Tending the Future

How Santa Fe Is Growing a Wellbeing Economy

Image Credit: Reunity Resources Community Farm

On a clear New Mexico summer morning in Santa Fe’s Southside, María Hernandez leans over a raised garden bed, guiding her daughter’s small hands to plant an heirloom corn seedling. The La Milpa Comunitaria garden behind a low-slung community center is already alive with activity: a circle of mothers trades recipes for calabacitas stew, a toddler chases a grasshopper, and the scent of roasting green chile drifts from an outdoor kitchen. This family-led “milpa” project began humbly with María and her friend Irail Torres started planting on a dusty lot to address the lack of fresh food for immigrant families like theirs[1]. Now it’s blossomed into a vibrant hub where Spanish-speaking families grow organic produce and share skills. “Nuestro propósito es cultivar no solo la tierra sino también las relaciones humanas (our purpose is to cultivate not only the land but also human relationships),” María says with a smile, recalling how the project sprouted from conversations about healthy food access[2]. Under trellises of climbing beans, parents discuss how diets have changed since childhood, how much harder it is to find affordable traditional ingredients. Here they are doing something about it by creating an alternative food economy based on resilience and comunidad[3]. The garden’s name, La Milpa, harkens to Mesoamerican traditions of sustainable farming, and indeed this little plot feels like a world unto itself, rich with corn, beans, squash, and a sense of possibility nourished alongside the vegetables.

Just a few blocks away, in the parking lot of an elementary school, a Community Swap is underway. Neighbors pop open their trunks to offer up clothes their children have outgrown, while others scoop rice and beans from a bulk bin into recycled jars. A banner strung between two trucks reads Santa Fe Mutual Aid, and on a folding table, volunteers sort donations ranging from diapers and pantry staples to hand-sewn face masks. This impromptu outdoor market of generosity grew out of crisis. During the pandemic, Earth Care (the nonprofit hosting today’s swap) helped weave a network of over 1,000 Santa Feans, comprised mostly of working-class immigrants, who shared what they could and voiced what they needed[4]. Together, they redistributed nearly three-quarters of a million dollars in aid, along with thousands of pounds of food and supplies, all through neighbor-to-neighbor solidarity[5]. “At the height of COVID, we saw that la gente would take care of each other when systems failed,” says Miguel Acosta, Earth Care’s co-director, as he helps a teen fix a broken bicycle chain. On a nearby curb, members of the local DSA chapter run a free “brake light clinic” to repair cars so that a burnt-out tail light doesn’t lead to an unnecessary fine for a low-income driver[6]. What looks like a casual community fair is, in fact, an evolving mutual aid system that has outlasted the lockdowns. These days, Earth Care hosts monthly community “closets” and skill-shares, and the City’s CONNECT program even tapped into the network to help people find rent assistance and social services[7]. In the words of one immigrant parent who found help through the network, “Me di cuenta de que no estaba sola – I realized that I was not alone,” a realization shared by many who both give and receive through this emerging solidarity economy[8].

Seeds of Renewal at a Community Farm

By midday, the sun beats down on rows of carrots and kale at Reunity Resources Community Farm, tucked among old elm trees near the Santa Fe River. At the farm stand, under a shaded ramada, a farmworker named Shannan Dunlap stacks crates of just-picked produce. A small line has formed, waiting to exchange colorful FreshRx vouchers for bundles of greens and squash. These vouchers are literal prescriptions for fresh food, given out by local clinics to patients managing diet-related illnesses[9][10]. “Doctors are prescribing carrots and kale now,” Juliana Ciano says with a laugh as she rings up a customer using Double Up Food Bucks to stretch their SNAP benefits[11]. Juliana and her husband, Tejinder, co-founded Reunity Resources, and their mission goes far beyond selling vegetables. “We’re closing the loop,” she explains, gesturing toward the long windrows of compost in the distance. Reunity began in 2011 by turning restaurant waste oil into biodiesel, then expanded into composting food and yard waste to enrich local soil[12]. In 2019, the couple took over this historic community farm, which is a plot that a WWII veteran, John Stephenson, had operated since 1947 to grow food for the hungry[13]. When Stephenson passed at age 100, Juliana and Tejinder vowed to carry on his legacy of growing food for those in need. They purchased the land and revitalized it as a regenerative farm, where each element supports the next: food scraps become compost, compost feeds the soil, soil grows healthy food, and that nourishes the community in a continuous, “golden circle” of renewal[14].

Under a nearby cottonwood, compost manager Trevor Ortiz turns a steaming pile of decomposing vegetable matter with his pitchfork. He notes that their rich compost is produced right here from local waste, calling it “fresh and full of microbial life”, unlike the lifeless bagged stuff shipped from far away[15]. Every bag of Reunity’s compost used in a Santa Fe garden means less methane from rotting waste in the landfill and more carbon sequestered in local soils. In the fields beyond, the farm team uses cover crops and no-till methods, eschewing pesticides or chemicals in favor of building ecosystem health[16]. “Our soil is revitalized, carbon is sequestered, and nutrient-dense food is grown to nourish our community,” Tejinder says, kneeling to show a visitor the dark, crumbly earth teeming with worms[17]. It’s hard, physical work, but it’s also deeply purposeful. Thanks to partnerships Reunity has forged, this farm now helps feed 50 households a week through food justice programs, and distributes thousands of dollars in free “farm bucks” to low-income families so they can shop with dignity at the stand[18]. Collaboration and reciprocity are clear models for thriving systems, Juliana likes to say, reflecting on how their farm links up with clinics, schools, and fellow farmers[19]. In fact, Santa Fe’s public schools send truckloads of cafeteria scraps here to be composted, and students come for field trips to harvest carrots and learn how soil, water, and sunshine are all connected[10][20]. Standing amid the sunflowers and the buzzing bees, one can sense how this little farm has become a node in a much larger network that ties together health care, hunger relief, climate action, and education into one holistic enterprise. It’s an economy of wellbeing in miniature, rooted literally in the earth.

Crossing Midtown: Housing and Hope

Later that afternoon, as thunderheads gather over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, a group of residents convenes on the grassy commons of the old Midtown Campus in the heart of Santa Fe. This 64-acre former university site lies mostly dormant with a few empty dorms and classrooms peppering a landscape of cracked parking lots. But to those gathered, it represents the future. Among them is Tomas Rivera, the director of Chainbreaker Collective, who has been working with Southside families for years to keep Santa Fe affordable. With maps and poster boards spread out on a picnic table, Tomas and other organizers are leading a People’s Planning session. Their vision? To transform this publicly owned property into a community-controlled asset with affordable homes, cooperative businesses, and parks instead of another high-end development. “¿Qué tomará para que la vivienda sea realmente accesible para nuestra gente?” Tomas asks the circle – What will it take for housing to be truly accessible for our people?

Chainbreaker Collective began 20 years ago as a scrappy bike-repair coop, helping low-income workers without cars get bicycles and bus passes. Over time it grew into a powerhouse of tenant organizing and transit advocacy on Santa Fe’s south side. When the city announced plans to redevelop the Midtown Campus, Chainbreaker launched a grassroots campaign to ensure the community’s needs would shape the project[21]. They knocked on doors, held bilingual workshops, and even produced a research report with public health experts making the case that a community land trust model at Midtown could stabilize housing and improve health outcomes for Santa Fe’s working families[22][23]. The idea is simple but transformative: the land would be held in trust by a nonprofit on behalf of the community, homes would remain permanently affordable, and development decisions would be made with neighborhood residents at the table[21].

In today’s gathering, you can feel a mix of hope and urgency. A single mother describes her fear of being priced out of Santa Fe; a young artist imagines live-work studio space that regular people could afford. An elder from a nearby barrio talks about the acequia (traditional irrigation ditch) that flows through the campus, reminding everyone that water and land here have always been commons to be cared for together. Chainbreaker’s organizers listen intently, scribbling notes. This is how they developed what they call the People’s Plan, by listening to hundreds of ordinary Santa Feans whose voices are too often ignored in city planning[21]. As dusk approaches, Tomas points out an old library building on the campus and muses about it becoming a cooperative maker-space or community kitchen. It’s still just a dream, but one rooted in detailed proposals and united community pressure. “If Santa Fe pulls this off,” he notes, it would be one of the country’s first city-owned developments guided by wellbeing economy principles - housing and enterprise in service of people, not profit.” The effort has already scored some wins: thanks to activism, the city has pledged that a significant portion of new homes built here will be permanently affordable for local families[24][25]. And with state and federal recovery funds flowing post-pandemic, millions are being steered towards housing assistance and eviction prevention citywide, much of it spurred by coalitions that Chainbreaker helped forge[26].

One of the people at the table is Rebecca, who found her way to Chainbreaker during the pandemic. She recounts how, when COVID hit, the restaurant she worked at shut down and she quickly fell behind on rent[27][28]. “I remember lying in bed, thinking, Today my children have a roof, but tomorrow I don’t know,” she says softly[29]. At the worst moment, she met a Chainbreaker volunteer named Cathy at a vaccine clinic in a library parking lot. Rebecca was in tears, overwhelmed by the online rental aid forms in English[30]. Cathy put a hand on her shoulder and said, “Don’t worry. We’re here to have your back,” and connected her with a Spanish-speaking housing navigator[8]. With that help, Rebecca secured aid, avoided eviction, and even found a new job with hours that let her care for her kids[31]. Now she’s determined to pay it forward. She’s here at Midtown advocating for the land trust because, as she puts it, “I never want my children, or anyone’s, to go through what we did. Housing should be a human right.” Rebecca’s story is just one of many. Across Santa Fe, organizaciones de la gente (People’s Organizations) like Chainbreaker, Earth Care, and others are catching those who fall through the cracks and empowering them to become leaders. “There are lots of organizations like Chainbreaker that are really here for the people,” Rebecca says, looking around the diverse crowd gathering under the evening sky. “I’m living testimony of that”[32]. In her view, this land trust campaign isn’t just about housing units, it’s about restoring faith that Santa Fe can still be a home for all, not just those who can buy their way in.

Weaving New Threads of Work and Money

As night falls, the lights flicker on inside a bustling cooperative grocery in downtown Santa Fe. La Montañita Co-op has been member-owned since the 1970s, and on a Friday evening, it’s warm and lively. A mix of old hippies, young families, and Pueblo elders from nearby pueblos are all Shoppers chatting in English and Spanish as they pick up local bread and chile. On the bulletin board by the entrance, flyers advertise everything from a seed exchange to a community acupuncture clinic. A notice in bold letters reads: “Move Your Money: Invest in Your Community!” serving as a reminder that where Santa Feans bank is part of this quiet revolution, too. Down the street, the local Permaculture Credit Union (PCU) is closed for the evening, but its window displays a mural of a tree with roots made of dollar bills. Founded here in Santa Fe two decades ago, the PCU is the first financial institution in the U.S. to operate entirely by permaculture values; care for the earth, care for people, and reinvesting surplus for the common good[33]. Instead of maximizing profit, this little credit union pools the savings of teachers, artists, park rangers, and others who want their money to fund change. Those funds become low-interest loans for things like solar panels, rainwater harvesting systems, small local farms, and cooperatively owned businesses[34]. Every year, PCU sets aside a portion of its portfolio for microloans to farmers through the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market Institute[35], literally seeding the local foodshed’s growth.

One of the co-op shoppers this evening is Ana, a school librarian who is also a member of the credit union. As she bags her groceries, she reflects on how these choices interconnect. A few years ago, Ana pulled her modest savings out of a Wall Street bank and moved it into local institutions as an act of personal alignment with her values. “Throughout history, banks only cared about profit and ended up exploiting people and the Earth,” she notes, paraphrasing a line she once read on PCU’s website[36]. “I didn’t want to be part of that. Now my money helps my neighbors buy energy-efficient cars or build adobe casitas, and I still earn interest. It’s a win-win.” Ana’s eyes light up when she mentions her newest project: she’s investing in a community solar cooperative that will allow dozens of lower-income households to benefit from shared solar panels on a neighborhood church roof. Santa Fe’s solarpunk dreams are coming alive piece by piece through local endeavors where the profits and power flow back to the community. Even City Hall has gotten on board with alternative finance: Santa Fe was one of the first cities to seriously explore a public municipal bank to keep taxpayer dollars local for affordable housing and green infrastructure[37]. While that idea is still winding its way through regulatory hurdles, the city did launch a pilot guaranteed income program, sending no-strings cash support to dozens of struggling families, a concept that was radical until recently, but here it’s seen as plain common sense to invest in residents’ wellbeing[38].

From her post at the co-op’s checkout counter, Ana watches as a group of workers from a local worker-owned woodworking shop finish their shopping. They pool cash and pay as a group, joking about getting back to their workshop where a big community center furniture job awaits. Such worker cooperatives are still relatively few in Santa Fe, but the ones that exist carry forward a legacy of mutual aid that runs deep in New Mexico. (One older woodworker is a former member of a 1990s forestry cooperative that planted trees and thinned fire-prone forests in Dixon, and he still calls it the best job he ever had[39].) Across town, a cleaning cooperative owned by its immigrant women members has just secured a contract to sanitize city buses with non-toxic supplies. And even the famous art collective Meow Wolf, now a multimillion-dollar arts company, began as a DIY cooperative of artists sharing space, skills, and profits to create something none could have made alone. These are the quiet underpinnings of Santa Fe’s labor force: a spirit that prizes cooperation over competition. You can see it in the way nonprofit organizations here treat their work not as siloed missions, but as a tapestry. For instance, Earth Care doesn’t just run gardens; it also incubates youth leadership so those young people can join efforts in housing, food, and climate justice across the city. And when Chainbreaker rallies for tenant protections, they do so alongside unions, environmentalists, teachers, and essentially anyone with a stake in a fairer economy. There’s a growing recognition that all these issues are interwoven, just like the lives in this community.

A New Dawn in the High Desert

As the night deepens, a gentle rain begins to fall, a blessing in this arid region. In a small adobe home on Santa Fe’s west side, an elderly couple, José and Elena, sit by the open window listening to the patter. Earlier in the day, they exchanged a few hours of childcare for a neighbor’s help repairing their fence, through a local time bank that values labor in hours rather than dollars. Today they earned three “time credits,” which they plan to spend on a ride to the clinic next week, courtesy of another neighbor in the network[40]. It’s an old idea made new, harkening back to the days when rural villagers here would all pitch in to build one family’s barn and then the next. Santa Fe’s wellbeing economy is full of these subtle exchanges, many of them unmonetized and rooted in age-old cultures of reciprocity. Elena adjusts the battery-powered lantern beside her since their electricity is out, which is not unusual in a summer storm. But instead of calling the investor-owned utility, they’ll wait for the lights to come back and dream about the community microgrid project that a local energy nonprofit has been proposing, which could one day protect their neighborhood from blackouts. In the meantime, they’ve got a rain barrel filling outside, and a pantry full of produce their friends at the community garden insisted they take for free.

Across town, at the south side public library, the glow of computer screens lights up the faces of two teenagers huddled over homework. They’re here after hours because the library has kept its Wi-Fi on, broadcasting into the parking lot where the kids’ family is parked in a dented old van they currently call home. Not long ago, these students had to struggle to get online for school. But last year the city installed free Wi-Fi hotspots at several mobile home parks and public housing complexes, even powering them with solar panels so the service stays free long-term[41][42]. “This effort is paramount in ensuring equitable access to educational resources,” one mobile park manager said when the first signal went live[43]. Now Santa Fe’s working-class kids can get online without sitting outside a fast-food restaurant. It’s a modest step, but one that speaks to a broader ethos: essential infrastructure from internet access to water rights, shouldn’t be luxuries reserved for the wealthy. Bit by bit, these ideals are being written into policy. You see it in the city’s budgeting for Wi-Fi and in its ambitious Sustainability Plan, which treats social equity as integral to cutting carbon emissions. You even see it in the revival of the Santa Fe River, which, after years of running dry due to upstream dams, now flows periodically by city ordinance, thanks to a recognition that the river has a right to water, and the community has a right to a living river. Such changes come from persistent activism: environmental groups and traditional acequia parciantes (water stewards) banded together to push the city to release water for the river. Now, on certain days, the river’s waters run, and children play on the banks where only sand trickled before. It is a quiet revolution, indeed, when a city decides that the wellbeing of a river, of soil, of community ties, is as important as real estate or industry.

Before dawn the next morning, Juliana from Reunity Resources is already up, walking the rows of the farm with a cup of coffee in hand. She reflects on the interconnectedness she’s witnessed: how a local credit union loan helped a young farmer get his start on leased land; how that farmer now sells at the farmers’ market, making fresh food available to more people; how a coalition of farmers and hunger relief groups convinced the state to fund Double Up Food Bucks so that low-income families can afford local produce[11]. She thinks about Miguel and the Earth Care youth who volunteer at the farm on weekends, trading labor for vegetables and learning about permaculture. Some of those teens have gone on to find jobs in solar installation and municipal conservation programs. In the distance, the first light of day touches the Sangre de Cristos in pink. A new day in Santa Fe’s experiment is beginning.

Weaving the Threads Together

Santa Fe’s quiet wellbeing revolution doesn’t announce itself with a single grand project or headline. It lives in the small, daily actions: a garden potluck, a tool lent, a policy meeting where formerly marginalized voices hold the mic. Taken together, these are like individual threads that, when woven, form a resilient social fabric. The people and places we’ve visited are all connected by relationships of care. In a city as intimate as Santa Fe, the same faces keep popping up: the mom you meet at the garden might also organize at the housing meeting; the credit union loan officer might be volunteering at the mutual aid drive. This is by design. Activists here have learned that siloed solutions won’t fix a system built on isolation and competition. So they build relationships and let solutions grow out of them. The result is not a utopia. Far from it. Santa Fe still grapples with serious challenges: deep inequality, an affordable housing shortage that isn’t solved overnight, and jobs that pay too little. Many of the projects we’ve seen are fragile, run on volunteer energy or shoestring budgets. Some may falter or fade if funding dries up or if burnout takes its toll.

And yet, something undeniably hopeful is taking root in this high desert soil. It’s the understanding that economic transformation is not a theory but a practice, one that must be cultivated patiently, collectively, like a communal garden. Each effort reinforces the others: the land trust campaign, for instance, draws strength from the food sovereignty movement, because stable housing and local food go hand in hand. The credit union’s sustainable loans help solarize homes, which strengthens the community’s climate resilience. The free Wi-Fi and time bank knit a safety net that catches people so they can participate fully in civic life. This is a relational economy, emerging in real time, and built on trust, reciprocity, and a redefinition of value beyond profit. As Miguel Acosta of Earth Care puts it, “We’re recovering the simple truth that we depend on each other, and that’s a beautiful thing.”

What will it take for this quiet revolution to fully flourish? It will require going beyond isolated pilots to transforming institutions with steps like securing policy that guarantees housing as a right, scaling up renewable energy co-ops, and creating public banks that invest solely in community wellbeing. It means bringing more people into the work so it’s not just the “usual suspects” carrying the load. It means embracing the wisdom of those who have been excluded: Indigenous water traditions, elders’ knowledge of barter, youths’ bold ideas for a post-capitalist future. Santa Fe, with its unique mix of Indigenous, Hispanic, and counterculture heritage, has seeds of wisdom aplenty to draw from. The transition underway here is as much about looking back to communal traditions as it is about innovating new models.

For readers elsewhere feeling the call for change, the invitation is to start right where you are. Plant a garden or join a community farm if food security is your passion, because every urban plot can become a node in the food commons. Support or launch a mutual aid network, even just a neighborhood tool library or skill exchange, to rediscover community interdependence. Move your money to local, ethical institutions, or if none exist, organize to create them, as Santa Fe’s pioneers did with their credit union and push for a public bank[33][36]. Advocate for policies like community land trusts, broadband for all, and guaranteed income in your city, because these ideas can travel, and they work wherever people commit to them. Perhaps most importantly, connect with others across silos: bring the housing folks together with the food folks, the climate activists with the labor organizers, and so on. The magic in Santa Fe happened when people saw their struggles were intertwined and started building a common future.

On the eve of Santa Fe’s annual Fiesta, which is a tradition marking resilience and renewal, the various threads of this story intertwine in a celebratory tableau. At the plaza downtown, Earth Care youth and Chainbreaker families join dancers and artisans, all sharing food grown, cooked, and served by local hands. There’s laughter, the sound of guitars, children playing, and a sense that this is the true wealth of a community. The wellbeing economy, at its heart, is about tending to one another and the earth so that all can thrive. Santa Fe’s quiet revolutionaries show us that this tending happens in everyday places and interactions, not in boardrooms or stock exchanges. Their revolution feels less like an overthrow and more like an irresistible blooming where each project is a wildflower breaking through the cracks of the old pavement, until one day, the landscape is transformed into a garden. In that garden, everyone has a place, and everyone has a purpose. Santa Fe is still on the journey, but every step it takes lights a path that any of us, wherever we call home, can choose to follow.

Sources:

Earth Care – La Milpa Comunitaria project description[1][2]

Earth Care – Santa Fe Mutual Aid Network overview[4][5]

Groundworks NM – Chainbreaker Collective housing justice initiatives[21][26]

Health Equity Partnership – Community Land Trust vision for Santa Fe Midtown[23]

Edible New Mexico – Reunity Resources Community Farm interview (Juliana and Tejinder Ciano)[16][11][19]

Santa Fe City – Free Wi-Fi for Mobile Home Communities announcement[41][43]

Permaculture Credit Union – Mission statement and values[33][36]

Groundworks NM – Personal story from Chainbreaker member (“Rebecca”)[30][44]

[1] [2] [3] La Milpa Comunitaria | Earth Care

https://www.earthcarenm.org/lamilpa

[4] [5] [6] [7] Santa Fe Mutual Aid

https://www.earthcarenm.org/santa-fe-mutual-aid

[8] [21] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [44] Chainbreaker Collective | Groundworks

https://www.groundworksnm.org/chainbreaker

[9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] Reunity Resources Community Farm - Edible New Mexico

https://www.ediblenm.com/reunity-resources-community-farm/

[22] [PDF] Bryce-Covert-The-Nation.pdf - Santa Fe - Chainbreaker Collective

https://www.chainbreaker.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Bryce-Covert-The-Nation.pdf

[23] Health, Healing, and Housing in Santa Fe: Community Land Trusts ...

https://www.healthinpartnership.org/resources/health-healing-and-housing-in-santa-fe-community-land-trusts-midtown-and-a-vision-for-post-pandemic-development

[24] [25] [PDF] Midtown Community Development Plan - City of Santa Fe

https://santafenm.gov/Exhibit_D-_Community_Development_Plan_%281%29.pdf

[33] [34] [35] [36] Welcome to the Permaculture Credit Union

https://www.pcuonline.org/

[37] Santa Fe Mayor Wants a Public Bank | Grassroots Economic ...

https://geo.coop/content/santa-fe-mayor-wants-public-bank

[38] [41] [42] [43] Free Wi-Fi for Mobile Home Communities | City of Santa Fe

https://santafenm.gov/news/free-wi-fi-for-mobile-home-communities

[39] The Mayordomo Santa Fe Magazine

https://santafemagazine.co/article/the-mayordomo/

[40] Santa Fe Time Bank - Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/SantaFeTimeBank/