All of the summaries of the books we have read include (many) links. Links evaporate. I check them when I post the summary and randomly go back in over time to check. If you find a broken link, please let me know via a comment or a direct email. Let me know which link was broken and I will fix it, replace it, or remove it.
William Dunmire is, I believe, living in Placitas. While there are abundant places to buy his books, finding information about him seems more difficult. He also published a book through UNM Press in 2013 on NM’s Spanish Livestock. I haven’t read it but it seems like it might be the next step in his research on the migration of plants between the Old World and the New. Here’s a bit about his work in the National Park Service
Dunmire spoke very highly of the geographer William Doolittle. This clip, which is still photos with a voice-over of him talking about becoming a geographer is 21 min 43 sec. While it doesn’t deal particularly with the work Dunmire refers to, you can find out more about that through the information on the following pages. He is a Professor of Geography at the University of Texas at Austin. His university page with his full 27-page CV is here. And he has a link to a personal interests page here. He also has a wikipedia page which is the short version of the other pages. Reading about him is very humbling…
A UNESCO video of Alhambra.
And, a UNESCO video of Casas Grandes.
Something of an aside, I didn’t know what a custard apple was (Dunmire was writing of popular fruits in Mexico during the days of the Aztecs) but one participant spoke quite highly of them and another said that they can be difficult to come by because they don’t ship well although you can find them canned. Seems like this might be something for our winter potluck…
Mexico City’s chinampas or floating gardens do still exist although they are nothing compared to the gardens of the Aztecs. Still they are of interest to permaculturists as a possible solution to food production problems. Toward the bottom of the lengthy blog post on chinampas, you can watch a video on these gardens as well. In the video, the speaker mentions one more source for information.
Dunmire mentions murals dating back to the 1500s with plants. With a bit more focus and time I was able to track them down. They are the Malinalco murals. The website I showed is the correct website but this is a different post with some pretty detailed information.
Agave was and is an important plant for food and other uses. I heard Ron Parker speak recently about his book Chasing Centuries: the Search for Ancient Agave Cultivars across the Desert Southwest. I thought I remembered an image he showed in that talk suggestive of farmed agaves but perhaps I imagined it. The video from that talk is no longer available but I did find this video which is quite informative about the various agaves, the cultures they were associated with, and the hybrids the different peoples introduced. It’s a nice blend of botany and archaeology.
Another link I came across related to the archaeology of the ancient agaves is here.
We talked about dryland farming and Hopi stunted corn. This link is a photograph of a Hopi man standing next to his stunted corn. And, this is a video of a Hopi man in his cornfield. He speaks about thinking of the plants as family. The field is very different from what I think of as a corn field in the midwest! This is one more link to Hopi corn.
Dryland farming with limited or no irrigation is hard. People made grid or waffle gardens. Sometimes waffle gardens seem to be pretty structured and really look like waffles. Here’s a link to an article about constructing contemporary ones that also has photographs of older ones.
I have been to Quarai, one of the three sites in the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument, about an hour southeast of Albuquerque. In the slanted light of evening you can sometimes make out the remnants of the gardens the people there made. It is thought that Quarai was an important trading area that specialized in fruits. Many currants and other berries are still there. This link is an overview of all three sites.
This link is to one of the Native Plant Society of NM newsletters with a sketch on the cover by Baker Morrow, a local landscape architect and UNM faculty member emeritus. It’s his visualization of how the gardens might have looked. With fruit and other shrubs around to help stabilize the plot.
The Spanish Mission part of the site dates to the early/mid-1600s, a time of a mini Ice Age. Baker translated Fray Benavides’ notes and letters about being at Salinas and how it was so cold in the winter that the wine froze. Baker suggested that during those years the growing season was too short for corn to mature and the people would have starved without the European wheat with its shorter growing season. The Spaniards also brought apple trees. While it’s not really likely that the original trees are still growing there, there are some old apple trees.
We discussed the possibility of a field trip there this fall.
A website I love because it’s VERY eclectic is Atlas Obscura. One whole bit, Gastro Obscura, is devoted to all things food. It’s sort of surprising how often they have articles related to things we’re reading. This link is to a story about a Navajo woman who is seeking remnants of the old peach orchards destroyed by the US government when the Navajo were driven from their land. While the history breaks my heart, her work gives me hope.
And, because you can never go wrong with chocolate, I showed this video of tree to bar. The video clip doesn’t actually show the full process but if you click on the more bit of the description, there are a couple more that probably fill in the other steps – I haven’t checked them all yet. But one evening I plan to settle down with a chocolate drink and my favorite chocolate bar and enjoy them all.