Posts by Jeff Wagner

In the high desert, growing squash is always a gamble. Our home, Delta County, used to be one of the biggest squash-growing areas of the United States, known for exporting Japanese varieties like kabocha squashes to discerning markets in Japan. We have faced increased pest pressure from squash bugs, recently, which both weaken the vines and carry diseases that can kill whole plants, and our region is now faced with very challenging growing conditions for Cucurbita-lovers like ourselves. This year, with a generous dose of […]

Continue reading >>

Groundwork has always focused on the relationship between culture and environment. This newsletter, we offer you an episode of one of our favorite podcasts: Outside/In from New Hampshire Public Radio. The episode focuses on what happens when you take a species (that’s us) that has a keen sense of direction and sense of place, and replace nearly all their navigation through the world with GPS in the span of just a few years. As you might suspect, our relationship with the world, both built and […]

Continue reading >>

Habanero-type peppers are their own species of pepper, capsicum chinense. Most of them are grown in extreme humidity and heat in tropical areas, requiring a longer growing season than the most common pepper species, capsicum annum. You see large amounts of habanero-types in places like the Caribbean and the tropical mountains of northeastern India (this is where ghost peppers come from). In tropical areas, peppers are long-lived plants, forming small trees that can live for several years. In areas with freezing weather in the winter, […]

Continue reading >>

Throughout the Groundwork food systems fellowship, we meet for weekly seminars on alternatives to the mainstream culture that relies on destruction to produce economic growth. We study the cultural, political, and economic movements that are imagining and trying to bring into reality a more livable future. Degrowth is one of our favorite movements. As a movement, degrowth is based primarily in the global north, focusing on how the wealthy societies of the world can craft a path forward that focuses on real measures of well-being […]

Continue reading >>

Meet a new vegetable! Stem lettuce, also called celtuce, is a Chinese specialty. Coming from the same species as regular old lettuce, these plants are grown for their large edible stems rather than their leaves. Stem lettuces are the aster family’s answer to kohlrabi. I first tasted stem lettuces in Yunnan Province in 2019, and fell in love. They have a great flavor. Mild and enjoyable: a little lettucy, a little asparagusy. This variety comes from Kitazawa Seed Company, and lives up to its claim to fame: […]

Continue reading >>

This conversation from the podcast “The Way Out Is In” is about applying mindfulness and wisdom in environmental and social movements. This week, our world had the two hottest days ever recorded. In the middle of the summer heat, it’s easy to feel overheated and overwhelmed as both heat and news cycles tax us and our communities. We chose this piece for this newsletter’s inspiration because it feels like a soothing balm for people who are working for a better future in any setting, whether it be as […]

Continue reading >>

Listen to a conversation between Groundwork’s director Jeff Wagner and Kelly Moody, an incredible botanist, teacher about people’s relationship with land, and instructor for Groundwork’s field programs. Kelly interviewed Jeff for her Ground Shots Podcast. The conversation focuses on the Colorado River, industrial food production, and how the Colorado River is a microcosm of the U.S. relationship with the natural world. Listen Now

Continue reading >>

All our ancestors, no matter where they originated, created intimate relationships with their home places, including place-based skill traditions. In the modern world, those skills and relationships are in decline. Groundwork’s folk school is a space to share and learn traditional non-industrial skills as a way to… Preserve and expand ancestral and traditional skills, helping humanity prepare for a less industrial future. Build relationships with place and foster the emergence of more localized culture. Explore values and ways of life the oppose capitalism, industrialism, and […]

Continue reading >>

At the end of May, Lance Swigart, Jill Spears, and Lulu Volckhausen visited Groundwork’s educational farm for a tour and interview. We chatted about Groundwork’s educational farm programming and the work that needs to be done to inspire young leaders in environmental and agricultural fields. You can listen to the interview on KVNF’s website by clicking here. The interview is split across the radio hour into segments, which begin at about 17:00 and 40:00. Click here to see more of Groundwork’s interviews and articles in […]

Continue reading >>

How can we create a sustainable relationship with the land? Nikki Hill and Kelly Moody are both teachers for Groundwork’s field courses studying ecology, botany, and human-landscape relationships in Colorado. Kelly is also the force behind the Ground Shots Podcast, interviewing all kinds of people who work with plants and ecosystems. The core question this conversation orbits around is this: how can we build a sustainable relationship with the Earth, rather than substituting one kind of over-consumptive culture for another? This interview with Nikki comes from […]

Continue reading >>