Located in the arid Southwest, on the Southeastern edge of the Colorado Plateau lives the A:shiwi also known as the Zuni people. Zuni Pueblo is the largest of the nineteen pueblos in New Mexico and perhaps the most isolated. Zuni Pueblo and its farming villages are nestled in valleys surrounded by Jurassic, Triassic and Early Cretaceous mudstone and sandstone mesas. Since the time Zuni was inhabited their survival was dependent on what the land provided. They developed different types of farming methods that enabled them to contest the variable water availability and inadequate soil quality that is common in desert soils. These methods include terrace gardening, a type of farming that allowed them to use the hillslopes of the mesas to divert water among several stair case terraces. On a larger scale is a type of agriculture known as dry-land farming or run-off agriculture which farmers used to grow…