What Telesfor Farm Teaches About the Future of Farming

By Nina Katz · Photos by Stephanie Cameron

South Valley vegetable farmers Saleema Robinson and Ana Moran are very good at finishing each other’s sentences. “We’re saving seeds,” starts Moran, “for our future,” concludes Robinson. “This isn’t just for our lifetime.”

These days, New Mexico is getting hotter. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association has declared that 100 percent of Bernalillo County is in a state of severe-to-extreme drought. Since Trump reclaimed office in January 2025, there’s been a dramatic downward shift in federal support for sustainable and community-driven agriculture. And everything is really expensive. I’m not sure anyone would call these ideal conditions in which to start a farm, and yet when I meet Robinson and Moran in June, they are embarking on their first season at Telesfor Farm.

Before making assumptions, no, they aren’t being naive like the couples you’ve heard about who shared one revelatory farm-to-table date night and turned on their Zillow notifications for Chimayó before they left the restaurant. Moran and Robinson’s slice of the South Valley has been in the works since the duo struck up a friendship at a yoga class eight years ago. Though Telesfor Farm hasn’t happened overnight, they were quick to realize their shared vision of growing food for and with community.

It’s good to be great teammates when farming is hard enough. Telesfor Farm started with a visioning session in 2018 at a city park with friends, a stack of paper, and a bag of markers. The crew busted out big ideas about how a right relationship with the land would look. Could they improve the health of the land while growing food? Could they create a viable business centered around affordability? They still have the papers from that day, which contain drawings of a mobile grocery truck, a stage for hosting events, and an horno for community dinners. “We were aiming big,” Moran admits, laughing.

Afterward, Moran and Robinson would go back to their regular lives, but this time with a dream in sight. Since then, the two have farmed in a few other locations in Albuquerque, experimenting for a couple of seasons as Picaflor Collective, a cooperative of women farmers of color. They’ve found mentors through Chispas Farm and Los Jardines Institute. Moran learned earthen architecture at the University of New Mexico and volunteered for programs like Project Feed the Hood while working in policy development at the National Young Farmers Coalition. For two years, Robinson, who is a conservation biologist (she received her master’s degree in conservation ecology with a focus on agroecology and social justice from the University of Michigan in 2018), left Albuquerque to be with her husband while he finished school in Colorado, and found herself working at the crossroads of farming and food sovereignty at the nonprofit FrontLine Farming.

Then in January 2025, just as Robinson and her husband were figuring out their next steps, the phone rang. It was Moran with the news that a two-acre property they’d previously gone for had been put back on the market, and if Robinson was in, it could be theirs.

As purchasing farmland for a young farmer tends to go, landing Telesfor Farm wasn’t straightforward or easy. If you aren’t born into farmland and don’t have a truckload of cash, transitioning from farmworker to farm owner is a struggle—and it’s one faced by the majority of young farmers in America.

This wasn’t the duo’s first try. For Moran, having a big team supporting her, and a little bit of luck, made all the difference. When the Telesfor Farm property went on the market in 2023, she had already been farming in the neighborhood. She’d even had a few beds at the site, which at the time was more of a community farm (a small piece of land shared by individuals growing primarily for themselves) than a market garden (a small-scale production farm, often selling produce directly at market or to restaurants). But the previous owner had received an offer more competitive than Moran’s.

“I was probably sad for like a year,” Moran says about the initial loss. “I was in a depression because of losing this opportunity. It felt too good to be true. It really wasn’t happening.” Two years passed, and Moran heard through the grapevine that Telesfor was back on the market. Through steep negotiations, inspections with adobe specialists (the house on the property was beautiful, but in certain rooms a bit crumbly), calls to her family for both buying advice and financial support, and a call to Robinson, Moran was able to make it work. “If all farmers let the grief of what doesn’t work out take over, we wouldn’t have any farmers,” Robinson chimes in, wisely.

“It was because [Robinson] said yes that made the final decision for me. I might have walked away from it, even though it would have been hard, because I couldn’t take this on alone,” says Moran, relieved. Robinson adds that she “didn’t really care where my husband and I lived as long as I was farming. Before [Moran] called, we’d been looking at all of these cheap apartments. It was just crazy to receive the message from her. It felt unreal.”

Fast-forward six months, and Moran, her brother, Robinson, and Robinson’s husband are all living on and working the land. When I visit, the field is in that awkward window between spring and summer bounties. Overgrown asparagus sways in the afternoon breeze, four-feet tall snap peas are browning at their crowns, the tomatoes are all green, and the zucchini have just started to put on flowers. Though the farmwork never stops, it’s the end of the day, harvest has been washed and stored in the fridge, and it’s the perfect moment to pause and reflect on what it’s like for Moran and Robinson to be beginning farmers in this time.

They are so excited to officially be a part of the South Valley farming community, which includes the young farmers of Chispas, Farm of Song, and Yappy Dog Farm, among many others. “As a small farmer, you want other small farmers to grow. As someone who’s in their first year on the land, the generosity from neighbor farmers has been out of this world. Because everyone knows what it’s like to start with nothing,” says Robinson as she points out tomato and pepper plants gifted from neighboring farmers who had extra starts. “Farming isn’t something you do alone. It doesn’t make sense.”

“What’s been core and essential to me is returning to common lands,” says Moran. Though Moran bought Telesfor after she and her family were able to scrape together an offer, she and Robinson plan to run the farm through a shared stewardship model.

The future of farming in the United States is fraught: On one hand, millions of acres of farmland are primed to hit the market (according to American Farmland Trust, up to a third of US farmland may change hands in the next fifteen years as aging farmers retire), and many young farmers are eager to take over those lands; on the other, the cost of land continues to rise.

According to the 2024 USDA National Agriculture Statistics Service Census of Agriculture, New Mexico has the most affordable farmland in the country, at an average of $700 per acre, compared to northeastern states, where the price per acre jumps to the tens of thousands. But $700 per acre isn’t a realistic depiction of what it costs to start a farm. Depending on the property, beginning farmers will need to invest in equipment from shovels to walk-behind tractors, infrastructure like irrigation and hoop houses, soil amendments, seeds, and marketing. Is there a house attached to the property? Does water need to be hauled? Does the property have a well? If not, can a well be drilled? Do you have the time and resources to endure the bureaucratic process of securing water rights?

The cost varies, but a commons-based approach to land management is an increasingly popular solution to the obstacles faced by young farmers. These farmlands would function as a collaborative operation that follows a set of land stewardship principles, usually rooted in regenerative land practices and social, racial, and economic equity in our food system. In a model set forth by Agrarian Trust, a land trust dedicated to holding US farmland for community-led stewardship, agrarian commons become a means of creating a more just food system via a radical shift in how land is owned. In New Mexico, one such agrarian commons has sprung up with a mission of holding and preserving ecologically significant agricultural land; founding members of the New Mexico Agrarian Commons include the nonprofits NM Healthy Soil Working Group, Naya’s Refuge, and Chihuahuan Desert Charities. Ultimately, they hope to invest in farms like Telesfor. It is proof at least that Moran and Robinson are not the only folks looking toward solutions rooted in collaboration.

“We have so much in our culture that focuses on private property and the commodification of food that we have lost some of the true value and purpose of sustainability,” says Robinson, emphasizing the value of cultivating “less dependence on systems that likely won’t serve us.”

“We’re on the precipice of climate change, you know,” continues Robinson. “Unpredictable weather and water scarcity . . . we’re building in a place that has a lot of question marks, but for me I feel like I’m able to keep doing it because I see the wonder in it. I see the beauty of having that relationship with the land. This is what we’re meant to do.”