Returning to his roots: how a local chile farmer is helping movie workers on strike

Up until recently, tying ristras was something Rick Sanchez had no idea how to do.

“I couldn’t tell heads or tails of how to tie a ristra,” he said. “I finally watched a video and learned properly and I started tying them up.”

A self-described “punk rock farmer,” the 50-year-old former musician and film set grip has only been farming and growing chiles for three years and only started making ristras this year. After making several, he realized he needed more people in order to make enough to sell.

The question then became: where to find the labor? The answer came on a phone call one day with a friend who had worked in the film industry but was unemployed due to the writers’ and actors’ strike.

“He told me his concern of not being able to pay his mortgage, and that was quite alarming,” Sanchez said.

Sanchez soon began to think about how he could help his former movie coworkers. Then, the idea hit him — have them come work for him tying ristras together.

Thus, Ristras For Reels was born. Eight former film industry workers are spending several days a week at the Sanchez family homestead tying ristras, which are then up for sale.

Each ristra has a label with the maker’s initials attached to it. When that ristra is sold for $35, the maker gets $30 from the sale to put in his own pocket.

It’s all part of Sanchez’s goal of helping anyone and everyone affected by the ongoing actors’ strike by using his past experiences to influence the present.

“I’ve been able to do this whole full circle of life, from being raised in organic farming to the music to the film and back to the farm, but following me is the music and the movies,” he said.

The slow and methodical lifestyle of farming and living off the land is a far cry from Sanchez’s previous jobs in the music and film industry. A self-taught drummer, Sanchez used music to launch a career in the late 1990s.

“I became a musician and was able to start playing in different bands. Eventually, I started working at different venues and I stumbled upon becoming the production manager at the Sunshine Theater in 1997,” he said.

He worked at the theater until 2006, when he shifted careers and started working in craft service for film sets. That soon led to him working as a rigging grip, then later as a set decorator.

“I did the pilot of ‘Breaking Bad,’ major features like ‘Terminator Salvation,’ ‘The Avengers,’ ‘Transformers’. I had a really, really good career for 12 years,” Sanchez said.

Then, things came to an abrupt halt in 2020 with the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Out of a job, Sanchez was looking for ways to make ends meet. To find a path forward, he took inspiration from his family’s past. He decide to become a farmer, like his grandfather before him.

“It’s pretty serendipitous to me how I’m able to actually fall back on family grassroots, such as organic farming,” he said. “It’s not a simple or easy life, but when you think about it, it’s a lot more simple than having to work 80 hours on a movie set.”

Chile farming may be a simpler life, but it is not an easier one, Sanchez said.

“Overall, it has been humbling, but it’s also been very frustrating,” he said. “Lack of water, lack of help — it’s been one of the hardest things that I’ve ever done in my life.”

Last year might have been Sanchez’s lowest point as a farmer, with drought causing him to lose 800 plants and bringing him to tears. “I mean, I cried when I watched it,” he said.

Slowly, but surely, Sanchez has begun to recover from the disappointment of last year’s crop. He is now cooperating with neighbors on growing chile and other crops and is excited about the future of his crops and his Ristras For Reels program.

His Garcia Family Punk Rock Chile Stand, which is located on his family’s homestead tucked away in the North Valley, has hosted several live music events featuring vendors selling goods.

Some of the members of the bands and vendors are also out-of-work movie industry people. Several more of these events are planned in the upcoming months, including one on Sunday.

It’s just another way Sanchez is living up to his promise to support those out of work due to the strike.

“We’ll keep supporting the film industry as long as we need to,” he said.

Gino Gutierrez is the good news reporter at the Albuquerque Journal. If you have an idea for a good news story, email him at goodnews@abqjournal.com