You're not seeing the iconic Schwebach Farm corn stands in town this summer, and here's why

MORIARTY — Pot holders, peaches and pork rubs fill the shelves in the Schwebach Farm Market. A worker bends over a patch of raspberry bushes near the farmhouse. Dark green heads of kale are growing in one greenhouse while vining tomato plants stretch toward the ceiling in the greenhouse next door. Sunflowers stand tall in rows behind the market. Pinto beans and bolitas, an heirloom bean that is difficult to find, grow in the fields, along with green beans and root vegetables — carrots and potatoes.

Amid all this bounty, the anchor crop is sweet corn. But both corn and beans are in short supply at the 160-acre Schwebach Farm this year. The corn harvest took an unexpected hit when the farm’s main well ran dry.

In one field, stalks of corn that normally tower at six feet are stunted at waist-height, unable to produce many ears. The corn harvest will be approximately 20% of the farm’s normal sweet corn crop. The bean plants’ leaves are beginning to yellow, only able to produce beans that are too hard and small to eat. The farm will have no bolita beans this year, although the pinto beans might still produce.

“Please continue to pray, as we take the harvest day by day. The beans and corn need moisture. Thank you for your outpouring of prayers and support,” the farm website reads.

The Schwebach Farm is known for selling sweet corn at 10 roadside stands all over Albuquerque. The family members are also familiar faces at New Mexico grower’s markets. This year, the Tramway and Montgomery corn stand is the only one open, and it’s operating on a day-by-day basis. You also won’t find the Schwebach’s at a farmers market besides the one operating on their own farm in Moriarty.

Dean Schwebach’s parents bought the farm when he was still a toddler. He couldn’t wait to leave after high school. But when he started a family of his own, Schwebach couldn’t get back to the farm fast enough.

“It’s not always easy, but it’s always good, is what we like to say,” he said.

Running a family farm in the Southwest can be a challenge. Direct marketing a lot of the produce has helped the Schwebach Farm stay in business. They also participate in Community Supported Agriculture, where they send weekly produce boxes and recipes to customers.

“I think it’s a challenge for smaller farmers. We don’t have the economy of scale that larger farmers have, but (you) just try and be careful, because you never know what a year’s going to bring, whether it’s hail, or heat, or cool. Whatever might come, we just do the best we can each year and thank God for what he gives each year,” Schwebach said.

His wife Ivellise Schwebach grew up in the suburbs of Los Angeles but loves farm life, especially the chance to work with her husband and six children. She also loves “seeing the land go from nothing to something productive that is beneficial to the community.”

“We see people come year after year, and they’ve seen our children grow up here. They’ve become part of the family and it’s a great life,” she said.

Water is key to farming everywhere, but in the high desert, water is especially sacrosanct.

“Water is everything when you’re farming in the desert Southwest, and we’ve been blessed with years of very nice monsoons, and we’ve endured hot summers, hotter and dryer than this summer,” Dean Schwebach said.

Dry weather isn’t new, but it is more consistent than when Schwebach was younger.

“We would get thunderstorms that would build up over the Manzanos, and then we’d get a shower or two, sometimes three showers a week in the mid to late afternoon,” he said. “That’s not as common as it used to be.”

The Schwebachs use a drip irrigation system — it keeps the amount of water they use at a minimum by applying water directly to a plant’s root system and allows for less evaporation than flood irrigation. They’re also growing some drought-tolerant crops like pinto beans. They rely on a main water well to power the drip irrigation system and have a secondary well for additional water.

Planting started at the end of April and finished near the Fourth of July. By mid-July, the main irrigation well had run dry.

There was little warning that the well would soon be out of water. Within a week of realizing the well was going, the water was gone. The secondary well was not substantial enough to power the drip irrigation system, so for six weeks sweet corn and bean plants were left dry in the extreme heat. The more mature sweet corn plants were able to produce, but the later plantings might produce nothing, the Schwebachs say.

The pinto bean plants are astonishingly hardy. After six weeks with no water, the bean stalks are still alive, and if they get strong rain there’s still a chance the plants will be able to produce.

Ivellise Schwebach wonders if the expanding marijuana industry played any role in lowering the water table.

“We know that a lot of people have come into the area to grow that. Then that changes the landscape and what happens here for ranchers and for farmers,” she said. “Those are considerations that I don’t think maybe were made in the decision to allow as many growers as have been allowed.”

Next year, the Schwebachs will have to decide whether or not to drill a new well, a process that can be expensive. They’ve talked with a scientist at Sandia National Labs who has a water finding rig, which they might use. They’re considering several options and drilling a new well is the most likely, Dean Schwebach said.

A new well is a risk.

“You can put a test well in and you won’t know until you develop it and start pumping it how much water you’ll get out of there,” Dean Schwebach said.

But the family wants to keep farming, because they value locally grown food.

“Food brings people together in so many ways,” Ivellise Schwebach said. “You can probably think back to when you were growing up, and you will smell something, and it takes you right back. That’s happened to me, and you think of how much life and living occurs around the table when you share a meal. Our customers have been coming in and saying, ‘I have to have my corn. I’ve been buying corn here for all these years,’ and it just makes a connection. It builds community.”

See 7 pictures of why you can't find stands for Schwebach Farm around Albuquerque