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| Gathering seeds from the archive for sharing at Gathering for Mother Earth |
Land Arts of the American West spent the last week of the first Watershed journey in a collaborative, hands on art project led by Land Arts Co-Director, Jeanette Hart-Mann, at her living experimental poly-culture farm-studio, Fodder Project Collaborative Research Farm (FPCRFarm), in Anton Chico, NM.
This farm is located on the Pecos River, which is a tributary of the Rio Grande. Its primary source of water is from an acequia, a series of ditch systems organized by local parcientes, which carry river water overland and parallel to the irrigable fields. The acequia systems in New Mexico were likely the first political organiztions of democratic process in the country, with roots to the sixteenth century.
This water is essential to the local agriculture in this valley, which is mainly alfalfa. But at FPCRFarm the production system is polycultural with concerns towards high desert annual, perennial, livestock, and wildlife living systems that provide resources for people to live healthy, vibrant, and creative lives: vegetables, fruit, dairy, meat, eggs, herbs, medicine, timber, fodder, water, and sun.
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| Camping in the field. |
This farm is also a research facility for Hart-Mann as a living artistic experiment that is dedicated to the "Practice of Everyday Life" (de Certeau) as it is related to ecology, agri-Culture, creativity, and agency.
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| Feast Map, dialogic wayfaring map of the garden, food, menu, and collaborative groups on the Land Arts Cook Tent. |
Hart-Mann led a tour of the garden and farm. Then the group circled to work through a design charet of how to use resources on the farm to design, produce, and distribute a feast within Land Arts.
Students pointed out aesthetic relationships between food resources and then slowly put these together to come up with recipes. Teams formed around the recipes and a consensus was determined with the objective for the evening menu. Teams harvested, prepared, and served an amazing feast of Goat Pumpkin Stew, Vegetarian Pumpkin Stew, Roasted and Goat Cheese Stuffed Green Chile, Spinach Salad, Tomato/Cucumber Salad, Homemade Corn Tortillas, and Amaranth/Alfalfa Tea.
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| Emily preps Candy Roaster and Chitra makes Amaranth/Alfalfa Tea. |
The following day Land Arts began preparing for the next stage of this collaborative adventure. This involved participating in "SeedBroadcasting" and creatively investigating the relationships between food, agri-Culture, and seeds through artistic forms of engagement, participation, collaboration, pedagogy, story sharing, and performativity. In this, we would be working together at the public event, Gathering for Mother Earth, at Pojoaque Pueblo.
SeedBroadcast is a collective project led by Jeanette Hart-Mann and Chrissie Orr and it has its seed roots at FPCRFarm. Seed saving is a primary investigation at Hart-Mann's farm with an eye on creativity, mutation, diversity, adaptability to climate change, and community based regenerative power systems that challenge the proprietary and homogenizing structures of industrial agriculture.
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| Jeanette Hart-Mann talks about SeedBroadcast and the Mobile Seed Story Broadcasting Station |
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| SeedBroadcasting at Gathering for Mother Earth. Photo: Andre Liptay |
Students joined SeedBroadacst as project collaborators, hosting the seed SWAP table, recording seed stories, facilitating the interior library of the van, and adding good cheer and humor. Students jumped right in and helped visitors look at seeds, find information, and most importantly share a genuine conversation about seeds, food, farming, gardening, agency, and creativity. They also walked around the event and recorded some amazing seed stories.
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| Land Arts Students help set up the SeedBroadcast site at the event. |
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| Land Arts student, Randal Romwalter engages the public at the seed SWAP table. |
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| SeedBroadcast seed SWAP table with seeds, drawing materials, and free agri-Culture Journals |
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| Land Arts student Liz Shores listens to a visitor share her story inside the Mobile Seed Story Broadcasting Station |
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| Land Arts students drawing seed pictures and discussing the days event. |
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| Land Arts students, Andre Liptay and Marz Shuster, get ready to record Alan Sutherland |
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| Land Arts students, Chitra Sangtani and Emily Gonzales record a seed story from Jennie Luna about amaranth |
Seed Stories were shared about seed saving, old-time agriculture and life on the pueblo, desires about the future of food and people power, artistry and seeding generosity, gardening, old seeds, new seeds, and hope through the germination of local grassroots agri-Culture. After the event students learned on-the fly audio production skills and we edited all the seed stories. These can be found at the Seed Story Broadcast site:
https://soundcloud.com/seedbroadcast. More information about this project can be found at:
www.seedbroadcast.org
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| SeedBroadcast, Land Arts, and special guest Bill Fox from the Center for Art and Environment |
