Mágica - Magic Farm Taos

04/29/2026

Question from a recent group:
"Are there any pescaterians in this group? Where do you go for fresh fish and seafood for cooking at home?"

It's a challenge to find a reliable affordable way to have a significant portion of one's diet be seafood while living in NM.
Being from eastern Long Island, NY, from generations of fishermen & boat-builders, I grew up fishing, clamming, swimming - and seafood was a staple of our diet. You could just go to the nearest fish store or right down to the docks if you're out early enough, and just get whatever's freshest. We ate a lot of flounder & bluefish caught ourselves - off the shore or just in my grandpa's little boat out in the bay. Tons of clams, too - they're fun and easy to harvest right from the inlets. Oysters, eels, blackfish, snapper, all easy to harvest.

Living in NM caused a major dietary shift. Grocery store seafood counters are pretty much just thawed versions of things they have flash-frozen. Ask for the still-frozen. Commercial ships freeze onboard, or soon after docking, so the flash frozen fish is going to be freshest you can get here in NM. I like the frozen shrimp at Albertson's - when they're on sale, it works out to about $4.50/lb for the 21/25 size. I get the deveined shell on - cooking in the shell yeilds more flavor. Sometimes I get a hankering for fresh wild salmon (broiled with lemon, pepper, & lots of butter). Canned albacore is a staple recently - easy to digest protein, keeps in the cabinet, & I can order it delivered ;-)

Those of us who know seafood & enjoy high quality have found the most economical & reliable source for fresh seafood as part of a regular diet here in NM is to order from Washington or Maine.
Its that simple.
If you place a sizeable order, the fedex cost isn't bad, works out to grocery store sale prices overall with far, far higher quality, great selection.

So, flash-frozen from the grocery store freezer for occasional meals, ordering from WA or ME fisheries for significant quantities.

Remember: fresh fish doesn't smell "fishy" - it smells vaguely of salt and ocean. If seafood has a fishy smell, its already a few days old and turning.

04/29/2026

Beef barley stew
Super nutrition after a long day planting😋
The stew and bread together were six hearty servings & cost less than $10 in ingredients, with half of that cost being the half pound of natural ground beef.

04/29/2026

04/29/2026

TAKE ACTION: Tell Your State Legislators Farms Shouldn’t Be Toxic Sewage Sludge Dumps!
https://advocacy.organicconsumers.org/page/78599/action/1

“The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed on Thursday to include microplastics and pharmaceuticals on a list of contaminants in drinking water for the first time, a step that could lead to new limits on those substances for water utilities.

Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator, said the agency was responding to Americans who have worried about plastics and pharmaceuticals in their drinking water. The gesture also aims to hand a win to health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s MAHA movement, which for months has pressured Zeldin to further crack down on environmental contaminants.�Studies have looked at the prevalence of microplastics in drinking water and in people’s hearts, brains and testicles.

There is also growing worry about pharmaceutical drugs that get into the water supply because humans excrete them and conventional wastewater treatment plants fail to remove them.”

The new draft list includes four contaminant groups – microplastics, pharmaceuticals, PFAS, and disinfection byproducts – as well as 75 chemicals and nine microbes that may be found in drinking water.
https://organicconsumers.org/epa-moves-to-designate-microplastics-and-pharmaceuticals-as-contaminants-in-drinking-water/

Editor’s Note:

We welcome the EPA’s move to formally recognize microplastics and pharmaceuticals as drinking water contaminants. It’s an overdue and important step. But we need to ask the harder question: when these substances are removed from our water supply, where do they actually go?

Water treatment produces biosolids, and spreading those on agricultural land has long been standard practice, even promoted as sustainable fertilizer. But biosolids carry the very contaminants we’re trying to remove — microplastics, pharmaceutical residues, PFAS, and more. Once on farmland, they leach back into groundwater and run off into the waterways that we draw our drinking water, completing a troubling cycle that treatment alone cannot break.

Removing contaminants from drinking water is necessary — but it is not sufficient if the end point of those contaminants is our soil and our rivers. We are, in effect, moving the problem rather than solving it.

Any serious regulatory framework addressing water safety must also address banning the spreading of biosolids!

04/29/2026

04/28/2026

Ready, set, get 'em!
$18 for 50 starts
or come dig your own everything :D

04/27/2026

Did you know if you dance around your house for just 3 songs*, 3 times a week, you'll get a sweet little cardio boost?
Also, it'll make you smile ;-)
Just keep movin' - number one secret 💗

* or one song 3x ;-)

Provided to YouTube by Universal Music GroupDance, Dance, Dance · Steve Miller BandGreatest Hits 1974-78℗ 1976 Haworth Enterprises, under exclusive license t...

04/26/2026

Living with ME/CFS is difficult.
Living with ME/CFS in a place without comprehensive medical care is devastating.
In every way.
Gratitude abounds, however - for my pure water, potent medicines, peaceful space, beautiful farm.
And that I can share this, the only true healing i've found in all the wild barbarism of NM.
The profundity of gentle peace is astounding.
Blessed be🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

04/26/2026

Sound bath activation for the new babies
🌱🥰🌱