Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Isaac Ramirez works in his garden at his home in Portales.
Isaac Ramirez, a recent graduate of Eastern New Mexico University, said he is serving his community with gardening and Facebook.
"We are all just wanting to feel good," he said.
We had a chat with him recently.
Q:
Where are you from?
A: Hobbs, New Mexico. Born and raised there for about 20 years before I moved here to Portales to finish college.
Q: Why did you decide to go to Eastern?
A: I was initially promised a scholarship with (Jeff) Elwell when he was chancellor, and I was attending the Boys State's program.
It was to teach youth about state, local and federal government, how businesses work and how laws are passed.
After we completed the workshop, we got three credit hours and a $1,000 scholarship so that's what finalized me coming here. My mom also attended here so she was my biggest motivator of all.
I love it and a small rural town is perfect for me because I came from a small rural community.
Q: What do you do now?
A: Budtender at Dispensary Near Me and I like to consider myself an advocate and a way to educate people through growing their own medicine or food.
It's nice hearing from people and their culture and backgrounds.
I look at it as like a little seed to a whole community of information that can be resourceful and impactful for those that don't know such things.
Q: Why do you decide to share your knowledge on Facebook community groups?
A: I love doing that because we have that opportunity to just say what we want but I believe in saying what needs to be said and this is the most accessible way for me to do it.
I'm not really a website designer, I don't have a blog, and I don't know much about media besides utilizing Facebook.
Once those groups come along, it connects all of us and there's like-minded individuals who want to better this place, who want to take pride in where they live and resolve issues when no one is doing anything about them.
Q: How does working as a budtender help you connect with the community?
A: As a budtender you are a legal cannabis pharmacist. You are educating the people to know what they are buying, know what they are consuming, know how to safely consume and what to do and what not to do.
At any other place, when you are buying a product, you should be informed on what you are buying. This is a safe regulated medicine with people who are taking the time to give them this information and the background of it.
There's so much more to cannabis that we are learning about.
Q: What is your favorite thing about agriculture in New Mexico?
A: I love how we have challenging climate and weather elements. If we are to adapt to how things are growing natively and then apply it you can create a native-agro ecological farmland that goes with the seasons so you have food all year long.
Q: What is your favorite plant?
A: My favorite right now would have to be Hopi blue corn only because it was used by indigenous groups to make porridge and atole.
This grain was utilized so much because of its resistance to the environment here.
Q: What is your best plant joke or pun?
A: I always say, "You just can't kill me, I grow like these weeds."
Or I like to say, "If you don't want to pull heads off, pull weeds."
