Kitchen Kwento

On Farming and Saturn's Return

All things move in cycles. 

"So, where is your farm?" I am sometimes asked. "I don't have one," I reply. 

At times the response is simply, "Oh." Or, "Why don't you get one yet?" Or, especially if the questioning is from relatives, "Then why did you spend all that time doing that organic farming thing?" which I translate as, why didn't you do something sensible with your time...but at least now you're back from gallivanting. 

I get where the questioning comes from. But I also get it when I catch a wistful tone from those who share half-whispered dreams. Of being unsure how they got to where they are now, of feeling misplaced, of questioning their current job or city or town. Of not being 100% sure what that change would look like, but knowing there's this thing nibbling at the corners, and it isn't satisfied with crumbs.

A hunger for connection is a powerful motivating force. For me, two seasons of farming were driven by an early calling since childhood, a desire to physically practice reverence, and to learn the basics of what ancestors up until two generations ago knew how to do. It opened up new goals, while closing off other possibilities. 

In my current reality, at times I feel a tension bordering on sadness. My rural soul half-hungers in this beautiful city, so alive with stories and sound yet where green life must find its way pushing up through sidewalks, on rooftops and inside planter beds.

When I am quiet enough to listen, though, lessons from the farm are still there to be harvested. And I'm using them to help through tumult - that period of necessary growth between 27-30 commonly known as Saturn's Return:

Lesson: Break Open. The tiniest seed has the potential for tremendous growth. It requires breaking the shell and leaving behind smallness. Reaching true adulthood is not the smooth journey I thought it would be, just as germination isn't the end of ever-accelerating change. The next step is to harden off and to leave the greenhouse for good. It means planting roots into the harsh reality of the field, and to endure and grow through the forces of wind, air, rain, pests, disease, and blazing sunlight.

Lesson: Plan for Harvest. Plans inevitably change and adapt, but there is no harvest without a plan. Plan well, like your hunger depends on. Feed it unrelenting care and persistence. Take stock, get real with what is and isn't possible, and wipe the slate clean of crops that didn't give a good past yield, even if they were a pretty idea at the time. 

Lesson: Face the Broken Places. These past two years have surfaced the uglies and the neglected places. Its lifted the curtain on obsolete habits, on the rusted and decayed things no one else can move out. While some things can be appreciated or even repurposed, for most its time to thank them for past use...and then take them out for recycling.  

Lesson: Make and Take Your Own Medicine. Plant medicine is labor intensive. It takes growing the plant, followed by multiple steps of harvesting, processing, straining, and jarring. Shortcuts fool no one and lead to a lesser product. If Saturn's Return is about taking stock of what hurts and is in need of healing, its also realizing there's no doctor, pharmacist or medicine in the house, simply yourself. 

Lesson: Flock. Exposing your foundation to all the elements can be lonesome. It has to be. But there is still a need to pause for warmth and companionship, even if its not romantic partnership. I have leaned so much on others in this phase, and especially on those who have survived the arc of their Saturn's Return into stronger, surer and brighter versions of themselves. 

More: 

I used to think Saturn's Return was woo-woo crap, but now that I'm in the thick of it, I can't stop talking about it. Natural cycles are the greatest teacher. There, we see constant change, see maturation, decline, and decay. We are a part of these cycles, and the small wrinkles that begin around our eyes, or the gray hairs that creep in, are only small external signs of vast, internal changes. I didn't even go into the many other farm metaphors, whether pruning (prioritizing), composting (death and transformation), or pest management (enough said).

Looking back at my first season, its no coincidence that many of the women were also between 26-31. These women weren't drifters - they came with a deep sense of purpose and questioning, some looking to make lasting change in their life trajectories, others to add on skills to heal their communities. All had put the pause on commitments - on jobs in nonprofits, as teachers, therapists, fundraisers, gardeners, in roles as partners, caregivers and mothers. Long-term relationships ended or were tested. While some are now working on farms or food justice related work, others have integrated the season in profound ways, gone on to school or to earlier work with a different reference point.

There's lots of info about Saturn's Return out there, some better than others, and so I'm not including any here. The curious can simply Google and click away. Or better yet: why not ask folks where they were in that period between 27-30?

Seeds of Inspiration: California's Prop 37

(Note: this piece was originally published on October 25 at Hyphen Magazine)

Angela Angel at work on "Free Our Seeds: Seeds Are Free." Photo by Robin David.

It was 1985: the era of Madonna, the Reagan administration, and the Millenials. It was also the year that the US Patent and Trademark Office first passed a patent allowing seeds and seed-bearing plants to be patentable. The generation born in that era would become witnesses to the rise of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), from the laboratory to the field to the grocery store.

Flash forward to 2012. Barely a week remains before California decides on the heated Proposition 37, a ballot initiative requiring the labeling of products containing GMO ingredients. As Hyphen blogger Nancy Wei explained, GMO critics are concerned about its impacts on health, farmers, agriculture, and the environment, and insist consumers have the right to make informed food choices. GMO products currently do not require labeling in the US, although many developed countries - including Japan, Taiwan, and the European Union - do.

No matter where people stand on the issue, Prop 37 is significant. It could send a ripple effect throughout California (called “America’s salad bowl” for the amount of fresh fruits and vegetables that are grown there), and into the rest of the country. Given its past, we can be sure that the GMO debate will continue beyond this initiative, no matter the outcome.

AAPI communities are woven deeply in the history of California’s food and agricultural landscape. So where do our communities stand on GMOs?

Growing up alongside the rise of GMOs is a new generation of Asian/Americans who claim a voice in the future of food. I spoke with Robin David and Angela Angel, two San Francisco cultural workers whose politically-infused artwork often touches on issues in the environment. Their most recent, eye-catching series “Free Our Seeds: Seeds Are Free” focuses on the danger to seeds, or what Angela calls “the nucleus of life.”

I’m noticing several of your recent pieces center around food and biotechnology. What inspired this?

Robin: We decided to prioritize food and land in our work. Our last project was on water, and our work tends to reflect the most pressing issues of the time. Both of us come from community organizing backgrounds. With the rising fight against agribusinesses such as Monsanto and Syngenta, we decided our theme for this latest series would be seeds.

Angela: I've spent time in parts of the world where agribusiness mortally affects local communities. In India, I stayed with Adivasi cotton farmers as the farmer suicide rate climbed by the thousands. I lived in Mexico and witnessed how the rise of corn prices, and the monopoly of corn produced for ethanol instead of for food, affected tortilla prices. Living outside of the States helped me see just how these decisions directly affect the people.

What do you see as your role in connecting people, and in particular, AAPI communities, with farming and food issues?

Angela: All peoples came from a land-based society. So everyone should be involved with food! Food is one of our most intimate relationships in several interconnected directions. I realized from a very young age that I wanted an intimate relationship with my food. It's basic, but the world is so fast and disconnected that this simple relationship has been strained. With our most recent piece about corn, I've realized how profound the cycle I have with corn is: I grow it. I eat it. I make art out of it. I fight for it. As the Maya embody: "We are people of the corn."

Robin: My dad grew up in a farm. Many Filipino/Americans like us come from a lineage of farmers, who tilled the land and produced the food on their plates. Here in America, where farming is not encouraged, we have lost that intuition, that labor of love, that control and awareness of where our food really comes from. I want us to remember that past, and imply that in our present.

GMOs are an especially heated issue right now, especially in California. If you had just one sentence to express your feelings about GMO labeling of foods, what would you say?

Robin: I want to know what I’m putting in my body!

Angela: I met this woman working on the Prop 37 campaign and she was wearing the best shirt. It said: "GMO OMG WTF are we eating?" 'Nuff said.

***

You can find “Free Our Seeds: Seeds Are Free” at Mama’s Art Café, 4754 Mission Street, San Francisco.
More AAPI Voices on GMOs and Prop 37 at SAAPISA
California Right to Know website

Seed Story

It's October. Welcome to 425+ years of Filipino American History. While reflecting on our community's legacies and connections to this land, we shed light on just how deeply this story is woven into the story of food and agricultural systems. This is true whether talking about the first Filipinos in the bayous, Alaskeros in the salmon canneries, to the struggles of farmworkers for dignity. That history, that story of connection, isn't over yet. 

A life, a plant, a story, a meal begins with a seed.

Last week, I was invited to lead a seeds lesson to 2nd and 3rd grade classes. While preparing the lesson, I felt surprisingly nervous, more than if I was going to address a room full of young adults. I knew this wouldn't be the time to get into topics like Monsanto and agribusiness, the benefits of sustainable farming, seedsaving, or the current debate around the right to know campaign on GMO foods.

How do you get to what a seed really is? How to touch its essence, and not define it by the complex issues surrounding it? This felt like turning a novel - a whole library, really - into a haiku.

So when I entered the classroom and faced 20 pairs of friendly eyes, I asked them to close those eyes for a minute and imagine a world without plants. To really imagine it. What would that world look like, smell like, be like? When they opened their eyes, they shared some of their ideas.

We couldn't breathe any air, said one girl. Everything would be dry and nothing would be green, added a boy. There would be no flowers. There would be nothing for us or the animals to eat. (Later, we talked about how even our clothes are from plants - many of us were wearing cotton). I heard this one repeated often: we need the plants to make our earth more beautiful.

I asked them who could tell us what a seed is, what it does. "A seed is the part of the plant that grows into another plant." And what does a seed need to grow? So many eager hands shot up. They knew: air, water, space, good dirt, and sunlight.

We talked about the seeds we knew and loved to eat. They named fruits like kiwi, and dishes like refried beans and rice.  Jars full of seeds to smell and touch were passed around the circle, full of red rice grains, millet, multicolored heirloom corn, bright lentils and whole, sweet-smelling vanilla pods.

At the end of the day, reorganizing the little jars of seeds, I couldn't help but think about the adult world outside this school classroom. How we get ourselves so confused at times. It's trite, but talking with the very young is perhaps the most potent reminder of what adults need to be reminded of. There is so much noise we either cut through or get caught in. I wondered:

To the boy who answered that seeds are the things that grow into other plants - what would he think if he later learns that some seeds have been engineered so the plants do not produce viable seeds?

To the kids who said seeds simply need good dirt, sunlight, space, water and clean air - what would they think about agriculture that leans on artificial fertilizers and pesticides, and poisons people and those very things needed to survive?

The truth is that if we do not shift course from where things are now, in a major way, that reality will continue and is exactly what they will inherit. The youngest and most vulnerable of our society see and know the simple truths. We owe the best we can do to restore and protect the promise of seeds.

More on Seeds:

Prop 37 Info
Bitter Seeds movie
Native Seeds/SEARCH

We Are Already Here

He wanted to apple galettes. Our farmstand only offered strawberry, and I told him so. "But I want apple," he insisted. It could have been a light bantering over fruit, in season or not, yet the exchange felt tense. His next words were the ones that got under my skin.

"You're not from around here, are you." It was a statement. He was a tall, middle-aged White male, with salt-and-pepper hair and a plaid shirt, and he looked me up and down in a way I didn't like. "No, you definitely are not from around here. I mean, obviously." He laughed. "You must be one of those programs, one of those students who visit from the city," he said, as though to remind me who I am.  

The thing was, I already knew exactly who I am. It's true I wasn't from here - here being small town Pescadero, at one of a patchwork of farms lining the windswept coast south of San Francisco. And as an ally to youth, I wouldn't take offense at being mistaken for one myself. What was tired, though, was the underlying questioning of presence I've encountered in spaces that White peers do not. In these small interactions there is a nuance of meaning. As though it's surprising to see a brown girl on an organic farm. 

This questioning goes hand-in-hand with another question I've heard before in the mainstream food movement. Well, where are the people of color? Where are the Asian Pacific Islanders? The Pinoys? Where are the__(fill in the blank)__? How do we get them to join?

The truth is, we are already here. We have been here, tending the soil, defending the land, saving seeds, watering roots, leading campaigns, struggling for the family farm, and bringing in nets of fish. The irony is that so many generations of knowledge, perseverance, leadership, and suffering of folks of color are the foundation of food systems in the United States, yet could ever be unseen or forgotten.

So to the questioning - why are you here? or why aren't you? - I think, "Reflect. Respect. Look again."

More:
Filipino/American Farmworkers and the Watsonville Riots
Brown Girl Farming: highlights the stories of farmers and food leaders of color
The Color of Food: Applied Research Center

2012 Is In the Details

Happy New Year. I spent the first day of 2012 in the sky, waking and dozing over the restless Pacific. Hours of darkened skies transformed into dawn just as the plane shouldered into Manila. Now I write from my parent's quiet home, awake with jetlag yet soothed by the night song of crickets.

2011 was a year as full of movement as the ocean itself. So many changes touched all corners, from the personal to global, the tiny to the immense, the political to the ecological. The winds of change are blowing and the earth is rumbling. I don't believe in doomsday but how I do believe in transformation. 2012, the year of the dragon, promises to be a year of even greater movement.

In the Kitchen Kwento universe, I look back with gratitude for events like the Kulinarya competitions, a Filipino farm and food gathering, sharing stories with The Filipino Channel. Within all of them, the lessons I've learned are that the simple act of food and gathering are among the most essential in the world we live in. I hold fast to these as an anchor to stay grounded, sane and optimistic.

So for 2012, I want to add another resolution that is more of a reminder than a to-do. I want to remember that it's ok to slow down at times even as the world speeds up, and take notice of the details. I don't want to forget to savor, and allow time to reveal those slow honeyed moments.

And what are these? To stop and smell the fragrance of fried garlic rice. To take joy in the pleasure of ink-and-paper letters. To halve dragonfruits and watermelon radishes and chiogga beets for their hot pink astonishment. To see for the first time there are hearts in the papaya bark of my parent's garden. 

I wish you a 2012 of beautiful details, happiness, and peace.

More:
N is for New Year's Abundance
Support Mindanao's Families Affected by Typhoon Sendong
Ground Theory's Travelogue from the Philippines 

Farm + Filipino + Food

A farm gathering of real food love.

When I first left the Bay Area to farm in Santa Cruz, I hoped to take back tools to communities of color, and in particular Filipino/Americans, who have been disconnected from our foodways. I imagined the ways to document this journey: twitter, email, pictures, this blog. But as the season closed, I realized I didn't want to just bring back tools, or photos, or words to the city.

I wanted to share something you could touch and taste and feel. Being on the land itself is the journey, so why not share that? I invited some folks with a deep love for the future of Filipino foods to come over to find out what kinds of flavors and conversations could emerge. The results? A delicious and thought-provoking gathering. (And yes, I'm sorry I couldn't invite you, too)

Cindy Mendoza's roasted tomatoes w/bagoong and heirloom Philippine rice

The instructions were simple: bring a Filipino/American dish with at least one seasonal ingredient and a story behind it. Our potluck was a balancing act. Some cooks replicated remembered dishes, keeping ingredients intact to those remembered from lola. Others reinterpreted dishes, with vegetables suited to a northern California climate and salt from the tropical coasts of Pangasinan. From banana-wrapped sisig, salted egg and heirloom tomatoes, to vegan bagoong, to sweet-sticky biko with fragrant latik, our potluck of food and stories was both rich and colorful.

Dennis' banana leaf wrapped sisig, cherry tomatoes and rice.

I couldn't wait to share delicata sa gata. It's my favorite winter squash.

Latik-topped biko from Jun Belen. Photo by Joanne Boston.

Like the potluck itself, this gathering was abundant and diverse - we had food bloggers, chefs, filmmakers, and educators, and the youngest of our up-and-coming next generation. I felt excited and proud to show off my baby ampalaya and patola seedlings. The group seemed to really connect with the concept of seed-saving, as we entered the greenhouse full of drying tecomari and Hopi beans. In the orchards, we scooped up fallen green-skinned Mutsu apples to later press for cider. The kids harvested yellow wax beans and took their pick of carrots pulled straight out of the soil. 

On the soil, where it all begins.

Sharing food and stories grounds us back to the land and back to each other. I was reminded how even for those of us who living in cities, we are still never impossibly far from eating in ways rooted to the seasons and the earth.  And as I watched the kids race around feeding chickens, and pressing apples into sweet juice, it reminded me there are so many possibilities for the future.

More:

Jo Boston is a Foodie's post includes pictures of our farm fresh picnic
Adrien Salazar at Ground Theory writes on Fil/Am History Month and visiting the Farm  
FilAm Nation cross-posts video on The Filipino Channel at the farm! 

Check out the sites connected with some of the awesome folks who made the trip. I may be missing a site, so do let me know!

Leroid David
Jo Boston is a Foodie
Jun-Blog
Mercury Lounge
Ground Theory
Kay Cuajunco
kapamealya
inuyaki
Aimee Suzara
Best Pesto
Asian Culinary Forum
Jim Espinas
Angela Angel
Filipino/American Coalition for Environmental Solidarity

Farm Fresh And On Adobo Nation

Flashback to three weeks ago. I received a letter from the Filipino Channel asking if they could visit the farm in Santa Cruz where I apprentice. They were interested in showing Adobo Nation viewers what a sustainable farm could look like. Would I be willing? Siyempre!

The morning of filming, I met the friendly Racquel and crew of two in the parking lot. As they pulled out sleek cameras, tripods, and gear, I realized I was still clutching a wet cilantro box and thought how people should really do things like clean their nails, wear makeup, etc. if they are going to be on TV. Well...

 

The can-do crew toured the farm for 3 hours, walked paths wet with last night's rain, admired bell peppers (did you know there is NO SUCH THING as a ripe green bell pepper?), the solar shower (that didn't make the segment), and my not-so-fresh tent cabin (that did). They somehow positioned us to sit on buckets and chat as naturally as possible while school field trips unfolded around us. I felt very fortunate to hear some of the crew's personal stories on farms, farmworkers, and what organic could mean to our communities, and I only wish I could've turned the lens back on them.  

With fellow farm apprentice and master baker, Jonathon Wu!

I would like to think I lost my fear of public speaking after being torn apart and glued back together by the honesty of young children. But yeah, I was nervous. It was an out-of-body experience to go from the daily work to talking about it, and I heard myself scraping for words. Who was I to say anything about farming? How to talk about irrigation in a non-nerdy way and without words like "goof plug"? 

Big smiles from Emily and Joanna, CASFS '11, as they box up hundreds of butternut squash

If I had one wish, it is that segment could've kept the message about how the sustainable food movement stands on the shoulders of elders and cultures that traditionally have always taken care of the land. But overall, how cool is it that The Filipino Channel wants to address sustainability in its programming?

While the mainstream may not perceive Asian Americans as being at the forefront of the environmental movement, in California 83% of Asian American voters identify as environmentalists, compared to the state's overall 52%. Asian American farmers and growers are sowing organic crops, choosing traditional varieties, and CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) models, as the old school way and not simply to ride a newer wave. We are a vibrant part of the movement for ecological sustainability.

I'm very thankful to have had a chance to meet the wonderful folks of Adobo Nation, and to share a little slice of the farm. TFC crew, if you are somehow reading this, maraming salamat po! 

More: Adobo Nation has a range of programs, from features on the culinary arts, to interviews with youth workers. The crew mentioned an earlier feature on the history of Filipino farmworkers in Stockton, which I'm now going to search through their archives for. If you find it first, please post the link!

Z is for Zenith. The Farm In Pictures.

        Farm sunrise. When the world feels both new and old.

In three weeks, I will pack up one corner of a wood-and-canvas tent, my little nest for sleeping on the CASFS Santa Cruz farm. I will turn out my pockets to leave behind unwanted seeds, shake fine dust off of fleece blankets, and pull maps and photos off the walls. I will leave a part of myself behind here, in newly shaped beds and seeds taking root. My body will be marked, too, in the tiny, tough callouses on my palms, skin a deeper shade of brown, and fading scars that tell a story of wild blackberries.

In three weeks, six months of a farm apprenticeship will come to an end. There will be a mad exchange of phone numbers and recipes and goodbyes as 46 farm apprentices disperse back into the world, returning to home communities and waiting family or charting out new paths. That time will come. But not yet.

"Zenith" is the word that comes to mind. I am still riding on an abundance of greens, corn, carrots, onions, and more. I am still here, a sole Filipina on this one piece of land, feeling my feet plant into the soil and uprooting many more questions and emotions than I can act on, and so simply hold.

Seasons are turning. I claim a moment of stillness, knowing that soon there will be an inevitable change with the start of autumn. From this vantage point, I will share a snapshot of the past months in pictures:

In the beginning, there was cover crop. Lots of it.

This was the first picture I sent home to the parents.

Morning feels good in these hills and mountains.

Readying the soil.

Before this farm, I had never seen such an ocean of lettuce.

Tomatoes and peppers in the hoophouses


In the springtime we picked jewel-like currants.


On harvest mornings, we follow a game plan.

CSA (community supported agriculture) members pickup boxes of produce.

We saw these apples turn from buds to blossoms to slowly ripening fruits.

Some of them became delicious sweet apple pies.

A rainbow of corn.                                     

Touring friends and good folks from the Bay Area.

Patience for winter squash in the fields. They grow even as the leaves slowly senesce.

The harvest moon shone so bright.

X is for Xylem

 
Xylem: ushering the flow between roots and shoots

Two hundred and one, two hundred and two...we stood at the tail end of a line of balikbayans and red-lettered cardboard boxes jammed with gifts at the San Francisco Philippine Airlines kiosk. Even on a weekday night, this line to Manila was the most bustling of them all. As I etched my parent's Philippine address onto luggage tags, I reflected on how their return to the homeland has deeply changed our family story. This airport, this passage between here and there, embodies our family's story of two worlds. Somehow, in the movement of bodies, passports, pasalubong (gifts), embraces, through currency and translation, we had learned to build, mend and stretch a family line across the Pacific Ocean.

When I hear about Pin@ys like me in the States learning to connect to tradition, I usually hear this is about searching for roots. "Know your roots." "Be proud of your roots.""Don't be ashamed of your roots," they say. But proudly acknowledging roots is one move; embodying them, carrying them, and keeping them alive is yet another.

In the plant world, I've seen how something will survive only if the whole is nourished. Roots, stem, leaves, flower, bud - life is resilient but they all depend on the soil, sun and air that surround them. I ask what lessons plants could have for a human family, for a culture and tradition like ours living in diaspora.

To stay alive, to deepen our groundedness into the 21st century, we must go beyond the surface, go even beyond digging those proverbial roots. There must be a channel through which that sap, that nourishment can continue to flow. In Western biology, this channel is called xylem - the planet's literal veins that carries water and sap to leaf, bud and new growth. In the world I live in, this channel is called ancestor, teacher, recipe, song, and story.

The time to part finally came. All around us a hundred movies and a hundred stories unfolded. Couples embraced their goodbyes, while solo flyers put on a fixed expression, readying themselves for the next thousand miles. We, too, were our own little movie, and waved hands at each other through the glass security windows until we couldn't see each other any longer.

W is for Water is Life

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Water flows. Garrapata Trail, Big Sur, California.

Last Friday, I left the to spend the night one hour south, in Big Sur. It felt good to sleep in a cozy hotel space, even as it felt a little odd to my body now growing accustomed to sleeping in the darkness of the farm. Our hotel room was stocked with mini soaps, scented shampoos, soda cans and lotions. Consumer conveniences. By the white sink a little plastic sign read: Water Is Precious on the California Coast, Use Wisely. If you wish to reuse your towel, place on the towel rack.

Water is precious, it's true. But I wondered if this language also reflects a broken relationship to water in this industrialized nation. What does it say about a nation when water is treated as just another amenity, there for use like a towel? For those with the resources to use water at will, there appears to be an option of choosing to respect it and protect it. For those who thirst, whose water is stolen or degraded or polluted, water means the difference between life and death.

This question rises in me while on this farm. This June, my farm apprenticeship rol focuses on irrigation. I feel like a water spider, navigating a web of drip tape, oscillators and gauging soil moisture, charged with balancing the flow of water the needs of the plants. There is beauty in the process and I feel a reverence watching crops respond to the presence of water. Bare beds full of seed transform to a mist of pale green. Baby plants raise fledgling leaves to the sun and slowly lengthen. Squash flowers bloom and fatten beneath hand-shaped leaves. There are many subtleties. Too little water equals death. Too much watering can drown. The lives of plants, the possibility of food, all depend on water.

Water is life. How often does it go unseen in its liquid journeys through root, leaves, and fruit, through sky, cloud, river, rain, and sea? Through dams and reservoirs, pipelines, bottles and sewers, through tailing ponds, storm drains, and human sweat and tears?

When we protect water, when we change relationship from use to one of respect, we protect life.

Water Is Life: there are many powerful grassroots groups leading efforts to defend, honor and protect the water and waterways we all share and depend on. Here's a few...

Keepers of the Athabasca
Cook Inletkeeper
Black Mesa Water Coalition
Bridge the Gulf

V is for Voyage to the Root

Farm thoughts...One month on this farm has moved like water. I can see the passage of time in the fields: once lush with cover crops, they are now open brown earth dotted with tiny lettuces, fuzzy tomatillos and peppers. The piercing scent of lemon blossoms is fainter than I remember that first day. Yellow citrus hangs low to the ground, and apple buds slowly fatten and blush. The moon, too, returns to full.

I try and fail to explain what it feels like to be here, on a farm in Santa Cruz, moving into a new rhythm. I know I cover less miles (geographically) in a day than city life, but enter into that day more deeply. It is a grounding thing to wake with the sun, to feel callouses grow on my palms and push seedlings into soil. But I also feel a different kind of groundedness, an unmeasurable ache of sadness and gratitude when I bend to the earth.

When I touch this rich earth, I remember faces and stories from across the years, many of them far from the hills of Santa Cruz. I remember the red hardpan of Kaho'olawe, sacred soils bombed by the US military and slowly returning to life as the people bring hope, water, and ceremony. I remember Pangasinan, my mother's province, the taste of milkfish and mangoes, and how I feel both connected and always foreign to that land. I reflect on the struggles of brown-skinned farmworkers past and present on California's soils, and how my experience here as an apprentice living on an organic farm is by far cushy, privileged.

I came here to take away tools - from drip irrigation, pruning, pest management, how to propagate, how to double dig a bed. But I also feel a weight on this experience. I look for more faces like mine in spaces lilke these. Deep inside, I bristle at "organic" even as it is in line with my beliefs, because I know "organic" and "sustainable" is not new or a concept invented in the First World, but a way of life lived by my ancestors, by all ancestors.

The season is changing. I feel another voyage taking place...and as I look for guidance, I look back to the stories that take me back to the roots.

U is for Under the Cover Crop

 

For things to live, something must also die. I savor the ocean of ebony and ivory blooms, knowing soon they will be gone. Good food is rooted in good soil, and cover crops are a co-creator. They help to pluck nitrogen from the air and with their bacterial partners, bring this richness down to earth. Later, in their own time, they are cut down by the farmer to nourish the soil.

The same soil beneath these trembling leaves and flowers could grow winter squash, garlic, or okra for a potful of pinakbet. But the earth must also be fed so we can feed ourselves. I silently thank the bell beans for readying the ground, and swing a machete through the luscious green stems.

T is for Tools of the Trade

It's the end of my first full day on the farm at Santa Cruz. My hands are a bit roughened but satisfied by the first visceral task of a farm apprentice: preparing the tools of the trade.

 

Fork and spade. While I've certainly gardened before, I received my new tools in half-awe like a kid using pens for the first time. I wanted to enjoy the newness of a moment that wouldn't come again.

Tools in hand, today I learned the ready-bought shellack coating the wood is more suited for home gardening than farming. Intended for protection, the coat causes the tool to eventually crack after long use and exposure to the elements. The wood endures best over time if it can breathe...much like people, it seems.

We laboriously scraped off shellack by hand, strip by strip, sanded it down until smooth, and rubbed the bare wood with linseed oil. It took me over 2 hours to prep my tools, and I was tempted at times to leave it half-finished. But I realized, why shortchange the process? Why leave a task undone, as though someone else will do it for me, or it will do itself? It was surprising to see my patience wear thin at a repetitive task for a tool that, with good care, could help to grow food for a lifetime. When I finally finished removing the coat, and sharpening the spade until it could cut clean through a blade of grass, it felt good.

It made me reflect on how the tools of the trade - any trade - are living things. I thought of my father, a doctor, and the meticulous way he'd care for his hands - vessels of healing more so than the stethoscope or the scalpel. I recalled the sharpening of chef knives, of polishing and storing, not just for practicality but also pride. I remember how our kumu hula, dance teacher, would guide the hula troupe to prepare gourd drums, harvest ferns and flowers for lei instead of buying them, and urge us to become familiar with the dance implements like they were family. And I remember watching a musician tune a guitar with a distant look in her eyes, seeking just the right note.

These relationships of knowing defy the throwaway culture now prevalent in the US. Things that last a lifetime have become foreign, and instead we face an endless parade of iPads, cellphones and disposable commodities that promise to be better, faster, smaller, more convenient...and instead have short lifespans, becoming obsolete far too quickly and out of reach for many.

Heirlooms are not only diamonds and gold. Maybe one day I will pass on to a grandchild a well-worn spade and fork, burnished with years of working the soil. I will tell her these are hers to use and they are good for growing food.

N Is for New Year's Abundance

I greeted 2011 surrounded by a riot of color, taste, and sound. From the rainbow-hued wet market, the tartness of green mangoes, to the fiery scent of exploding firecrackers, the new year began with an overwhelming sense of abundance.

So much beauty surrounds us. With that, three glimpses of New Year's from the Philippines:

Mahogany Market, Tagaytay City. An edible forest of bananas tower in green, gold, and orange-yellow.

 

My spirit is fed in returning to roots. In Pangasinan, my mother's home province, the land shimmers with emerald rice fields, fish ponds jumping with bangus, salt fields, and a hundred family stories.

Nasugbu, Batangas. I love the quiet invitation of the table - a place to gather, share food, and build rhythm at the beginning and end of the day.

There's More:

Generations of Filipino Vendors at Mahogany Market

Undermining Abundance - the Big Business of Creating Scarcity

Manila Man and Bananas

L is for Lupa

Waipi'o Valley: taro paddies and muddy ankles remembered.

There is nothing like a lake in midsummer. The first baby step into Lake Del Valle was all warm, coffee-colored waters swirling gently. In the second step, all the mud of a drowned valley swallowed my feet. Diving in and escaping to deeper waters was necessary.

Floating on my back, I smelled smoky summer BBQs, tasted lake water tinged with lupa (earth), and dreamed. Funny how those earth-tinged California waters took me back to other rich, fertile lupa on the Big Island, Hawai'i, and a place I have not touched for years but which haunts me still.

The sweet fragrance of Waipi'o rises up from the valley floor. As a youth, I was blessed to spend a summer night in Waipi'o hosted by Native Hawaiian aunties and uncles who continue traditional taro farming. I learned how much like Filipinos, Hawaiians living in their own homelands must struggle for self-determination. In keeping alive the root of Hawaiian foods, they also keep alive ancestral ways of life for future generations.

Linking earth, water and sky: taro, gabi (Tagalog), kalo (Hawaiian)

We stepped barefoot into the taro paddies, called lo'i kalo in Hawaiian. The mud surrounded my toes and ankles a warm, smooth second skin. As the hot sun beat down and heart-shaped leaves fluttered around us, we harvested taro and surrendered to the rhythm of the Valley.

Nothing was wasted. We learned how the thick green stalks were saved to be planted again into the earth and grow again. Water diverted from the river slowly flowed through the lo'i and reconnected, just as clear as before. No artificial fertilizers were added, and the river was not starved, a stark contrast to conventional agriculture. After washing the thick mud from the taro and our bodies, we spent hours preparing the taro, later filling our bellies with a feast of freshly pounded poi and leaf-wrapped lau-laus.

That night, belly satisfied, I listened to the rain patter onto the tin roof, the same waters that had flowed through the paddies, into the ocean, and now returned to the island. I slept, filled with gratitude for the gift of our hosts for sharing their home and a meal deeply rooted in the land.

A Little More:

Taro: The Roots of Hawaiian Culture

Save the Banaue Rice Terraces, Save Filipino Heritage

The Deeper Meaning of Food

F is for the Filipino American Farmer

Filipino farmers in the asparagus fields of Stockton, California. Image from Little Manila Foundation.

Four years ago, I was asked a question I still seek the answers to. "When was the last person in your family a farmer?"

I didn't know what to say...and felt a little ashamed. Sure, I loved reading Carlos Bulosan's America is in the Heart. I chose produce from farmer's markets, not just because they tasted good but because the food came directly from a person, from a place. But I never heard stories of our family's farming history, and conversely, never asked. All I knew was my family's "white collar" history of immigration - how my parents, my titas and titos had crossed the Pacific as nurses, technicians, and teachers. It felt like a kind of amnesia. Who were - or are - the family farmers?

While I may never learn the names of direct farmer ancestors, my life would not be the same without the legacy of farmers in this country and their experiences, struggles, and hard-won triumphs carved into the land. When I look at photos documenting the waves of Filipino farmers in the 20s and 30s, I see my grandparents and great-grandparents in their faces, and my heart rises.

From Seattle to Stockton, Waipahu, the San Joaquin Valley, to Fruitvale, Filipino farmers were among those who worked the earth, harvested apples, cut cane, built thriving communities, survived the spiritual pains of loneliness and racism, and shaped the long, beautiful, and painful history of this country. There are vital lessons to be learned from the Delano manongs, whose efforts united Filipino and Mexican agriculture laborers and birthed the UFW movement, to farmers in the Philippines, where rapid climate change is ravaging crops and people, and many work without owning the land they till.

I've found a little thread that ties my family to farming. Before our lolo (grandfather) became a pilot in WWII, he studied agriculture. His family line, my mother's side, grew mangoes, cacao, rice, and raised fish, and I had the chance to visit those fields and fishponds with my mother. It's small, but it is a beginning. There is more to uncover, reclaim and understand.

Looking deeper, I can only feel more respect for all farmers here at home. Their legacy is relevant to all of us - as people with Filipino roots, as Californians, as those who have ever eaten a peach or stalk of asparagus, as those connected to US history. We are part of this legacy.

More: there are amazing resources, organizations, on this rich history past and present. Please suggest more to add to this list, look them up, and thank a farmer near you.

Little Manila Foundation 

Delano Manongs: Forgotten Heroes of the UFW

My Soil

Asian Farmers Organization

Poster from the multi-awarded "Romance of Magno Rubio," based on Carlos Bulosan's plays

D is for DNA circa 1980

Heirloom corn on the Native Seeds/SEARCH farm, Patagonia, AZ

Q: What's something that connects an ear of corn, a taro root, you and me?
A: DNA. Not just deoxyribonucleic acid, the inner blueprint, code, recipe for life. But DNA as a link of past to present, from what we eat to what we are, to what is seen and unseen. And its what some, including poet-activist John Trudell have reworded as "descendant now ancestor."

Yet from an entire ecosystem, to a living organism, down the molecular level, DNA has become a battleground and figures in the story of getting food and medicine from the farm (or forest) to the table.

I can vividly remember the summer of 2005 in Hawaii, and the protests at the UH Manoa campus to stop the proposed patent of taro, or kalo, a traditional crop and part of Native Hawaiian cosmology. Taro also figures deep in traditional Filipino foods (gabi) and across the Asia-Pacific. It took serious opposition from the community to lift the patent. But it still raised the question - how could any one person, corporation or institution "own" taro, whether in whole or in part? How can there be a patent on ancestral foods that have sustained countless generations - and are even what some consider a living ancestor?

How did we get here? In 1980 the US Supreme Court upheld the "patentability" of living matter. In basic terms, a patent would define companies or researchers as the "inventor" and the living thing or its extract subject to ownership. This opened a doorway to controversial issues of intellectual property rights, questions of profit, and a disturbing trend of research and extraction from biodiverse Global South and indigenous communities.

Writer, activist and physicist Vandana Shiva breaks this down:

Seed has been brought into monopolies. Cells have brought into monopolies. Genes have been brought into monopolies. Animals have been brought into monopolies...A seed cannot reproduce without permission of the patent holder and the company. Knowledge cannot be transmitted without permission and license collection. It’s rent collection from life. It’s rent collection from being human, and thinking, and knowing.

From the smallest level, there are big consequences for food and survival, where it comes from, who can grow it, and how we as a people can sustain ourselves. Let's support those who are protecting the living biodiversity and foods that link ancestors to descendants. Its a food heritage we are all connected to.

Some more on DNA and Food:

Filipino scientists devise system to stop biopiracy

Ricekeepers in Minnesota

In Motion Interview with Vandana Shiva

Taro patenting in Hawai'i

What would our great-grandma and great-grandpa eat?