“A farmer-writer who loves garlic as much as words” is how the New York Times described Dixon writer and farmer Stanley Crawford in a 2011 story, and one might be hard-pressed to improve upon that characterization. Crawford, whose 11 books included the seminal and award-winning memoirs Mayordormo: Chronicle of an Acequia in Northern New Mexico and A Garlic Testament: Seasons on a Small New Mexico Farm, died Jan. 25 at his home in Dixon as a result of a medically assisted death he chose after learning earlier in January he had untreatable cancer, his daughter Katya Crawford tells SFR. “He was totally brave, totally ready, and was very, very graceful about it,” says Crawford, who was with her father when he died, along with her brother Adam and his wife.
In 2019, Crawford published The Garlic Papers: A Small Garlic Farm in the Age of Global Vampires (Leaf Storm Press), which documents the massive legal battle that pitted his small farm in New Mexico against a Chinese garlic importer and its several international law firms, also the subject of a Netflix documentary, “Garlic Breath,” in the six-part series Rotten, released in 2018. “The news about Stan’s passing came as a shock,” Leaf Storm Publisher Andy Dudzik (a former longtime SFR publisher) tells SFR via email. “As a writer, he was a singular talent and an absolute joy to work with. It was an honor to be entrusted with publishing two of his books. He was also one of the most gentle and humble souls I’ve ever known, and I will miss him greatly.” Leaf Storm also published Crawford’s 2017 novel Village, which Crawford described as a “love letter” to the Northern New Mexico village where he and his late wife, Rose Mary, who died three years ago, raised their children after moving there in 1969. Katya Crawford tells SFR her father spent the last weeks of life visiting in person and on the phone with friends and told her, in the end, “friendship are everything,” he said. And he had so many, Katya notes. “He had a really good life.”
Read the full story by Julia Goldberg in the Santa Fe Reporter here.
