HISTORY
In 1988, Dr. Devon G. Peña created the Rio Grande Bioregions Project as a research unit of The Colorado College Southwest Studies Program to initiate a series of applied participatory social action research projects with acequia (community irrigation ditch) farming communities in the Upper Rio Grande bioregion. In 1995, the RGBP received an interpretive research grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for a collaborative interdisciplinary study of acequia farms in this high-altitude headwaters bioregion. The results of these and more recent and continuing studies was the establishment, in 2006, of The Acequia Institute. TAI fulfills the philanthropic vision of our benefactor, the late Alfonso Carlos Peña, who donated the funding for acquisition of the farm land and creation of an endowment to support grant making and other program activities. The farm is located on traditional Caputa Ute homeland territory and is part of the historic long-lot (vara strip) granted to Dario Diego Gallegos, the founder of La Plaza de San Luis de la Culebra on the 1844 Sangre de Cristo land grant. It is irrigated by two community acequias, the San Luis Peoples Ditch and the Robert Allen Ditch, hence the name of the farm, Almunyah de la Dos Acequias. The Almunyah is a rare supplier of artisan-produced chicos del horno, the famous adobe oven-roasted white flint maize listed on the Slow Food USA Ark of Taste as an endangered and disappearing heritage food. Depicted in the photo below is our 2015 crop and is shown after being removed from the adobe oven and laid to dry under the sun. Culebra Peak in the background is part of our 80,000-acre common land.
