Agritourism and my Passion for Country Life

I recently launched the first Seven Directions' Agritourism Experience http://www.sevendirections.net/english/2010featured/High_desert_farm.html. I had an urge to do it. Let me explain why.

I grew up in the countryside and later on a small farm surrounded by vineyards and wheat. poppies and cornflower blues. I used to play with goats, cows, geese and chicken (plus cats and dogs). My life then moved on to a corporate life with no cows nor poppies! A lot of other weird kind of animals though!

When manure's smell is in the air for me it's like being home again. I know you are beginning to giggle, but it's a question of imprinting! I was born and raised with that thing in my daily life.

Get the idea?

New Mexico is still a rural state with many farms of different kinds and sizes scattered from north to south. Here especially, but all around the world too, we all want more of the real thing in terms of food and produce. No GM organism is safe here! Therefore the appreciation for organic and genuine food is great and farmers' markets flourish. Most farms in this state are still today similar to those I remember from my childhood because here it sometimes feels to be still living in the post-war years. I'm not saying this in a derogatory way, on the contrary!

I was extremely interested in the growing agritourism movement since my days near Lake of Garda where my country house was embraced by corn fields, alfalfa, sunflowers, persimmon and fig  trees and cows with their "natural product". I don't mean milk!!          
                                                                                     

Not my house, but it gives you an idea

I observed some small farms I used to buy my greens from embracing the then very new idea of opening up their homes and fields to people willing to share their life for a few days and work along them in the fields, rewarded by simple farmers' food at night. Was that agritourism? Yes, indeed, at its very beginning.

Nowadays, around the world one can find deluxe farms with fluffy beds and all the rest or other creative variations on the theme of agritourism. That's not what I like nor what it is. That is the usual distortion of good ideas carried out by people only looking for..guess what...money! This is how it works: a new concept is gaining ground but you businessman want to cater only for the wealthy; therefore you use the new concept's name and adapt it to your target. Et voila', another great fake!

I think that the simplicity of rural New Mexico's life is an experience every urban citizen should have once in his or her lifetime, if not more often.

I have some pictures of myself, age 3, carrying a basket which was bigger than me to go pick fresh eggs. I will never forget the excitement of my daily ritual! We all need to pick eggs more often, don't you agree?

It's not me as I was only wearing white (my mother's idea!0

By the way, someone should tell Google to allow the word agritourism without marking it as a mistake. Get real, Google!

I can go on forever about my life on a farm but this long foreward just wants to send a message to all my readers: there is a fantastic life out there in the fields (and a lot of work too) that can't be missed.

So come with us on one or two days agritourism exploration and then, I can guarantee you, you will want more!

Our Planet

This is not about a place I want to describe and rave about, this is about our place, our planet!

Mother Earth is sick, very sick. Humans, animals, trees, water...everything will have (are having, rather) a hard time to live the way it is used to . We won't be going anywhere if the situation doesn't get enough attention. And quickly.






    
                                                                                    this, not this     



Why am I writing about this? First because I care, second because I watched a wonderful movie, actually more like a documentary, which I highly recommend: A Fierce Green Fire.

It is amazing to learn or remember how many courageous people started the fight long ago and how many organizations around the world have joined since then. But Mother Earth asks for more.

Celebrate Earth Day                                                          

with something meaningful for our mother!

Our luminous Earth seen from the no-light Moon

http://www.earthday.org/earth-day-history-movement

Strange Things Happen in New Mexico...

True or false? We shall see. The astonishing frenzy created by the multimillion dollars treasure hunt is the greatest idea ever for promoting tourism.
A bronze chest, approx. 10"x10"x5" and 42 pounds, containing over a million dollars worth of gold, jewels and artifacts is creating an incredible buzz.

Begin it where warm waters halt
And take it in the canyon down,
Not far, but too far to walk,
Put in below the home of Brown.

This and four more poetic directions included in the book The Thrill of the Chase (5,000 copies sold so far and the only authorized store in the world that sells it, Collected Works Bookstore&Coffeehouse in Santa Fe, has 4000 books on back-order), were given by Forrest Fenn, a famous Santa Fe art dealer,  and the chase began, right away!

Collected Works Bookstore&Coffeehouse, a Santa Fe treasure

Now, with close to 3,000 likes on his Facebook page -The-Hunt-for-the-Fenn-Treasure- New Mexico is experiencing a huge increase in visitors.

As stated in TODAY Feb.27 issue, Fenn came up with this unprecedented idea to invite people to explore the outdoors. See? He is helping New Mexico True, the current tourism campaign!

It reminds me of the gold rush when Americans were facing horrible ordeals in order to get to a gold or silver mine or straight to California. Is this a special American thing? To be in line with the tradition, the hunt began with a woman lost who had to be rescued.

Fenn loves mysteries, people say. Seriously? Or does he like playing tricks? We shall see!

Next step for me: create a tour to the sights where people got lost or something happened to them during the hunt! :-)

I made it, 10 months later

Where did I made it to? Ojito Wilderness! I wrote about it in this blog last May and made it a priority.

I picked this season to avoid the heat one can find there, and timing was perfect! It is as gorgeous as I hoped. You are alone in this vast territory surrounded by silence, beauty, and peace. It seems in the middle of nowhere but it's very close to Zia Pueblo whose land surrounds the Wilderness. The area with the best rock formations and colors is not far from the winding road, the only one through the Wilderness, and an easy walk, but it feels you are in another world. The sun was shining and a cool wind made everything just perfect.

I was with my oldest New Mexico friend who introduced me to the secrets and beauty of this state. I was in heaven. We haven't traveled together for quite some time, life kept us too busy. As we began our road trip we both felt as if we never stopped traveling together. Back to the old days, it was so nice.

Not much to do in the evening in that area so we decided to visit a local winery,

Ponderosa Winery

taste their wines and buy some bottles. One helped us go through the late evening, after a good hamburger at Los Ojos Restaurant&Saloon. No other choice anyway! We also checked-out a couple of new-ish B&Bs in Jemez Springs, both a great and unexpected surprise, worth the trip.

For breakfast we decided that the Cuban Cafe in Cuba was worth the drive. I love that place, very firendly people, good family New Mexican food.

Back on the road for a fantastic off-the beaten track tour. I only found one website about the place I intended to see, unfortunately with bad directions! Never mind, we loved it and we go back with better directions soon.

Dirt roads, small village-like groups of homes and trailers, cows, horses, and ghost towns. I was so excited to have found such a place. After long drives, picture stops, and giggles I suddenly forgot about the world's bad news and realized that I again found MY New Mexico! The reason I moved here and the feeling that this was my home. For sure it's not for forest lovers!

 

It is the particular dry land, dry cholla, the horizon that never ends, shacks that tells the story of a better past, blue skies with amazing white clouds, silence, magnificent rocks that makes my heart beat at a fast pace.This is the place where I feel one with Mother Earth!

Trends, data, forecasts...true or false?

In my business -travel, excursions, road trips and the likes- we try to learn as much as possible about our customers and their tastes, which every other month, according to surveys, seem to change 360 degrees! We learn about growing incoming markets and about the attractions their travelers look for, we compare surveys and strive to interpret the data we diligently read.

I'm confused, to say the least.

The official sources always depict a glamorous future. Others tell you that a country is your must target or that, for instance, luxury travel is the way to go. But wait, this doesn't seem to be true anymore, I just read that coach tours are hot!

Coach tours

OR

Hands-on experiences?

 ????

It's so much fun to read about a city's growing success as the most coveted destination in the world and then see on a different report that in that same city hotel bookings have gone down! Is people spending their nights under the bridges?

Can someone tell me what would he or she do in my place? One answer could be: surf the tide! Alternatively, others may suggest to hire an expert (with a reputation for interpreting the crystal ball) and reward him/her with all my marketing budget. Or, possibly, to put my finger in the air (without forgetting to wetting the specific finger before). Remember the great Woody Guthrie's song? Put your finger in the air, and hold it right up there...Put your finger on your cheek, leave it there a week...Put your finger on your nose, and see if it grows...Put your finger on your ear, and leave it there a year...Put your finger on your finger, leave it there, let it linger....Sorry for the digression!

This is what I did: I stuck to my original business philosophy (and brand positioning, as the marketing gurus call it)  which, after 8 years is still convincing, I think. I call it gut feeling, it never fails you, my word. Sometimes Seven Directions Custom Tours even falls in one of the "travel categories" of the future!

P.S. Next time I will try to explain how to listen to your gut feeling.

The Land of Enchantment and....Mysteries

What the Roswell crash might have been

Pilot Paul Tibbit ready to leave for Japan

Strange figures left centuries ago

Robert Oppenheimer and General Leslie Groves at Trinity Site in 1945 at the first nuclear explosion

Quite astonishing what happened in this state!
From UFO to dramatic flights to deliver the first atomic bombs, to secret atomic experiments and ancient figures sculpted on rocks. And this is just the beginning.

There are numerous ghost towns, astronauts training sites, WW2 Army Airfields with their own adventurous stories, spies all over during the Atomic Era, and more.

If you begin a search, as I did, you can't avoid visiting New Mexico and discover what's behind the adobe walls!

Women's worlds

This is quite a topic! But it's going to be short because I want to just focus on three women who happen to belong to the same family, all three incredible artists with their own distinctive style.

They were, and one is, from a pueblo in Northern New Mexico, they shared a passion for following their inspiration and thinking outside the box, far from the boundaries of their times, their culture, and the art world establishment.

The books -three, written by different women- that just recently launched in Santa Fe, are precious in that they each give an insight into the human as well as artist being, all immersed in the history of their respective times.

Can you guess who these extraordinary women are? Let me help you.
Pablita Velarde, her daughter Helen Hardin, and Helen's daughter Margarete Bagshaw.

Pablita Velarde and her father Herman

Helen Hardin

Margarete Bagshaw

Margarete has put an enormous amount of energy into the book project. She convinced other two special women to write a book each, and she herself wrote the third. Shelby Tisdale, who was until a few months ago the director of Santa Fe's Museum of Indian Arts & Culture/Laboratory of Anthropology, is an award winning author and an anthropologist specializing in the arts and cultures of the native people of the American West. She moved to Los Angeles to become the Vice President of Curatorial and Exhibitions at the Autry National Center. We miss her.

The second book is by Kate Nelson, an award winning journalist who found her home in New Mexico 23 years ago. She is the super active Marketing Manager at the New Mexico History Museum/Palace of the Governors.

The crown jewel of the whole project about the extraordinary artists' family, is the recently opened The Pablita Velarde Museum of Indian Women in the arts, in downtown Santa Fe.

Believe me, the books are worth your time and money! Great design too, and lots of pictures!
They open up a cornucopia of information, feelings, anecdotes, lifestyles, dreams, failures and successes, fears, culture clashes, love and death.

Enjoy!

Pueblo Ceremonial. Pablita Velarde

The Women. Helen Hardin

Messages. Margarete Bagshaw