Hi! This year I am embarking on an ancestral project, to rediscover the rices of my people and begin to reintroduce them into our diets. I have 19 species of African rice from across the diaspora, many acquired through the USDA Germplasm database. They are being grown out in a greenhouse for the first year according to California quarantine protocols, and I will be moving them out to the fields after the first year, where they will be cross pollenated and selected for taste and comfort in rainfed conditions, primarily.
South Central LA is in one of the most ecologically diverse areas of the world, and is traditionally a farming town. Dairy cows, Black farmers and horseback riders, these are pieces of our legacy that Black folk in this city are deeply divided from. This is a ancestral reclamation project as well as an adaptation one; as the rice is adapting to rainfed urban conditions, it will be the centerpiece of programming here at Coyote Gourd farms, as we reintroduce folks im the city to our ancestral foods and farming practices.