way to
grow a
community; to energize a struggling
local economy; and to promote interac-
tion among the diverse backgrounds of
the town.
The historian and author Cecilia
Thompson was one of our earliest
supporters. She placed the market
within the context of Marfa history and
declared it to be an entirely new way
for a disparate community to come
together.
Cecilia understood the importance
of a gathering place. Though small, a
market such as ours provides a way to
care for one another, to preserve our
natural resources and to buy local. Even
if you don’t go home with a bag of
Bob and Leslie’s collards—Lynda
McKnight’s favorite green—Saturday
morning at the market is an exciting
place to hang out with neighbors and
friends. This summer Farm Stand
Marfa is celebrating its ninth year. The
market began in the summer of 2006
with locally grown vegetables, eggs
from the Nut Farm in Fort Davis,
honey, Irma’s tamales and tortillas, goat
cheese produced by the Floros on their
farm in Alpine and organic baked
goods made by Ganka.
In those days you couldn’t find a loaf
of fresh-baked bread in Marfa.
Certainly not an organic one and defi-
nitely not the creative loaves that master
baker Ganka pulls from her oven:
woven breads, sturdy ryes, breads with
nuts and seeds and dried fruits. Before
long, Ganka added strawberry tarts,
pumpkin cheesecakes, chocolate crois-
sants and apple gallettes to her reper-
toire. And the town ate them up.
Starting up the market was the
beginning of a chapter of intense gar-
dening, of growing vegetables, herbs
and flowers to take to market, work I
had done in the coastal soil of California
continued from page 4
26
Cenizo
and the rocky outcrops of upstate New
York, but never in the desert. Quickly I
learned that good growing practices
were the same everywhere. In Marfa,
despite frigid winter temperatures, I
found I could grow cold hardy vegeta-
bles year round under floating row cov-
ers.
During the market season, March
through December, Fridays late into
the evening and early Saturday morn-
ings were spent
picking, often
accomplished
with a support-
ive band of
friends
who
helped me har-
vest arugula one
leaf at a time
and wash beets
and bag lettuce.
We were com-
mitted to some-
thing new for
Marfa – to feed-
ing ourselves
locally. Not an
easy ambition and not one done with-
out help. The market was at the heart of
our dream of producing local food.
I remember the first morning Alicia
Morales came to the market. We were
located in those early days between the
Marfa Studio of Arts and the Pizza
Foundation, in a parking lot that Dax
Pass had given us permission to use.
Alicia arrived with a large tray of burri-
tos. Within minutes they were sold. She
turned to her husband Ben and said,
“Wait here. Tell them I will be back.”
She drove home, assembled more bur-
ritos and returned to the market. The
street was lined with cars. She had to
park across the way at Stripes, which
was then called Town and Country.
She carried the replenished tray of bur-
ritos across highway 90 where everyone
Second Quarter 2014
was waiting for her. She had barely set
the tray down before she ran out again.
“It was exciting,” Alicia recalls.
“That was nine years ago,” I remind
her.
“Yes. What a joy I have because I
find this. Getting out of the house on
Saturday and enjoying the day. I work
a lot on Friday. But I have a lot of fun
going over there and seeing the peo-
ple.” Folks are still lining up for
Alicia’s burritos,
her
jars
of
creamy whipped
jalapeno salsa
and
horchata
and lemonade
ladled into cups.
Over the win-
ter a friend who
is a chef in New
York City visited
Marfa for the
first
time.
He loved the
Marfa Burrito,
Ramona’s café
south of the high-
way, but he expected to discover more
regional food. “Come back in the
spring,” I told him, “when the market is
open.”
Alicia makes three kinds of burri-
tos—asado, chile verde and bean and
cheese—from recipes and techniques
learned in her mother’s kitchen. The
asado is pork cooked in a red sauce
made from dried chiles. The chile verde
is made with fresh green chiles. She
roasts the chiles, then adds them to a
mixture of ground beef, onions and
tomatoes. Sometimes she finely chops a
potato and stirs it into the mix. And
finally, there is the vegetarian’s delight,
the bean and cheese burrito, tastiest
when she uses asadero cheese that is
stringy and delicious when it melts.
Alicia was disappointed to have
missed the last market of 2013. The day
before Thanksgiving she fell in her
home and broke her sternum. The pain
she experienced was almost unbearable,
but it was a straight break up and down,
no punctures to her lungs or damage to
her heart. “God was with me,” she says.
She spent the winter healing. This
spring she is back at the market. Nine
years later Ganka and Alicia continue
to be regulars.
During the first years of the market
Martha and George Floro supplied us
with goat cheese from their mountain-
side farm in Sunny Glen on the sunset
side of Alpine. The sign on the gate read
Floroland. I have the sweetest memo-
ries of my weekly visits to their home-
stead. Goats and their offspring were
everywhere, tucked under trees, cor-
ralled in pens and cooling off in the dark
barn. They were raising Alpines and
Nubians for milk and meat. One day I
counted over one hundred animals, so I
don’t think many of the goats were
being eaten. They were more like pets.
George once told me that the farm was
an expression of their commitment to
each other and the ideas they shared
about living gently with nature and con-
tributing to the community. “It’s
Martha,” he said, his eyes sparkling.
“Her good nature makes it possible.”
The truth of this was self-evident, as
George was a passionate activist and
was known for his outspoken ways.
Taking up where the Floros left off,
Malinda Beeman and Allan McClane
have built a thriving goat farm two
miles east of Marfa. Allan cares for the
animals and milks them twice a day,
and Malinda, Farm Stand Marfa’s cur-
rent manager, produces their Marfa
Maid Cheese. At her market table you
will find the creamiest cheese spreads
flavored with herbs, along with feta,
ricotta and soft mold ripened cheese.
An artist, gardener and irrepressible