Written by Jeff Radford
Corrales Comment
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Wednesday, 09 April 2008 |
A pioneer in Corrales’ farmland preservation movement, Dorothy Smith, died March 22 at 94.
She owned and operated La Ventana Grande Ranch on a 30-acre tract of
land that ran from Corrales Road to Rio Rancho since1952. It has been
her cattle that villagers and visitors have seen grazing in a pasture
just south of Meadowlark Lane for the past five decades.
A charter member of the Corrales Road Scenic and Historic Byway
Committee, of Corrales MainStreet, Inc. and of the Corrales Farmland
Preservation Committee, Smith served until just a few months after her
90th birthday. She announced she was tired of going to meetings.
But subsequent to retiring from committee work she continued to ranch,
with the assistance of niece Alana McGrattan, and placed a portion of
the ranch into a conservation easement, to be protected from
development in perpetuity.
Nearly seven acres of Smith’s farm between Corrales Road and the Main
Canal are preserved for agricultural use. Her property was one of the
first four easements to be purchased with funds from the U.S.
Department of Agriculture’s Farm and Ranch Preservation Program and the
Village of Corrales’ municipal bonds.
“There’s no turning back, when you turn farms into subdivisions,” the
then-91-year-old cautioned, in explaining why she opted to put part of
her farm into an easement through the Village’s farmland preservation
program.
“People have got to start thinking about saving farmland now. When you
look back at all the farmland that has been lost to houses, you realize
that you’ve got to do more with what you’ve got.”
Her niece and partner Peter Kaserer continue to raise cattle and grow
alfalfa at Ventana Grande Ranch, inspired by Smith’s connection to the
land here. They also plan to dedicate to the Village of Corrales a
horse trail easement along a portion of the ranch.
In addition to farming in Corrales, Smith had a long broadcasting career with KOB radio and television.
She obtained the first television license in New Mexico, and worked for
KOB-TV filming and producing local news, eventually managing the
station’s video traffic department.
Smith served as secretary-treasurer of the N.M. Advertising Federation for 35 years.
When she and her late husband, Wallace Smith, bought the farm in
Corrales in the early 1950s, neither knew anything about running
a ranch. She grew up in a small coal mining town in southern
Illinois and her husband was from New York City. She had studied
advertising at New York University and had worked in marketing research.
“We didn’t know which end of a shovel to pick up,” she said with a laugh.
They had moved to Albuquerque in the 1946, living in a brand new
subdivision in the near Northeast Heights along Jefferson. “We looked
at living on a farm in Corrales as a better alternative,” she recalled.
“We knew we wouldn’t have to farm for a living, but if it turned out
that way, fine.”
At first, trying to keep up the farm they had bought was a weekend
effort since they both had full-time jobs in Albuquerque. She was a
broadcast producer for KOB-Radio. Her husband was an electronics
engineer at Sandia National Laboratories. “We really didn’t do any
farming at first, but right away there were people coming here to plant
and share the crop.”
Smith’s contributions to maintaining Corrales’ character and farming
tradition have been recognized officially in recent years. She was
honored as the Corrales Fourth of July parade grand marshall in 2004.
In 1997 she was named “Farmer of the Year” by the Ciudad Soil and Water
Conservation Service, a program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
A celebration of her life is planned for the Saturday of Memorial Day
weekend at her home on Corrales Road. Donations to the Dorothy Smith
Scholarship Fund of the N.M. Advertising Federation may be sent in her
memory.
She is survived by her niece, Alana McGrattan and grand-nephew Wallace Kaserer. Her husband, Wallace Smith, died in 1965. |
