‘We worked very hard’
Krista Allen Navajo Times Betty Thompson Kelly, 90, demonstrates how to make tsidigo’í during North Leupp Family Farm’s annual harvest festival in Leupp, Ariz. Kelly told the audience that traditional food such as corn have sustain the Diné people throughout the years.
Leupp harvest fest a way to restore traditional farming traditions
Krista Allen Navajo Times
Betty Thompson Kelly, 90, picks squash from her farm plot of land at North Leupp Family Farm on Aug. 29, after the farm’s annual harvest festival. Kelly grew squash of various types, including crooked neck and zucchini.
LEUPP, Ariz.
The smell of charcoal-grilled bread and mutton wafted through the air as harvesters bustled about preparing for the annual harvest festival at North Leupp Family Farms on Saturday.
Krista Allen Navajo Times
Betty Thompson Kelly, 90, demonstrates how to make tsidigo’í during North Leupp Family Farm’s annual harvest festival in Leupp, Ariz. Kelly told the audience that traditional food such as corn have sustain the Diné people throughout the years.
While guest speakers expressed their gratitude to the great harvesters that morning, the children laughed and scampered around the area with a snow cone in one hand and a steamed corn in the other. It was obvious that the crops were gathered for this occasion.
“This is what we are thankful for,” Betty Thompson Kelly said about the harvest. “We worked very hard.”
Each year, North Leupp Family Farm (NLFF) has workshops and a harvest festival, to which the entire community is invited to celebrate the growing of traditional food.
For instance, Kelly, a 90-year-old farmer who has a plot of land at NLFF, demonstrated for the youngsters how to make tsidigo’í (kneel down bread).
During her presentation, Kelly taught her young audience how food has an especially powerful force.
“It seems that we are forgetting our traditional food that have sustained us throughout the years,” Kelly said in Navajo. “Store-bought food such as sweets can contribute to all sorts of diseases, ending the life of our people.”
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