A LOVE LETTER TO MILPA
I recently wrote wrote an essay about Milpa and Mestiza de Indias for Flamingo Estate’s Spring Catalog. What a privilege and joy it is for me to write about this sacred farming practice and share more about our friends Gonzalo and Mara of Mestiza de Indias. We are honored to partner with them!
Many thanks to Flamingo Estate and their team for joining us in donating to Mestiza de Indias. If you would like to learn more about Mestiza de Indias and their Regenerative Farm, this is a wonderful article… and for more ways to get involved and contribute. . . click here. Thank you for all of the continued support and for reading!
A Love Letter to Milpa
When I first began Masa Memory, a traditional kitchen and sustainable growing practice, I had a recurring dream. In this dream, I am walking with a woman in a large field. She sings a beautiful song and it is very dark outside. When she touches the land, the sun rushes out from behind the clouds, pouring a beaming light onto her hands. The color of the earth is revealed, allowing me to see the deep dusty red hues. Scooping soil up into her hands, she reaches out to me and says, “taste.”
Months later, back in Oaxaca. I was on my way to visit the farm where we would plant our first Maíz harvest. A woman came out to greet me with her daughter. The sky was heavy with thick gray clouds, and we were surrounded by the powerful humming of cicadas, whose song is believed to be a prayer for the rain to come.
As she walked me around the farm, the scene in front of me began to feel like my dream. The way the woman and her granddaughter knelt down and buried their fingers deep into the dry earth felt familiar. The sunlight, growing stronger all around her, pulled everyone’s attention to her hands as they touched the ground. At that moment, everything became clear.
My devotion lived in the land. My recurring dream was being realized right in front of me. My beloved Maíz, tortillas, and family food traditions were all there with me, in the palm of her hands, alive in the soil. In that moment, I was tossed into the center of connection and granted a deeper insight into the life of a seed, born in the shelter of the earth. I realized my life’s work was one of love and respect for soil, seeds and Milpa.
Milpa is a traditional farming practice that emphasizes the importance of sustaining diversity. So much more than a polyculture system of cultivation, Milpa farming is a fundamental path towards securing food sovereignty for all people. This complex system has been passed down by generations of farmers to produce and protect all ancestral food, with Maíz at the heart. Hosting an assortment of diverse crops, living together in the same field, Milpa methods mirror the same diversity we see weaving together in nature. Because Milpa farming does not cultivate the land using modern agricultural techniques, the land of a Milpa farmer is regenerative, never depleted and overflowing with nutrients. Each plant provides minerals another plant needs: the seeds share water and protect each other from sun, wind, drought and weed overgrowth. This method of farming requires an intimate connection to the soil, a long standing knowledge of the land and a lifelong dedication to the preservation of seeds.
A Milpa farmer is a guardian of the seeds and will fully immerse themselves in the process of Milpa. Their life is so intrinsically connected to the land, that what happens to the Milpa, also happens inside of them. I will always remember a farmer in the Yucatan who said to me, “When the land sings we celebrate together and when the land cries, the entire jungle mourns.” A Milpa farmer not only safeguards the land but also all of the elements around it. All of the farmers I speak with emphasize the power of Milpa to create healthy connections between the land and the people. They know that what goes into the soil will eventually make way into the surrounding trees, plants, water, and humans. They believe Milpa is a privilege and a form of resistance for farmers and their families against today’s overly industrialized world.
We are all so fortunate to have an abundance of knowledge around us to learn from and use to support seed conservation and farmers. Caring for the land inherently means caring for the people. One of the farms we are partnering with to get this message out is Meztiza De Indias, a tropical regenerative agriculture project that sets out to recover heirloom species. I asked Gonzalo and Mara of Mestiza de Indias if they would share why Milpa farming is essential for them and how they apply these practices to their farm. Their response resonated deeply inside of me and is shared across Mexico.
“Mayan communities, who created one of the most innovative and sustainable food production systems in human history, presently live surrounded by garbage and waste and suffer from serious food-related illnesses. Young people have to leave their communities and travel to the cities to earn a living. This is the impact of modernization on Indigenous communities: the loss of traditions and ancestral knowledge. The Milpa, part of this ancestral food production system, barely survives in the Mayan communities, but it is a clear example of a method based on the observation of nature. Understanding it as a system and a network of relationships and beneficial cooperation between species. The Milpa, therefore, reproduces these associations giving rise to a small ecosystem; where the bean provides nitrogen to the corn and act as a holder for the beans, the pumpkin acts as a cover and protects the land - as the leaf litter would prevent the growth of other species competitors and so on. This system tells us not only about how to produce food but also about how nature challenges us and shows us how we should relate to each other as human beings. Therefore, on the farm, the milpa and ancestral knowledge are our beacon; the one that guides us so as not to lose sight of nature, the great teacher.”
When I make Masa and press tortillas, I am reminded, once again, of the sacredness of Maíz: "the seeds of seeds." I make tortillas in solidarity with our partnering farms — with all of the farmers who honor and protect the land. I think of the story of The Three Sisters, (Maize, beans and squash), of the powerful patchwork colors in a single ear of corn, of the never-ending abundance Maíz brings to a kitchen. The future of our health and access to ancestral food lives on in thanks to the slow food resistance. We have so much to learn from the seeds, our elders, and traditional farming practices. As Gonzalo and Mara shared, the Milpa is a great teacher to all who are willing to listen and learn.
love, April