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| 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.
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| 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
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| 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.
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| Ivan stirs the chicharónnes and talks about matanzas |
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| 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.
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| 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!
