About Us – NM Prickly Pear Festival

About Us

The New Mexico Prickly Pear Festival is the fifth in an annual series that seeks to celebrate everything prickly pear; food, art, music. The festival features a wide range of programming such as cooking demonstrations showing people how to use prickly pear fruit and pads in their own kitchens; workshops and talks about prickly pear processing and interesting and unique ways to use prickly pear; and programming for farmers, ranchers, and gardeners for how and why to incorporate this native plant into their systems. 

The festival also features a full market with vendors selling a variety of prickly pear products: food, drinks, bath & body products, art, crafts, and more; as well as live music at our festival stage. 

Festival Mission

The idea for the festival came out of conversations with our partners at the Three Sisters Kitchen about how to create greater use of native sustainable foods like prickly pears and how these could be a resource for new and existing farmers, food processors, and food businesses in New Mexico. 

Our mission for the festival is fourfold:

  1. To create a greater market and use of native sustainable foods like prickly pears, and boost their role as an agricultural resource for New Mexico.
  2. To support small food businesses, food processors, and farmers, particularly those that incorporate native and sustainable foods into their businesses. 
  3. To center prickly pears' history as an Indigenous food in the US Southwest and Mexico and raise Native voices and traditional use of prickly pear and other endemic plants and foods. 
  4. To create a space for enjoyment and celebration of prickly pears and other native foods of the Southwest.