Bean Tree Farm

Curry Toppings with a SW Flair

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Ideas for curry are in the air…On an adventurous (pre-Covid19) tour of Morocco last February 2020, as fellow travelers, we befriended a remarkable character, Kip Bergstrom, an enthusiastic foodie who seeks out the absolute “right source” for his gourmet dishes.  Diving headlong into Moroccan lamb, he found a local, caring sheep farm (for him Connecticut) and has become online chef for www.wearwoolnewlondon.com! 

Curry dishes call for crystallized ginger so my inventive Southwest solution is candied local fruit rinds as “side boys” or toppings!

Tia Marta here to share how Kip’s “LambStand” has inspired me to go local with lamb curry in the Southwest.  Being a mindful omnivore, I found Sky Island Brand from the 47-Ranch near Tombstone, AZ, providing lamb at Bisbee and Sierra Vista Farmers’ Markets from their arid-adapted, heritage churro sheep.

My family tradition at Easter has always been to serve lamb roast–then lamb curry soon after, so I’m getting ready.  Mom’s favorite touch to complement complex curry flavors was to dress the table with a festive array of toppings all around the main dish–what she called “curry boys” or “side boys.”  (Not sure the derivation of this term—like servants long ago around the table offering toppings?)  Regardless, these complementary dishes are a visual and gastronomic joy, so I’ve taken it as a fun challenge to create local Southwest curry toppings from local gardens and desert harvests.  These flavor combos promise to surprise and delight you in any curry dish–lamb or vegetarian….

In place of regular store-bought toppings called for in typical curry recipes, here are my creative suggestions:

Fresh from the garden, here are ingredients to make Muff’s Chirichurri Mint Sauce.

In place of regular mint sauce, I make a Southwest version of chimichurri sauce:

Muff’s Chimichurri Mint Sauce Recipe:

Ingredients: handful (1/2 Cup) fresh mint leaves from the garden

2 Tbsp chopped I’itoi’s onions (tops and all) from our mini-oasis veggie patch (also available from Mission Garden as starts (or shallots chopped)

3-4 small cloves heirloom garlic (or 2 lg garlic cloves) chopped

2-3 little chiltepin peppers whole (when I can get there before the birds–use sparingly) OR 1/2 tsp chile pepper flakes

1/2-2/3 Cup red wine vinegar,

1 Tbsp olive oil

Optional–up to 1/4 Cup fresh cilantro chopped

Chimichurri Mint Sauce Directions: Blender, chill and serve fresh in a small cruet.

In place of the traditional peanut “side” I like our local bellotas (Emory oak acorn nutmeats) or pinyon pinenuts.

In place of shaved coconut, I purchased jujube fruit from Tucson’s Mission Garden–grown in the Chinese garden section there.

In place of raisins and coconut toppings, try dried jujubes, desert hackberries, or crunchy dried chun (saguaro fruit)!

Chutney is a must as a curry topping!   Using a variation on Mom’s recipe, I make a local peach-mango and barrel cactus fruit chutney that should win prizes.  You can find a fabulous cactus-with-chia chutneys or barrel cactus seed mustard at BeanTreeFarm ordering online for easy pick-up.  

Barrel cactus fruit chutney, garden rosemary-garlic jelly, and Bean-Tree Farm’s barrel cactus mustard make great toppings!

Velvet and screwbean mesquite pods were used in making Tia Marta’s Mesquite/Membrillo Conserve–a great curry garnish!

Another goodie to use as a topping is my mesquite/membrillo conserve  that I made using quince fruit (membrillo) from Mission Garden plus a concentrated sweet syrup made by boiling down whole mesquite pods(See last October’s Savor-post.)

With fresh eggs from the Mission Garden “farm” I first boiled then pickled them for another curry complement.

In place of candied ginger, I made candied Meyer lemon-peel and grapefruit-peel from our little huerta trees and the fragrant sweet-lime peel from Mission Garden’s unusual citrus.  Click for the recipe in the SavortheSouthwest.Blog archive.

I’m topping off our SW curry meal with Rod’s amazing backyard olives (a future post?), an extra chiltepin hit, then partnering it all with a wee dram of bootleg bacanora mescal.

Your taste buds will be delighted and amazed to discover how all these different flavors blend and complement each other to enhance any curry dish!   

 

 

In a festive array around the curried lamb centerpiece, the Southwest’s low-desert bounty provides a garland of delectable complementary flavors!

I’m sending thanks to our desert gardens within and beyond the garden wall, for the plenty that our Sonoran Desert provides.    Here’s hoping these ideas might inspire you to try your own to dress up a curry dinner– lamb or vegetarian—in whatever habitat you live!

“Yellow Moon” leads to…..Sweet Pea Harvest-Time!

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Desert ecologist Dr. Tony Burgess enjoying the glow of Oam Mashad — “Yellow Moon” in Tohono O’odham is the lunar cycle or “month” when so many desert plants are blooming yellow.

illustration palo verde post June7,2019

Massive bloom of foothills palo verde (Parkinsonia microphylla), in spring 2019, extended beyond the normal Oam Mashad, making it the longest lasting and dense-est flowering in botanical memory! (MABurgess photo)

THIS WEEK in early June is a narrow window of opportunity–one of those Manna-from-Heaven moments we are blessed with in our colorful and productive Sonoran Desert.  Tia Marta here, encouraging you to get out into the desert right away to enjoy this pulse of plenty!  What an experience it is, eating fresh sweet peas right off a tree! No fuss. No kitchen cooking.  It’s an easy outdoor treat that grandparents, little kids, even overactive entrepreneurs can all enjoy, along with our feathered and four-legged neighbors.

To ID our most directly-edible and flavorful bean-tree–the foothills, one of many palo verde species–note close-up that the top petal of its butterfly-shaped pea flower is WHITE, and its pinnate leaflets are teensy. (MABurgess photo)

Palo verde flowers, once pollinated by buzzing helpers, shed their petals and morph in May into clusters of bright green seed pods.  Foothills paloverde pods are not flat–check these photos.  Rather, they look like beads on a short string.

Not to be confused with foothills palo verde, the flat pods of blue palo verde (Parkinsonia florida) have no constriction between seeds, and a bitter taste to my palate–not nearly as flavorful as foothills. [Avoid Mexican palo verde (Parkinsonia aculeata) with its orange petal and potentially toxic seed.]

Imagine each seed of a foothills palo verde (Kuk Chu’hu-dahk) pod inside a long green sheath, a constriction between each like beads on a necklace. (MABurgess photo)

My Tohono O’odham harvesting teacher and mentor, Juanita Ahil, taught me that Kuk Chu’hu-dahk kai is its best when eaten in the green stage, as the pea-size seeds are just swelling.  She told me, “Don’t wait til they are real fat, or the seeds will get a little tough and lose some sweetness.”   These sweet green peas are chucky-jam-full of legume protein, complex carbs and sugars, and phytonutrients in active mode.

In a short few days when temperatures soar, the soft green seeds shrink into hard little brown “stones,” which can be used in a totally different way, as a protein-rich flour (but that’s another story!)

With the gift of our cool wet spring of 2019, there is a good chance our sweet pea harvest season may extend into June beyond the “normal” first week.  But don’t hesitate!  Go browse with a basket or canvas bag to bring some home to share or prep into salad or snacks.  Long sleeves, gloves and sunglasses are suggested, as branches of foothills palo verde are sharp-tipped.  [A voice of experience:  In your enthusiasm to look up and reach for handfuls, don’t forget to look down for rocks or rattlers in your shared space.]

Note the structural similarity of a peeled foothills-palo-verde pod to edamame at your favorite sushi bar. They do look like botanical sisters. For a great “desert edamame” recipe go to my June13,2019, savorthesouthwest post (link below).

Beyond the simple pleasure of eating directly from the tree, you can also make “desert edamame” with palo verde pods.  They make a wonderfully unexpected hors d’oeuvre or potluck finger-food. Click on my June 13, 2015 post Lovely and Luscious Legume Trees for fabulous recipe ideas and helpful photos. More sources are at Bean Tree Farm’s website,  and desertharvesters.org.

To peruse and purchase my traditional Southwest foods and watercolor artwork, visit my website www.flordemayoarts.com or several special shops in Tucson:   NativeSeedsSEARCH, the Tucson Presidio, Old Town Artisans, and Tohono Chul Park Museum Shop.  Next fall-winter season, sign up to learn more about traditional Baja Arizona foods in our City of Gastronomy downtown tours at Tucson Presidio Museum.  I also teach timely hands-on wild foods harvesting workshops through Tucson’s Mission Garden.

Foothills palo verde pods plump and ready to pick for a sweet desert treat

Now…grab a pal and go ye into desert foothills to browse palo verde pea-pods –mindfully, joyfully, gratefully!

Prickly Pear Upside-down Cake, Summer in Tucson

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Amy Valdes Schwemm here today, with glochids in my hands.

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Figeater beetle, Cotinis mutablilis

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Santa Cruz River Farmers’ Market Workshop

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“I want to be a scientist!” she said.

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Nopalitos en escabeche (pickled cactus pads with carrots, garlic, I’itoi onion, chiltepin, Mexican oregano)

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Prickly pear kombucha

Harvest party at Bean Tree Farm. Classic Barbara Rose cocktail with too many ingredients to list!

Harvest party at Bean Tree Farm. Fancy cocktail by Barbara Rose!

Prickly pear vinegar

Prickly pear vinegar

Prickly pear jelly on Sourdough Sonoran Wheat, Barley, Almond crepe

Prickly pear jelly and nut butter on sourdough Sonoran wheat, barley, almond crepe

Apple, prickly pear and friends compote

Apple, prickly pear and friends compote

Peach prickly pear cobbler

Peach, raspberry, prickly pear cobbler

Prickly pear upside down cake

Prickly pear upside down cake

Prickly Pear Upside-down Cake

1/4 cup butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

3/4 cup whole wheat flour

3/4 cup unbleached all purpose flour

3/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup prickly pear juice

1/2 cup butter, melted

1 teaspoon vanilla

6 prickly pear fruit, glochids singed over fire, peeled, seeded and sliced

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. In a 9 inch springform pan, put 1/4 cup butter. Put pan in the oven just until butter is melted. Sprinkle with brown sugar and arrange prickly pear fruit on top. Mix flours, sugar, baking powder and salt. Separately, mix prickly pear juice, 1/2 cup melted butter and vanilla. Combine the two mixtures and pour into prepared pan. Bake for 3o minutes or until a toothpick inserted in cake comes out clean. I like the cake to have some brown edges. Cool, invert on to a serving plate and enjoy. IMG_3286

Lovely and Luscious Legume Trees

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Desert Ironwood (Olneya tesota) still in flower! This should be a good bean year for ironwood.

Known as hoh’it-kahm to Tohono O’odham, the Desert Ironwood (Olneya tesota) is still in flower! This should be a good bean year for ironwood as the flowers produce pods.

Hasn’t this been the most incredible, elongated spring in the Sonoran Desert ever?  Tia Marta here to celebrate this red-letter year for our desert legume trees–they are still coming on!!

Desert Museum hybrid palo verde--thanks to St Mary's Hospital for beautiful landscaping!

Desert Museum hybrid palo verde–thanks to St Mary’s Hospital for beautiful landscaping!

We have had the joy of palo verde blossoms from mid-April thru May.  Mark Dimmitt’s amazing Desert Museum hybrid palo verde continues to grace public buildings and roadways with a glorious yellow glow.  Mesquites (life-giving kui wee’hawk to traditional Tohono O’odham) are still producing creamy yellow catkins and greening pods soon to ripen.  Red pod clusters are hanging from white-thorn acacia.  Dusty lavender ironwood blossoms still bedeck the foothills….Color and Beauty–the first of the gifts…

 

For wild-food aficionados and first time experimenters, this promises to be a bountiful bean year.  Bees are already going wild–they know the buzz.  I’m going wild just thinking about the desert’s gifts of nutrition for so many life-forms.  Humans are just a few of the happy recipients.  With the help of bacteria, the desert’s bean trees even feed the soil with bio-available nitrogen, hidden from our awareness in their root nodules.

Foothills palo verde pods ready for eating off the tree! (maburgess photo)

Foothills palo verde pods ready for eating off the tree! (maburgess photo)

This week is PALO VERDE TIME for sure!  We gotta get out there right away because this only lasts a few days!  If you want a sweet treat to pluck right from the tree, take a walk up almost any rocky hillside in the Sonoran Desert and find the Little-leaf or Foothills Palo Verde (Parkinsonia microphylla–the green barked shrubby tree with teensy leaflets, actually no leaflets right now in June’s heat).  It will be covered with little hanging pods that look like paternoster beads, each seed making a bulge in the pod.  Say a prayer of blessing and thanks to the Koh’o-koh-matk Tree and to Nature for this food.

Seed pods of foothills palo verde plump and ready to pick fresh for a green desert treat.

Seed pods of foothills palo verde plump and ready to pick fresh for a green desert treat.

If you find it at the right stage, you can snip the pod-covering with your teeth and peel it back to reveal the pea-like green bean–sweeter than any sweet pea you ever tasted.

Just peel back the outer fiber and voila! there's the delicious sweet "pea"

Just peel back the outer fiber and voila! there’s the delicious sweet “pea”

It can be eaten fresh right then and there. Most harvesters can’t help gorging at first, gathering later.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The variations from one palo verde to the next are interesting to see.   Some pods are all green, some flecked with red, some are even purple!

Foothills palo verde with bright purple pods--Tucson's west side.

Foothills palo verde with bright purple pods–Tucson’s west side.

Foothills palo verde (Parkinsonia microphylla) pod ready to eat.

Foothills palo verde (Parkinsonia microphylla) pod ready to eat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you find palo verde pods that are really getting super-plump and the pods are turning slightly buff or straw colored, they may be a little beyond the sweet stage.  At that point it’s best to let them fully mature and to use them for grinding later.  Both the sweet soft green “beans” and the later hard stony seeds when mature are super nutrition for whoever eats them–both chucky-jam-full of complex carbs and high protein.

Foothills palo verde harvest (maburgess photo)

Foothills palo verde harvest (maburgess photo)

Years ago in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, I purchased snacks from a kid selling what he called “balled peanuts.”  The delectable treats had simply been boiled in a salt-brine.  Inspired by that treatment, I tried the same process on our desert legumes.  It works wonders on mature ironwood pods–watch for them to be ripening in the coming weeks.  Great also for prepping plump green foothills palo verde pods before they harden.  Quick brining produces a gourmet delight–Desert Edamame!–creamier and tastier than soy bean (and who knows now if any soy is  GMO-free?).   Just imagine….Sonora Desert sushi, tilapia caterpillars with a side of Palo Verde Edamame….

Foothills palo verde pods cooked in brine ready to eat (maburgess photo)

Foothills palo verde pods cooked in brine ready to eat (maburgess photo)

Here’s a quick recipe for Desert Palo Verde “Edamame” Hors O’ouvres:

In a saucepan:

2 cups washed whole foothills palo verde pods

2 cups water

2 tsp sea salt or RealSalt

Boil for 5-10 min to desired “done-ness” or softness.

Chill and serve as snack, as a blow-em-away pot-luck offering,  or as a complement to any Asian cuisine.

Easier than edamame--and you know they are not GMO! Yum!

Easier than edamame–and you know they are not GMO! Yum!

As pods ripen further on our Sonoran Desert bean trees to become hard seeds, the cooking technology can adapt.  Parching and grinding the nutritious but super-hard seeds of palo verde, ironwood, and acacia can create unusual and delicious flours for baking–but that’s another story…

Contact http://www.DesertHarvesters.org for upcoming events like the mesquite milling at Mercado San Augustin, Thursday, June 25, and demos by some of the great Bean Tree harvesters like Barbara Rose, Amy Valdes Schwemm, and Brad Lancaster.  Also Google Bean Tree Farm for more harvesting ideas.  Hey, thanks to Barbara Kingsolver for spreading the idea of our “Bean Trees” to the outside world!

With such nutritious plenty surrounding us, delicious gifts from  hoh’it-kahm,  kui wee’hawk, and ko’o-ko-matk,  bean trees which the Tohono O’odham have known for centuries, we can taste–and experience–food security in our bountiful desert.

If you want more info on harvesting the desert or monsoon gardening, do come talk with me, Tia Marta, at our Sunday, St Philips Farmers Market booth–in the shade of the Flor de Mayo canopy–8am-12noon.  You can find more wild desert food products at our website http://www.flordemayoarts.com.   Also watch for announcements by Tohono Chul Park of our upcoming Fruits of the Desert class this August (www.tohonochul.org).

Mesquite–Ancient Food for the Future

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Yes, we gotta admit it—Tucson and ALL OF BAJA ARIZONA is a FOOD-COLONY!  To feed ourselves here, we currently import over 96% of our foods from out of state or out of country. If there were to be a transportation stoppage or disaster (perish the thought), we have less than 4 days’ food supply in local groceries. (info from Fry’s managers and Pima Co Emergency Mgmt.) This is a scary and sobering reality, and we need to remedy it for the good of all.
When it comes to food security in the Desert Southwest, if we are smart we’d best turn to those whose ancestors not only survived but thrived here, before European food fads invaded, and long before bio-technology pretended to save us–Let us listen to Native People!  If we look to traditional O’odham cuisine, and to that of all low-desert Traditional People in the Southwest, we learn that one of their most important and consistent staple foods was MESQUITE. Meal ground from the whole, ripe, dry pods was prepared in diverse ways by every tribal group, and stored safely against lean times, providing them amazingly tasty nutrition.

Now….its up to “newer arrivals” to the desert to expand our cultural tastes–and enjoy lessons from local tradition….

Harvesting ripe velvet mesquite pods--an old Chuk-shon tradition (RodMondt photo)

Harvesting ripe velvet mesquite pods–an old Chuk-shon tradition (RodMondt photo)

Everyone enjoys mesquite’s shade, its smokey flavoring and fuelwood in BBQs. But what about mesquite as food and food-security? Sweet and yummy are first.  Culinary versatility is up there.  Nutrition is paramount.  Recent nutritional analyses show what Native People have ALWAYS known intuitively, that mesquite’s sweetness is healthy (complex) sugars, and that it gives sustained energy (from slow-release complex carbs.)

A major plus for arid-lands food-security is that mesquite trees grow plentifully in the desert WITHOUT ANY HELP from humans. Having evolved with large Pleistocene herbivores, mesquite’s survival strategy is to over-produce quantities of tasty pods to entice mammoths or (extinct) ungulates to eat them and spread their seeds, scarified and delivered in ready-made fertilizer packages. In more recent centuries, cattle have provided a similar service to spread mesquite.  Hungry bi-peds can benefit too from mesquite’s plentiful productivity. With global climate change and the promise of expanding deserts, mesquite offers us a healthy staple food and a fitting dry-lands crop for our stressed Planet.

Velvet mesquite pods (Prosopis velutina) in green phase (maburgess photo)

Velvet mesquite pods (Prosopis velutina) in green phase (maburgess photo)

[Mesquite pods are ripening as I write–so heads-up!]

A most timely gathering of mesquite experts—both traditional and innovative—is about to happen at  a MESQUITE CONFERENCE open to the public and not to be missed………Attention–Novice mesquite-harvesters, cooks and culinary artists, bakers and chefs, nutritionists and clinicians, ranchers, farmers, gardeners, athletes and fitness fans, survivalists, nature buffs, climate-change planners…. this conference is for you.

MESQUITE: NEW AGRICULTURAL TRADITIONS FOR AN ANCIENT FOOD  will be held in Benson, Arizona, all day Friday, June 13, 2014, at the Cochise College Campus, 8:30am-4pm.
There will be talks by leading Mesquiteros, including traditional Tohono O’odham harvester Clifford Pablo, new crops innovator Dr. Richard Felger, the one and only mesquite agronomist Mark Moody, wild-harvester Amy Valdes Schwemm, creative desert rancher Dennis Moroney, animal feed expert Dr. Howard Frederick, desert foods ethnobotanist Martha Ames Burgess, and Cooperative Extension outreach educator Mark Apel.

In addition, generously sharing their knowledge, techniques and recipes will be demonstrators, including desert foods writer Carolyn Niethammer, wild-food teacher Barbara Rose, solar cooking expert Valerie McCaffrey, mesquite millers from San Xavier Farm Coop and Tohono O’odham Community College, and children’s book author Laurie Melrood. This is the place to contact producers of mesquite meal for your home cooking, for nouvelle local-source eateries, and breweries. Get your tastebuds ready for samples of delectable new culinary mesquite delights!

Sponsored by Baja Arizona Sustainable Agriculture and University of Arizona Cooperative Extension, with extra support from USDA Western SARE, we have been able to keep the registration fees to a minimum– accessible to anyone. $30 covers the whole day conference including luncheon ($20 for students or members of BASA). Space is limited so register soon. Registration is online via the BASA website http://www.bajaaz.org. For further info call 520-331-9821.
Once registered, please group your travel plans in carpools. For carpooling ideas check out the Native Seeds/SEARCH or BASA facebook sites. Let’s not let anyone miss this conference who needs to be there!

 

Select sweet velvet mesquite pods dry and ready to grind (maburgess photo)

Select sweet velvet mesquite pods dry and ready to grind (maburgess photo)

 

Delicious honey mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa) with ripening pods.

Delicious honey mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa) with ripening pods.

ADDITIONAL MESQUITE HAPPENINGS–Plan to Harvest, Plant, and Celebrate Native Bean-Tree Abundance Before the Rains…

DESERT HARVESTERS is organizing events to help people dramatically enhance the quality of their mesquite pod harvests, what to make with them, and how to better sync with the Sonoran Desert’s seasonal cycles in a way that enhances our shared biome.
We are teaming up with local culinary businesses to increase offerings of native foods in their cuisine, and to encourage landscaping with native food plants in water-harvest earthworks beside their buildings.

Mark your calendar for Thursday June 19, 2014!

Guided Mesquite Harvests and Plantings
Hosted at the Santa Cruz River Farmers’ Market
100 S. Avenida del Convento, Tucson, AZ

5pm harvest on foot, 6pm harvest by bicycle
Led by Desert Harvesters including Amy Valdés Schwemm and Brad Lancaster
$5 to $10 per person (sliding scale)

These hands-on harvest tours show you how to:
• Identify and sample the best-tasting mesquite trees
Every tree is different, but some varieties are consistently much better than others. Taste the differences. (We will also likely harvest from desert ironwood and palo verde.)
• How to harvest safely, ethically, and responsibly
Harvesting pre-rains is best practice to avoid invisible toxic mold. Harvesting from the tree avoids fecal or fungal ground contamination. Check out http://www.ediblebajaarizona.com/calling-all-mesquiteros/ for more on why pre-rain harvests are the traditional practice, and so important.
• Use cool tricks such as the harvest cane.
• How and when to plant the best bean trees
Participants are encouraged to bring sun protection, reusable water bottle, and carry-bags for harvested pods.

Iskashitaa, an organization that helps resettled refugees integrate into the Tucson community, will be offering their beautiful hand-made harvest bags and fresh-squeezed juice from fruit they’ve gleaned. Also there will be AravaipaHeirlooms’ prickly pear pops and chiltepine-infused cold brews from Exo Roast Co.

Bean-Tree Processing Demonstrations
Before and/or after the Guided Harvests and Plantings
4pm to 7pm–FREE
Taught by Barbara Rose, desert foods farmer/fermenter/cook extraordinaire of Bean Tree Farm (see their website for more awesome workshops), will show you how to turn milled or whole desert ironwood seeds, palo verde seeds, and mesquite pods into tasty dishes. Native foods such as mesquite flour, cactus fruit pops, drinks, syrup, and cholla buds will be available for sale, along with seeds and seedlings of the best-tasting native bean-trees and chiltepines.

AND THEN DON’T MISS Sunday, June 22, 2014!

Pre-Monsoon Mesquite Milling
Sunday, June 22, (alert–in the event of rain, it will be moved to Sunday, June 29)
6am to 10am
Bring Your Own Pods!
Pods for milling must be clean, dry, and free of mold/fungus, stones, leaves, bugs and other debris. Cost: $3/gallon of whole pods, with a minimum of $10.

Also at the milling event:
• A native wild foods demonstration – highlighting what’s in the wild-harvest season now
• Exo’s mesquite-, mole-, and chiltepin-infused coffees
• Mesquite baked goods and cactus fruit popsicles
• Seeds and seedlings of select native bean trees and chiltepines — so you can plant yours in time for the rains.

Our thanks to hosts Exo Roast Co. and Tap & Bottle,
403 N. 6th Ave.,Tucson, AZ
Harvesters’ Happy Hour at Tap & Bottle
Come join fellow harvesters in fermented merriment. Tap & Bottle will have local brews on-hand, some infused with local native ingredients. And they will donate a percentage of all the sales to Desert Harvesters. Learn more online at: http://www.DesertHarvesters.org

 

Mesquite can help us into a food-secure future– fittingly, sustainably, healthily, and sweetly– as we face heating and drying of our desert home.  What a gift mesquite is, as we begin to declare our independence from being a FOOD-COLONY!