Rio Grande Grain: Christine Salem

Rio Grande Grain is the fourth blog in a series of articles from the 14th edition of the SeedBroadcast agri-culture Journal.  Due to the rapidly changing and challenging times of COVID19 we have postponed the printing of this issue until later in the year but hope that you can access this poignant and timely edition on line and past issues here. 

Thank you so much Christine and the Rio Grande Grain Team for your contribution.

Rio Grande Grain

Christine Salem

Northern New Mexico was once the breadbasket of New Mexico with over 300 small mills in operation around the state. In 1892 New Mexico brought 230 varieties of wheat to the Chicago World’s Fair. 

Today most of our flours and grain products are derived from highly hybridized dwarf modern wheat, which is bred primarily for high yield at the expense of nutrition, flavor and biodiversity.
It is grown primarily in the midwestern US and Saskatchewan and sold on the commodity markets. Modern wheat is highly dependent on chemical inputs and increasingly degrades human and soil health as well as farmers’ incomes. 

A small group of farmers, gardeners, and bread bakers have organized under the name Rio Grande Grain and hope to bring our grains back to their roots. Since spring 2018, we have trialed small quantities of over 60 varieties heritage and ancient wheat, rye, and barley, in small plots near Alcalde. We have collected qualitative and quantitative data on each variety over four growing seasons and discovered a few that are strong performers in our unique high desert region. In fall 2019 we were able to move from trial quantities to seed-increase quantities of our top performing varieties—Kamut, Sonoran White, Einkorn, Emmer, Turkey Red, Red Fife, Spelt, and Marquis wheat; Rebel and Swiss Mountain rye; and Tibetan Purple barley. In another year we’ll have hundreds of pounds of seed that we can provide to small farmers who are ready to try a crop that supports regenerative agriculture principles and fetches a far higher price than commodity grain.

Winter trials just before the harvest in June, 2019.
Photo Credit: Alessandra Haines

Fortunately, the environmental movement and the locavore movement is beginning to reverse the decline of market farming and paving the way for locally-grown, heritage grains to return to our fields and our foods.

There are a number of steps involved, from creating a market (consumer and commercial) for the grains to producing enough product to serve that market; identifying the millers, malters, and brewers who can store, process, distribute these grains. We call it the grain chain because there are a lot of moving parts that are beginning gradually to fall into place.

Farm equipment is another issue. As we move beyond trial quantities of grain, hand harvesting, threshing, and cleaning is no longer an option. There used to be small combines (machines that both harvest and thresh the grain) that were suited to small fields. But those are no longer being manufactured in the US. We have a few small-scale combines in the state that have been imported from China. We are looking at equipment sharing to lessen the startup hurdle to a farmer wanting to experiment with growing grains. Technical support is another area we hope to offer to new growers.

Ironically, as many of us are eliminating gluten from our diets, biochemists are discovering that it’s the short-rise white flours of modern wheat, modern processing, and commercial baking that likely are the unhealthy culprits. Long-rise sourdough breads made from whole grains can actually be tolerated by many with wheat sensitivities and are thought to support healthy gut microbes. Home bakers are enthusiastic about counter-top stone mills that preserve the whole grain – bran, germ, and all—to bake up breads using long-rise sour-dough leavens that mitigate the gluten and are actually good tasting and good for our guts.

Rio Grande Grain team from left: Deborah Madison, Ron Boyd,
Alessandra Haines, Jody Pugh, Diane Pratt, Steve Haines, Hal Bogart.
Photo Credit: Debora Clare

We are returning to our roots and learning together how to grow locally-adapted, climate-resilient, soil-supporting grain crops for our future in northern New Mexico. 

If you’d like to know more, contact and Instagram.com/riograndegrain.

Christine is a lifelong gardener, and since 2018, a sour-dough baker and grain grower.

The Buckle: Layne Kalbfleisch

The Buckle is the third blog in a series of articles from the 14th edition of the SeedBroadcast agri-culture Journal.  Due to the rapidly changing and challenging times of COVID19 we have postponed the printing of this issue until later in the year but hope that you can access this poignant and timely edition on line and past issues here. 

Thank you so much Layne for your contribution.

The Buckle

Layne Kalbfleisch

February 9, 2020

I’m a braided Indian

A Woodlands Indian

Ojibway

Living among Tewa

Saying Keresan words

Creator hears my prayers

Three names for Grandmother

Three names for Thank You

Howpa Hanu!

Cornmeal in my right hand

Tobacco in my left

Heya Hey!

My Grandmother was a Celtic knot

Scot Ojibway

Who was that woman at the Newberry Hotel?

Coyote sounds in the heart labyrinth

Christmas Day

An abandoned stable

How perfect

This is my home

The old ones told me

The Piedra Lumbre has a space

Between mesas

Orphan

Montosa

Kitchen

And Chimney Rock

Blessed Yucca

How did Gibson Gene know?

Cerro Pedernal  in the hypothetical middle

The Weaver

Spider Woman

Changing Woman

That’s what I hear

But like an ellipsis

It’s the space between

The omission

What’s not said

Ravens help.

Layne Kalbfleisch, M.Ed., Ph.D., is an educational psychologist, teacher and cognitive neuroscientist who studies the relationship between talent and disability and supports problem-solving and ingenuity across life.  She is the founder and CEO of 2E Consults ™ LLC, a practice that serves families and children, and organizations that support families and children in New Mexico, Virginia, and across the US.  She teaches in the education department at Northern New Mexico College in Española, New Mexico, and lives in Abiquiu, in view of the Cerro Pedernal.  She is from Boweting, Michigan, and a member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of the Ojibway.    

FLOWERING: HERE, THERE, AND EVERY WHERE: Emily C-D

Flowering: Here, There and Everywhere is the second blog in a series of articles from the 14th edition of the SeedBroadcast agri-culture Journal.  Due to the rapidly changing and challenging times of COVID19 we have postponed the printing of this issue until later in the year but hope that you can access this poignant and timely edition on line and past issues here. 

Thank you so much Emily for your contribution.

FLOWERING: HERE, THERE, AND EVERYWHERE

Emily C-D

We planted a seed and the flower gifted us so many more. Did you know that ideas are seeds too?

Plants have been a constant inspiration in my artistic practice, and my recent art with seeds is part of a trajectory of work that merges environmental and social issues. Last summer I joined forces with activists to expand the conversation around migration, inviting the public to understand the phenomenon through the larger lens of nature in an artistic, participatory process.

Florecer Aquí y Allá (To Flower, Here and There) is a trans-local migrant rights art action that occurred on July 6, 2019 in 14 different communities in North America all the way from San Pedro Sula, Honduras up to New York City. The call to action was made by ODA, or Otros Dreams en Acción, an organization based in Mexico City and dedicated to mutual support and political action for and by those who grew up in the United States and now find themselves in Mexico due to deportation, the deportation of a family member, or the threat of deportation. Dreaming our ideas together, we felt that the migration conversation is mired in negativity and difficult to understand political frameworks. Florecer was our proposal to breach the topic on a more emotional level that would inspire people to open their hearts and consider migrants as part of a larger picture of humanity in movement in a world that is in fact constantly in motion.

As I see it, flowers spread their seeds on the wind to where they need to go to grow, meanwhile we humans are building walls and laws that impede our movement and therefor our growth. Could we be inspired by our plant teachers to let ourselves move to wherever we dream and deem is fertile soil for reaching our human potential?

So it was that we landed on the concept of FLORECER, which in Spanish literally means to flower or bloom, but can be understood in a broader context as to flourish. Together we formulated six shared proposals of what migrants need in order to live and prosper here, there, and everywhere:

1

Abolish Migrant Detention

We flourish here and there when we are all part of the solution. Detention and deportation are not part of the solution.

2

Families Belong Together

We flourish here and there when laws and policies protect families, women, and children. Separating migrant families is a crime against humanity.

3

Diverse Communities

We flourish here and there when our diversity is valued and protected. Natural ecosystems thrive with diversity, and human culture is no exception. Discrimination is dehumanization, lives are on the line.

4

Safety & Inclusion

We flourish here and there when governments invest in structural change to guarantee mobility with human rights. Safety and inclusion for migrants creates safer communities for all of us.

5

Education & Jobs

We flourish here and there when we all have equal access to education and employment free from exploitation. This is the key for strong (trans) local economies.

6

People Before Papers

We flourish here and there when the human rights of every single person do not depend on any official paper. Documents should create access instead of inequality.

As a central action of Florecer in the Zocalo, 

or main square, of Mexico City, we decided we would construct in community a monumental mandala made out of painted banners and seeds—corn, rice, and beans, staple crops that feed humanity across the globe. Much of the 

so-called migrant “crisis” is in fact fueled by the Climate Crisis, as communities are forced to move from their homelands because of their inability to continue to cultivate there the foods that have for millennia been the basis of their culture and basic nutrition. As such, the seeds we used in the installation held not only great cultural significance, but also immediate hunger stanching value, the reason for which at the termination of the event, all the seeds used in the construction of the giant 50 ft. mandala—nearly 700 lbs total!—were donated to local shelters so that migrants might eat.

While I was busy calculating, cutting, and painting yard upon yard of canvas in preparation for the event, Maggie Loredo, co-director of ODA, was working hard to organize simultaneous public actions with migrant groups and allies across the Americas, the idea being that art, music, and seeds can cross the borders that try to divide us. What was a beautiful surprise to all of us was that five of the communities decided to create their own versions of the mandala that I had designed for installation in the Zocalo. This was truly the power of pollination, community art that crosses borders!

Children painted together in Sunset Park, Brooklyn with the Red de Pueblos Transnacionales, Stop Shopping Choir, Global Exchange, and the New Sanctuary Coalition. In Tijuana, Espacio Migrante and Dreamers Moms created a gorgeous rendition with colored sawdust. La Resistencia in Tacoma, Washington did a wonderful poster with different native plants springing from the stems. In Tapachula on the southern border of Mexico, Iniciativas Para el Desarrolllo Humano brought people together to create a mandala out of fruit, plants, and hand-written notes. And in Chicago, Organized Communities Against Deportation chalked their demands and dreams onto the street. This is the power of art that belongs to everyone!

WE PLANTED THE SEEDS TO FLOURISH HERE AND THERE.

We hope this is only the beginning.

#FlorecerAquíyAlla

#MigrantSolidarity

www.floreceraquiyalla.mx

For more information about ODA, please visit www.odamexico.org

In Spanish “ODA” translates to ode, or a poem meant to be sung. We believe in the power of arts and culture to learn from one another and to tell our stories from the inside out. We believe in our potential as a community to make positive change in the aftermath of deportation and exile. We believe in our right to be from two countries, to belong aquí y allá.

Emily C-D is a bilingual illustrator, muralist, sculptor and seed saver, originally from Maryland, based in Mexico, and working on both sides of the border. She partners with diverse communities, creating in collaboration works that seek to cultivate wonder and respect for the living world and our place within it. Please follow her @emilycdart on IG and check out her full portfolio at www.emilycd.com

The Beauty of Compost: Liz Brindley

The Beauty of Compost is the first blog in a series of articles from the 14th edition of the SeedBroadcast agri-culture Journal.  Due to the rapidly changing and challenging times of COVID19 we have postponed the printing of this issue until later in the year but hope that you can access this poignant and timely edition on line and past issues here. 

Thank you so much Liz for your contribution.

The Beauty of Compost

Liz Brindley

Since I started farming a few years ago, I've been drawn to the colors, textures, and shapes found in a pile of compost. To me, this pile of scraps is an abundant heap of design elements waiting to be discovered. But recently, I've come to find that the beauty of the discarded runs deeper.

The pile of compost I so admire starts with a seed planted in spring soil by eager hands worn and weathered from the time it takes to tend the land. This seed carries hope, intention, and the promise of possibility. As the season rushes forward and the days become longer and the sun hotter the seed turns into a sprout which turns into a gift of food from the earth.

This food is harvested and transferred from farms to the familiarity of my kitchen where I create a pile of scraps as I peel back the coating on citrus and slip off skins of garlic to reveal the fruits I'm after, the essence I seek in a moment of eager hunger. This pile grows larger as I chop and cut and slice and sauté.

Before I know it, a small mountain of fragments has formed and, in between my attention drifting from tasks that need tending to the food that is simmering, I've almost forgotten to pause to admire the pile of pieces before passing them back to the earth in a gift of reciprocity for the nourishment I've received.

I must stop to recognize the beauty of these delicate remnants that were once encased in seeds held by the soil that became shells and skins holding produce in protective embrace.

Without this moment of recognition, I can become so consumed with consumption that I forget to turn to compost to be reminded that creativity balances destruction. Without this recognition, I forget that I, too, am part of these cycles of shedding and releasing and ending to find new beginning. Without this recognition, I forget that what was used up can be useful for new life.

As I scoop up the scraps to dump them into the compost, I'm reminded that transformation takes time. This compost will pass into the next version of itself in a process of patience sprinkled with parts of the past that no longer fit the present. The scraps seem to shift their shapes with an effortless ease that allows change to carry them back to their beginning.

It is suddenly spring again, and I sprinkle the soil and seeds with this old life to form new life and continue on in connection with nature's cyclical rhythms.

Liz Brindley is a Food Illustrator and Farmer in Northern New Mexico. Her mission is to help people more deeply connect with food through her design business, Prints & Plants. She is the recipient of a Scholastic National Gold Key Art & Writing Award, and her work as been exhibited in galleries across the United States.

SeedBroadcast Journal Edition #14 Online

The14th edition of the SeedBroadcast agri-Cuture Journal was in action before the major rupture in our individual and collective lives and ways of being. This global pandemic has impacted all of us in extreme ways our lives disrupted, our daily patterns flipped in new directions and the uncertainty of what will come tomorrow is present at all times. 

Now more than ever is the time to bring out those stashed seeds that have been kept in the tin box on the book shelf, or in the cardboard box in the shed and if possible plant them in the earth and nurture them as they will nurture you. Keep a few in a safe place, as did our ancestors and for those in the ground sing to them and watch them sprout and grow. We can learn many marvelous ways from their grace and resilience.

We have postponed the printing of this issue until later in the year but it is available to download on read online here.

A huge shout out to all who contributed to this poignant and timely edition it is your wisdom that shines bright and touches the rest of us,
thank you

In solidarity and health

SeedBroadcast