New Mexico author and garlic farmer Stanley Crawford dies at 86

Jan. 30—Stanley Crawford's nonrealist novels have been touted by New Yorker magazine for their "originality and linguistic effervescence."

His nonfiction captures the dignity, grit, grace and fraternal spirit of agrarian life in northern New Mexico.

He involved himself in community affairs, restored vintage cars and was a craftsman gifted in turning wood and glass into things that required admiration.

And he was a garlic farmer in the small Rio Arriba County village of Dixon.

"My brother and I both appreciate that he was a writer and a thinker," said Katya Crawford, Stanley's daughter and a professor in and chair of the department of landscape architecture at the University of New Mexico. "But he really valued working with his hands. I would say foremost he was a farmer who was highly educated."

Crawford, perhaps best known to New Mexicans for two works of nonfiction — 1988's "Mayordomo: Chronicle of an Acequia in Northern New Mexico" and 1998's "A Garlic Testament: Seasons on a Small New Mexican Farm" — died Thursday at his farm in Dixon.

He was 86, and it had recently been discovered that cancer had invaded his liver, kidney and colon.

Crawford was preceded in death by his wife RoseMary in January 2021.

Survivors include his daughter, Katya, and son, Adam Crawford.

"He was a brilliant writer, and not just in one genre," said William deBuys, Crawford's friend and fellow New Mexico author. "He had a really varied literary style, from his experimental fiction to his brilliant tone in nonfiction, which is completely nonsentimental and never lingers on the surface but always goes deeper to find the paradox."

All about place

A Californian, Crawford was educated at the University of Chicago, the University of California, Berkeley, and the Sorbornne in Paris.

He met his wife, a journalist from Australia, when they were both living in Greece. Their son Adam was born while the couple was in Ireland.

They lived for a while in San Francisco, but moved to New Mexico in the late 1960s to escape the stress and violence of that era's anti-Vietnam War protests.

Stanley and RoseMary started out gardening on their few acres in Dixon, but eventually that evolved into a farming enterprise that produced garlic, statice flowers, gourds, squash, pumpkins, sweet onions, basil and peaches.

"I really worked out farming in the summer and writing in the winter," Crawford told an Albuquerque newspaper reporter in 1990. "Writing is abstract. You sit in a room with a pencil or a machine. Farming is quite the opposite. It is multidimensional. It involves all aspects of living."

He had published 11 works of fiction and nonfiction.

Those early novels lauded by the New Yorker were "Gascoyne" (1966), "Travel Notes" (1967), "Log of the S.S. The Mrs. Unguentine" (1972) and "Some Instructions to My Wife Concerning the Upkeep of the House and Marriage, and to My Son and Daughter Concerning the Conduct of Their Childhood" (1978).

"When I read his fiction, it was like 'Who is this man?' It was like a little window into him," Katya said. "My favorite (novel) was 'Log of the S.S.' I didn't care for 'Some Instructions.' It was supposed to be sarcastic, but it hit a little too close to home. I loved 'Mayordomo.' "

"Mayordomo," published by the University of New Mexico Press, is about Crawford's experiences working on an irrigation ditch, and "A Garlic Testament" (Harper Collins) takes the reader month by month through fields and garlic and adobe.

The former won the Western States Book Award for creative nonfiction, and the latter was described as "lyrical, humbling, delicious and detailed" by the New York Times Book Review.

Both are books about place.

"I think in these times a lot of people are feeling disconnected from what we call reality," Crawford told a newspaper reporter in 1992. "It is very easy for people to float through an existence without connections.

"I think people want to read about places where these connections are evident."

Tower of strength

DeBuys lives in the Taos County village of El Valle, near Dixon. He is the author of "River of Traps" (1990, University of New Mexico Press), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Like "Mayordomo" and "A Garlic Testament," deBuys' "River of Traps" is about the farming life in northern New Mexico.

He and Crawford had known each other since the late '80s.

"We were both involved in small farms and villages in New Mexico and had written about that experience," deBuys said. "There was a lot of mutual respect and common understanding. We didn't have to explain things to each other."

DeBuys respected not only Crawford's writing but his willingness to get involved in community affairs, from the Santa Fe Area Farmers Market, to the Dixon library and the local electric co-op.

A few years back, Crawford went to court to challenge a giant Chinese corporation whose business practices he believed were unfair to small farmers in America. He lost the case.

"Talk about David vs. Goliath," deBuys said. "I thought of him as a tower of strength, genuinely tall and very calm.

"He was a terrific writer, great contributor to the community, a mechanic, an excellent farmer who thought deeply about how life in all those sectors should proceed."

Kept on writing

Katya Crawford said her father knew he was dying, so he spent his last weeks calling friends.

"He would say, 'I'm dying and just want to have a conversation with you before I go,'" she said.

She said her brother had only recently convinced their father to stop farming, but that he had continued to write and had completed a novel, which is now with an agent.

"One thing that is very beautiful about writers is that their work stays alive," Katya said. "We will always have that part of him — and the farm."

A celebration of life is planned for Crawford, but no date has been set.

"I picture Stanley on a tractor," deBuys said. "He is on the road or in a field, deriving inspiration from small actions that help farther his thoughts."