Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

Good to see you again. Wish we had known of the ceremony; we just moved near 
Abq. Native and Hispanic sharing seed after 400 years of bad blood is a sign 
of change in the world. Along that line I recommend 
http://www.nativeseeds.org/v2/default.php . Absolutely, dirt isn't everything 
- we just can't separate the study of soil from what we grow in it.  Hence, 
our two lists combined into Living On The Land.

Lynn is a friend from Placitas near Alcalde, who's making a difference with 
traditional water rights in NM, growing for market, and working with urban 
growers.


paul, tradingpost@riseup.net
---------------
The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our 
most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its 
renewal is our only hope.
   - Wendell Berry

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 3/25/2006 at 10:42 AM Lynn Montgomery wrote:

>Dear Paul,
>    Its refreshing to get beyond dirt. There are so many other aspects to
>farming and gardening. One is seeds. Two weeks ago, for the first time in
>centuries, Traditional Hispanic acequia parciantes, (farmers that have
>been growing crops here before the Pilgrims arrived), and Native
>Americans, especially local Pueblo ones, but from all over the Americas
>The purpose was to exchange seeds, perform ceremony to bless them, and
>sign a Declaration of Seed Sovereignty in Alcalde, NM. Alcalde is the site
>of a gathering in 1598 of Spanish settlers from the Oñate expedition and
>Pueblos to negotiate settlement sites, etc. Oñate went on to commit
>hideous acts against the Pueblos, which has bred bad blood since. The
>sacredness of our seeds brought us all together in solidarity.
>    Kent Wealey, the founder of the largest seed bank in the world, Seed
>Savers Exchange, encourages us to develop our own personal landraces, or
>strains, or genotypes. Most of us call them heirlooms. These heirlooms
>don't come about by accident. A well refined sense of observation is
>required, one that comes from close connection to the land and nature.
>Kent suggests that we plant hybrids and develop our own custom strains to
>fit our micro-environments and to select from the resulting chaos of the
>next generation. This might sound like blasphemy to some, but this is
>actually most insightful. Civilization is founded on such observations,
>Wheat, corn, and most modern cultivars had their beginnings here, and we
>can all benefit from practicing this most venerable of human traditions.
>Regards, Lynn
>
>"All we are given is possibilities - to make of ourselves one thing or
>another."
>  - Ortega y Gasset