By Navona Gallegos, with Kim and Chris Sheehan
The Northern New Mexico Springtime blessed us with perfect weather on April 6, 2025 for a field day at Clean Fork Farm in Jaconita. Sunny but not hot or windy, we were happy to spend a day outside on this inspiring 7 year old farm project started by Kim and Chris Sheehan. Using a host of permaculture, no-till, and soil health approaches the couple transformed an overgrazed horse pasture into a verdant market farm, orchard, and off-grid homestead–all while working full time jobs.
During our field day, Kim and Chris showed us around the farm, explaining the land work and infrastructure they had put in. After the tour, we got a chance to help out with some hands-on work: inoculating cover crop seeds before they were planted with a tractor-pulled seed drill and preparing beds for potatoes and onions. We were rewarded for our afternoon’s work with a delicious meal from Juicy Foods Catering in Santa Fe.
Clean Fork Farm is truly an ecosystem; the rainwater harvesting and soil health practices create a synergistic effect that can be felt. Unusual for our arid New Mexico lands, there is hardly any bare ground to be found. The abundant cover is due in part to a network of swales Kim and Chris had dug by Gordon Tooley in 2019 as part of a Healthy Soil Program grant. The ditches and swales changed the decades-long pattern of acequia flood irrigation water leaving the land quickly by following the lowest paths across the property. Now flooding progresses across the land one ditch at a time and spills more uniformly along each on-contour trough until it is caught by the next slightly downhill swale and ditch. Think of a series of spilling terraces, but with almost no height difference between them.
In addition to rainwater, the swales also sink and spread acequia water. Kim and Chris are commissioners of the Acequia de la Otra Banda which serves about 105 parciantes and 200 acres of irrigable land.
The way Kim and Chris manage water on Clean Fork Farm is one of the factors that allows them to farm with no-till practices. For the crop beds, instead of having to disk to create furrows for flood irrigation, the permanent deep compost mulch planting beds (see No-till Growers on YouTube) are watered via drip irrigation from either their 10,000 gallon water tanks or their well water. Pasture crops for chickens and pigs are flooded via on-contour ditches and progressive flooding in sections by “filling and spilling” starting uphill and working downhill on a 2% grade.
Kim and Chris practice minimal disturbance to prepare a new bed on virgin land. After laying out market garden standard beds (30” wide), the top few inches are tilled lightly to remove grasses and weeds. Another option is to cover the new bed with a silage tarp to create a stale seedbed. Under the tarp, weed seeds germinate in the warmth and moisture but then die due to lack of light. The silage tarp method is more successful in reducing weeds and much less labor intensive, but requires several months in order to be effective. Once weeds are taken care of, the bed is broadforked if needed and a light grading applied to flatten the bed. Finally, 2-3” of compost and amendments are added.
When flipping beds (transplanting or direct seeding a new crop after removing a finished crop from an existing bed) Kim and Chris use a broadfork to aerate the soil to allow for better air and water infiltration. 1-2” of compost is added, plus amendments, if needed. If the beds are going back into production soon, a clear plastic tarp is laid over the area for a few sunny days. This kills the grasses and weeds fairly quickly but has to be used with caution to avoid damaging the soil life under ground.
During the field day, we prepped two beds for potatoes and onions. Those beds had sat empty since the fall. We added various different mineral amendments as well as humates, alfalfa and feather meal to provide a gentle boost in nutrition for plants and mycorrhiza.
The no-till approach is also part of the land management around the production beds. Kim and Chris have a seed drill, allowing them to seed directly into the living ground cover between the swales.
Why focus on no-till practices? Minimizing soil disturbance increases soil fertility and water retention by encouraging the soil microbiome. In addition to cycling nutrients and making them available to plants, organisms including fungi and bacteria create structure in the soil with glue-like substances that give healthy soil its chocolate cake-like texture. This structure allows water and oxygen and therefore roots to infiltrate deeper into the soil where they find more nutrients, moisture, and stable temperatures.
Kim and Chris also take a proactive approach to enhancing the soil at Clean Fork Farm by inoculating with high-quality compost. Matt Batchelder of Fun-guy compost provided Johnson-Su compost for the field day demo. This compost has a high fungal content and only needs to be applied in small amounts as it is highly is effective in increasing plant vigor and water holding capacity. Kim and Chris have applied this material at each seeding (1-2x per year) as well as in soil blocks when growing transplants.
During our field day, we inoculated a mix of cover crop seeds* before they went into the seed drill. Kim made an extract of 3 pounds of compost in water. The seeds were then mixed with this extract and molasses in a concrete mixer. The seeds needed to be dry to move through the seed drill, so we spread the seeds out on a tarp before planting.
There are only a handful of no-till market farmers in the Rio Grande Valley, but these practices are beginning to catch on. Kim explained that even though it takes some work to implement, building soil health pays off.
*Clean Fork Farm cover crop mix: Siberian Wheatgrass Vavilov, Perennial Ryegrass Amazon, Crested Wheatgrass Ephraim, Smooth Brome VNS, Intermediate Wheatgrass Reliant, Orchardgrass Profile, Pubescent Wheatgrass Luna. Clover mix (Alsike, medium red, Ladino), Buckwheat, Green Sprangletop, Sorghum Sudan grass, Mustard, Sand Lovegrass, Brundage Wheat, Winter Rye VNS, Sainfoin, Daikon Radish, Switchgrass, Blue Grama grass.
Art Schuneman
I had a boss once who used to define elegance as “the complexity of the problem divided by the simplicity of the solution.” Navona, Kim and Chris produced a post that in itself is as much of an example of elegance as the solutions Kim and Chris are implementing at their ranch. The information on their water management practices inspires me to continue my water management journey. Having just watched a documentary on the water management practices of the Amish, I am gaining more appreciation for these types of principles.
The second take-away for me is the concept of using silage tarps. I have seen them in practice but this article presents such a clear, straightforward presentation of this concept that is making me add it to my gardening studies.
Thank you for sharing this.
Arcenio Lujan
What is the Molasses used for in the cover crop process?
admin
The molasses provides some quick food for the microbes that we’re adding with the compost slurry. It helps to get them going when they are in the ground and in turn the cover crop seeds get a better start. Hope this helps! Thanks for the question!