Olla Award
By Lynn Cline
The Olla Award recognizes individuals who have made significant contributions in the realm of good food work in New Mexico, and who are creating a more robust local food system. Nominations are submitted by the general public and the winner is determined by the edible team.
Christina Keibler wore many hats at the New Mexico Farmers’ Marketing Association (NMFMA), but her primary focus was making sure that the nonprofit was supporting New Mexico’s diverse farmers, ranchers, consumers, tribal communities, and food-insecure communities. Her way with words and passion for helping others, as well as her joy in sharing her delicious, healthy recipes on the NMFMA website, endeared her to people not just in the farming and farmers market communities around the state but to everyone she met.
“A lot of people called her a shining light,” says Alison Penn, NMFMA’s communications administrator, who was mentored by Keibler and was her friend for the last decade. “They called her a joy, a powerhouse, and a bright soul.”
Keibler’s expertise, enthusiasm, and energy played a big role in strengthening New Mexico’s healthy local food community. When she started at the NMFMA in 2014, she brought two decades of experience as a horticulturist, ecologist, and food and culture researcher. She drew from her extensive knowledge in local food systems, farming, sustainability, cooking, and outreach for co-ops, nonprofits, and state agricultural extension services, as well as many other areas. In her seven years at the NMFMA, she helmed a dizzying array of projects, from community outreach and program evaluation to research endeavors, educational content creation, website management, and helping consumers get information about Double Up Food Bucks and other nutrition incentives.
“Christina was very community minded, and the NMFMA and the whole farmers market community was the perfect place for her to fit in,” says Sarah Grant, the now retired cofounder of the NMFMA, which strives to strengthen the local food system by supporting agriculture producers and networks that build a healthier New Mexico. “She was hired as a part-time person and very quickly became full time. Having Christina helped the organization grow. She did a lot of research for [programs funded by] grants. She was very patient and good at learning new technology. She was a big part of improving our social media. She had an amazing amount of interests, like being an anthropologist, and she was super interested in farmers and farmers markets.”
Keibler, who grew up in Chicago, earned her master’s degree in cultural anthropology from the University of Kansas, and also held degrees in natural resources ecology and conservation biology and horticulture. She was a painter, a photographer, and a belly dancer, part of a Santa Fe circle of dancers closely woven together through friendship.
“Christina was a pioneer woman,” says Denise Miller, executive director of the NMFMA, who worked closely with Keibler. “She made cheese, made her own paints, created her own belly dancing costumes, fixed her windows, grew food in her garden, and more. She was fiercely independent and a true free spirit.”
Surveying the NMFMA’s some two hundred active members— farmers, ranchers, farm stands, grocery stores, and farmers markets—was a major part of Keibler’s work. “She was in charge of all the surveys,” Penn says. “We do several throughout the year, but the important one is our membership satisfaction survey, and that’s where she gleaned a lot of information on how we were serving the communities and what gaps there were. She was able to problem solve,” Penn says.
At the same time that Keibler was working to strengthen a local food system that supported farmers and consumers with affordable nutritious fare, she found time to pour her love of local food and cooking into the NMFMA blog, sharing her recipes, photographs, and musings such as “Five Ways with Frugal Food Scraps,” explaining how to use minced vegetable scraps to make tortillas and pizza crusts.
“Her true love was the recipes,” Penn says. “We have a bank of about two hundred recipes on our website and a lot of them are Christina’s. They are original. She thought a lot about using ingredients that were culturally relevant and commonly available in New Mexico. That was her passion project.”
Carrie Nash, a close friend and fellow belly dancer, spent a lot of time at Keibler’s home. “I’m not a cook, so generally I would just bring her some flowers, and she would feed me the most incredible food,” she says. “Most of the time, we’d eat in Christina’s kitchen. I don’t eat meat, and she would always find a way to make food for me, and to make something taste like it was meat when it wasn’t. She loved making desserts. She made just the most incredible food. She was so intelligent, so intellectual in so many ways, but she came across as incredibly kind, loving, and supportive.”
Keibler passed away on March 11, 2022, at age fifty-three, from complications related to COVID-19, leaving her coworkers, friends, and everyone else who knew her shocked and brokenhearted. Yet the kindness and love that she shared lives on, through her work and her friendships. “She approached everything from the heart,” Penn says. “She was deeply in love with her life and her work, and I think if more people exemplify that, our world will be a better place.”
Reading aloud a thought that Keibler once shared with her, Penn finds comfort and grace, even in the midst of grief: “I like to think that the legacy we really leave after we are gone is how we help to improve other people. We may be gone but our impact remains, like ripples in a pond.”
