Elite Skilled Labors

About Elite Skilled Labors

Kirtland sits in the green seam of the San Juan River, where alfalfa fields run flat toward the bluffs and ditch water arrives before the sun clears the mesa. Elite Skilled Labors works those early hours, when the air is still cool enough to hold the smell of cut grass, mowing and trimming yards along the highway and the side roads that drop toward the river. Out here a lawn is something a person decides to have, coaxed out of high desert ground, and it deserves to be kept honest — even lines, edges that follow the walk instead of wandering off it. By afternoon the light goes hard and white across the fields, and the yards left behind hold their shape anyway. It is plain work, done well, in a valley that rewards anyone willing to start early.