE are stewards of the land and we want a healthy, holistic system, from the soil, to the plants, to the family and the people we sell to. That’s a big part for us.”
Asked about things like coddling moths and mating disruption techniques that Gordon Tooley in Truchas uses, Bassett replies, “We have used mating disruption, in the past. We’re only 1 acre here and mating disruption is recommended for 40 acres or less. So, you create a buffer of disrupted area. So, I’ve used it, it’s kind of expensive, so we’ve moved away from it since we’re on such a small scale. I still use pheromone traps to trap the initial flight of the adults so I know when they’re flying and when they’re laying eggs. And then according to temperature I know when those eggs are hatching and then I apply my pesticide at that time. It’s much narrower spectrum of effectively. I don’t just spray randomly. It’s very directed.”
Bassett talks about basic management.
“We are very much in line with Gordon Tooley (Tooley’s Trees in Truchas) in our management practices,” Bassett says. Tooley stresses that it is imperative to keep bare ground covered. “This orchard was planted in, I think it was New Zealand Dwarf White Clover. It’s a low growing white clover. The grasses have moved in over time. It should probably get replanted or something like that.
“Another focus of ours is getting more woody mulch, which Gordon might have talked about, wood chips, back onto the orchard floor, creating more of a… allowing more oxygen to get down into the soil. What happens with the sod, the grass that grows up along the root zones, it’s so thick that air can’t get down, oxygen can’t get down, it creates a kind of a barrier and so that’s one of our major focuses is trying to get more woody mulch. Chip all our prunings and bring that all back into the orchard. You just top mulch it. Top dress it and the bacteria, the fungus in the soil decomposes it and that’s by you can’t see any of it. We’ve put out truckloads of it.”
Bassett points to some purple flowers growing amid the rows of trees.
“We also did some intercropping with some comfrey, sages, and different things- woody perennials that add fertility to the soil just by growing in the orchard. Where there’s not a sprinkler, there’s a comfrey bush. We get about three cuts a year. It’s just for fertility purposes in the orchard. But it kind of goes along with the whole philosophy we were talking about, trying to introduce more woody perennials and less grass into the orchard.”
Bassett walks down a row in the apple section of the orchard. Four years ago he and Tooley grafted new varieties onto some of the apple trees to make them more marketable.
“Originally this orchard was planted in Gala Honey crisp in a variety called ‘Golden Supreme,’ which was a typeof Golden Delicious,” Bassett says as he approaches a tree. “And the ‘Golden Supreme,’ while they’re a nice apple, they don’t have that same cult following as the Honey Crisp. They’re a phenomenal apple. Crisp, sweet, tart, just like everything an apple could be — they are. And so, we took out about 100 of the ‘Goldens.’ We cut them down at hip height in March, right before they budded out, and then grafted on Honey Crisp twigs onto the tops. We did about three rows, each row 30-33 trees, so we got about 100 trees grafted. We still have some ‘Golden Supreme,’ about 50 trees, but we took our Honey Crisp supply up to 200-250 trees.”
The trees are dwarfs and are spaced at six feet apart with the rows being spaced 15 feet apart.
The farm sells most of their fruit locally.
“We produce about 10 tons per acre, so 10 tons in the peaches, 10 tons in the apples,” Bassett says. “We sell them all between Taos, Santa Fe and then if we have a real glut we’ll sell them in Albuquerque. We work with the Montanita CDC (Co-op Distribution Center) and we also work with Monte at Skarsgard CSA in Albuquerque and those are both great venues.”
Enter Mother Nature’s tap on the shoulder mentioned above.
“This 2016 was our eighth year with this orchard,” Bassett says, “And of the eight years this was our third bumper crop, third full crop. 2011 and 2013 we had zero crop in the peaches, 100 percent loss. The other three years of crop we’ve had 20-50 percent of our crop. The apples we’ve had better success with. We’ve had a consistency in that we’ve had a crop every year. The peaches bloom earlier, so they’re exposed to more freezing temps.”
And although the Lees had installed equipment to help battle freezing, it’s still a fact in Northern New Mexico agriculture and something that has to be dealt with.
Bassett talks about Lee’s freeze and frost proofing technology.
“Walt built a frost protection system in the orchard,” Bassett explains. “It includes a 40 foot tower with a propeller on top of it. A wind machine that moves the cold air that‘s trying to settle. Basically the cold air is settling in and flowing down canyon, like the river flows. But as that cold air tries to move into the orchard area, the fan is creating a convection current and pulling warmer air down for the atmosphere from 40 feet up and it kind of recycles that same air. If you turn the fan on at 32 degrees and cold air 24 degrees is moving in, it buffers the air in the orchard. At 28 degrees you’ll have 10 percent loss; this is at full bloom of the orchard when the flowers are open. They are more hardy before they open. So, they can survive colder temps but once they’re full open you have a 10 percent loss at 28 degrees, you have about 90 percent loss at 24 degrees. So those four degrees, your crop is either saved or lost.”
Bassett stops briefly, looks over that the fan, and then continues.
“We have the fan and then we also have a second aspect of the frost protection which is the in ground sprinkler system. And at 32 degrees I have a frost alarm that wakes me up, a temp. Sensor out in the orchard, that wakes me up. I get up. I start the pump and I start pumping 50-degree water into the orchard. That water freezes and as the water changes phase form liquid to solid, at a molecular level heat is released. And so we are actually laying down ice on the orchard floor, we’re not covering the trees, just spraying the floor. They are also for irrigation. These create a continuous full-on ice sheet over the entire orchard floor, about one inch thick. (In an all night session) The two systems together seem to be the real trick in saving the crop.”
It’s such a idyllic scene that one is easily tempted to think that this can’t be more perfect, that this is what the agricultural life is all about. But Mother Nature occasionally taps you on the shoulder and reminds you that you are not in control.
The Bassetts took the orchard over in 2008 from Walter and Betty Lee. At that time the Lees had the name of the farm as Cottonwood Lane, which references the drive in along the dirt road bordering the river. One acre of peaches and one acre of apples. Each acre holds about 350 trees. On one of the trees you notice Leroy Trujillo up on a tall ladder thinning out peaches. It’s a bumper crop this year and they need to protect the branches from breaking, and increase the size of the fruit, by removing excess. That’s what Trujillo is doing now, leaving a swath of small, thin peaches in his wake on the orchard floor.
“We hand thin the crop, so that each fruit can size up more and become a better peach. Basically if you let them over-crop, they’ll break branches, you’ll end up with a bunch of peaches that size up to about the size of an apricot, instead of having those nice big, three to a pound or two to a pound. peaches,” Bassett says while explaining the thinning Trujillo is performing. “This is actually our second pass going. Leroy’s going back to make a second pass. It takes about 200 man-hours or something and now we’re going a second pass on it.”
“In the first year in 2009, our first crop, we did it exactly as Walt did,” Bassett explains. “And then after that we kinda reassessed it and tweaking it and making it our own.”
Bassett originally grew up in New Hampshire and worked on an apple orchard next to his parents’ home as a child. When he started college he found he was more interested in the local organic farm than in his college studies.
“It wasn’t until I was like 18 and moved to Washington state to go to college,” Bassett explains. “Whitman College in Wallawalla, Wash. I was studying cross-cultural philosophy, religions and stuff… I lasted about five semesters there and just connected more with the local organic farm and just went out there and started learning in that environment. The nitty gritty of soil health and production.”
He worked on farms in Washington, Oregon, California and Colorado before settling in New Mexico.
His wife, Taylor, is an elementary school teacher and taught in the Española school district for two years.
They were renting a house and finally found the farm and purchased it.
The Lee’s had the farm certified organic and the Bassetts have continued that certification.
“The organic program in New Mexico is part of the NMDA (New Mexico Department of Agriculture) and basically there’s a lot of record keg about what we use for fertility, for pest control, for disease control,” Bassett explains. “Records need to be kept so that our certifiers can verify that we are keeping good records of what we apply and when we apply them. There are other stipulations as far as when you can add raw manure to a crop, things that could cross-contaminate for food borne illnesses and stuff like that. You can use pesticides; they need to be approved for organic use. We do control for the coddling moth, the worm in the apple, which is the number onepest here. But we use products that have less residues and aren’t as lethal and more targeted t specific pests, rather than broad-spectrum pesticides.”
He pauses and then continues, “The reason we hold the certification is for our wholesale markets because we get a much better price, than not being certified organic. Direct sales at Farmers Markets, it’s not as important because I have a personal relationship with everybody. They can ask me, do I use this…the whole sale, like the co-op puts them in their grocery store, I’m not there for people to ask so it’s a way for people to know that we are conforming to the standards of organic practices. As far as flavor, I think you can be an organic grower and still have poorly tasting fruit.
“And as far as petro chemical conventional forming, it’s a direct offshoot form the war industry basically. There are a lot of the same chemical compounds that were used in war as biological warfare that we’re mounting on our land and that’s not how I steward the land. I’m looking to steward the land in a way that is low impact, as far as moving forward in time. Our pond here you can see fish and turtles and the biggest bullfrogs you’ve ever seen. You know if we were spraying Diazinon those are dead. Those are indicator species, is it a live system, is it life producing, is it full of vitality… or is it this model of agriculture that we are imposing on the landscape and have no sensitivity to the larger picture. That’s very important to us. WE are stewards of the land and we want a healthy, holistic system, from the soil, to the plants, to the family and the people we sell to. That’s a big part for us.”
Asked about things like coddling moths and mating disruption techniques that Gordon Tooley in Truchas uses, Bassett replies, “We have used mating disruption, in the past. We’re only 1 acre here and mating disruption is recommended for 40 acres or less. So, you create a buffer of disrupted area. So, I’ve used it, it’s kind of expensive, so we’ve moved away from it since we’re on such a small scale. I still use pheromone traps to trap the initial flight of the adults so I know when they’re flying and when they’re laying eggs. And then according to temperature I know when those eggs are hatching and then I apply my pesticide at that time. It’s much narrower spectrum of effectively. I don’t just spray randomly. It’s very directed.”
Bassett talks about basic management.
“We are very much in line with Gordon Tooley (Tooley’s Trees in Truchas) in our management practices,” Bassett says. Tooley stresses that it is imperative to keep bare ground covered. “This orchard was planted in, I think it was New Zealand Dwarf White Clover. It’s a low growing white clover. The grasses have moved in over time. It should probably get replanted or something like that.
“Another focus of ours is getting more woody mulch, which Gordon might have talked about, wood chips, back onto the orchard floor, creating more of a… allowing more oxygen to get down into the soil. What happens with the sod, the grass that grows up along the root zones, it’s so thick that air can’t get down, oxygen can’t get down, it creates a kind of a barrier and so that’s one of our major focuses is trying to get more woody mulch. Chip all our prunings and bring that all back into the orchard. You just top mulch it. Top dress it and the bacteria, the fungus in the soil decomposes it and that’s by you can’t see any of it. We’ve put out truckloads of it.”
Bassett points to some purple flowers growing amid the rows of trees.
“We also did some intercropping with some comfrey, sages, and different things- woody perennials that add fertility to the soil just by growing in the orchard. Where there’s not a sprinkler, there’s a comfrey bush. We get about three cuts a year. It’s just for fertility purposes in the orchard. But it kind of goes along with the whole philosophy we were talking about, trying to introduce more woody perennials and less grass into the orchard.”
Bassett walks down a row in the apple section of the orchard. Four years ago he and Tooley grafted new varieties onto some of the apple trees to make them more marketable.
“Originally this orchard was planted in Gala Honey crisp in a variety called ‘Golden Supreme,’ which was a typeof Golden Delicious,” Bassett says as he approaches a tree. “And the ‘Golden Supreme,’ while they’re a nice apple, they don’t have that same cult following as the Honey Crisp. They’re a phenomenal apple. Crisp, sweet, tart, just like everything an apple could be — they are. And so, we took out about 100 of the ‘Goldens.’ We cut them down at hip height in March, right before they budded out, and then grafted on Honey Crisp twigs onto the tops. We did about three rows, each row 30-33 trees, so we got about 100 trees grafted. We still have some ‘Golden Supreme,’ about 50 trees, but we took our Honey Crisp supply up to 200-250 trees.”
The trees are dwarfs and are spaced at six feet apart with the rows being spaced 15 feet apart.
The farm sells most of their fruit locally.
“We produce about 10 tons per acre, so 10 tons in the peaches, 10 tons in the apples,” Bassett says. “We sell them all between Taos, Santa Fe and then if we have a real glut we’ll sell them in Albuquerque. We work with the Montanita CDC (Co-op Distribution Center) and we also work with Monte at Skarsgard CSA in Albuquerque and those are both great venues.”
Enter Mother Nature’s tap on the shoulder mentioned above.
“This 2016 was our eighth year with this orchard,” Bassett says, “And of the eight years this was our third bumper crop, third full crop. 2011 and 2013 we had zero crop in the peaches, 100 percent loss. The other three years of crop we’ve had 20-50 percent of our crop. The apples we’ve had better success with. We’ve had a consistency in that we’ve had a crop every year. The peaches bloom earlier, so they’re exposed to more freezing temps.”
And although the Lees had installed equipment to help battle freezing, it’s still a fact in Northern New Mexico agriculture and something that has to be dealt with.
Bassett talks about Lee’s freeze and frost proofing technology.
“Walt built a frost protection system in the orchard,” Bassett explains. “It includes a 40 foot tower with a propeller on top of it. A wind machine that moves the cold air that‘s trying to settle. Basically the cold air is settling in and flowing down canyon, like the river flows. But as that cold air tries to move into the orchard area, the fan is creating a convection current and pulling warmer air down for the atmosphere from 40 feet up and it kind of recycles that same air. If you turn the fan on at 32 degrees and cold air 24 degrees is moving in, it buffers the air in the orchard. At 28 degrees you’ll have 10 percent loss; this is at full bloom of the orchard when the flowers are open. They are more hardy before they open. So, they can survive colder temps but once they’re full open you have a 10 percent loss at 28 degrees, you have about 90 percent loss at 24 degrees. So those four degrees, your crop is either saved or lost.”
Bassett stops briefly, looks over that the fan, and then continues.
“We have the fan and then we also have a second aspect of the frost protection which is the in ground sprinkler system. And at 32 degrees I have a frost alarm that wakes me up, a temp. Sensor out in the orchard, that wakes me up. I get up. I start the pump and I start pumping 50-degree water into the orchard. That water freezes and as the water changes phase form liquid to solid, at a molecular level heat is released. And so we are actually laying down ice on the orchard floor, we’re not covering the trees, just spraying the floor. They are also for irrigation. These create a continuous full-on ice sheet over the entire orchard floor, about one inch thick. (In an all night session) The two systems together seem to be the real trick in saving the crop.”
Mushrooms
But loosing 100 percent of those peach crops in 2011 and 2013, had Bassett’s mind churning. The only thing that had saved them was the mushrooms, which are an inside crop for the most part.
So they started thinking about a method of reducing Mother Nature’s tap on the shoulder. The mushrooms were one avenue to take, the other a “New Project,” a “High Tunnel Orchard.”
First, the mushrooms, as Bassett enters a greenhouse with bags hanging all over the place, some with oyster mushrooms peeking out of their sides.
“This is the mushroom laboratory area, I call it a laboratory because it’s so much different from farming in the ground, it has a much different feel. We do a succession plantings or succession inoculations if you will. Meaning we inoculate every week, the same amount every week and then that translates into a fairly steady production/harvest throughout the summer. We have harvested recently in here. We harvest every day. It’s pretty amazing!”
Bassett pauses as sprinkler come on in the “Laboratory.”
“This is our “mini- Oregon” over here. Where it stays about 70 degrees, 80% humidity. We have enough rack space for two months of inoculations, weekly inoculations. We make 72 bags a week. To give you an idea. This rack is holding four weeks’ worth of inoculations (a whole month). So you can see the white in the bag, is the organism, it’s the mycelium is the vegetative part of a fungus, consisting of a mass of branching, thread-like hyphae. The mass of hyphae is sometimes called shiro, especially within the fairy ring fungi. Fungal colonies composed of mycelium are found in and on soil and many other substrates, consuming the carbon, grown on sawdust. The bags here on your right are more brown, not as much white, are the newest bags. The organism hasn’t colonized them. So we have one more week worth of inoculations to hang on this rack. The week after that we will start taking out the oldest bags and adding the new ones in their place.”
We head back out to the orchard.
“This is the secondary mushroom production, so this is inoculated mushroom substrate,” Bassett says as he points to an area of raised soil in the orchard sitting alongside some of the fruit trees. “So after we do the initial growing of the mushrooms in the mushroom green house, the bags get cut open and mulched out on the ground in the orchard. And they re-grow, to all become one,” which sounds very Sci-Fi. “And then in the spring and fall we get major production out of these beds. The floor of the orchard is literally carpeted with mushrooms. This type of mushroom we have is very vigorous and can out compete most other organisms, so we don’t need the same type of sterile environment that other types of mushroom cultivation needs.”
So the mushrooms are just mixed in with the soil of the orchard, you wonder?
“We kinda stomp it out,” Bassett says. “Move the bags out of the way. Roll over it with the tractor. The organism, reconnects. Its consciousness becomes one. They are all individual bags here and then it all reconnects.
Which sounds even more Science Fictionish!
“It is,” Bassett responds enthusiastically. “Mushrooms are! They are! They have a really profound consciousness. They aren’t plants. They’re not animals. They are something else. A whole separate kingdom of life. And they do reconnect. And they start consuming the carbon. Reinvigorates them. Every time you disturb them, it reinvigorates them. And when they feel the right temperature fluctuations between day and night the right moisture, possibly gravitational pull from the moon then they’ll just grow mushrooms in that secondary production, in a major way, carpet. This system here we’re forcing them weekly, they constantly feel the bounds of their container and then they decide to start putting mushrooms out. Where as in the outdoor production it’s a little more random. We harvest daily in here because they grow so quickly.”
After the Twilight Zone theme song ends, Bassett continues.
“This has been a way to keep us on the farm, basically. In Feb 2011, we had that very severe cold snap during the Super Bowl when they shut off the gas going to Taos and Espanola. That was so cold in the winter, that winter low was actually so cold that we lost the peach crop before it bloomed. So no flowers ever came out. And that year was the year we built our first high tunnel and that diversity has been a nice buffer, you know, in keeping us on the farm.”
What’s the biggest challenge with the mushrooms?
“The relentless schedule harvest,” Bassett says immediately. “They must be harvested at 24 hours cycle, they must be harvested every 24 hours or else they’ll over mature and become overgrown, worthless. They turn slimy (if over mature). They just slime-out, they lose their texture, their firmness that you’re going for and basically become a pile of slime. April through November. Everyday all those months. That’s the biggest challenge of maintaining the quality and keeping the quality to offer to our buyers. It’s kind of the anchor. Can’t go camping for a night during the summer, for example. Can’t miss a day.”
We head to the recently acquired six acres, which is about 10 minutes drive away, where the high tunnel orchard project is underway.
“So we’ve been wanting to do this new project for a few years, doing research about planting trees undercover. We got this piece of property in August of last year for this project. It used to be an old apple orchard,” Bassett says and he looks at a six-acre parcel with a large greenhouse structure that looks like it covers about an acre. Actually the structure is about 45,000 square feet, which is slightly over an acre “The previous owner removed all those apple trees and had it replanted and so it was ready to go for this new project.”
The greenhouse is another response to late frosts and the freezing of the flower buds in Northern New Mexico.
“We just weren’t happy with losing the crop two out of seven years, last year it was two out of six years, when it happened. Having that consistency and that experience at the smaller green house at our place. Knowing that our plants grow so well in this environment. We did some research. There are other universities that are doing the initial research for these types of projects. Primarily in Michigan, they are putting sweet cherry trees under cover so they keep off the rain. So it doesn’t rain on them right before they’re harvested because they tend to crack and so they had loss due to the cracks, so they keep the rain off them. But this is for the frost protection, so it’s a little different.”
The structure is a multi bay, high tunnel, five bays wide. Each bay is 31 feet wide. That’s 155’ feet across the front and they are all 300 feet in length, It’s the length of a football field, wider than a football field. They have 300 trees per bay, the center row they train to a super slender axis training system. They are planting at two foot spacing, which means they will have very high trees that have essentially not branches. The fuit will be harvested from the high trunk.
“Basically what that will create is a fruiting trunk which doesn’t have any branching which holds its fruit load on the trunk itself. We did that because we have 16 foot ceilings in the center of the tunnels. So, we’re making a long, narrow tall hedge,” Bassett explains. “The apricots are the most vigorous, they’ve been in the ground the longest. This shoot here will get pruned back to about four to five inches this winter, the fruit load will be on that spur. It will get tied up to the wire. The wood that grew this summer will be fruit bearing next year.”
They have three rows of trees in each tunnel. The super slender ax is the center row and have eight inch trellis built for them. The outside rows of the trees, they headed (cut) them about knee height, more typically in the orchard you would head them at hip height, but since they’re in the cover, they headed them low to create the initial branching lower to the ground. The center row of slim trees will eventually reach the ceiling of the tunnel.
The trees on each side of the center row will be wider trees with more branches.
“In the meantime we were able to put in a row of annual planting; tomatoes, cucumbers, melons,” Bassett says. “We’ve got 600 apricot trees, 600 sweet cherry trees, 200 plums, 100 nectarines planted in the first year. 1,500 pounds of melons, 300 pounds cucumbers, 1,200 pounds tomatoes, the plants in between the rows of trees, will go to the same buyers/areas. Direct retail sales. “Thin skinned seedless cucumbers, Persian variety. Very sweet, thin skinned, no seeds. We grow Sun Gold tomatoes, cherry tomatoes. The all-star flavor of tomatoes. Golden colored, orange colored. We harvest two to three times a week on all these crops, on all these annual crops. We wait for them to mature to their ultimate ripeness, harvest it, it decreases its ability to store, but that’s not what we’re into. We’re not trying to store anything. We are trying to get it to people right away. Everybody loves a homegrown tomato in the summer.”
“We didn’t plant anything in the perennial stock over here, that we have at the farm. We didn’t plant any peaches/apples. This is all new products, earlier flowering things. The plants like the apricots, the things that freeze out nine out of 10 years here. We’re hoping to get them 10 out of 10 years. Diversifying the farm again,” Bassett explains, and then segues into what he considers the hardest part of agriculture, “I guess the hardest part for me is, the dilemma that I have is, when I’m here at the farm I’m always farming. You know if its Sunday morning, I’m still getting up to go switch the eater somewhere or check in on some trees that were having trouble earlier in the week that I maybe did something to, want to check in on…there’s never really a down time. We’ve really had to learn how to leave the farm and to be able to get a rest. Otherwise it’s too relentless, you can’t put it down. And ad the kids get older, now that we have children, family, it’s even more important. To spend time with them and not just be a workaholic all the time. Also, when we lost the crop in 2013 in bloom or 2011 where we lost the crop before they bloomed it was heartbreaking. We had just poured six weeks of time, energy, pruning them, the trees looked awesome. The bloom looked awesome and then we lost the entire crop. It was pretty devastating. It invigorated me to do this project.”
Basset says they’d like to plant a new peach orchard in the newly acquired six acres.. The old one they have at the other farm is aging and in another five years it would be nice, he says, to have the frost protection this new project affords the trees and plants.
“It would be all indoor,” Bassett says. “We are moving to put all our stone fruit under cover, to secure a crop every year and what we’ll do where we take our peaches out at the other farm, we’ll expand our apples and get into pears. [won’t freeze as early] And the frost protection system that we have over there is to my standards. But the peach, with the two years of no crop, is not. If that happens two out of every 10 years that’s 10 percent loss.”
Does Bassett every have second thoughts about being into farming?
“Sure, yeah. Definitely. You always wonder is the grass greener on the other side sorta thing. In the end we just decided, in farming you’re always gonna have adversity, no matter where you go. We could move to Hawaii and start a farm there and it would be too wet. Too many different fruit flies we couldn’t even grow fruit. We love being in this area and so we just decided to stick it out and purchasing this property, second property and moving forward with this project was just our real commitment- here to stay sort of thing.”
Growing the crops isn’t the only issue with small farms, they also have to deal with the business, marketing side.
“We have great relationships with about a dozen restaurants in Santa Fe,” Bassett says. “You always form a relationship with the chef first and a lot of the restaurants we sell to are chef-owners and once you establish a relationship with the chef you’ll be directed to deal with the sous-chef or whoever is in charge of produce buying,” Bassett explains. “The local farm to table movement in Santa Fe is really large and everybody is trying to jump on that wagon and when I approach a chef, it’s really asking them to put their money where their mouth is. I can offer you this every week and they are gung-ho to do it. I offer them superior quality, reliability, and consistency. They want to do it. Some chefs find me at the Santa Fe Farmers Market. This week I am reaching out to new restaurants or restaurants I have worked with in the past. I have a couple tiers of restaurants that I work with; there are the ones that are my number onesupporters and clients, that as soon as I get mushrooms, they want them. And they want 20 pounds per week for every week form now until I don’t have them. Another tier of chefs, is “I don’t have them on the menu; I want to run them as a special. Call us when you have extra.” This is nice for me, depending on supply I have another four to five other chefs to call… I have 10 lbs. for you. Marketing is a huge part of my responsibilities. I have farm hands helping me run the farm. But I really do all the marketing. My wife helps and does the Farmers Markets. I do all the other sales. It takes 1 hour to drive to Santa Fe, 2 hours to deliver, test out what some of the chefs have done with my products. The chefs are always eager to, ‘you have to try this, it’s so good!’ Very personal relationship I hold with my restaurant clients. They are buying from me. That’s one of my favorite parts of the business, is representing my products at Farmers Markets and to our chefs. I feel good about what I produce, I feel proud. And they appreciate it.”
And although the farm offers a variety of items, Bassett says it’s important to be known for something in particular.
“1 thing I’ve found that is really important is to find your niche and commit to it. You know, like… I’m the peach guy,” Bassett says with a laugh.
What’s it like for Bassett to be in the agriculture business?
“For me, I like the independence of being my own boss of course and doing my own project and being sorta creative in my process of what I bring to the community, problem solving skills,” Bassett says enthusiastically. “So, I really enjoy that and was drawn to that. But more so, it’s the flavor in the fruit that just drives me to do what I do. I strive for fully-ripened, tree ripened, vine ripened fruits. We don’t grow vegetable, leaves, roots. We do, we grow plants, but what we’re after to bring to market are the fruits. That piece of it is what you can’t buy at the store. You can’t buy vine-ripened fruit at the store. Everybody knows that from their childhood, from having that peach that just locks in your memory, that makes you feel, this is what life is. Peach juice dripping down your beard, getting sticky. That’s why I decided to become a fruit grower.”
But loosing 100 percent of those peach crops in 2011 and 2013, had Bassett’s mind churning. The only thing that had saved them was the mushrooms, which are an inside crop for the most part.
So they started thinking about a method of reducing Mother Nature’s tap on the shoulder. The mushrooms were one avenue to take, the other a “New Project,” a “High Tunnel Orchard.”
First, the mushrooms, as Bassett enters a greenhouse with bags hanging all over the place, some with oyster mushrooms peeking out of their sides.
“This is the mushroom laboratory area, I call it a laboratory because it’s so much different from farming in the ground, it has a much different feel. We do a succession plantings or succession inoculations if you will. Meaning we inoculate every week, the same amount every week and then that translates into a fairly steady production/harvest throughout the summer. We have harvested recently in here. We harvest every day. It’s pretty amazing!”
Bassett pauses as sprinkler come on in the “Laboratory.”
“This is our “mini- Oregon” over here. Where it stays about 70 degrees, 80% humidity. We have enough rack space for two months of inoculations, weekly inoculations. We make 72 bags a week. To give you an idea. This rack is holding four weeks’ worth of inoculations (a whole month). So you can see the white in the bag, is the organism, it’s the mycelium is the vegetative part of a fungus, consisting of a mass of branching, thread-like hyphae. The mass of hyphae is sometimes called shiro, especially within the fairy ring fungi. Fungal colonies composed of mycelium are found in and on soil and many other substrates, consuming the carbon, grown on sawdust. The bags here on your right are more brown, not as much white, are the newest bags. The organism hasn’t colonized them. So we have one more week worth of inoculations to hang on this rack. The week after that we will start taking out the oldest bags and adding the new ones in their place.”
We head back out to the orchard.
“This is the secondary mushroom production, so this is inoculated mushroom substrate,” Bassett says as he points to an area of raised soil in the orchard sitting alongside some of the fruit trees. “So after we do the initial growing of the mushrooms in the mushroom green house, the bags get cut open and mulched out on the ground in the orchard. And they re-grow, to all become one,” which sounds very Sci-Fi. “And then in the spring and fall we get major production out of these beds. The floor of the orchard is literally carpeted with mushrooms. This type of mushroom we have is very vigorous and can out compete most other organisms, so we don’t need the same type of sterile environment that other types of mushroom cultivation needs.”
So the mushrooms are just mixed in with the soil of the orchard, you wonder?
“We kinda stomp it out,” Bassett says. “Move the bags out of the way. Roll over it with the tractor. The organism, reconnects. Its consciousness becomes one. They are all individual bags here and then it all reconnects.
Which sounds even more Science Fictionish!
“It is,” Bassett responds enthusiastically. “Mushrooms are! They are! They have a really profound consciousness. They aren’t plants. They’re not animals. They are something else. A whole separate kingdom of life. And they do reconnect. And they start consuming the carbon. Reinvigorates them. Every time you disturb them, it reinvigorates them. And when they feel the right temperature fluctuations between day and night the right moisture, possibly gravitational pull from the moon then they’ll just grow mushrooms in that secondary production, in a major way, carpet. This system here we’re forcing them weekly, they constantly feel the bounds of their container and then they decide to start putting mushrooms out. Where as in the outdoor production it’s a little more random. We harvest daily in here because they grow so quickly.”
After the Twilight Zone theme song ends, Bassett continues.
“This has been a way to keep us on the farm, basically. In Feb 2011, we had that very severe cold snap during the Super Bowl when they shut off the gas going to Taos and Espanola. That was so cold in the winter, that winter low was actually so cold that we lost the peach crop before it bloomed. So no flowers ever came out. And that year was the year we built our first high tunnel and that diversity has been a nice buffer, you know, in keeping us on the farm.”
What’s the biggest challenge with the mushrooms?
“The relentless schedule harvest,” Bassett says immediately. “They must be harvested at 24 hours cycle, they must be harvested every 24 hours or else they’ll over mature and become overgrown, worthless. They turn slimy (if over mature). They just slime-out, they lose their texture, their firmness that you’re going for and basically become a pile of slime. April through November. Everyday all those months. That’s the biggest challenge of maintaining the quality and keeping the quality to offer to our buyers. It’s kind of the anchor. Can’t go camping for a night during the summer, for example. Can’t miss a day.”
We head to the recently acquired six acres, which is about 10 minutes drive away, where the high tunnel orchard project is underway.
“So we’ve been wanting to do this new project for a few years, doing research about planting trees undercover. We got this piece of property in August of last year for this project. It used to be an old apple orchard,” Bassett says and he looks at a six-acre parcel with a large greenhouse structure that looks like it covers about an acre. Actually the structure is about 45,000 square feet, which is slightly over an acre “The previous owner removed all those apple trees and had it replanted and so it was ready to go for this new project.”
The greenhouse is another response to late frosts and the freezing of the flower buds in Northern New Mexico.
“We just weren’t happy with losing the crop two out of seven years, last year it was two out of six years, when it happened. Having that consistency and that experience at the smaller green house at our place. Knowing that our plants grow so well in this environment. We did some research. There are other universities that are doing the initial research for these types of projects. Primarily in Michigan, they are putting sweet cherry trees under cover so they keep off the rain. So it doesn’t rain on them right before they’re harvested because they tend to crack and so they had loss due to the cracks, so they keep the rain off them. But this is for the frost protection, so it’s a little different.”
The structure is a multi bay, high tunnel, five bays wide. Each bay is 31 feet wide. That’s 155’ feet across the front and they are all 300 feet in length, It’s the length of a football field, wider than a football field. They have 300 trees per bay, the center row they train to a super slender axis training system. They are planting at two foot spacing, which means they will have very high trees that have essentially not branches. The fuit will be harvested from the high trunk.
“Basically what that will create is a fruiting trunk which doesn’t have any branching which holds its fruit load on the trunk itself. We did that because we have 16 foot ceilings in the center of the tunnels. So, we’re making a long, narrow tall hedge,” Bassett explains. “The apricots are the most vigorous, they’ve been in the ground the longest. This shoot here will get pruned back to about four to five inches this winter, the fruit load will be on that spur. It will get tied up to the wire. The wood that grew this summer will be fruit bearing next year.”
They have three rows of trees in each tunnel. The super slender ax is the center row and have eight inch trellis built for them. The outside rows of the trees, they headed (cut) them about knee height, more typically in the orchard you would head them at hip height, but since they’re in the cover, they headed them low to create the initial branching lower to the ground. The center row of slim trees will eventually reach the ceiling of the tunnel.
The trees on each side of the center row will be wider trees with more branches.
“In the meantime we were able to put in a row of annual planting; tomatoes, cucumbers, melons,” Bassett says. “We’ve got 600 apricot trees, 600 sweet cherry trees, 200 plums, 100 nectarines planted in the first year. 1,500 pounds of melons, 300 pounds cucumbers, 1,200 pounds tomatoes, the plants in between the rows of trees, will go to the same buyers/areas. Direct retail sales. “Thin skinned seedless cucumbers, Persian variety. Very sweet, thin skinned, no seeds. We grow Sun Gold tomatoes, cherry tomatoes. The all-star flavor of tomatoes. Golden colored, orange colored. We harvest two to three times a week on all these crops, on all these annual crops. We wait for them to mature to their ultimate ripeness, harvest it, it decreases its ability to store, but that’s not what we’re into. We’re not trying to store anything. We are trying to get it to people right away. Everybody loves a homegrown tomato in the summer.”
“We didn’t plant anything in the perennial stock over here, that we have at the farm. We didn’t plant any peaches/apples. This is all new products, earlier flowering things. The plants like the apricots, the things that freeze out nine out of 10 years here. We’re hoping to get them 10 out of 10 years. Diversifying the farm again,” Bassett explains, and then segues into what he considers the hardest part of agriculture, “I guess the hardest part for me is, the dilemma that I have is, when I’m here at the farm I’m always farming. You know if its Sunday morning, I’m still getting up to go switch the eater somewhere or check in on some trees that were having trouble earlier in the week that I maybe did something to, want to check in on…there’s never really a down time. We’ve really had to learn how to leave the farm and to be able to get a rest. Otherwise it’s too relentless, you can’t put it down. And ad the kids get older, now that we have children, family, it’s even more important. To spend time with them and not just be a workaholic all the time. Also, when we lost the crop in 2013 in bloom or 2011 where we lost the crop before they bloomed it was heartbreaking. We had just poured six weeks of time, energy, pruning them, the trees looked awesome. The bloom looked awesome and then we lost the entire crop. It was pretty devastating. It invigorated me to do this project.”
Basset says they’d like to plant a new peach orchard in the newly acquired six acres.. The old one they have at the other farm is aging and in another five years it would be nice, he says, to have the frost protection this new project affords the trees and plants.
“It would be all indoor,” Bassett says. “We are moving to put all our stone fruit under cover, to secure a crop every year and what we’ll do where we take our peaches out at the other farm, we’ll expand our apples and get into pears. [won’t freeze as early] And the frost protection system that we have over there is to my standards. But the peach, with the two years of no crop, is not. If that happens two out of every 10 years that’s 10 percent loss.”
Does Bassett every have second thoughts about being into farming?
“Sure, yeah. Definitely. You always wonder is the grass greener on the other side sorta thing. In the end we just decided, in farming you’re always gonna have adversity, no matter where you go. We could move to Hawaii and start a farm there and it would be too wet. Too many different fruit flies we couldn’t even grow fruit. We love being in this area and so we just decided to stick it out and purchasing this property, second property and moving forward with this project was just our real commitment- here to stay sort of thing.”
Growing the crops isn’t the only issue with small farms, they also have to deal with the business, marketing side.
“We have great relationships with about a dozen restaurants in Santa Fe,” Bassett says. “You always form a relationship with the chef first and a lot of the restaurants we sell to are chef-owners and once you establish a relationship with the chef you’ll be directed to deal with the sous-chef or whoever is in charge of produce buying,” Bassett explains. “The local farm to table movement in Santa Fe is really large and everybody is trying to jump on that wagon and when I approach a chef, it’s really asking them to put their money where their mouth is. I can offer you this every week and they are gung-ho to do it. I offer them superior quality, reliability, and consistency. They want to do it. Some chefs find me at the Santa Fe Farmers Market. This week I am reaching out to new restaurants or restaurants I have worked with in the past. I have a couple tiers of restaurants that I work with; there are the ones that are my number onesupporters and clients, that as soon as I get mushrooms, they want them. And they want 20 pounds per week for every week form now until I don’t have them. Another tier of chefs, is “I don’t have them on the menu; I want to run them as a special. Call us when you have extra.” This is nice for me, depending on supply I have another four to five other chefs to call… I have 10 lbs. for you. Marketing is a huge part of my responsibilities. I have farm hands helping me run the farm. But I really do all the marketing. My wife helps and does the Farmers Markets. I do all the other sales. It takes 1 hour to drive to Santa Fe, 2 hours to deliver, test out what some of the chefs have done with my products. The chefs are always eager to, ‘you have to try this, it’s so good!’ Very personal relationship I hold with my restaurant clients. They are buying from me. That’s one of my favorite parts of the business, is representing my products at Farmers Markets and to our chefs. I feel good about what I produce, I feel proud. And they appreciate it.”
And although the farm offers a variety of items, Bassett says it’s important to be known for something in particular.
“1 thing I’ve found that is really important is to find your niche and commit to it. You know, like… I’m the peach guy,” Bassett says with a laugh.
What’s it like for Bassett to be in the agriculture business?
“For me, I like the independence of being my own boss of course and doing my own project and being sorta creative in my process of what I bring to the community, problem solving skills,” Bassett says enthusiastically. “So, I really enjoy that and was drawn to that. But more so, it’s the flavor in the fruit that just drives me to do what I do. I strive for fully-ripened, tree ripened, vine ripened fruits. We don’t grow vegetable, leaves, roots. We do, we grow plants, but what we’re after to bring to market are the fruits. That piece of it is what you can’t buy at the store. You can’t buy vine-ripened fruit at the store. Everybody knows that from their childhood, from having that peach that just locks in your memory, that makes you feel, this is what life is. Peach juice dripping down your beard, getting sticky. That’s why I decided to become a fruit grower.”
A Freshies of New Mexico worker thinning peaches
Rows of mushrooms
Bassett inside on of Freshies of New Mexico greenhouses where vegetables destined for farmer's markets are grown
To contact Bob Eckert for assignments, consultations or workshops, please email [email protected]
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or use the contact form on the About page