TONIGHT, MAY 4
Sonoma, CA
Friday, May 4
5:30 - 6:30 pm
Reader's Books
127 E. Napa Street
SATURDAY, MAY 5
San Francisco, CA
2 - 3 pm
@ The Ferry Building, Market at Embarcadero
1 Ferry Building #42
hosted by Book Passage
with CUESA
MAY 4, 2007 -- After a great event in Boulder (many thanks to Boulder Going Local!) and busy days in Denver, we did manage to hit the area's first mid-week farmers' market. As always, we struck on something remarkable - simple be
ans infused with...history.
Abbondanza Organic Seeds & Produce work to produce locally adapted seeds and also offer a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program that delivers an incredible array of foods to its members. What caught our eyes were two baskets of dried beans: Indian woman, a yellow variety; and Cherokee, a purple. Both, it turns out, come from seed stock first brought to Colorado more than a century ago. The circumstances were tragic: the beans were carried by Cherokee dislocated by their forced removal from their traditional territories in 1838 - the western migration now known as the Trail of Tears. Some 4,000 Cherokee are thought to have died, mainly from disease in concentration camps established under the presidency of Andrew Jackson.
The beans tell a story, then, as so many local foods do. They are also a critical reminder that many of the indigenous peoples across the Americas were committed agriculturalists and cultivators - far from the simple "hunter and gatherer" sterotype that somehow lingers despite the conclusive evidence that disproves it.
I showed the beans to many of the people we met and spoke to in Colorado; few had ever seen them. The European local-food movement launched the slogan "Eat the View." Here's another banner to raise: Eat Your History. -JBM
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ans infused with...history.
