Farming the good earth

Inside México: How did you come to live here at Rancho San Jose?

Barbara Hoet: We were living near Malinalco, and we had some friends who knew Arturo Farias, the farm’s administrator. They thought it would be perfect for us because we could work part time and still have time for our art. We came to visit, and moved in the next day. We’ve been here for ten months.

Mike Hoet: This is a demonstration site, to show how you can have a natural place that is also close to a city.

IM: What do you grow on the farm?

BH: We have onions, lettuce, garlic, cilantro, parsley, spinach, beans, beets and corn. In the beginning, we didn’t know about planting, it was all new. It took us six months to figure it out, what we can plant and can’t plant. We had to learn what you could plant in the rainy season.

We’re still experimenting, and learning a lot.

We grow enough here to feed ourselves. What’s left over, we’ll trade with the neighbors, and some of it Arturo will take to the city to be sold in [organic supermarket] the Green Corner.

IM: What’s the history of this rancho?

MH: Four years ago it was a sheep farm, before that it was cornfields. The river [that flowed through the land] was dammed for agriculture 60 years ago. This whole area used to be a lake, and it’s finally growing back [to be wetlands again]. Now there’s water here until the end of the dry season. But it’s still fragile.

BH: We now have kestrels, cranes, herons, ducks, egrets, mallards, moor hens, and redwing blackbirds on the land. The field is full of peppermint and sage. In the summer it’s spectacular; at night the frogs make wonderful music and the field lights up with fireflies. It’s something to see!