New Mexico Farm, Ranch Museum
Opens 3000 Years Of Ag Exhibit

LAS CRUCES, N.M. —(AP)— It's the story of generations of farming and ranching — 3000 years' worth.

The New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum's first main gallery permanent exhibit, ``Generations,'' officially opened Sunday after years of planning and hard work.

``The exhibit is filled with a tremendous amount of information presented in the form of imagery, artifacts, audio and video excerpts, computer touchscreens and interactive displays, all intended to get the visitor involved with the exhibit,'' said Toni Laumbach, curator of collections for the museum, which opened in May 1998.

Some of those pictured are famous; some are unknowns.

They all represent ``the long struggle New Mexicans have always had making a living from the land,'' said Bob Hart, the museum's curator of interpretation. ``Ranchers, cowboys, sheepherders and goat ranchers, farmers, Pueblos and Navajos, Spaniards and Hispanos, African-Americans, Mormons, immigrants and homesteaders, all have an important place in our still-emerging story.''

The displays begin with the state's first farmer — an Indian woman who started it 3000 years ago near Bat Cave above the Plains of San Agustin in west-central New Mexico. Then the exhibit follows the development of agriculture in New Mexico, person by person, along a river of time.

Sixty-seven huge photographs cover the wall behind the exhibit, testimony to ``the hardships and joys of agricultural life in the territory and state,'' Hart said.

The photographs were gathered from many collections of institutions and private individuals throughout New Mexico.

Visitors can get a flavor of farming from grinding corn with a mano and metate, learning to use a rope and saddle, listening to oral histories or watching movies about the cowboy way of life or how American Indians used rock mulch to increase crop yields.

The museum, with its bilingual displays, emphasizes the multicultural character of New Mexico agriculture. Indian, Spanish and Anglo farmers and ranchers learned from each other, worked together, borrowing and blending cross-cultural skills and sharing a dependence on the land.

The museum is open from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and from noon-5 p.m. Sunday.