Grain School 2021 starts this weekend
For all of you who have attended Grain School in past years down in Colorado Springs at UCCS, you know I'm talking about and I am just preaching to the choir. This absolutely transformational gathering is one of the deepest dives into higher education for farmers, bakers, food makers and community builders. The friendships that I have made there over the years have forged some of the strongest bonds I've made in recent times with folks from near and far that have a common interest in healing the planet, nurturing the soil, baking for biodiversity and flavor and nutrition and a whole lot more.
This year of course everything will be held online. There are a variety of ways to attend including a free public forum tomorrow from 10 am - 2 pm. Listen to the beautifully poetic Rowen White speak about seed saving, hear Liz Carlisle on healing our land and communities, and be in the presence of the great Bob Quinn as he talks about adaptive dryland farming practices and employee ownership. Bob been trialing dryland tomatoes and watermelons up in Montana if you can believe that.
Last night I fell asleep listening to one of Rowen's recent talks with her words in my ears that had me waking up early today inspired and elevated about our ancestry that is encoded in our seeds, our humanity.
Here's some beautiful words from Martín Prechtel on seeds;
"In some forgotten part of all of us there yet towers the roofless ruins of a tiny neatly made earthen timber palace, of an unconscious memory in whose thick walls these amazing ancestors have left for us to find, a pot of precious seeds, indigenous seeds of still viable knowledge, and living vitality, seeds that could re-sprout into view. The organic articles of the original treaty that we humans promised long ago to uphold between ourselves and the natural world when we began to cultivate seeds and her plants and animals through agriculture. Mudded into the forgotten ramparts of our indigenous souls, these seeds of how humans are meant to live have passed down unnoticed like spiritual recessive genes in our souls from grandparent to grandchild through millennia waiting for each generation to consciously rediscover them, replant them into welcoming ground and cultivate once again into view a livable, viable array of ritual seed culture worth descending from."
Here's a link to register and for more information on Grain School this year: https://outreach.uccs.edu/grain
Witness this beautiful song and video work by Raye Zaragoza. Her songs were featured in the amazing new film Gather.