THE STORY OF CASA OJO

In September 2017, I bought two ramshackle adobe houses with their random additions and lean-tos, a root cellar filled with half-buried centuries-old stuff, fence parts strung along and held together with barbed wire, a collapsing wooden triple outhouse full of cats, and other assorted shacks—one hiding the soon to be discovered mother of all bee hives—a marooned wringer washer tipped on its side, and the rusted and muddy implements of decades of life tending to this one pastural and irrigated acre in Ojo Caliente, New Mexico. All of this was presided over by an enormous elm tree, and beyond, a view of red cliffs eroded by the Rio Ojo, a trickle of what was once an ancient inland sea. The next two years would be full of seeing the pure potentiality of this place and transforming it into something new. After a day of swinging a sledgehammer to create holes to open space and a crowbar to reveal adobe and wood beneath the brown-sculpted carpet, plaster board ceiling and faux wood paneling, I took to the springs for a soak. On a cool night, with steam rising from the pools reflecting the moon and stars—I felt like I had died and gone to heaven.
—Steve Justrich, Owner and Proprietor of Casa Ojo

Website by Larry Hermsen: larrydhermsen@gmail.com