In the Arizona Desert, Where Your Neighbor Is an Alfalfa Farm

In the Arizona Desert, Where Your Neighbor Is an Alfalfa Farm

This far out, there’s no such thing as municipal city water. The afternoon desert sun beats down, hard, as we drive up the gravel road to Tom and Illene Wood’s reddish-brown adobe-style stucco house, nestled off-the-grid within the shrubs and mountains of the Sonoran Desert, with cacti and mastiffs standing guard. Like many residents of rural America, they dug a well. That 400-foot well cost them $10,000. But by 2011, the land had shifted, and t…