Preparing for planting
Navajo Times | Rima Krisst
Corn and other seeds saved by Tsé Chizhi farmer Kris Barney provide a burst of color on a gloomy winter day.
Diné farmer offers seeds of wisdom
ROUGH ROCK, Ariz.
“On this land we know where everything is,” said Kris Barney, the owner of Tsé Chízhí Farm and Seeds, set in a pasture abutting rugged cliffs below Black Mesa. “There’s a power in everything around us,” he said. “Everything is interconnected.”
A 31-year-old farmer, sheepherder and seed steward, Barney learned everything he knows by doing.
“All my life I’ve been around people who were working with the land – ranching, farming, hunting, collecting food and medicine, and water from the springs,” he said. “That’s just the way of the way of life here.”
He planted his first garden when he was 12 and says he just never gave up. He’s been planting every year since.
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Highway 264,
I-40, WB @ Winslow