Rio Grande Voices: Bringing the land to life

Dixon mayordomo manages acequia for half century

Staci Matlock | The New Mexican

12/28/2008 - 12/29/08

The tiny village of Dixon lies about a mile from the Rio Grande, cupped in a valley south of the plummeting cliffs in the Rio Grande Gorge . Its cluster of old adobe and new frame houses are scattered among pastures, orchards and gardens. The landscape is subdued now in December, the usually vibrant green valley asleep until spring. There's a small grocery store, a couple of churches, a volunteer fire department bay, an elementary school and the Aaron Griego gym.

The man after whom the gym is named drives his Toyota pickup along a narrow dirt road behind some of the houses on a recent winter morning. "Down there is the ditch," he says, waving a strong, callused hand toward where the hill drops sharply under a row of leafless trees into a slender, winding trench.

This is the century-old Acequia de la Plaza, built and maintained by hand, that delivers water from the nearby Rio Embudo to 32 irrigators, or parciantes, along a four-mile stretch of land. The acequia is one of nine ditches in the Dixon valley. Water that isn't used to grow hay, fruit, vegetables and corn rolls back into the Rio Embudo, which merges with the Rio Grande.

Griego, 77, makes this drive regularly from mid-spring when the snows melt, until the end of the irrigation season in September, checking the flow of water in the ditch. It's a drive he's made for 50 years as the ditch boss, or mayordomo. The water in the acequia dictates the size of the crop the farmers and gardeners in the valley will have each year. Griego dictates who gets the water and for how long each week. In times when the water supply is poor, Griego, the other mayordomos and ditch commissioners meet to agree on sharing the shortage.

Griego was born and raised in Dixon. His parents and grandparents both farmed land in the Dixon valley. Two of his brothers, like him, still farm there.

He spent his career teaching and coaching around Northern New Mexico. For 34 years, he taught at Dixon Elementary School. He ended up teaching three generations of the same families.

Griego's partner in farming, raising three children and teaching over the last 51 years has been Virginia Griego, a Taoseña. "He says I only get out to help when its time to harvest," Virginia Griego, 70, says. "Really we do everything together."

Griego is still a tall man, topping out over six feet. He moves with the easy grace and body control honed by decades of playing basketball. He took the Peñasco High School girls basketball team to state twice, losing the championship by three points to multi-time champion Texico (on the Texas border) in 2006. For two decades he opened the elementary school gym two days a week for the community. He played pickup basketball games with kids well into his 60s. His work coaching and volunteering earned him a Ten Who Made A Difference award from The New Mexican in 2002.

But his critical work managing the ditch was little known outside of the parciantes. That work was recognized this year with a Pablo Romero Lifetime Mayordomo Award in June from the local ditch association and a Mayordomo of the Year award in early December from the New Mexico Acequia Association.

In 1959, the Griegos bought the five acres of land bordered by the Rio Embudo on one side and the Old Taos Highway on the other. The land had an old dump and an old barn, but little else, and everything was overgrown. They worked to bring the land back to life. Aaron Griego agreed to buy the land only on the condition he could be the mayordomo of the acequia.

Griego says it is hard to get people involved in managing the acequia anymore. "We're down to one commissioner," he says.

Some pastures in the valley have been plowed under for home sites. Some landowners use their irrigation water for lawns now instead of gardens. But Griego says he does see a few more people growing vegetables, helped in part by a popular new farmers market in the dirt parking lot of the Dixon grocery store.

New Mexico's acequias are a marvel of pre-computer engineering. Ditch after ditch like the Acequia de la Plaza was measured and dug by hand a century ago or more, the fields leveled with horse teams.

The ditches must be clean for water to flow. Trash, floods and beavers all create havoc on the ditches from time to time. In the early days, landowners helped clean the Acequia de la Plaza each spring. By the time Griego became ditch boss, many of them worked in Los Alamos or Taos and hired someone else to clean the ditch for them.

Griego is never sure how many people will show up on ditch cleaning day. "I dread cleaning day," he says. "I never know if I'll get five people or 25."

Neighbors along the ditch offer the workers cool drinks and cookies. "I hate that," Griego says, with a mock grimace. "It slows down the cleaning."

Once the ditch is clean, Griego starts the task of managing water flows. Parciantes call him up and say they need water. He takes a look at his schedule and tells them when they can open their headgate to let the water from the ditch flow into their fields, and how long they can irrigate. When their time is up, they are supposed to shut the flow off and turn it back into the ditch for the next parciante.

But that doesn't always happen, especially when there's little water. Then the ditch boss has to step in to make it right.

Linda Griffith, the only one of three Acequia de la Plaza commissioners left, says Griego has to be a psychologist and a diplomat. "You have to be so many things with the acequia," she says. "People are stealing water or using too much water. He's so tactful."

Griego points out different areas as he drives along the ditch. "I break it down into sections. That way if the water isn't flowing the way it should, I know where to check," he says.

About half the farmland in Dixon is no longer cultivated and irrigated, Griego estimated. Instead, people are growing small gardens and lawns. He knows what each parciante is growing, who has stopped farming, who's sold their land.

He's not worried about anyone trying to sell their water rights off the ditch to someone elsewhere. The acequia's by-laws require approval by the ditch commissioners for any water transfers.

But he does wonder who will step up to help Griffith as a ditch commissioner. Irrigating hasn't changed much in the valley in the last century, but maintaining the association and the ditches is more costly and complicated. Older parciantes are scared off by some of the paperwork involved in managing now. Younger ones don't want to make the time to participate.

Griego says the members have never moved to oust him. A few asked to take over as mayordomo; none of them lasted longer than a couple of months. Sometimes he wants to stop. "But who's going to take it over?," he asked as he drove past another field.

His grandson Zack, 14, who's been blind since birth, wants to inherit the position. Like his grandfather, he adores farming. "He's already started assigning water to people when they call," Griego says with a chuckle. "He rides his bike across our farm and along the ditch. When he hears water running, he comes back and asks me if that person was scheduled to have the water."

Griego's been taking a newcomer to the area around with him during the irrigation season. "He's only been in Dixon ten years. He doesn't know everyone on the ditch yet, but I'm training him so eventually maybe he can take over," Griego says.

Griego reaches the end of the ditch and turns his truck around on the icy road. He doesn't like all the hassle that comes with his mayordomo role. But in the end, it's worth the trouble. "I love to irrigate," he says.

Contact Staci Matlock at 470-9843 or smatlock@sfnewmexican.com.

Editor’s note: Rio Grande Voices is an occasional feature about people whose lives and work are connected to the river.