Holy Work of Raising Soil, Sample Chapters2016

My Heartis Indigenous:Of Mennonites,BeesandLand
Land: The Holy Workof RaisingSoil
AnitaAmstutzSample Chapter2016
Matter Matters
Matter matters. It sounds trite. But it’s true. We are of the earth and the earth is of
us. Many religious theologies and beliefs about God are more interested in
concocting and defending ideologies and doctrines that are not grounded in created
matter itself. Despite many of the earliest cosmologies that inspired love of created
matter, the devotee is not taught that it is an absolute necessity to be deeply
connected to the constant sacred in the material world that is around us, through us,
within us. Their gods would be sky gods, peering at a distance, deeply suspicious or
skeptical of this life, hoping for an escape hatch from life on planet earth.
Yet, despite this, Christianity, my particular path of devotion and training, has as it’s
root, an incarnational God who came to earth as a body in the form of the Jewish
Rabbi Jesus— identifying with the human experience of joy and suffering, sorrow
and delight. It has, at the core of it’s scriptural creation story of human bodies made
from soil. The first dirt being scooped out of the earth1, Adam, a derivative of the
Hebrew word adamah (clay or earth) was called to the holy work of raising soil,
tilling and tending it, nurturing it as a baby.2 The first farmer. This Judeo-Christian
cosmology reminds us where we came from and where we will return someday.
Reclaiming our kinship with the soil ignites wonder and curiosity, as a rising
movement of young and old alike reminds us. We are being called back to our body
and soul roots. In fact, we are all Indigenous—living in a particular place of soil,
1 Genesis 2:7 NRSV
2 Genesis 2:15 NRSV

2 [Type the document title]
water, and air at any given time. We only need to awaken to this truth and look
around at our earth neighbor.
“Soil. It’s so common we can easily forget how precious it is. It is so rare in the
universe that we can easily miss its significance to our planet…the foundation
for all living things, including humanity…. It is the virtual breeding ground for
all life on earth…
Planet earth is unique for having soil. And that soil forms from rocks broken
into pieces from weathering and erosion, glaciers, volcanoes, releasing vast
quantities of nutrients, combined with plantlife to create soil”3
The precious skin that covers our earth is filled with billions upon billions of micro
organisms needed to grow stuff, purify and regenerate. Without it, there is no life.
If our economies had any inkling of the most indispensable jobs in our economy and
paid its workers accordingly, farmers and teachers would be billionaires. I am sure
of it.
But as we know, that is not the reality. Small farmers have been driven out of
business and rural communities have fought to survive as their products have been
devalued by the mainstream economy. We want to pay the smallest price possible
for food at the grocery. And still the poor struggle to make ends meet and feed their
children. Yet, survival for those who grow our food has come at a cost—to the land
and our own health. Bio-Tech, Big Ag Industrialized farming methods have been
3 (The Wonder of Creation: Soil, The Foundation of Life
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEETdcLYhsQ)

peddled to our Universities and agricultural world as the only way to make a profit.
The returns of this promise have depleted the soil, drastically increased chemical
use and mono-cropping in order to receive federal subsidies. The soil is no longer
treated and revered as a living substance, an extension of our bodies, to be
nourished and cared for, but a dead, inert substrate to be beaten into submission for
a profit .
As I crisscrossed the Midwest in the Fall of 2016, heading northward, towards my
writing residency in Minnesota, everywhere I looked small, Midwestern
communities had drunk the poison. Or perhaps they were force fed. My people,
those Bread Basket farmers, stewards of the land, had sown cornfields and soy lined
with signs. Like proud banners they announced GMO Roundup drenched seeds by
such companies as Pioneer, Syngenta, Bayer and Dow. “At a July 2008 meeting,
Monsanto officials announced plans to raise the average price of some of the
company's triple-stack maize varieties a whopping 35 percent. Fred Stokes of the
U.S.-based Organization for Competitive Markets (OCM) describes the implications
for farmers: "A $100 price increase is a tremendous drain on rural America. Let's
say a farmer in Iowa who farms 1,000 acres plants one of these expensive corn
varieties next year. The gross increased cost is more than $40,000. Yet there's no
scientific basis to justify this price hike. How can we let companies get away with
this?"4 All of this is in the name of the “green revolution” to feed the world. There is
4 http://gmwatch.org/gm-firms/10558-the-worlds-top-ten-seed-companies-who-owns-
nature

another name for it. Profit. Massive profits as agro bio-tech companies take their
“mission” globally. In 2007 Monsanto posted 23% of the world market’s sales of the
proprietary seed market.5 And the U.S. Government continues to subsidize this
effort, creating a vicious cycle of dependency.
Everywhere Monsanto, Bayer, DuPont and other agro-tech industries use the law to
bind small farmers, indigenous and rural community from using their own seeds
rather than “patented” GMO seeds. In a 1998 bid to own nature and control the food
supply globally, Monsanto sued a small farmer in Canada, Percy Schmeiser, for $1
million with a “patent infringement lawsuit”. Percy had been working for 50 years
to develop disease resistant seed varieties for his farm that were indigenous to the
climate and soil of his region. But his neighbors had agreed to test Monsanto’s
canola, which was genetically modified, meaning a gene was spliced in it that made
it resistant to Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup. This seed, if spread by the wind or
cross pollination would kill anything living. It was a “terminator seed”. That harvest
year, it irrevocably destroyed Percy’s own seed, contaminating half a century of
research when it blew onto his farmland due to a massive thunderstorm.
It wasn’t long after Schmeiser contacted Monsanto to come and test for the damage
their seed did to his, that Monsanto filed a lawsuit against Schmeiser, saying it
doesn’t matter how, when or where it happens, if Monsanto’s GMO patented seed is
found in your seed, you are liable to pay them for it because they own it. Percy took
them all the way to the Canadian Supreme Court. They ruled against him, saying
5 Ibid

that the patent held up in court. Mercifully, they did not hold him responsible for
paying the fine. Instead they booted it to the Canadian Parliament to update the old
laws on patents which did not include such things as seed genetics at the time they
were made in 1867 and 1869.
Percy continues to spread the word today, supporting seed bio-diversity, despite
efforts by the agro-business giant to silence him and his wife with threats. He says,
“no forms — no life forms should be patented. And terminator seeds6 should be
globally banned. And we have a strong opinion that terminator seeds should never,
never, ever be introduced, because, to us, it’s the — I think the most serious assault
on life we’ve ever seen on this planet. When they come out with — want to come out
with a gene that terminates the future of the germination of that seed, so that would
totally control the world seed supply.”7 He ended by saying that we are returning to
the feudal systems of Medieval Europe, but this time it’s not the kings, lords or land
barons, but the corporations, jockeying for ultimate control of our food.
A buzzword for Indigenous communities today is seed sovereignty. The right to
grow their own food with their own saved seeds, healthy, free of poison and
affordable. Winona LaDuke, indigenous activist, writer and economist has written,
6
A gene that’s put into a seed…to create… plants [that]are sterile. And so, it cannot be used the following
year for seed. But the dangeralso of the terminator gene, it can cross-pollinate into indigenous crops,
heirloom crops, and render those seeds from those plants also sterile. So it’s a termination of the future of
life, forcing farmers to buy seeds every year, rather than to conserve seeds so that they can be used every
year. From a “Democracy Now!” interview by Amy Goodman, September 17, 2010.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/17/percy_schmeiser_vs_monsanto_the_story
7 Ibid

“There are two kinds of law. The white man’s law and the Creator’s law”. Being
indigenous to a place means supporting and nurturing all life, not poisoning the very
land that supports yours or anyone else’s community.
Lorenzo and the Bees
Not all farmers have bowed. Shortly after I began my beekeeping adventures, I met
Lorenzo at a local farmers market. An heir to one of 6 original families from Spain
who were deeded vast tracts of land in New Mexico, he is part of 300 years of
tradition—- land that has been in his family for 7 generations. He was surrounded
by young handsome men with long black hair and beautiful smiles, a mixture of
family friends and interns who work his farm. Close to seventy years old, Lorenzo
wore his usual, a trademark handkerchief around his neck, a straw hat and
overalls. He is small in stature, as a former horse jockey, but what he lacks in height
he makes up for with a robust spirit and eyes shining with curiosity and intelligence.
We connected over bees and spirituality. He invited me to come and see what he is
doing on his family land.
I finally took him up on his generous offer. I saw his 4 acres of family land down in
the South Valley that he brought back from the brink of decay over 20 years ago. He
left his home as a young man, for a promising career as a horse jockey. Beginning in
Chicago, he criss-crossed the South and mid-Atlantic states racing horses during his
career. He had a natural affinity with horses and lots of experience growing up next
to the intelligent horse nation. He describes that time in his life as intense. A time of
skyrocketing to financial success, but leaving him empty inside. He called the
business “corrupt and ugly”. Farming for him was like taking a breath of fresh air

after not breathing for a long time. Lorenzo exchanged his old life for a new one,
hands in the dirt and began the humble and authentic life deeply connected to the
roots of his people and the biotic community.
Lorenzo dug up the trash that had accumulated, began to irrigate, nourish the land
and plant food. He jokingly said that he is still looking for a tractor that disappeared.
It took him 15 years to clean and prepare the land. It was full of Chinese Elm, an
invasive species that sucks the land of water and nourishment. Now, after 5 years of
production, Lorenzo’s land has more food than he knows what to do with.
He sells food, gives it away to the community, brings young people from schools in
to learn about it and to work on the land. He says, “Farming is not a vocation or a
hobby, [for me] it’s a passion”. For Lorenzo, this place leaks life giving energy and
he radiates the joy and love for the land which he has nurtured back to health. He
understands this call as a way to serve his community and Mother Earth, whom he
talks of reverently and respectfully as a member of his own tribe. There are row
upon rows of succulent blackberries, a half acre of asparagus, chili, blue corn,
pumpkins, cucumbers, and an outdoor year round kitchen and hoop houses.
What does all this have to do with bees?
As Lorenzo talked about his land and the relationship that he has cultivated with it, I
felt the same sense of connection that I have with my bees, welling up in my own
heart. He talked of the food he grows as not just edible plants but a living life force
which create consciousness as you partake in growing, nurturing and eating their

gifts. “Every cell of your body reacts to “real food“, he said, his eyes lit up with delight.
Yes. This is what I feel when I eat raw, freshly harvested honey, pollen or propolis
from the hive. All of it is living food. All of it has healing properties, untouched by
chemicals or human degradation. It is a sacrament from the bee’s gift economy —–
given by their very life and hard work.
Lorenzo’s approach to farming is a blend of indigenous spirituality and Spanish
Catholicism. Lorenzo remembered his Native grandmother, who taught him to love
the land, be respectful and know the native herbs and plants. Before she cultivated
any herb, she would listen quietly for its essence or spirit to speak to her, honoring
it’s particular quality for the person to be healed. To this day, he is highly
complementary of the feminine as a carrier of special spiritual wisdom and
tradition--- an empowered female role which is rare in a macho Latino culture.
Lorenzo talks of the deep spiritual aspect to the food growing tradition of his
ancestors—the spiritual growth that comes from caring for the land. “We don’t own
the land, the land owns us.” This flouts the Western European concept of ownership.
I remember my earliest mentor, Wally Ford, a minister ordained in the Disciples of
Christ Church, who told us that the original scriptural text of the Lord’s Prayer was
not “Forgive us our trespasses…” but rather translated, “Forgive us our
debts(Matthew 6:12 NRSV) and forgive us our sins ( Luke 11:4 NRSV). These were
wedded to Jewish scriptural mandates which saw debt as sinful, oppressing the
poor, according to the law and the prophets. But with the advent of the Feudal
system in Europe between the 9th-15th c. , “sins” became translated as “trespassing”.

The privatizing of land during Medieval times consolidated power and wealth for
the church, as well as feudal landowners. The Lord’s Prayer, instituting it as a sin or
a crime to cross feudal landowners privilege and power. This kept the lower classes
in check. The people’s commons and loosely held ownership of land became
concentrated with the wealthy. This concept of land ownership paved the way for
the ugly 18th and 19th century land reforms in Scotland. Fuadach nan Gàidheal, the
"eviction of the Gael", otherwise known as the Highland Clearances, evicting the
small scale farmers of the Scottish Highlands. Commonly held lands were taken and
enclosed for sheep, creating a reverse revolution in agriculture for the Scots. It was
carried out largely by hereditary aristocratic landowners, brutally and forcibly,
devastating the cultural landscape of a people indigenous to their place for
generations. 8 It was only the continuation of the colonizing of the Land as
commodity, as the people’s who had co-evolved with the land was privatization for
the few who were part of the owning class.
In 1795, Thomas Paine, a Founding Father and political theorist, blamed civilization.
He acknowledged that private property, though an unnatural construct, is the price
we must pay for developing agriculture. But, he wrote: It has dispossessed more than
half the inhabitants of every nation of their natural inheritance, without providing, as
ought to have been done, an indemnification for that loss and has thereby created a
species of poverty and wretchedness that did not exist before.
And so, he proposed, not as a charity but as a right…
8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Clearances

To create a national fund out of which there shall be paid to every person, when
arrived at the age of 21 years, the sum of 15 pounds Sterling as a compensation in part
for the loss of his or her natural inheritance by the introduction of the system of landed
property and also, the sum of 10 pounds per annum during life to every person now
living of the age of 50 years and to all others as they shall arrive at that age.9
Clearly, this has not panned out in rural America. Today the highest rates of poverty,
in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, lie in rural America.
For Lorenzo land was and is about relationship— at once communal and personal.
Sadly, his ancestors experienced the ugliness of an unwarranted racism and
marginalization at the hands of the Anglo colonization which continues to this day.
Anglos were harsh and brutal in their treatment of the people they found in the 19th
c. There was a flinty hardness in the heart and eyes of those seeking riches and
domination of this landscape. What they found was a mixed race of people who had
merged, intermarried and were eking out an existence with unlikely alliances, side
by side on this often harsh, waterless Frontier. There were the Pueblo people along
the Rio Grande, nomadic Apaches, Comanches, and Ute, as well as Hispanos and
Mestizo, a blend of Indigenous and Spanish. In a pecking order, the Anglos came to
despise and scorn Hispanos even more than the Indigenous, a racism and prejudice
against their culture and what they saw as a “backwardness” among these people of
Spanish and Catholic descent.
9 BrookeGladstone, host of WNYC’s "On the Media," in a new five-part series: “Busted:
America’s Poverty Myths." (September 28, 2016)

“The Americans had begun to think that their national destiny was somehow
“manifest” and that the entire continent beckoned them with an enormous
economic and territorial mission. The New Mexicans, on the other hand, were
essentially a pastoral people. Although their ancestors the conquistadors, had been
driven by a sense of destiny that was at the very least as aggressive as the
Americans’, the intervening years had bred in them an outlook much like that of the
Pueblos: a settled feeling of permanence, a sense of completeness in the present, of
being unchanged through time. Between cultures of such opposite temperament,
conflict was inevitable.”10
One of the most grievous chapters of the Anglo colonization of New Mexicans was
the land grant grab that happened after the original conquest. “The United State
conquered New Mexico twice. The first conquest was carried out by traders, miners,
ranchers and speculators–‘rugged individualists’ who served only themselves. The
second conquest proceeded concurrently but was the work of soldiers, scientists
and other professionals who represented the United States as a collective.”11 As the
hordes of settlers and prospectors moved in, mapping began in earnest by the U.S.
Geological Survey. Every nook and cranny of the topography was accounted for,
including the land held in commons by the “manitos”12. These were Lorenzo’s
ancestors, a combination of Moorish and Jewish settlers sent by Queen Isabella of
10 William DeBuys, Enchantmentand Exploitation: TheLifeand Hard Times ofa New
Mexico MountainRange(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2015), 86.
11 Ibid,141.
12 Manitos was a shortened version of “Hermano” and “Hermana”, a sign of familial
affection and spiritual friendship found amongst the small villagers when the Anglos
came.

Spain in the 16th century.13 The next wave of colonizers looked at the land with
dollar signs chi-chinging in their eyes. The opportunities to open up tens of
thousands of acres of fertile land for grazing gleamed in the eyes of unscrupulous
lawyers, politicos, government officials, and family members willing to conspire to
sell the priceless family “jewels”—land.
But there was one little problem to this second wave of colonization. It had villages
of people “in the way”—whose land had been bequeathed by the Spanish Crown.
These villages, often isolated, located along the spines of the mountains, next to
watersheds, were held in common. In the absence of a cash economy and they held
their land in common. “The most important civic virtue for a man to have was
verguenza, a self-effacing probity that restrained him from advancing himself at the
expense of others”.14 Imbalances of land ownership was checked by something
called the eijido, the commons in the center of town. “One of the most striking
aspects of life in those days was the absence of fences in the villages to separate
individual plots of land. Instead of barbed wire, children were employed to keep the
livestock where they were supposed to be and fetch them when they wandered too
far.”15 This communal land ethic allowed all to graze public lands whether you had
13 These original settlers who followedthe conquistadors and Franciscan priests into New
Mexico, were an exiled and dispossessed people themselves. As the Inquisition was
ravaging Europe and the Mediterranean world,the Moors and Jews,both marginalized
people in Spain were given the choiceto either convertand become “conversos” to the
Spanish Catholic crownor to leave forthe new worldand settle the frontier. Either decision
was fraught with danger and risk. Many chose to migrate to the territory of Mexico. They
became the manitos,intermarrying and mixing with the Indigenous population. (gratitude
to Lorenzo Candelariaforthisoralhistory)
14 William DeBuys, Enchantmentand Exploitation:TheLifeand Hard Times ofa New
15 Ibid, 170.

10 acres or 120. Getting ahead of one’s neighbor was of “negligible value”, because it
would be the demise of the whole. “People were poor in material comforts and their
children slept crowded together, several to a bed, but they were rich in what they
valued most: time, family, and the freedom of the land”.16 The people were bound
together by religious customs that included celebrations and feasts honoring the
water ditches used for irrigating (Acqueias) and to remember the Saints who
watched over their farming activities. But the outside world was changing,
unbeknownst to this land based people.
A particular Lieutenant Carpenter noted that… “Nearly all the land in the territory
that might be easily farmed or ranched consisted of Spanish and Mexican land
grants whose titles were almost invariably uncertain and required long and costly
litigation to protect”. He wrote: “It would be economy ‘to buy up all these claims at a
good round sum and throw the land open to settlement under the homestead laws.
The speedy increase in the population and amount of taxable property, and the
general prosperity of the people, would soon more than repay the original outlay,
and change this conservative, inert Territory into a thriving rival of her less favored
neighbors’”17
And so, it began on a grand scale. Litigations and shady, fly by night court
proceedings that would dispossess a whole race of pastoral and peaceful people
from their land over generations, leaving landless communities behind. And they
16 Ibid, 173.
17 William DeBuys, Enchantmentand Exploitation:TheLifeand Hard Times ofa New

were stolen or bought for very little money. Stripped of their sovereign rights, and
suddenly living on land acquired in secret deals in a town days from their village
(Santa Fe), a host of social problems followed along not far behind. A people whose
economy was not based upon cash, but land and community, they were ripped from
that most intimate and valuable---land, family, time—the fabric was shredded. At
least the Pueblos were given their reservations along the River. For the manitos, it
was as though their limbs had been hacked off.
These land grants, originally taken from the pueblo people, had allowed these
Moorish/Jewish Spaniards of mixed Indigenous blood to have lives of self
determination. Their lives may have looked primitive to the outsider, and they were
indeed hard, but the villagers were self-sufficient and self-contained. Proud and
dignified, they survived by traditional, land based medicine, sharing their land and
bartering food and goods. As their agrarian base crumbled, subsistence farming
disappeared up and down the Rio Grande Watershed. Economic disparity between
the trading centers of the growing cities and rural farming communities became
acute. It followed a pattern of colonization—conquest, dispossession of land,
destruction of a culture and land based people. Lorenzo had alluded to the
turbulent 60’s in New Mexico. He had at one time been involved in Hispanic social
revolutions spanning the state to return dignity and land to the people. La Raza. The
Race. Power to the People. Back then the Federal government was the thief. Today it
would be the multi-national corporations.

I wasn’t surprised that Lorenzo and his community in the South Valley were fighting
a 38,000 home mega-development funded by British multinational bank,
Barclays. It would turn the sand dunes of the New Mexican desert into a high end
village, siphoning off upwards of 12m gallons of water a day. In a land where people,
roots and animals live on the razor’s edge of drought, a way of life would be snuffed
out. As Lorenzo said, it would reduce his water flow drastically, along with other
farmers and dwellers along the river. It would create infrastructure for water and
utilities that the city of Albuquerque and tax payers would be
paying forward. Public welfare, I think they call that. Santolina would abut a valley
that is not only rich in history and resilient in tradition and land, but also ridden
with gang violence, poverty and other societal afflictions. The development would
be a travesty.
After a sham of public forums to invite the communities to speak out—the voices
packing the rooms being overwhelmingly against this development—the County
commissioners handed over the land against the people’s will. I would later find that
they were all cozy in the real estate developers pockets. As always, one only needs
to follow the money.
One thing I have learned on my sojourn with bees and farmers along the Rio Grande,
a very different landscape from the farm of my childhood is that soil and water are
indivisible here in the Southwest. Water is not only life, it is blood in the veins of
New Mexicans. Over the centuries it has proven more than once to be bloody as
generations have fought for it’s right. Water, over the centuries has been fickle and

fragile, increasingly diminished by human activities of dams, overgrazing,
population, fossil fuel development and climate change. Lorenzo as a farmer,
intimately connected with the soil, knows the value of water. Water is more
important than money. Money is nothing, he states. Our true treasure is food and
water. They are everything. Money is an illusion. If that artery of water, the
confluence of the Chama River and Rio Grande runs dry, we will learn this lesson
quickly.
At the end of our tour, I noted Lorenzo’s beehives at the edge of the farm, empty and
cob-webby. At one point, he said he had over 20 hives. “Mmmm, blackberry
honey…”, Lorenzo smiled as he remembered. His bees had become run down with
mites, diseases, colony collapse. He gave it up.
We talked generally about the weather and I casually mentioned putting some of my
bees on his farm. I could taste that blackberry honey melting in my mouth. Lorenzo
was delighted. He was eager to create a partnership. It would become clear that
Lorenzo wanted bees to pollinate his enterprise and to harvest sweet blackberry
honey.
One day I went down to visit him and see the early Spring progress as he and his
workers prepared new starts in the hoophouses and roto-tilled row upon row of
dark rich humus. Lorenzo, his usual cheerful 4'7" diminutive self, clothed in
coveralls and his trademark straw hat and neck bandanna, pulled a rolled cigarette
from his pocket, lit it and took a deep drag.

He looked at me with a twinkle in his eye as I inhaled deeply of the fragrant warm
moist air of the hoophouse—tobacco smoke curling around us. There was a long
row of Russian Kale, my favorite. Arugula, baby greens, spinach, lettuces of all
types. This was Lorenzo's religion. He said, "This is our mother earth. Like an
umbilical cord, we are connected to her for life...without her, we die. We humans are
made of the same stuff as this earth but also of stardust. The whole Universe is right
here inside us as humans! It is here in this soil! Such potential."
Lorenzo, my earth mystic friend. He was still absolutely delighted by all of it, 20
years after marrying himself to the land. And like any good marriage, time had only
enriched the soil of his love. When I came to visit this little 4 acre plot, I also felt that
all is right with the world. It was hard to explain. In a world of so much imbalance,
suffering and violence, it was like a tiny piece of the Garden of Eden. Shalom. The
peace of the soil harmonizing with the molecules of plants, sipping water and air to
make something edible. No chemicals used. Such beauty and goodness and health.
But Lorenzo had something else to show me that day. "Look! Some bees have moved
into an abandoned hive. Let me show you!" Lorenzo beckoned me.
We walked over to the topbar hive, cobwebbed and dirty. Sure enough, bees were
flying in and out of the slit of a doorway. When I pried off the topbars, the bees flew
out. I stood stock still, since I was silly enough not to don my veil and smoker for this
event. What I saw was amazing. The hive was chock full of comb and an old colony,
their small bodies huddled together, noses buried in the comb, butts in the air---like

a picture from the death scene of those who had imbibed the poison of Jim Jones'
Guyana. They were lifeless and still. Likely they had starved or frozen to death.
Yet, swirling around this scene of death was a new hive of bees, longing for a place
to call home. Busy tidying up, sweeping the floors, hauling debris, clearing out the
macabre scene of death in lieu of resurrection.
Wow. I didn't know what else to say.
Lorenzo smiled. He knew. With his desire, he had put out a call to the Bees. The
welcome mat was out there, inviting them to find a home. Mother Nature knows
what she needs. The universe brought the bees here to his farm—gratis. They were
right on time for the Spring bloom. Ready to pollinate. Life bearers.
I thought of the Galaxies and stardust that I have never seen. I’ve been told they do
exist. Bees and humans, trees and flowers, dolphins and topsoil are merely a
microcosm of those far off places. That which is light years away is also here. And
somehow we are all interconnected in the great Web of Life.
Stewardship of the land animal husbandry must work in tandem with the nature of
the creature. Whether soil or bees. Lorenzo understands that we are called to care
for the soil and in return it will care for us. Exercising an earth mysticism and
spirituality rooted itself in the alchemy of New Mexican clay and sand, he serves his
community, respectfully included Mother Earth as a member of his tribe and

community. Like Wendell Berry, the Kentucky poet, it all turns on affection.18
Instead of commodity, land, soil and creatures are kin, rooted in relationship.
In a book entitled My Penitente Land:Reflections on Spanish New Mexico, Fray
Angelico Chavez, seeks to reclaim the rich and vivid history of a people before the
Anglicization history narratives have all but submerged their story. This Franciscan
priest speaks to the New Mexican reality of land based peoples. That land is at the
heart of their spirituality. Northern New Mexico communities, who have had their
land taken and their livelihood destroyed now fight for spiritual survival amidst an
epidemic of heroin addiction amongst their young. As a Mishkeegogamang elder
from Northern Ontario put it. Taashikaywin is the word for an intimate connection
with the land. “It is everything….that’s our identity… our spiritual perspective. When
I say part of us that means, air, water, plants, animals, and
spirituality…Taashikaywin is a sacred cycle. This is what is broken and in need of
repair. It’s the reason there is so much confusion, and why people feel lost. “19
Lorenzo’s farm is a vital and dynamic community presence within the intricate
social complexities of rural and urban life and farming. It is a hub of Community
Supported Agriculture (CSA) links the city with the country dweller. Reclaiming and
revitalizing our rural communities means forging necessary alliances. Healthy farms
beget equally healthy communities. Lorenzo and his family and friends stand at the
18 From an essay by the same title, delivered by Wendell Berry, poet, essayist, novelist and
farmer, April 23, 2012, NEH JeffersonLecture.
19 Deanna Zantingh, “Uncoveringthe Truth”, CanadianMennonite,September 21, 2016, Vol.
20, Issue 19.

intersection of addiction, immigration, poverty, and meager resources. They
embody resilience itself.
Matter matters.

Holy Work of Raising Soil, Sample Chapters2016

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