Here’s a peek at the design of their physical space, which is located at 10 Cargo Way.

And a reminder of how much I love them and why.

There’s a lot of discussion these days about innocence, and I confess I too have very strong opinions on the subject. In 2002 I was sexually assaulted on my way home from the post office. Last year the police tracked back DNA to a person who is serving time for another crime, and they contacted me so I could testify in front of a grand jury, and to see if I could ID the perpetrator in a photo lineup.

I traveled to New York City in the dead of winter, my least favorite time to be back East. I was suspicious I’d be a bad eye witness, though I was interested in the process. Among other reasons, I got to work ever so slightly on the book The Innocents by Taryn Simon, so I knew that sometimes people are convicted of crimes they haven’t committed. Also, it had been eight years since the crime had occurred and that’s a long time (though eye witnesses can make mistakes even within an hour, a day or a week).

Once in a room with photographs of eight men in front of me, my eyes went straight for one of the guys. Since this is a story about eyewitnesses, I can confess I can’t remember exactly where the guy was on the sheet of paper or anything about his features. What I do remember is that he had some skin condition—pimples or moles—little black specks on his face and I thought that seemed familiar. None of the other photos had that, and almost all the photos were darker, with dark backgrounds and less visible facial features. I doubt that the person who put the lineup together did that on purpose but it would be easy to set it up that way subconsciously.

The worst part, though, of the whole identification thing was how the detective revealed to me that the photo I’d picked out was exactly the photo he’d been hoping I’d choose. It wasn’t anything he said, but I knew I’d picked, well, right. Except that felt really wrong. And once the detective got excited it was over for me, because I could never again be sure that my mind was unclouded. What followed was fifteen minutes of insisting I wouldn’t sign anything. The detective argued with me, he left and he came back, he paced and he pleaded and I just couldn’t sign that paper, no matter how scary it was to say so, no matter how many times the detective told me, “You know, this is just a formality—we have DNA evidence!”

Back in 2002, after this all happened, I was carried through some pretty rough spots by my curiosity about the justice system. I had a hero complex for the lady detective assigned to the case, and I was happy to visit the sketch artist and sort through hundreds of beautiful old mug shots that could serve as models for this nose or these eyes. I suppose it’s okay to admit, now, that I walked out with a few of my favorites in front of the detective, no less. I think that last year, making my way to New York to revisit this crime, I was still curious about how this all works, and the more I found out, the more problematic it seemed.

Personally I’ve never understood the victims with bloodlust. I have only recently been angry at my attacker, and my anger is actually pretty mild, considering. I think this guy should be locked up for sure, because otherwise he’d just commit crime after crime. If another gracious lady had to rebuild herself after such an event as I did, it would be a shame and a horror. But I would hate it more to think that the wrong man was imprisoned as his time alive on this beautiful earth slipped away. I would be utterly haunted if the man was put to death.

After:

Matt hadn’t heard about Russian dogs commuting by subway before.

Honestly, I am not sure whose photos are whose from this day—Hannah and I were handing the camera back and forth. It was truly a lovely day spent in the Andes. More from this set here.

I’ll keep posting videos as Wayne sends me more images!

Tierra Vegetables barn foundation pour from The Seedling Project on Vimeo.

Hayloft experiments from The Seedling Project on Vimeo.

Our philosophy on food is that all leftovers should be rolled into the next meal (when practical, which is almost always). This philosophy makes it hard to share recipes because the recipes often span many days. However, our other philosophy is that you can substitute anything for anything else.

The smothered cabbage (sans risotto) was one leftover I recommend making the night before, as were the mushrooms: maitake, shitake, lion’s mane, chanterelle, and king trumpet, cooked individually in good olive oil/butter/beer per Alice Water’s mushroom instructions in The Art of Simple Food. That was what we had in the house, all of which needed to be used immediately for fear of committing the cardinal sin, wasting food. Whatever mushrooms you have in your house will be exactly right for this recipe.

Baked Pasta with Spicy Sauce (aka Pastítsio in the Greek)
serves 4-6

Tomato Sauce

• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 onion, chopped fine
• 2 garlic gloves, crushed and chopped
• 1 can tomatoes (we canned ours in the summer, hence above photo)
• 4 tbsp fresh parsley or another green, chopped
• 1 tbsp fresh greek oregano or other herb, chopped
• 1 tsp grated cinnamon (or powder)
• 1/2 tsp grated nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp muddled clove (or powder)
• cayenne or other chili pepper (we used Tierra’s Espelette powder)
• salt and pepper
• 8 oz. hollow macaroni or other short pasta

Heat the oil in a saucepan, add the onion and garlic and let them get soft (about 5 minutes). Add the herbs and the kale, and cook them until they are wilted, another 5 minutes. Add the tomatoes and bring the heat up until it’s bubbling, lower the heat again and let cook for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. While it’s cooking, boil salted water and cook the pasta as per the instructions on the package (until tender). Drain well and set aside.

Instead of meat

Meanwhile, assemble the thing you’ll use for a base—we used the smothered cabbage for the first layer and then the mushrooms, but we were very tempted to use spaghetti squash and caramelized onions instead. To make the smothered cabbage just follow this recipe. I can’t describe it any better. It does take 1.5 hours simmering on the stovetop, so I recommend doing it the night before, as I said above. To make the mushrooms put about 1 tbsp of olive oil and/or butter in a pan on medium-low heat, add some crushed garlic and a thinly sliced onion and once it’s soft, your chopped mushrooms. When the mushrooms are hot and wilted themselves you can pour in some beer or wine to deglaze the pan. Cook until the are delicious. Salt to taste.

Custard top

• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1 1/4 greek yogurt (or any kind)
• 2 oz. (or a hunk) of feta

Beat these all together, season with salt and pepper.

Whole thing

Now, assemble the pastítsio. In a large ovenproof dish add the base layer of smothered cabbage and mushrooms, or your leftover substitute. Next add the pasta layer, followed by the tomato sauce. Pour the cheese/egg sauce over the top, grate some parmesan onto it and put the entire thing into a preheated 375 degree oven for 30-45 minutes, until golden brown. Serve hot or warm, cut into portions.

The Tierra Vegetables greenhouse features excellent homebrew efficiencies like a rainwater collection system that is used to conserve water while keeping the greenhouse warm through the night, and rolling tables that maximize space. After the greenhouse, see the smoker, which has been in use for over twenty years. Featuring a cast of characters including brother and sister farmers Lee and Wayne James, greenhouse builder Montana Hartley, an Evie sighting, the dogs, Tierra customers, the Shetland sheep, a toad, a lizard, hummingbirds… etc. Music by Brightblack Morning Light. Edited by me!

Greenhouse and Smoker Tour from The Seedling Project on Vimeo.

The person I live with has had a bad bicycle accident and he must eat only soft foods. This has meant that I have cooked rather a lot of soup for the past four weeks. So far I haven’t even made it through the small soup section of Alice Waters’ The Art of Simple Food. I have learned from Alice many soup techniques, including starting with onions and not including too many ingredients. Definitely do not work very hard and the soup is bound to be delicious. The recipes I’ve especially loved are the corn chowder, spicy cauliflower, potato leek, gazpacho and squash with white beans. As a result of my pseudo apprenticeship to Alice via her book, I have been killing it in the soup department. It hardly even matters what ingredients we have.

Tonight I started with a red onion, some olive oil, a clove of elephant garlic, and rendered pig fat (Thank you JKS and Canida). For spice I threw in two peppers that were drying on our counter (whole), some turmeric and cumin. These slowly browned on low heat while I chopped up a big squash (with skin on but seeds out) and some potatoes. When the onions started to get loud (and run out of moisture) I splashed a little beer in there, then threw in the squash and the potatoes and a frozen container of chicken broth (homemade is best!). After the soup cooked a while and the squash was soft, we added a little course salt and our three-week sour milk. We buy raw milk and from what we understand, when it goes sour it’s actually a natural fermentation process that cannot happen with regular pasturized/homogenized milk and it is perfectly edible. My housemate blended the entire thing into a puree and then decorated our bowls with variations like hot sauce, chipotle sauce, yogurt, saurkraut and avocado. I recommend this meal very highly.

Images from Tierra Vegetables (spring 2010).

Winnowing fava beans in July from The Seedling Project on Vimeo.

Many of you know that I have been haunting Tierra Vegetables for over a year now, beginning with the handoff of my ten Peruvian bean seeds and continuing through harvest, planting, harvest again… Within the larger project of a movie about fava beans are contained a number of farm life vignettes, including this one about winnowing. Winnowing is the process of removing the bean husk from the dry beans (a process I read about as a kid scouring novels about life in the Old Days, but had never seen).

The amount of effort it takes small farmers to get their food to market is often greater than the effort expended by larger farmers, because of economies of scale. However, what is sacrificed in convenience is more than made up for by local expertise in growing, knowledge of human-sized time and energy saving techniques (compared with industrial-sized ones) and extensive variety of crops. The more time I spend around Tierra Vegetables the more I am impressed with the size of their vegetables, the flavor and quality, and their ability to feed all of us in a sustainable manner. Even the fan used in this vertical winnower is powered by solar panels on the farm stand roof.

I look forward to every trip I make to Santa Rosa to really see where my food is from, who is getting it to me, and how they do it.

Tierra Farms greenhouse, Healdsburg, Ca.

Last weekend I had the great pleasure of attending the Tierra Vegetables greenhouse-warming. All my favorite Tierra characters were there—Lee and the dogs, Zeni, Erica, Wayne and Evie (and their dogs), and a bunch of Tierra regulars I’d seen before. I also met Montana Hartley, greenhouse builder extraordinaire, and his two lovely daughters. I filmed Montana waxing poetic about the making-of and captured him quoting a line from a Kurosawa film he’d seen when he was a kid. While I was there I went down to look at the smoker, where all the delicious Chipotle peppers are cured (I ate some tonight in the form of Chipotle Hot Sauce No.2), and I saw a huge hummingbird-feeding operation and got some fabulous footage of the hummers at the troughs.

Lee's Shetland sheep—second oldest flock in the country.

As for the greenhouse itself, it is a wonderful piece of low-budget craftsmanship. The Tierra greenhouse has the look of a conservatory, or a church, but it is quite modern and was built on a shoestring. There are several great innovations, some very typical for greenhouses, like rolling tables you can push out of your way while watering that make great use of every warm inch of space. Then there are the rainwater caches that collect water coming from the roof and drain into big fifty-gallon drums connected by pipes. Rainwater is free, it’s superior to mineral-rich well water, and in the big barrels below the tables it serves as a thermal mass to keep young seedlings warm at night. The greenhouse also looks as though it were made out of glass, but it’s actually polycarbonate sheets, which withstand impact, insulate and are somewhat flexible. There’s also a wood stove (yet to have a chimney) and a water heater that runs hot water under the seed tables for some extra warmth when it’s time to coax little cotyledons out of their shells. To top it all off (ha, ha), there’s a spire on the top of the building! It’s a little thing, but that small detail is what  brings to mind grander buildings (and reminds me of the Agia Sophia, my favorite-ever house of worship).

After my Tierra tour, Erica led me down Chalk Hill Road to Pleasant Avenue to see Montana’s flower-stand operation and Tierra’s sister greenhouse. As a builder, Montana is really top notch in the imagination department. Where Tierra’s greenhouse is a conservatory, the Hartley greenhouse is more like a mosque. He writes, “I try and save all of the odd shaped pieces that pile up behind the band saw.. I often fret over what is firewood and what is precious fodder for our next project. The girls and I have endless fun with these pieces. The arched doors on the greenhouse are a example of what can be made from end cuts.”

Arched greenhouse doors by Montana Hartley

One of my heroes, Steve Sando, standing among some of his delicious beans.

Two weeks ago, I had the privilege of interviewing Steve Sando of Rancho Gordo beans and poking around in his bean packing plant. A lovelier industrial space is hard to be found—natural light, music, and a gorgeous collection of Mexican movie posters from the Cold War era all contribute to a warm place to be. We talked about many aspects of beans, but my favorite (and the reason I was there) was to talk about heirloom beans and why seed diversity is such an interesting topic. I’ve yet to assemble the video, though I have at least got it into the computer and I am greatly looking forward to poring over it all. One tidbit I remember well is that Tepary beans (small, hearty beans, drought-tolerant plants) are the only beans that are originally from the contiguous U.S.

At Rancho Gordo I also got advised on where to get a burrito for lunch and I have been craving that burrito ever since. However, eating it while driving was rather foolish.

Peruvian bean descendants.

Last week I met with the Director of Filmmaker Services for the SF Film Society, Michele Turnure-Saleo, to talk a bit about the rough draft of the fiscal sponsorship application that I cobbled together.

A rough draft is a really good exercise, and serves as a starting point from which discussion and suggestions can branch from. As I put together the draft I was pulled in a million different directions—I so much want to go back to Perú and wanted to fit that into the grant. However after much consideration I am going to focus on a movie I can make near me in northern California, which is the movie that I have been filming for over a year about ten fava beans I brought back from the Andes. Because of the rough draft exercise I now have a working title for the bean film: Habas. Habas is what the beans are called in Perú, and is the only name I knew them by until farmers here confirmed they were fava beans.

As for the critique of my rough draft:

My logline was voted ‘too dry’. For those of you who might not know, a logline is the subtitle of a film. Currently it is “ten fava beans and their genetic significance”. We’re supposed to go for more ‘ten fava beans’ and less ‘genetic significance’.

The background section was a little rocky, though there are nuggets of good stuff. The important thing in this film seems to be to keep it contemporary—history is all well and good but ‘what does it mean for us now’ should be more of the focus. In the new version I will talk more about crop diversity, seed banks, what is growing now (12 crops account for 80% of the world’s crop tonnage—name the crops), farmer’s markets, seed companies—that kind of thing.

My synopsis was just Okay. I am to rewrite it after I tackle the Treatment, which I admit I left totally blank. I don’t know what a treatment looks like, not coming from a film background. Michele says, “Beginning, Middle, End.” I’m to balance the whimsy of my ten bean crusade with the weight of our loss of crop diversity and other more serious subjects.

Target audience—I thought it wasn’t specific enough, but it turns out I need something in there about the broader appeal of the subject. Yeah! Distribution and marketing, my funding plan, current status and timeline should all be prose rather than lists. Go for specialty niche film fests and audiences, use words like “we will, we intend to, we will apply to…” For the timeline write a sentence or two about the status and then a list of dates and action items. This I’m very much looking forward to. Lists! They are the way to go.

In the key personnel category, I am underselling myself. Gah. I have to be the Head of something and nothing need be chronological. And all the people who are working on this with me—however far in the future that may seem—I’m hitting you all up for equally awesome bios.

In Search of Soil preview from The Seedling Project on Vimeo.

This is somewhat outdated—not that I don’t love it, but it’s a bit on the old side (June ’07? where does the time go?). When I started making this documentary I promised myself to stick with it even if it took ten whole years! So far it’s been five, and I’m slowly but surely acquiring the skills I’ll need to make something worth watching. If you have any thoughts after seeing the preview I’m all ears, and very much grateful for the feedback. Trudging onward!

I recently attended the SFFS Fiscal Sponsorship Orientation, and of all the SF Film Society classes I’ve attended, this one left me feeling the most energized and hopeful by far. The classes are taught by Michele Turnure-Saleo, who is the Director of Filmmaker Services and simultaneously all-business and approachable. At the Fiscal Sponsorship Orientation we covered what it takes to receive sponsorship, which will allow donors to receive tax credit through the SFFS 501(c)3 nonprofit status. The application is vast and we learned almost immediately that it will likely be rejected for our first 1-4 attempts. In a way, I find this oddly comforting—if I am bound to be rejected it also means that I am bound to be cajoled/assisted in improving my application and I know that I can use all the cajoling I can get.

Since taking the class, my next step is to apply for sponsorship. To begin that process I’ve scored a meeting with Michele herself at the end of this month. I’m trying now to prepare ahead of time. What I need to gather in less than a week are very solid first drafts of my logline (a short and sweet summary); some background info (should be academic); a synopsis that leaves you wanting more and includes briefly information like: it’s a documentary/ arc of story/ stakes/ characters/ issues; a treatment (gulp—this is supposed to be 2-5 pages long), thoughts on my target audience (specific as possible); distribution strategy (including social media, education use, etc); my funding plan; my current status; timeline for completion; key personnel; and last but not least, my budget summary and detailed breakdown, which should be a road map that is easy to read and a sort of $ narrative all of its own.

Okay, deep breath, this is just a first draft…

Cattle Branding Ceremony, Pampachiri, Peru from The Seedling Project on Vimeo.

For your viewing pleasure I have put a very simple video of a cattle branding ceremony up on vimeo. This is very much an anthropological experiment—there are so many records of events that Hannah and I filmed when we were in Peru that don’t really fit into any specific narrative arc but are enlightening simply in how different they are from life in the U.S. I also feel that this kind of minimal editing fulfills some of the promise of the original Seedling Project proposal, which was to record methods of Andean farming before they are lost. When I wrote that proposal I thought I’d come back with a tidy list of how-to advice on terrace farming like the Incas did it. Once I was in Peru I could see that individual tips and tricks of farming (start your plowing on the outside of the terrace and work your way in, for example) are really quite useless unless taken as only a part of the whole. How different life is there! I could not expect us here in California to elect three water mayors per town (every year) and for them to run along the canals every August to see that they are in good condition. Would you dig up a bottle of homemade hooch from last year and drink it down though it has a little dirt in it, and bury a new bottle along with a few coca leaves and a prayer for a good harvest? I suppose if you are reading this blog you just might.

Bare root now and reap the benefit later... apples.

This is the month for pruning and for reading seed catalogs—armchair gardening. My current favorite catalog is The Natural Gardening Company‘s comparatively thin but well-curated missive from Petaluma, California (it’s local for me, that’s part of why I love it). I also subscribe to Johnny’s Selected Seeds because my dad always did, and Seeds of Change because it’s gorgeous and it’s a powerful good idea.

But really what I want to recommend is that you buy a book about your local gardening, and for Northern California I love Katherine Grace Endicott’s Northern California Gardening; a month-by-month guide. Whenever I look out my window and I’m not sure of what I should be doing next (and I can’t remember which chores Sara Winge, my gardening mentor, would give me this time of year) I turn here. This is where I first learned of bare root plants and I love the idea so much I think about it all year. Winter is when plants are dug up that are dormant and they are sold without soil—they’re easier to handle and therefore less expensive. Think of apples, pears, roses, vines, shade trees, berries, rhubarb, artichokes! And if you plant them now they will be in a good position to make the most of the slowly shifting temperatures and transition strongly toward big bushy joyous bounty come spring and summer.

Danzante from The Seedling Project on Vimeo.

This is a video I made for a post that my good friend Meara O’Reilly wrote for the SF MoMA blog a while ago. I’ve partially edited a longer cut with more dancing, but I’m having a hard time deciding how long each cut should be, and what to do about jumps when I cut between scissor dancer clips. There isn’t really enough of a story about any of the dancers. When we were in Peru we were thinking mostly of agriculture and not dancing so we just kind of blindly (though enthusiastically) archived this. Looking back at it, this is one of the easiest indicators of how different and isolated the Andes are from western culture. Though there’s clearly break dancing moves sometimes! And you can watch loads of it on youtube (search: danzante)!

For example:

And because I’m starting to reminisce, here is ONE more. This is a song. I’d never heard these ladies before, but I’ve been to Puquio and when I go back to Peru I will most certainly be passing through Puquio on my way to Andamarca. And eating Peruvian porridge in the market. And having one last slice of pizza. This type of music is de rigeur in the highlands—playing in every combi van, bus, and restaurant.

Fields planted in the Systema Laymi, a system of farming in the highlands of Peru.

This was a page hidden like an easter egg on our first website. It’s always been one of my favorite images.

About our logo. We took the shape from a photo of a mountainside in production of vegetables using the Laymi system. Sistema Laymi dictates that land be used two years in a row followed by a rest of at least seven years (customarily a rest of 8-20 years). Potato is planted the first year, and then any number of other tubers are grown. It was recently discovered by agronomists that potato pests do not live in the soil longer than seven years, an example of the innate logic of local custom. Anyway, the shapes on the side of the mountains seem to us a bit like modern art—oh so Rothko.

Nuestro logo es la forma del cerro que producen verduras utilizando sistema Laymi. El sistema Laymi estipula que la tierra debe ser usada por dos años, seguidos por siete años de descanso (usualmente se la deja descansar por 8 a 20 años). Se siembra papa el primer año y luego se sigue con otros tubérculos. Los agronomos han discubierto recientemente que las plagas de la papa no viven en el suelo por más de siete años, un ejemplo de la lógica innata de las costumbres locales. Las formas al lado de los cerros nos parecen como arte moderna—tanto Rothko.

Turning over soil for planting, Ccenta, Pampachiri, Peru.

One of the things I’m going to do with this newly updated website is look over old images taken on my first two trips to Peru. The scope of agricultural land that has been abandoned is almost impossible to comprehend—it’s visible in this image across the valley—lines almost appearing to shift like an optical illusion when you look at it straight on. When farmers work the land here they have brutal hikes up and down the steep incline before and after each workday. The hikes alone knocked me out when I was there, but the people who travel these trails every day do it nimbly although they are burdened with plows, babies and lunch.

In this photograph the woman who stands looking back is the owner of the chakra, or plot, and she had recently moved back to the region for part of the year almost as a kind of retirement hobby with her husband. This kind of influx of new/old faces is a boon to the local economy, which is suffering badly since the terrorism years of the 80s and 90s.

A woman weeds a maize field in Andamarca, Peru.

In ancient times the Incas fed an empire with marginal land utilizing sustainable farming techniques—even managing to store 3-5 years worth of extra food in case drought, hail or frost ruined a year’s crops. These methods must be documented before time irretrievably alters them and the knowledge is lost to us and future generations of sustainable farmers.

Farmers in Peru utilize ancient terraces, called andenes, to modify vast tracts of steep cactus-covered slopes into arable land, prevent erosion and make the most of what rain comes along. While malnutrition and poverty are rampant, thousands of hectares of andenes lie abandoned and unused. What began as a mass exodus from the country to the cities in the age of Sendero Luminoso is now reversing itself, as people move back to the land of their birth.

The project is directed by Andrea Dunlap, who has worked variously as the archivist for Makani Power, the director of design and production for photo-journalism book publisher Umbrage Editions, and various and sundry other companies, publishers and magazines, including Farrar, Straus & Giroux, National Geographic Adventure magazine, O’Reilly publishing and for her dad, the Gentleman Farmer (in no particular order).