When Aaron Kie talks planting, he’s thinking three sisters, the skin of Mother Earth and the waffle method.
When Michael Giese talks planting, he’s thinking three radishes, yields of the Earth’s bounty and box gardens.
Kie, 27, an intern who will work with Indian Pueblo Cultural Center’s summer campers, and Giese, the executive chef at the center’s restaurant, will find common ground as they work together in coming weeks to plant a garden to benefit both diners and campers.
With funding from a $10,000 PNM Resources Foundation Grant, they are creating a garden from which campers can learn native farming techniques, and patrons of the Pueblo Harvest Café & Bakery at the center will get vegetables picked that day in their meals.
“This particular project helps us to fulfill our mission in sharing pueblo culture, history, our way of life, not only with our campers but our restaurant patrons,” said the center’s executive director, Travis Suazo, who is from the pueblos of Laguna, Acoma and Taos.
Kie, a Native American Studies student at the University of New Mexico and an enrolled member of the Isleta Pueblo, will be a main resource at Indian Pueblo Cultural Center Summer Day Camp, where about 50 kids ages 6 to 13 will learn native cultures throughout the month of June.
He began his internship in November, and it runs until the camp ends. So far, he has set up a grid about 20 square feet that looks like a giant waffle, with raised channels going horizontally and vertically, and depressed portions that are a little larger than 1 square foot.
Indian Pueblo Cultural Center intern Aaron Kie prepares the waffle grid. Each student who comes to the center’s camp this June will have his or her own portion of the grid for learning Native American farming techniques. (Roberto E. Rosales/Albuquerque Journal)
Each square will be assigned to a camper, who will learn to farm it using a Zuni-inspired technique created for places like the Isleta Pueblo, where the nearest water hose is sometimes 2 or 3 miles away, Kie said.
“The water soaks into the ground farther down and keeps the roots moister,” Kie said. “You don’t have to water it as much. It takes two, two and a half weeks to be dry enough to re-water.”
He plans to sprinkle in words in Keresen, his native language, to tell stories involving butterflies and bees, and to plant what he calls “the three sisters:” corn, beans and squash, vegetables that team up and grow like a family when in the same plot.
“It’s known throughout Indian country that they look out after each other when they’re growing,” said Kie.
The hardy squash would be on the outside, protecting the corn and beans from bugs. The beans use the corn stalks for trellises as they grow up, and nitrogen released from the beans’ root system helps the corn and the squash get nutrients from the soil.
