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Monday, April 3, 2006

New Mexico Earth Industries Is Traditional and Green

By Donna Redman
For the Journal
    There were hardly any adobe blocks left in the production yard at New Mexico Earth Industries last week, but that's about to change big-time.
    And, by the end of the summer, there will be between 400,000 and 500,000 adobe blocks made and sold, with thousands lined up neatly in rows.
    "It's warm-weather work," owner and adobero Richard Levine told the Journal recently. "Because you can build (structures) in the winter, we try to make enough adobes (from April through) summer to last all winter long."
    New Mexico Earth Industries, on the Paseo del Norte frontage road near Edith, has been in business since 1972.
    The office is in a rustic adobe building with thick walls and short doorways that looks, appropriately, as if it was built a century ago. It was built little by little over the years by the people working at the adobe yard, according to Levine.
    "The Army brought me here from New Jersey in the early 1950s and I graduated from UNM in the early '60s," he said.
    His degree in library science was useful for a while when he worked as librarian at a South Valley library.
    But his friend Simon Chakerian had money that he wanted to invest in a business, so the two began exploring possibilities. They decided to try their hand at making and selling adobes.
    "He said 'two shovelfuls of dirt for a quarter, we can't go wrong!' It took us only about 15 years to learn how to make a quarter from two shovelfuls of dirt," Levine said.
    And they kept at it.
    At one point, they were featured in an article about ethnic skills in the Smithsonian magazine in 1989. "They liked the idea of homes still being made out of dirt," Levine said.
    Well-known adobe home builder and remodeler Albert Parra used Earth Industries adobes on some projects including adobe building demonstrations on the Mall in front of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C.
    Levine said his adobes were selected because "No. 1, I answer the phone; and 2, our quality is consistent and they felt confident that we could supply the adobes that they wanted," Levine said. "Not great reasons, but legitimate reasons."
    "The adobe industry is a craft industry and it's an important industry, but it's shrinking," he said. "It should be on the upswing now that we've decided to go to renewable resources. That's where the adobe industry would really shine."
    The clay used to make the adobes comes from a sand and gravel dealer north of Bernalillo. The company makes plain adobes, semi-stabilized and stabilized adobes. The semi-stabilized and fully stabilized adobes have emulsified asphalt— a little in the semi-stabilized and more in the fully stabilized.
    Levine explained that emulsified asphalt has a consistency very much like that of water and it mixes quickly with the water used to manufacture the adobes. It makes them resist water absorption; thus they are more weather resistant. Fully stabilized adobes must meet a code for moisture absorption, he said.
    Plain adobes are used mostly for hornos (large beehive-shaped outdoor ovens) and for use in homes for people who are sensitive to the outgassing of the asphalt used in stabilized adobes.
    At the peak of the season, eight to 10 people work at the production yard, making the adobes and turning them by hand to dry.
    The vast majority of New Mexico Earth Industries adobes are sold in the greater Albuquerque area. Some go to western Colorado and some have gone as far as Iraan, Texas, according to Levine.
    The adobes cost about 60 cents each at the yard or from 85 cents to 90 cents delivered locally.
    One of the largest adobe yards in the state, Levine said, his firm makes about $300,000 a year.
    Levine bought his friend out about 15 years ago. Two of Levin's seven children work with him at the adobe yard, his son Mark and daughter Helen. He said he's looking for at least one of his three grandchildren to join the business someday, too.
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