Vigil’s Chimayo Produce

Gloria and Noel have been farming for 30 years and have been vending at the Santa Fe Farmer’s Market since 1990. Their farm is a small, family-owned farm that utilizes the ancient acequia system to grow sustainable crops such as chile. Their goal is to preserve the agricultural and cultural heritage of Chimayo, to use the land as God intended.

Noel and Gloria received the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market Institute’s “Farmer All Star” award in 2014.

Noel Trujillo is a self-described city boy whose dad was a civil engineer who worked all over the country. Noel lived in six states when he was in grade school and attended 11 elementary schools before he landed in Albuquerque for high school. Gloria is a country girl who grew up in Chimayo. Her mom was a principal and school teacher for 44 years, and her dad had a union job up in Los Alamos operating a jack hammer. But during his off hours, her dad tended his farm in Chimayo where Noel and Gloria live today, Vigil Farm, and his thousand fruit trees that he planted after WWII. He also raised cows and horses and alfalfa and lots of different kinds of crops. So, this is a story about how two people got together, who, even though they came from fairly different places, shared some very deep values about life and how they wanted to live.  Their lives and history reflect what is the best of this area we call home.

Gloria is a Chimayosa. Her father was from Cundiyo, which was founded by Vigils. Her mother was a Martinez and her grandmother an Ortega, all of whom grew up in Chimayo. Gloria’s granddad on her mom’s side sent five of his six kids to college. He sold vegetables to help pay for the tuition. Her grandfather’s belief in the value of education runs deep in her lineage.

Noel’s father grew up on a 30,000 acre ranch near Roy, and his mother was from La Loma. His dad felt there was no future for him in Roy, so when Jose was 15, he left home with $15 in his pocket and ended up working at – and attending – Menaul School in Albuquerque. After high school, his father enrolled at UNM, worked at a hospital at night, and graduated with an engineering degree. Although Noel had to travel a lot with his engineer dad, he saw the impact of his father’s education on the world: his dad was the engineer at the Albuquerque Sunport, at the UNM Student Union Building, on Arizona’s highways and on many buildings up in Los Alamos. Education was what made it all possible, and it marked Noel, too.

So, little wonder that Noel and Gloria met at Highlands University, and that Noel didn’t make the grade with Gloria’s parents until they figured out that Noel’s dad and Gloria’s dad were classmates at Menaul. “Once they figured that out,” Noel said, “I was in.” Gloria got her master’s in elementary education at Highlands and a second masters in Library Information Sciences at the University of Denver. Noel got his masters in Speech and Communications. Like so many of the farmers at the Market they had full time jobs. Gloria was a school librarian for 35 years and President of the NM Library Association. Noel taught speech for 36 1/2 years, mostly in Espanola and Los Alamos.

But during all this time, they have been selling at the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market. Gloria said they started when their daughter was 9 years old and the Market was located at Sanbusco. “We’d load up our 76 Cutlass with vegetables, squeeze Alyssa in, and off we’d go,” said Gloria. You can imagine that working full time jobs and raising a family was hard enough, but they got up every Saturday at 4 am to pick the squash blossoms and come to town.

“When I was growing up, we had those lard buckets full of stuff and we’d go door to door from here to Las Vegas, to Roy, to Mosquero, to Santa Fe. My family had been doing that for forever and a day. I’d take one side of the street and my cousin the other side. On the east side, on Canyon Road. All over. I liked it because there were little stores along the street we could stop at to get a coke and some chips. Now I wouldn’t dare do it, but back then it was fun,” said Gloria.

“She’s a planting machine,” said Noel.  “She’d plant me, too, if she could. If I ever turn up missing, look for a green spot and that’s where I’ll be.” Their two-acre garden is half Chimayo chile and half veggies of all sorts. They have 35 fruit trees left from the 1000 that Gloria’s dad planted in the 40s, a beautiful blackberry patch, and turkeys and chickens galore, which are more for pets than eating. “The only thing I kill are mosquitos, flies and squash bugs,” said Gloria.  “I had a teacher once who told me ants have families, so since then, I just don’t kill.”

Noel and Gloria’s lives in Chimayo are a rich reflection of all that they are and came from. They cautioned several times over the summer, though, that they are “getting up there,” Noel said. “We talk about cutting back.”

Do they worry about what will happen to the land when they stop farming?  “Sometimes,” Gloria said.  “But I grew up doing it. My parents worked and farmed.  I value the land and the water.  It’s in my blood, I guess, and I’ll do it as long as I can.”