The Resiliency Of Hopi Agriculture: 2000 Years Of Planting

I love stuff like this. Old ways are good.

I bought a good bit of dried organic whole blue corn from Azure Standard co-op a few months ago, and will try my hand at making the Piki bread with some of it.

I don't have the traditional "kitchen" for making it the authentic Hopi way, but I will definitely try to adapt by using a lightly oiled cast iron skillet and white wood ashes from an oakwood campfire. I definitely WON'T be using my bare fingers for "painting" the batter onto the hot skillet, but will probably use a BBQ brush or something... I have not figured out quite how to do that part yet.

Will be taking notes on that last video about dry farming, and will add them to my bulging notebook crammed full of stuff about gardening under adverse weather conditions...

Thanks for bringing these excellent videos to us!


.

 

i find it interesting that this is very similar as the zai planting pits of africa. in that it just concentrates all the energy and fertility on planting holes.modern ag plows it all and often spreads fertilizer broadly..not always..but it use to.buffalo bird woman of hidasta indian in dakotas farmed very similar and theres pictures of her last gardens before her death in the book about her and their farming practices.

Buffalo Bird Woman

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_Bird_Woman

the book has been made digital from early 1900's and you can still but it as well.

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/buffalo/garden/garden.html


also of note is the depth the corn can be planted and still pop ground level.modern corn wont do that...recommended depth is no more than 2 inches.hopi says they can go as deep as 18 inches.

 

heres an interesting excerpt from buffalo bird woman book.

Keeping Two Years' Seed

Corn kept for seed would be best to plant the next spring; and it would be fertile, and good to plant, the second spring after harvesting. The third year the seed was not so good; and it did not come up very well. The fourth year the seed would be dead and useless.

Knowing that seed corn kept good for at least two years, it was my family's custom to gather enough seed for at least two years, in seasons in which our crops were good. Some years, in spite of careful hoeing, our crops were poor; the ears were small, there was not much grain on them, and what grain they bore was of poor quality. We did not like to save seed out of such a crop. Also, frost occasionally destroyed our crop, or most of it.

When, therefore, we had a year of good crops, we put away seed enough to last for two years; then, if the next year yielded a poor crop, we still had good seed to plant the third season.

In my father's family we always observed this custom of putting away seed for two years; and we did this not only of our corn, but of our squash seeds, beans, sunflower seeds, and even of our tobacco seeds; for if I remember rightly, the tobacco fields were sometimes injured by frost just as were our corn fields.

Not all families in our village were equally wise. Some were quite improvident, and were not at all careful to save seed from their crops. Such families, in the spring, had to buy their seed from families that were more provident.

Saving a good store of seed was therefore profitable in a way. In my father's family we often sold a good deal of seed in the spring to families that wanted. The price was one tanned buffalo skin for one string of braided seed corn.

Even to-day, families on this reservation come to me to buy seed corn and seed beans. A handful of beans, enough for one planting, I sell for one calico–enough calico, that is, to make an Indian woman a dress, or about ten yards.

 

Good videos. I like the ancient wisdom they show. There is much we can learn from that.