Groundwork Blog

This March, I took a willow basket weaving workshop with Jeff Wagner from Groundwork. Let’s just say, it was a humbling experience! Working with wild materials involves significant preparation. Our willows, harvested by Jeff in early winter, were dried for three months before being rehydrated for weaving. We were learning a European stake and strand style. Jeff is the executive director of Groundwork, a Western Slope non-profit that believes environmental problems stem from cultural issues. Their solution? Place-based education that fosters a shift in perspective […]

Continue reading >>

I applied for this fellowship because… I applied for this fellowship because I have been seeking to understand and work towards a vision of the world that inspires me. I have ever-changing ideas of what this future could look like: It always includes community, a close relationship to the food we’re growing, vulnerability, and personal responsibility. I often ask myself if some version of this future is possible in our polarized and disconnected culture where these values hold such little importance. How do we get […]

Continue reading >>

For my “summer vacation” this year, I spent about a week on the traditional lands of the Ute communities now known as Grand Mesa National Forest in Colorado. The pull to meet the Mesa was strong. Many of us traveled from afar (some as far as Southern England). We were pulled because we had an insatiable curiosity about land relationships on top of the world’s largest Mesa. Having a bit of fear of being an animal on a mountain is healthy. I had this fear […]

Continue reading >>

Listen Now In several conversations recently, this interview has come up as a foundational piece of inspiration for activists, educators,. So this month, we’re featuring Joanna Macy’s first appearance on the On Being podcast: “A Wild Love For The World“. Joanna Macy has lived a varied life: she is a translator of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, worked for the CIA and the Peace Corps, worked alongside the Dalai Lama when he was first exiled to India, and was a foundational force for the environmental […]

Continue reading >>

Groundwork began in 2019 as a collection of Bite-Sized Books that had the goal of contributing to more expansive, holistic, and creative conversations about addressing environmental issues. With encouragement from friends, I (Jeff) am returning to writing and publishing on a regular basis. In the next few weeks, watch for the first release of The Winnowing Tray. You may ask, what’s a winnowing tray? It’s a type of flattish basket used all around the world to winnow seeds, separating the viable seeds from chaff, dust, […]

Continue reading >>

This month, we bring you the story of a mustard defying the odds: Bekana mustard! This mustard has everything. Fast-growing. Beautiful. Mild flavor to eat raw in salads. Crunchy stems to cook like bok choi. What could go wrong with this plant? Truelove Seeds describes the history of these seeds: “Japanese soldiers returned home with Chinese cabbage seeds after the Russo-Japanese war in the turn of the 20th Century. Bekana (often called Tokyo Bekana) is believed to be a selection from these early Chinese cabbages, […]

Continue reading >>

In spring of 2023, Groundwork sponsored the Lithium Lands Fellowship, a month-long immersion field study to document the flora within Jindalee Resources of Australia’s proposed McDermitt Lithium Project site, with a focus on culturally important plants (CIP). CIP are plants traditionally used for food and crafts by Indigenous people. The relative density of these plants in a landscape often point towards ancestral human kinship, as well as current use and significance for local tribes. The fellowship project was motivated by threats to the site from […]

Continue reading >>

One of the most exciting and inspiring parts of being a seed grower is the understanding that our food and seed crops aren’t static relics of the past, and instead, living ecosystems that are constantly evolving and adapting to place. Therefore, the work of the seed grower isn’t only the maintenance of varieties from our past but as a co-evolutionary partner in the varieties of the future. For the past summers on our educational farm in Paonia, Colorado, we have been plagued by infestations of […]

Continue reading >>

This new section of our newsletter (and blog!) will include the books, podcasts, and people that keep us inspired to continue our environmental work in the face of all the challenges facing our world. We see burnout, overwhelm, and hopelessness as some of the largest obstacles to climate and ecological action, so this is where we share tools to maintain a sense of stability in rough seas. Hooray! This month: an incredible interview with Christiana Figueres, one of the guiding figures for the UN’s work […]

Continue reading >>

These seeds defied USSR government control to travel to the United States in the late 1980’s! One of our seed steward mentors, Bill McDorman, was visiting an agricultural research station in Siberia on a trip to find seeds that might grow well in the harsh conditions mountain west. He asked whether he could take samples of the seeds back to the US to grow and distribute, but the research director told him he would need permission from the Kremlin. As he was leaving, one of […]

Continue reading >>