Ceramist Roxanne Swentzell grows her own food on half an acre in the desert.
Roxanne reuses rainwater to help her plants thrive in the arid setting.
By Linda Mason Hunter
Down a desolate country road on Santa Clara Pueblo in northern New Mexico, Roxanne Swentzell lives on old family land. She not only built her house, but also reared and home schooled two children. She converted half a desert acre into a jungle of sustenance, and created the clay sculptures that have made her one of the most notorious contemporary ceramists in the United States.
Roxanne’s ground is idyllic. A few horses, sheep, turkeys, and chickens calmly roam within distant views of the snowcapped Sangre de Cristo Mountains. There’s editable vegetation everywhere. Roxanne lives a simple life, limiting her wants to a few basics, growing her own food, baking from scratch, and making as many of her supplies as possible.
“I’ve always liked to grow things,” she explains, “and I’ve always had animals around me. They are my friends. I love to watch things grow. Now I live in this jungle,” she says, gesturing at her unruly surroundings and laughing.
Appreciating Permaculture
In 1986, Roxanne set up housekeeping with her two small children in an old shed, determined to learn the rhythms of her land before building a permanent home. One morning, still in pajamas, she walked to a chosen spot and drew an outline on the ground with a stick. Then she started digging a foundation.
She knew she wanted a solar-powered, adobe home. It doesn’t make sense in the Southwest not to have solar, she insists. She wanted a typical northern New Mexico territorial-style house with a pitched roof, two large second-story dormers, and a big kitchen with outdoor access.
Roxanne built the house by herself, with occasional help from friends and family. One year later, she moved in.
Around this time, she married Joel Glanzberg, an itinerate gardener with a drive for permaculture, a 1950s Australian concept that literally means “permanent culture.” Permaculture allows people to live sustainably off the land without harming it. With Joel’s help, Roxanne focused her attention on the land.
They enriched the soil with manure, straw, and other organic matter. Turkeys and chickens fertilized the yard. Trails, surrounded by bushes, trees, and herbs, allowed other parts of the land to heal and regenerate. A large cold frame was built on the south side of the house for growing greens year-round, and an inner courtyard surrounded by an adobe wall, allowed for microclimates where assorted plants thrive.
Roxanne receives less than twelve inches of rainfall annually, making water a sacred commodity. Drinking water from the tribal well is too precious to squander on gardens, so Roxanne collects rainwater in a large metal tank. Trees surround the tank, providing shade to discourage evaporation. A shaded open tank a few feet away provides water for a small plant nursery and swimming. Two small cement-lined ponds house fish and water plants.
Graywater is used in an irrigation system composed of swales. By providing channels for water to flow, a swale helps control erosion, holding water near plants until it absorbs into the ground. Bathtub, dish, and laundry water empties into a swale. Once the system was established, plant areas off the swales “became full of life, like magic,” Roxanne says.
Not Dependant on Energy
The family’s ability to live completely off the grid, growing their own food and raising organic vegetables and meats, is remarkable. That was back in the 1980s, the heyday of the nonprofit Flowering Tree Permaculture Institute, when the property was known internationally as a successful experiment in sustainable living systems. Roxanne and Joel experimented with different ways of raising and storing food. They butchered, dried, smoked, or froze the pork, sheep and fowl.
“We did the whole works. From the sheep we got milk, cheese, and butter; from the chickens, eggs and meat. We raised bees, made candles, gathered honey; grew wheat and ground it in a mill. We dried all the fruit we could and turned grapes into vinegar,” Roxanne says. “Plus, we were having to learn it all. There wasn’t anyone to teach us. We lived as completely off the land as we could.”
Balancing Life With The World
Roxanne’s ideal mental state is one of balance—being careful and attentive in all things—an ancient philosophy with strong roots in her native Pueblo culture.
As a Native American and a permaculturist, Roxanne concentrates on living in harmony with the natural world. “I try not to buy or use any materials that are poisonous to the environment,” she says. “For example, because I garden a lot, I am aware of insects, birds, and wild plants that move in as soon as soil is created and water is available. In a state of imbalance we call these ‘pests’ and ‘weeds.’ But in my belief, pests and weeds are only annoying because they are symptoms of imbalance in the system.”
Roxanne’s children grew up developing gardens and herding turkeys. “To me they are the true permaculturists because they were brought up with it,” she says. “They must see the world differently from other people. They see it all connected.”
With classes, workshops, and a steady stream of visitors, it became hard to sustain a private life. Eventually, Roxanne wanted out of the goldfish bowl. Consequently, today Flowering Tree doesn’t have a community of people working on it. Roxanne, single now, lives quietly. “I can’t do everything so I’ve had to compromise,” she sighs. She brought electricity to her home, and she’s not raising all her own food anymore.
So she’s back on the grid and has decreased her flock to a few chickens, sheep, and turkeys. She raises her chickens for eggs, her turkeys for ceremonial feathers for dances, and her Charro sheep (a distinctive Navajo breed) for wool. Her children, now grown, have moved to a nearby pueblo. Although she misses them terribly, Roxanne is serene, energetic, and joyous in living simply.
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