SeedBroadcasting from Celebración de Culturas Familia Y Tradiciones

Seed Story drawings inside the Mobile Seed Story Broadcasting Station

On June 13, 2015 SeedBroadcast participated in the Celebración de Culturas Familia Y Tradiciones in the high mountains of Northern New Mexico. This was the first annual weekend event bringing together local artisans, traditional crafts, storytelling, presentations, demonstrations, and great food to celebrate the genius of place across the Peñasco valley. The event as a whole took place in the villages of Rio Lucio, Peñasco, Vadito, Rodarte, Llano de la Yegua, Llano de San Juan Nepomuceno, Chamisal, and Las Trampas. In each of these villages people opened their houses and shops to share their deep creative knowledge and historic rural practices.

Homemade tortilla demonstration and the best tortillas hot off the grill!

Visitors came from all over the region and many old timers came from far away to see friends and family. All weekend long people drove from site to site learning about fiber arts, ceramics, making posole and other traditional foods, wood crafts and furniture, retablo painting, herbs, and lots more. Here is a link the Celebración de Culturas web: http://www.penasconm.org

SeedBroadcast helper, Chloe Maize, helped several young folks make their own Seed Story drawings

Natalie Lopez invited us to park the Mobile Seed Story Broadcasting Station out in front of her small business, La Jicarita Harvest and old family adobe home where she serves up authentic Northern New Mexican food including the notorious chicharrón burrito with mounds of green chile. During the morning we watched as Ivan Rodriguez cooked chicharrónes over a small wood fire.

Ivan stirs the chicharónnes and talks about matanzas

Boiling chicharónnes

Chicharónnes are pork rinds that are boiled and then fried in their own fat. It takes much patience, time, and many stories to properly prepare chicharónnes . Here is Ivan’s Seed Story….. and of course the chicharónnes were perfect!

https://soundcloud.com/seedbroadcast/ivan-rodriquez-shares-his-seed-stories


During the day several storms passed through bringing blessings of rain for local crops but putting a damper on visitors to the Broadcast Station. Nevertheless, the event continued throughout the intermittent rain and we met several local farmers and gardeners who climbed aboard the van to talk seed. One young lady talked about revitalizing the old seeds by getting all the local families together to bring out their seeds, tell their stories, and cultivate an intergenerational effort to grow the seeds once more. She wondered how to do this?

The local chico corn is no exception and it was spoken of several times over the day as one of the most valued seeds, food, and traditions. Known as maiz de concho, this white flint variety is used to make posole and chicos which are staple foods for regional communities throughout the winter. Chicos are made by putting fresh ears of corn, husks and all, into an horno, roasting overnight, and then drying for storage. An horno is a large adobe oven that is pre-heated with firewood and retains heat overnight and throughout the next day. It is often used to make chicos, bake bread, and roast meat.

Horno building demonstration

Natalie’s husband, Roy, was demonstrating how to build an horno on site, right out in front of La Jicarita Harvest. He already had the concrete pad prepared and spent the entire day laying out the first course of adobe bricks and mudding them together. Once it is done they will use it to make their chicos and bake bread.

At the end of the day Roy sang us a seed song about keeping the seeds alive with families and communities. Here it is:

https://soundcloud.com/seedbroadcast/roy-lopez-sings-seeds-from-celebracion-de-culturas-penasco-new-mexico


Thanks to all we met at the Celebratión de Culturas keeping the seeds alive and growing!

SeedBroadcasting at UrbanRefuge A.R.T.S.

SeedBroadcast will be at the UrbanRefuge A.R.T.S. Valle de Oro National Wildlife Refugeat to celebrate and record stories about South Valley agri-Culture.

Join us for a day broadcasting, share stories and seeds.

Saturday July 11, 2015 from 10am - 3pm
Valle de Oro Wildlife Refuge
7851 2nd St SW
Albuquerque, NM

A.R.T.S.
Artistic Expressions
Recycling/Repurposing
Transportation Activities
Storytelling/Seed Projects

Here is a link to more information: https://www.facebook.com/events/760893424032286/

Bees + Seeds: Time of Action and Solidarity for Food Justice.

March against Monsanto

In this time of major shifts in our world around the injustices of access to healthy food and seeds there is such a need for action. We cannot allow these inequalities to continue and for major corporations to govern and determine the rights to own and distribute our seeds. This is a human right and has been part of our traditional agricultural system since we humans started our relationship to seeds and plants. This is a relationship based on reciprocity and without the balance and without the understanding that we are not the controllers we are heading to a disastrous tipping point.

Saturday May 23rd 2015 was a global day of solidarity and action sponsored by  March Against Monsanto and GMO- Free New Mexico .
Groups from all over the world held their own events, marches and educational activities to highlight the need to take back our food systems and promote positive solutions for local food growing.

 It was a call for action for:

• Solidarity against Monsanto’s predatory business and agricultural practices 
• Reject “ substantial equivalence” of GMO crops 
• Promote organic solutions 
• Expose the cronyism between big business and the government 
• Address poverty, the real cause of global hunger 
• Support food and seed sovereignty 
• Support local farms, bees and biodiversity 
• Labeling of all food that contains GMO’s 

Local sustainability activist Anna Maldonado

SeedBroadcast was invited by Chris Perkins to take part in the Albuquerque event called Bees + Seeds. This started with a march from the Downtown Growers Market to the Bees + Seeds Festival of music, speakers, bee and seed art, local action groups and food. This festival provided the space of people to speak out and to engage in animated conversations around many GMO issues.

Jade Leyva with her Seed Mural project

The SeedBroadcast Mobile Broadcasting Station was active and alive with visitors exchanging seeds and information about the ins and outs of growing and saving seeds in the dry southwest. Squash seeds arrived from local seed saver, Raven. He has been growing these seeds out for over forty years and were originally given to him by the great Hopi leader Grandfather David . Grandfather David was the teacher and mentor to John Kimmey, who he entrusted with the Hopi Prophecy. Kimmey  ventured further afield to sensitively spread this prophecy. In the seventies Kimmey joined with local activist Seth Rothman (Green Fire Times) to start the Talavaya organization. Talavaya was established after talking with elderly Indian and Hispanic farmers and discovering there were only a few left who still planted the old seed strains of their ancestors. It became one of the first seed banks in the southwest to save and distribute local traditional seeds. 

Raven with his Hopi squash seeds

 So forty years later the seeds were returning with their held stories and the resilience to retain their essence of purity.  They returned to remind us that we need to protect them as these strains of seeds are rapidly disappearing taking with them the traditions that are at the heart of many cultures.
We cannot let this happen.
 So let this day of action against Monsanto spark more actions, and more actions.....Please do not keep silent, raise your voices, seek those local varieties of seeds, put your hands in the soil, plant them and pray and sing for their survival…….

“There's really no such thing as the 'voiceless'. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.” Arundhati Roy

The following are some of the voices that spoke out:

Anna Maldonado shares her story of GMO'S

Sarah Jones talks about her love of seed bombing Yvonne Cunningham talks straight up about Food Justice Timothy Gallardo talks about applying real science to food production Sally-Alice Thompson talks about food justice and sings a song about the right to know Robin Seydel talks about justice and fairness from the soil upwards
Bryna Stalarow talks about injustice of food Marian West talks about Food Justice

Ways you can take action:

• Call or meet with your local officials
• Plant Bee-friendly flowers
• Boycott food companies that use GMO's and pesticides
• Plant a vegetable garden
• Grow food
• Grow a garden with your neighbor
• Vote with your fork
• Buy organic and local sustainable foods
• Save your lace race seeds
• Speak out, sing out, dance out
• Listen to our planet

SeedBroadcasting at the Albuquerque Museum of Art

SeedBroadcast will be parked out in front of the Albuquerque Museum of Art to Celebrate Fathers and Food.

Sunday June 21 from 12 - 4pm
Albuquerque Museum
19th and Mountain Rd NW
Albuquerque, NM

Bring seeds and stories to share!
SeedBroadcast is always free and open source. Come find us out in front of the Museum!

Celebrate Fathers and Food at Community Day

Celebrated Chefs, Seed Sharing, and Music

ALBUQUERQUE, NM –Explore ways to sustain New Mexico’s rich food traditions during Community Day on Sunday June 21st from 12 - 4 p.m. at the Albuquerque Museum. Learn about the ways you can preserve and share the community’s local food culture through a variety of activities throughout the afternoon. Bring your food-loving dad along and he receives free admission to the Museum!

Get inspiration to cook with local, in-season produce from celebrated local chefs, Jason Greene, Executive Chef and Owner The Grove Market and Café (pictured here), and Jonathan Perno, Executive Chef at Los Poblanos and James Beard Nominee. Chef demonstrations are generously sponsored by Edible Santa Fe and La Montanita Co-op.

Swap seeds and stories in the mobile van provided by SeedBroadcast, a nonprofit that encourages communities to keep local food and culture alive. Share recipes and create food-inspired art with participants from Vecinos Collective.

Enjoy the sounds of Sina Soul and Rodney Bowe SWEETLIFE in the amphitheater. Led by Rodney Bowe, (veteran vocalist, master musician, multi-genre, multi-instrumentalist,) alongside multi-lingual, multi-genre vocalist/musician, Sina Soul the band offers a dynamic selection of funk, soul and jazz music. Cash bar available.

Community Days are developed in conjunction with Albuquerque Museum’s new exhibition, Only in Albuquerque. These programs are designed to make connections to the exhibition’s main themes, Spirited, Courageous, Resourceful and Innovative. Community Days take place on the 3rd Sunday of the month through September.

This event is free with general admission....but SeedBroadcast is always free and open source. Come find us out in front of the Museum!

Sign the Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC) right to save and share seeds!

Did you know that in the United States it is illegal to save and share seeds, even if you are doing it non-commercially?

Can you believe that! It's true.... Last year we saw the crush of this legal rhetoric threatening the shut-down of non-commericial, public seed libraries all over the country which serve backyard gardeners, community gardens, and open/free-source networks of seed savers and seed SHARING.

Please help change the laws by adding your name to the letter of support that will be presented at the annual Association of American Seed Control Officials’ (AASCO) meeting!

DO IT NOW! Time is running out.

Here is what you can do to help change the laws and ensure our legal right

The Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC) will be lobbying for an amendment to the Recommended Uniform State Seed Law (RUSSL)
which will be updated at the Association of American Seed Control
Officials’ (AASCO) annual meeting this July. AASCO is an organization
of seed regulatory officials from the United States and Canada. The
members meet annually to discuss mutual concerns of seed law
enforcement, to be updated on new developments in the seed
industry, and to update RUSSL, which the organization developed and
maintains as a “model” law for states and federal programs. This law
affects every seed library - and so we are asking every seed library to
support SELC’s proposed amendment, which will exempt non-
commercial seed sharing from the labeling and testing requirements
under the model law.

Help support SELC’s effort in amending RUSSL to exempt seed
libraries!

If you represent a seed library, please complete this form to add
your name to the letter of support that will be presented at the
upcoming AASCO conference. To read the full letter, click here.

If you do not represent a seed library but you still want to send in a
letter of support, please download the attached letter of support
template, fill it out, and send it to SELC intern Carolyn at
carolyn@theselc.org. Seed librarians, please share this letter of request with your allies in the food justice, climate action, food security and other relevant movements. We'll be presenting these letters at AASCO's July meeting. We'd love to get the letters by June 19th.