I knew I wanted to go back to Spain, do it again, follow a foodway but how? I investigated scholarships, travel abroad ILC options and met with anyone I could who could support my vision. I always thought I needed to know everything before I set out to accomplish a goal – I was beginning to see that the main point of accomplishing a goal is to learn how to do it whether you accomplish it or not. Writing this it seems silly, but it really was my belief – how could I do something if I didn’t know how to do it to begin with? This notion was unraveling for me and began to allow myself to explore the things that were of interest to me, unapologetically, against what I was taught, instead I trusted myself and did it anyway. So I took a leap of faith. The Query was forefront and taking advantage of my newfound freedom with my education, lying in wait to pounce once I let go of all that held me back. I enjoyed working with Sarah Williams for the past two quarters and knew I had a lot more to learn from not only her wealth of knowledge in food and agriculture studies but even more her drive and encouragement to question and explore. This course seemed the perfect home base as an inquiry driven course on land, story and foodways. The beginning of this quarter was outlined by a few quotes and one of them set me free:
“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
Howard Thurman 1974
This quarter felt alive, I was able to reconnect with cooking from the land and sharing that with my peers. Using texts like An Everlasting Meal by Tamar Adler to connect food and conservation and joy.
Landbased Learning Fall 2024: Cooking From the Land
I practiced storytelling, beginning with storying my experiences with land, food and education. This was a formative practice and helped me visualize and experience point of view in storytelling.
Landbased Learning Fall 2024: Storying Your Relations
We practiced “nosedives” little queries into our surroundings and daily activities, looking at connections to land, food and ourselves. I wrote about my mini versions of The Query, working on the Evergreen farm, connections from my travels in Spain to a trip to Mexico and more, read about them here: