Open Collective
Open Collective
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Mid Season Harvest and Fall Prep
Published on August 15, 2023 by Dioganhdih

 
She:kon! Greetings all,

As our growing season soars forward, we are continually amazed at the vast beauty unfolding before us.  Our focus this season is on seed grow outs of three Haudenosaunee strains of heirloom beans, Corn Planter Purple beans, Tyendinega Potato beans and Hodson's Silverwax beans, along with a small batch of Mohawk Red Corn and Onondaga Sunflowers. This year's seed was sourced from Traditional Native American Farmers (3 Sisters Collective), Akwesasne Seed Hub, and Hudson Valley Farm Hub Seed Rematriation garden. 

This year we are tending to two garden plots, in Wurtsboro, NY and in Kingston NY, growing heirloom bean seeds and corn in both locations. This part of the season has us admiring the beans flowers and pods, bringing continued plant care to our garden space, singing seed songs, adding compost and building up corn mounds, trellising tomatoes, peppers and sunflowers, pruning tomatoes, weeding, infrastructure maintenance, leading small garden tours, hosting volunteer groups.

We wish we could be in the garden all day, but holding this kind of work requires a solid amount of administration. We've documentating thru photos and videos, managing our social media and marketing, logistical planning for Iron Path's 2024 garden season, logistical planning for 2023 harvest and harvest schedule, logistical planning for seed storing winter 2023-2024. 
We've also been consistently building our networks between T2BIPOC farmers in Hudson Valley, NY and throughout Haudenosaunee homelands. It has been so amazing to get to know values aligned farmers throughout the Valley. 

We've also been in planning mode for Iron Path's first in person art residency. In November we'll be gaething here in Kingston, NY at Eureka House, where we have one of our garden plots. We'll be bringing together Haudenosaunee artists and educators as well as some of our BIPOC artist and chef friends to collaborate on a harvest dinner, creating and fabricate a Bean Zine (stay tuned for that), making prints together and whatever else might emerge from getting to be together in a creative environment. Once we have our own space we hope to host many intentional artist residencies, so this is a great way to start modelling what we wish to build!  

Thanks for reading along and for being in our network. Your support is greatly appreciated, we couldn't be doing this work without your support on this platform.

in deep solidarity and gratitude,
Iron Path Farms
😀  1

Christian J Matute

Posted on August 18, 2023

Thank you for the updates! Staying tuned to when hands and hearts are desired in the Kingston garden. Peace