Our Story...
Jardin de Milagros
This is a story about a couple who had to retire to discover the real meaning of hard work.
Jerry Hobson, 73, and his wife, Susie, 72, live at their small farm, south of La Union NM near Canutillo TX, named Jardin de Milagros. They grow and harvest vegetables for the area’s hungriest residents, with the help of volunteers. At one time, Jerry Hobson’s workdays started at a civilized hour at El Paso Natural Gas headquarters and, in the late 1970s, in the halls of power in Washington, D.C. Susie Hobson was a homemaker raising three children and later, a teacher, who enjoyed school holidays and summers off. Today their days start before the sun rises and the work is virtually every day, year-round.
Yet they love what they do – and so do thousands of people in our community. Today the Hobsons spend their days growing and harvesting vegetables for the area’s hungriest residents, those most in need of the fresh produce that fills the Hobsons’ pickup truck, week in and week out. The Hobsons own Jardin de Milagros, one of the most extraordinary plots of land on the border.
Time, land and water
“We kind of just started this project,” says Jerry, 73, recalling how the project took shape in the summer of 2008. “We had the time, the land, the water. It was like someone was sending us a message.” It was time to “give back.”
The “time” element came when Jerry, a chemical engineer, retired from a career that included stints at El Paso’s Chevron Refinery and El Paso Natural Gas and managing the local office of James, Cooke & Hobson, a manufacturer’s representative business that sells mechanical equipment like pumps, boilers, cooling towers, and water and wastewater treatment equipment..
The “land” had been in Jerry’s family since the 1920s – a few acres in Canutillo, near La Union, once the site of a Butterfield Trail stagecoach stop and guesthouse. Jerry’s grandfather, Warder Wallace, moved to El Paso in 1920 from Kentucky, after being told that his tuberculosis left him only six months to live. He certainly outlived the prediction, going on to raise a family on the farm after homesteading 10 acres and acquiring more land as the years passed. He died in 1976.
The precious “water” comes from an old well. With Jerry’s engineering skills and a complex network of drip irrigation pipes, the water could be used with maximum efficiency and precision for different crops.
Jerry and Susie had small backyard gardens before, but they did some research and began a larger garden with a few crops, including tomatoes and zucchini. “You have to be a pretty bad gardener not to be able to grow squash,” he laughs. “We started taking produce to neighbors, friends, and people at church (they were long-time members of First Christian Church on Arizona Ave.). We thought we could do more.”
The Hobsons knew about the Kelly Memorial Food Pantry run out of big Downtown church — Trinity-First United Methodist — and started taking their food surplus there. Launched in 1998, Kelly Memorial Food Pantry was first open one day a month. The couple talked to Rev. John Schwarting about their desire to share their food with those most in need and a long-time friendship and collaboration began.
That first summer, mostly working by themselves with some hired help and a handful of volunteers, the Hobsons delivered a remarkable 12,000 pounds of food – and a new era began for El Paso’s “food-insecure,” the one in five area residents who either go hungry or face a high risk of hunger on any given day.
The Hobsons, who met at a mixer at the University of New Mexico over 53 years ago, work hard every day, but they also have a lot of fun on their farm and elsewhere. For instance, when they heard about the casting call for the movie “Mine That Bird” at Sunland Park racetrack a few years ago, Susie donned a Kentucky Derby-appropriate hat and Jerry dressed the gentleman farmer role for the auditions; they both made it into a crowd scene in the movie.
It’s true that Jerry once gave Susie a compact front loader for hauling compost as a birthday present, but the two enjoy spending time with their family and friends, entertaining and travel. Jerry has been to Africa six times since 2012 to help a very poor village develop a water system for clean drinking water.
Two of their children, David lives in Austin and Laura, with the oldest grandson, lives in Albuquerque, and Jennifer and three more grandchildren live nearby in Las Cruces. The couple enjoys watching the sunset from their rooftop patio and sipping fine red wine from Jerry’s brother’s award-winning New Mexico winery, Milagro Vineyards, where David learned vinticulture skills. They are active in their church at University Presbyterian Church in El Paso; Susie is active in local women’s organizations and is on the board of Bridges Academy.
To hear Jerry and Susie tell it, anyone could do what they have done. “All of our work is just an experiment,” Susie says. “We try different ideas and see what works best.” They feel like they are “ordinary people who had some land that could be put to use.” However, that’s not how others see them: Jeannine Kennedy, past executive director of Kelly Memorial Food Pantry, calls them “heroes” and Mary Len Stanton, past director of Trinity-First’s children’s ministry, for 15 years, calls them “incredibly generous and gifted.”
“What an extraordinary mission,” says Kennedy, who served as the food pantry’s executive director. “Their vegetables are a lifeline to our clients; they are thrilled with the fresh produce.” More than 2,000 people a month come to the food pantry, each representing an average of 3.2 members in their households, resulting in an outreach to more than 6,400 individuals living in the Downtown area and beyond. About a third of those families have children under the age of 18; about 15 percent are over 65.
“Even in February, they were bringing in greens, such as Swiss chard, beets and winter vegetables,” says Kennedy. “And they provide recipes for vegetables people might not be familiar with, such as cooking pumpkin or rutabagas.”
“Susie and Jerry are absolutely authentic in caring about the community and the world,” says Stanton. “With Jerry’s knowledge of water use and engineering and Susie’s background in biology and education, the different threads of their lives have been woven together to make a difference.”
Outreach
For several years, Stanton, who also served as her church’s summer camp director, took youngsters ages 6 to 12 to the farm to help pick vegetables. “Some of these kids from our inner city and who live in apartments, have never had the experience of being on a farm like this and seeing vegetables grow,” she says. “The kids have fun searching for squash under the leaves and we have our snacks on the Hobsons’ beautiful patio.” The campers might be young, but they put their energies into the harvest – Stanton reports that in a single day, 60 kids in her Cooking Camp session picked 1,500 pounds of produce for less fortunate children and others.
Educational outreach is an integral part of the Jardin de Milagros mission and the Hobsons have hosted an astounding number of groups at the farm over the years. “I like kids to know where their food comes from – how the flowers produce vegetables,” says Susie, who after teaching biology and math at Bowie, Irvin, Morehead and Coronado, can talk about everything from photosynthesis to cross pollination. “The students learn a lot, but they have such a good time, they don’t want to go home!”
Volunteers are always needed to help prepare the soil, plant the crops and harvest the results. Over the years, helping hands have come from area congregations, schools and groups as diverse as Junior League, home school classes, UTEP Mortarboard, Raymond Telles Academy, members of the Federal Bar Association, Mentis, a neurological rehabilitation center, Border Servant Corps and spring break mission trips. Many of these organizations have also made financial donations to the garden.
In fact, the “high tunnel” greenhouse that’s 42-feet wide and 96-feet long – came via a $10,000 donation from Wichita, Kansas. A group of 35 high school students and nine adults from Calvary United Methodist Church raised the funds and then helped build it. The greenhouse has greatly expand the farm’s growing season and has added additional winter produce.
Year-round bounty
Now the Kelly Memorial Food Pantry is open two and a half days a week and represents a coalition of churches and one synagogue, Temple Mount Sinai.
The Hobsons also deliver food to the El Pasoans Fighting Hunger Food Bank, formerly West Texas Food Bank, and other good causes, including the Mustard Seed Café, which offers a nutritious “pay what you can” lunch on El Paso’s West Side, located at the Westside Community Church, 201 E Sunset Rd, El Paso, TX 79922.
While their first crops yielded 12,000 pounds for the food pantry in 2010, today the Hobsons’ efforts have produced more than 10 times that. The variety of crops has increased dramatically including broccoli, cauliflower, cucumbers, lettuce, okra, onions, tomatoes, turnips, and tons – tons! – of summer squash. Over the last couple of years, the couple has worked with volunteers and their own hired hands to “glean” leftover crops from area farms.
The final 2018 production records show that more than 90,500 pounds of food came from the Hobsons’ three acres. And 36,200 pounds of produce, including chili, cucumbers, peppers, pumpkins and squash, were gleaned by volunteers from other local farms before being plowed under
The Hobsons don’t talk about it, but those of us who have spent time at the farm know that the couple has invested not only their time and considerable energy and passion into Jardin de Milagros, but also some $70,000 a year for everything from labor, which is never ending, to seeds, fertilizers, equipment and fuel. To help offset some of those expenses, tax-deductible donations can be made to the nonprofit, 501(c)(3) Kelly Memorial Food Pantry with a notation for “Garden.” Send checks to KMFP c/o J. Hobson, 496 Wallace Rd, Anthony, NM 88021.
September is National Hunger Action Month, but for the Hobsons and others working to fight hunger in an area with as great a need as we have, every month is a time to take action. Not many communities – if any – in this country have a couple quite like Susie and Jerry Hobson, which makes their work here all the more appreciated. They are true heroes of our time.
For information about volunteer or donation opportunities, email jeraldhobson@gmail.com
By Cindy Graff Cohen, Southwest Senior, El Paso Inc. | Originally Posted:Wednesday, September 3, 2014 and Updated July, 2019