Doug Findley is a man with a vision. His whole life, he says, is about agriculture and about "getting local food production going". Doug was born in Albuquerque and raised in Corrales, and has seen Corrales go through great changes in his lifetime. He didn't start out as a farmer, though. Doug was originally a musician, playing bluegrass fiddle in some "very good" local groups, and he spent several years in construction. But the more he participated in putting buildings on what had once been open space, the worse he felt about it. "It's against nature", he says. The pressures and 'wrongness' ended in substance abuse, until one day Doug says he "just stopped everything dead". He put away his fiddle and his contractor's license, turned his back on the substance abuse, and started laboriously digging out a half-mile of neglected acequia ditch on a neighbor's vacant land. Within a year he had gotten his organic certification, put in several types of crops, and started selling at markets - Corrales first, then Santa Fe, then Los Alamos. He has been a farmer for seven years now and goes to four different markets every week.
Doug's sister Heidi soon decided to plant two acres of her own in raspberries, but she quickly turned over the farming end of the business to Doug, while she obtained an organic food processors' certificate and started turning out raspberry jam. Meanwhile Doug put in two more acres of raspberries, installed a drip irrigation system, and instituted a program of organic soil care. The raspberry jam allows Doug and Heidi to sell all season long, supplementing with fresh raspberries and cut flowers as they come into season. But Doug decided to branch out on his own and, in 2007, he planted 3,000 strawberry plants. In the spring of 2008 he planted 5,000 more, then watched as the entire spring crop from the '07 plants got frozen out. Doug still got some berries from his new '08 plants and hopes everything will be back on track next year.
The raspberry jam is now in Whole Foods stores all over the Rocky Mountain region, as well as in several Albuquerque stores. The business even sells half-gallon jars of jam to local caterers and restaurants. Doug's aim is to be able to sell jam wholesale all year around and to wholesale fresh fruits in season.
Doug's ambition is to create a nice farm and supply the community with fresh food as "my part of saving the world". He doesn't want fresh, local foods to be priced out of the reach of the average person, and he takes an active role in promoting new small farms. He acknowledges the country's food system is set up to hinder anyone who wants to farm on a small scale, and he bemoans the high price of land. "I can't buy my own acreage", Doug says. He uses neighbors' vacant lands, which gives the neighbors greenbelt status and a tax break. But the land in his area is valued at development prices, not farmland prices, and can command $500,000 an acre. "I'm farming on millions of dollars' worth of land", he explains, "and can't find anywhere I can afford to buy".
The best part? Working really hard in a hot field with an aching back, Doug can just lay down and stop everything and stare up at the sky, losing his troubles in the distant blue. "Everything I do is rewarding", he says. "Everything is a gift." He loves the intimacy of the Los Alamos market and has acquired many close friends over the last seven years. "You feel like you're part of the community", he says of Los Alamos. "They miss you when you're not there."
Contact Heidi's Raspberry Farm online at www.heidisraspberryfarm.com or call (505) 898-1784.