Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum: online, onsite and interactive

The majority of the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum’s staff is working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, said museum Communications Manager Craig Massey. “We are staying in contact through Zoom meetings, email and calls,” he said.

Massey said about a half-dozen livestock and maintenance staff are on site at the museum, “taking care of the animals and providing security for the 47-acre property,” which is temporarily closed to the public.

The museum’s exhibits designer, Rafael Torres (a former designer for the Las Cruces Bulletin) has created an animated virtual tour of what the museum’s upcoming exhibit, “Monumental Territory: The Artwork of Kayla Blundell,” will look like. You can find it on Facebook at New Mexico Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum.

Another exhibit that is being planned to open this summer is “Riding Herd with Billy the Kid.” Work on that exhibit continues, Massey said.

“Our focus is to remain engaged and connected to the public,” he said. “We’ve increased our postings on social media – Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Our educators are providing posts that showcase the ‘Cattle Breed of the Week,’ as well as crop and food staples. Our education coordinator, LuAnn Kilday, has recorded a wool spinning video and a weaving video (how-tos). We will be doing more of these.”

“Another thing we’re doing on Facebook is posting the ‘Faces of Farm & Ranch,’” Massey said. “We post these when we receive them. The idea is to show that we all have farming or ranching in our backgrounds. At some point, all of us had ancestors who grew their own food. So, we’re inviting the public to email to us one to three photos and four or five sentences, telling us about their ancestors and what food they grew and where in New Mexico.”

For more information, visit www.nmfarmandranchmuseum.org.