Take a short walk down an enchanting acequia. Container is a classic with some camo.
What is an Acequia?
(A-Sec-ee-ya)
Acequias, sometimes referred to as ‘ditches’ or ‘arroyos’ are community-based forms of water sharing used for irrigation, first introduced to the region that is today New Mexico by the Spanish in the seventeenth-century. The acequia system itself is much older, dating back to methods developed by the Moors and brought to the Iberian Peninsula during their occupation of the region.The area of the North Valley encompasses approximately one hundred square miles in the northwest quadrant of metropolitan Albuquerque. The area is bounded by Interstate 40 on the south, Interstate 25 on the east, the Rio Grande on the west, and the Bernalillo/ Sandoval County line on the north. Some would also include the area of Downtown north of Central Avenue, the village of Corrales, and the town of Bernalillo. The environmental character of the North Valley is strongly influenced by the Rio Grande and its associated bosque, the Spanish word for woods. Cottonwood and Russian olive dominate the banks of the Rio, and the bosque they form is considered a wetland. The cottonwood tree is also found throughout the valley along irrigation ditches and drains. The tree is tied to the history and image of the valley as evident in the number and variety of place names that refer to the cottonwood.
Early Spanish colonists selected the North Valley with its scattered high grounds for use as farmland. The frequent flooding of lower fields caused drainage problems and deposits of clay silt. Around the time Albuquerque itself was founded in the early eighteenth century, the valley's water table was close to the surface. Bogs near the cultivation fields were called esteos, stagnant water holds. Colonists farmed between them, creating webs of acequias (ditches), which were cleared of heavy silt each year as community projects. The ditches were fed by a larger community ditch, called the acequia madre. The entire network supplied water to the arid fields on slightly higher ground. Today, despite the abundance of ground water just a few feet below the surface, many North Valley lands are irrigated by the same methods as those of the early colonists.