I have a little time to visit this morning before I'm off to a day of community meetings involving water issues for my village.
The DK4 robot will post this at the appointed time, and I'll get in myself soon enough to qualify as hosting this diary.
Put on the coffee, but we prolly don't need a fire this morning; not likely to even freeze tonight here on the high desert.
Acequias, community irrigation ditches, in northern New Mexico are the oldest continuous self-governing political bodies of non-Native origin in the United States. When the first settlers of European descent arrived in New Mexico in 1598 and began to practice agriculture along the Rio Grande just north of Espanola, NM, they constructed the first of what became hundreds of hand-dug irrigation canals to carry water from the river to their fields.
Whether they brought this knowledge with them or learned it there from the Native populations already living there in little villages ("pueblos") isn't germane to the point.
Farming communities have used these irrigation facilities ever since, and many are still in use, governed by local bodies of "parciantes", the people who actually use the water on their fields.
Now a treasured cultural institution, acequias are recognized and protected by New Mexico State law and ancient custom.
I have been asked to serve on the Commission that governs the acequia that has nurtured our village since 1835, and expect to be confirmed by vote at a meeting of parciantes later today. Not being of Hispanic or local origin, this is something of an unusual honor for me.