Farming, Maya style

On the last day of April - seems like a really long time ago, now - we took a little trip with Judge Courtney to the farm of our friend, project consultant, and Master Forest Gardener Narciso Torres. Narciso lives in Santa Familia village, which is pretty close to BRASS Base as the crow flies, but takes around 30 minutes to reach as the truck rumbles over partially paved roads. His house is surrounded by plants and trees that produce all kinds of edible or otherwise useful products - the small, red, and incredibly hot bird peppers being my favorite. He even has a large cacao tree for those in need of a chocolate fix.

In ancient Mesoamerica, money really did grow on trees. Cacao was a medium of exchange.

Cacao beans ready for processing.

A fallen calabash vine at Narciso's house. The bottle gourd is the oldest Mesoamerican domesticate.

Narciso's home garden is definitely something special, but his outfield farm is nothing short of spectacular. He grows and tends a variety of native and non-native crops, trees, and bushes in a mosaic plot that would look unfamiliar to farmers from the Great Plains. After visiting his farm for the first time last year, I could easily pick it out in satellite imagery from Google Earth.

One of these fields is not like the others, one of these fields just isn't the same.

Archaeologists have debated the nature of ancient Maya food production for the better part of a century. I could do a whole series of posts on this topic, and I may in the future, but that's perhaps more context than we need to introduce Narciso's forest garden. His is a traditional Maya form of food production, in the sense that 1) he is Maya, and 2) his farming methods were learned from family members and passed down through generations. I am skeptical of using direct-historic approaches to understanding ancient Maya life - ask anyone who knew me in grad school - but there is an interesting and potentially useful analogue for understanding Maya settlement patterns and subsistence strategies here. The ancient Maya likely practiced a form of infield/outfield agriculture, comprising gardens surrounding the family home and more extensive plots further afield. Outfields are often viewed as large areas cleared with slash-and-burn techniques and planted with one or more staple crops of the Mesoamerican triad - corn, beans, and squash.

This scenario certainly makes sense from a Euro-American agricultural perspective - amber waves of grain and all that. But was it necessarily the case in the Prehispanic Maya Lowlands? Anabel thinks not, and she makes the case with co-author Ronald Nigh in a recent book and an article you can view here among other publications. The forests of the Maya Lowlands are dominated by plants and trees that produce edible, medicinal, or otherwise useful products - think hardwoods for construction, like mahogany, and palms for roof thatching - and the ancient Maya were intimately familiar with these resources. Outfields could have been guided through a managed form of ecological succession to maximize both food output and production of other necessities, and contemporary forest gardens provide a model for testing with archaeological materials. With that in mind, let's take a trip through Narciso's farm and see what a forest garden looks like today.

You're not farming in Kansas anymore, Dorothy.

The casual traveler entering Narciso's farm would probably think they'd walked onto a patch of fallow land. Parts of it are overgrown. There are trees aplenty. The whole plot is not given over to orderly rows of corn, soybeans, sorghum, or wheat. This ain't Iowa...but a farm it is. Some areas are not currently in use for growing crops, but the entire plot is a managed mosaic of shrubs, trees, and cultigens. Narciso has even built a small structure since I visited last year.

This small field shelter, made of reclaimed materials, was not here last year. It makes me wonder about a lot of the solitary mounds we find in survey around El Pilar.

Spot the sherds! Late Classic
overburden edition.

Amazing technicolor maize.

Narciso had some pretty interesting things inside his field hut, including loads of ancient sherds he's found while removing rocks from areas he wants to plant. This is not surprising, as a number of mounds are clearly visible in the plowed fields that border his farm. Ancient Maya settlement covered this area, and a large temple complex - called Bacab Na by Anabel when she rediscovered it in the 1980s - lies nearby. Narciso also had some indigenous corn stored in this structure from the last harvest.

A custard apple bears little resemblance
to your standard Golden Delicious.

A ripe cashew. You can eat the fruit as is,
but the nut requires some processing.

As you walk down a path through the relatively open southern section of the farm, you pass a number of fruit-bearing trees. Narciso assiduously tends them by pruning, clearing weeds, and harvesting fruit as needed. The trees in turn provide shade and mulch, which help keep the ground moist during the hot dry season and replenish nutrients in the soil. Moving further into the farm, we come across a small section that may look more familiar.

Sweet potatoes planted in rows blend seamlessly into the rest of the forest garden.

The "thin," "fragile" soils of tropical Central America have been decried by agriculturalists and archaeologists alike for decades. Scholars have spilled gallons of ink debating how the cultural achievements of the ancient Maya could have arisen from such a shaky agricultural base. But as Anabel and some others point out, there is nothing fragile about tropical soils if traditional methods of hand cultivation and managed succession are used to produce food. Soil degradation becomes a problem when people introduce technologies developed outside the tropical landscape - such as the horse/ox-drawn plow brought by the Spanish during their conquest and colonization of Mesoamerica. The plow works very well in other areas of the world, but its historic and contemporary use in the Maya Lowlands, along with the alien practice of converting forest to pasture for non-indigenous animals, has led to erosion and decreased soil fertility in many areas. Ancient Maya society developed over several millennia of occupation in the Central American tropical forests, and the techniques the Maya created to extract resources from their environment provide a model for sustainable agriculture today.

A pathway through the canopy.

The group enters the forested area.

Moving north through Narciso's farm, we enter a more forested area dominated by larger trees. These trees act as true solar collectors - the temperature was a balmy 102 degrees Fahrenheit (~ 39 Centigrade) in the open areas of the farm, but the air cooled appreciably (to perhaps 95 F) beneath the shade of the canopy. This area contains fruit trees, cacao, allspice, and a variety of medicinal plants and herbs that flourish in the shade, just as the motto on the Belize flag reads.

Narciso approaching the boundary stream
with machete in hand.

Narciso preparing Provision Bark, used to
make a tonic tea, for Judge Courtney.

A small stream that drains into the Belize River forms the northern boundary of Narciso's farm - the adjacent plot belongs to and is worked by his brother. The stream provides needed moisture during the dry season and creates additional ecological niches for aquatic and wetland flora and fauna. Narciso described some animals in the stream that he called "weasels," but which sounded like the seldom-seen tropical river otter to us.

Narciso applying crushed leaves as a salve
to the bruise.

Bandaging the herbal salve with a leaf and
securing it with a piece of vine.

I've mentioned that forest gardeners cultivate medicinal plants alongside food crops, and this time we unfortunately needed to use some of these resources. Anabel received a nasty bruise on her arm the night before our visit, and we did what we could with the materials - mostly ice - available at our house. Narciso took a look at the bruise and immediately went off to find a remedy, which he then applied and bandaged with materials ready at hand. Anabel reported a soothing effect from this salve.

I've only been able to show a small fraction of what Narciso has growing in his fabulous forest garden, but I hope this was a sufficient glimpse of the remarkable biodiversity promoted by this traditional form of Maya agriculture. The contemporary Maya forest is teeming with economically useful plants and trees, and this abundance may be the result of ancient forest management and land-use strategies. We can test this hypothesis with paleoecological data recovered from El Pilar and its surroundings, and we're working to gather this information along with the archaeological settlement data from our survey.

And yes, our trip to Narciso's farm did include two horse sightings, although neither of those horses belonged to him.

This old mare belongs to Narciso's brother. She was freed from her tether shortly after I took this pic.

Finally, today seems to be an auspicious day for posting about gardens, as the three most important mothers in my life - my mom, Patti Horn; my partner, Linda Howie; and my grandmother, whose 90th birthday is also today, Helen Moran - all enjoy gardening and tending useful plants. I'd like to wish them all a Happy Mother's Day and to dedicate this post to them!