Since I came back from Perú in 2006, for the most part I have been living in California, which is where I was born. I continue to be interested in agriculture and nature, and though I struggle sometimes to see how things here connect to what I learned in Perú, the projects that I film here do seem connected to my first impulse to examine organic agriculture (here and abroad) more closely.
A honeybee buries her head in basil.
Tierra Vegetables
In 2008 I met Lee James of Tierra Vegetables at the San Francisco Ferry Building Farmer’s Market, and since she had a wide variety of chilis, some of which came from Peruvian seed, I asked her what the chances were that a bag of seeds I had been given in Perú would grow. It had been two years since I received them as part of the Andamarcan tradition of sharing leftover seeds with people who have just helped you plant your terraces and seeds tend to deteriorate in quality so I was starting to worry about them a bit. She offered to plant them at Tierra which set off a flurry of learning and filming and driving to Sonoma County about once a month.
Bay Natives
Having a love of walking and looking, of birds and bugs, and of gardening, I also have an interest in native plants. Native plants are at once a broad and specific interest. If you are living in South Dakota and reading this page, you are not perhaps going to be very interested in the plants I might mention but you might be interested in the general notion of learning what used to live in the ecosystems you frequent and how you might contribute a little time and space to plants that native birds and bugs are specially adapted to using. I have the privilege of living in the Bay Area, which is particularly diverse and in which Paul Furman and Geoff Coffey operate a native plant nursery whose website I love to surf when I have an idle moment or two. I took a memorable walk with Paul, who is also a very talented photographer, on a bushwhack on San Bruno Mountain in June, looking for a couple of plants on a hillside covered in poison oak. The Trillium Hunt movie is the result of that hike.
Trillium chlorpetalum is typically a woodland plant, but this one was found in chaparral on San Bruno Mountain. Photo by Paul Furman.
California Plants and Farms
Since I came back from Perú in 2006, for the most part I have been living in California, which is where I was born. I continue to be interested in agriculture and nature, and though I struggle sometimes to see how things here connect to what I learned in Perú, the projects that I film here do seem connected to my first impulse to examine organic agriculture (here and abroad) more closely.
A honeybee buries her head in basil.
Tierra Vegetables
In 2008 I met Lee James of Tierra Vegetables at the San Francisco Ferry Building Farmer’s Market, and since she had a wide variety of chilis, some of which came from Peruvian seed, I asked her what the chances were that a bag of seeds I had been given in Perú would grow. It had been two years since I received them as part of the Andamarcan tradition of sharing leftover seeds with people who have just helped you plant your terraces and seeds tend to deteriorate in quality so I was starting to worry about them a bit. She offered to plant them at Tierra which set off a flurry of learning and filming and driving to Sonoma County about once a month.
Bay Natives
Having a love of walking and looking, of birds and bugs, and of gardening, I also have an interest in native plants. Native plants are at once a broad and specific interest. If you are living in South Dakota and reading this page, you are not perhaps going to be very interested in the plants I might mention but you might be interested in the general notion of learning what used to live in the ecosystems you frequent and how you might contribute a little time and space to plants that native birds and bugs are specially adapted to using. I have the privilege of living in the Bay Area, which is particularly diverse and in which Paul Furman and Geoff Coffey operate a native plant nursery whose website I love to surf when I have an idle moment or two. I took a memorable walk with Paul, who is also a very talented photographer, on a bushwhack on San Bruno Mountain in June, looking for a couple of plants on a hillside covered in poison oak. The Trillium Hunt movie is the result of that hike.
Trillium chlorpetalum is typically a woodland plant, but this one was found in chaparral on San Bruno Mountain. Photo by Paul Furman.