Tijeras cafe blends local farm food, workshops, and community space

At 11784 NM 337 in Tijeras, Roots Farm Cafe & Education Center serves breakfast and lunch from produce grown on its own small farm, sells local goods, and gives people a place to gather, learn, and linger on Bernalillo County’s eastern edge.

A cafe built to do more than feed people

The business is run by Daniel Puccini and Kendall Rattner, and its posted hours are Wednesday through Sunday, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., with Mondays and Tuesdays closed. Indoor and patio dining give it two ways to serve customers, and its menu changes by day and season, which keeps the offerings tied to what the farm and local suppliers can provide.

Roots functions as part restaurant, part coffee shop, part mercantile, and part farm. In a place like Tijeras, where a single-use restaurant can be vulnerable to slow traffic, a business that also sells specialty items, farm products, and coffee can pull in different kinds of customers across the week. The model is built to capture a breakfast stop, a lunch crowd, a retail purchase, and a return visit for a workshop or meeting.

A small farm with a dry-land logic

The farm is small, horse-powered, and located in the mountains south of Tijeras. It relies primarily on snowmelt and rainfall and has to manage water carefully in a high-desert setting. The farm sits at the center of the food on the plate and the business’s identity.

That agricultural setup also shapes the menu and the economics. A farm that depends on seasonal water and natural growing methods will not produce the same volume year-round, which helps explain why Roots leans on a changing menu and a wider supply network.

A local supply chain that reaches beyond the front door

Roots works with local farmers and producers, and its vendor list shows how broad that network is. The names connected to the cafe include La Montañita Co-op, Trifecta Coffee Company, Fano Bread Company, Schwebach Farm, New Mexico Tea Company, Kei & Molly Textiles, Polk’s Folly Farm, Old Windmill Dairy, Tucumcari Mountain Cheese Factory, Heidi’s Raspberry Jam, MJ Honey, Savory Spice Shop, and Santa Fe Windmill Water.

That mix of food, drink, and retail products gives the cafe more than one way to make a sale. It also ties the business to other regional producers, from bread and cheese to honey, jam, coffee, and even textiles. For a place serving as a community stop rather than just a lunch counter, the vendor shelf is as much a part of the business model as the dining room.

Workshops turn the cafe into a classroom

Roots Natural Learning Center, associated with the cafe, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit education center. It offers field trips, workshops, informative talks, and internships focused on sustainability and self-sufficiency, giving the property a second use beyond meal service.

The workshop topics show how closely the education side is tied to the realities of rural and dry-land living. Workshop sessions include:

• raising honeybees
• canning and pickling
• dry-farming
• natural building techniques
• composting
• vermiculture
• erosion control

The cafe has also used workshops to get very specific about land management. In one listing, Daniel Puccini was scheduled to discuss no-till vegetable production in dry lands, water collection and irrigation, seed selection, and reduced tilling. Another session brought in Jim Brooks of Soilutions and the Tijeras Creek Remediation Site to lead a vermiculture and composting program.