Return of the Peaches
They may receive scant and unpredictable rainfall, but the Hopi mesas of northern Arizona support some of the oldest continuously inhabited communities in North America. When the Spaniards arrived in the region almost five 
centuries ago, the Hopi were agriculturalists. They recognized the peaches the Spaniards brought as excellent additions to their diet, and quickly learned to grow them both to eat and to use in their traditional ceremonies.
Hopi subsistence agriculture continued largely unchanged well into the twentieth century. However, increased contact with the dominant culture brought an influx of wage labor and packaged commodities after World War Two. Hopi agricultural practices began to decline. By 1951, many Hopi had discontinued farming altogether. Today, this shift away from dryland farming and toward a wage economy has changed the fabric of Hopi culture. The loss of their organic, local foods system has resulted in increased diabetes, decreased physical activity, and the disappearance of heirloom crops that support, and are supported by, pollinators and other insects vital to ecosystem health. For the Hopi, what we commonly call “ecosystems” includes humans as a fundamental element; the two remain inseparable both for physical health and for spiritual well-being.
Despite the current scarcity of dryland farming in Hopi land, peach trees can still be found. Their roots run deeply and widely through Hopi culture, and they represent much more than a supplement to the traditional diet. Named sipala, the fruit also symbolizes strength, endurance, and the ability to overcome hard times. Nowhere is this more true than in the village of Sipaulovi on Second Mesa. This is where Sipaulovi resident and Hopi elder Ferrell Secakuku has chosen to make his stand against the tides of change.
Ferrell believes a return to ancient agricultural practices holds the key to the health of the Hopi people, their lands, and their traditions. As he points out, these three elements cannot be spoken of independently. “If I could revive the springs and the peach orchards and some of the farming that we had to go through to learn the meaning of the Katsina, to learn the meaning of these social dances, then perhaps Hopi youth could really know what Hopi is about,” he says. (In Hopi stories, the Katsina are the spiritual beings who bring moisture and all good things to Hopi land when they return from the sacred San Francisco Peaks each year.) By bringing back agriculture, Ferrell believes he can share what he learned as a young person. He says, “At least the youth will have the experience, will see the experience of what I did when I was a kid their age, which [otherwise] they will probably never have. That’s what I want to put a little bit more meaning behind, because after all we are Hopis, and they are supposed to know this.”
Well into his sixties, yet sturdy and stronger than most people half his age, Ferrell continues to live, farm, and teach in the Hopi way – a way that remains committed to the health of all the world. Each time he visits the fields, he looks out over rolling hills once covered with fruit trees, squash, corn, beans, and sunflowers. Now he sees abandoned peach houses where tools and food were stored, nearly dead peach trees, and bare rocks where peaches once dried in the northern Arizona sun. Because of this neglect, many heirloom varieties once grown here are in danger of extinction. So is the traditional and sustainable way of living on the land that remains integral to the flourishing of both crops and the people who grow them.
Yet what Ferrell sees on the mesas today is the potential for reversing this trend. In the spring of 2003 – twenty days after the vernal equinox in accordance with Hopi cultural practices – he organized a large planting party involving community members aged five to seventy-two. The participants planted Hopi blue corn, squash, beans, sunflowers, plums, and of course, new peach trees. In addition to the familiar rewards of growing such crops, the group has an eye toward economic payoffs for the village by 
marketing some of the produce as non-genetically modified, local, and traditional food. With the work begun, village residents will maintain the fields and crops and at the same time provide invaluable demonstration activities and workshops for future growers on the mesas.
The past and future merge in this old/new agriculture. Modern innovation, Ferrell feels, need not extinguish older ways. Small brush weirs and larger dead-wood gabions, or water catchments, in nearby washes slow water runoff during large floods, allowing nurturing moisture to reach the roots of the trees. Just as important, these simple woven structures hold back nutrients on their uphill side. Each gabion prevents topsoil from being washed downstream. The results are there on the ground to witness. “This is where we plant next,” exclaims Ferrell as he points excitedly to the rich topsoil held in place at one silt-collection site. “This is where the good stuff is – and we don’t lose it if we just pay attention to the flow.” He likes the metaphor, both for work on the ground and in the community he calls home.
Ferrell hopes that his peach orchard project will serve as a model for other Hopi villages and for other peoples on the Colorado Plateau who want to protect their cultural and spiritual traditions. For him, restoring the culturally significant springs associated with orchards, conserving Hopi heirloom crop varieties, and encouraging a return to traditional agricultural practices all represent small steps of a larger journey toward community health. Many village residents would still prefer to get packaged foods rather than work in the fields. This, as Ferrell puts it, is simply an obstacle that the Hopi need to confront daily, rather than pretend it will go away or that it is inevitable.
Giving up is not an option. It never has been, for the Hopi. The restoration of traditional agriculture involves, and from the looks of it requires, community outreach and information-sharing within and between Sipaulovi and other Hopi villages. But nothing makes an impact quite like a peach tree loaded with bright pink blossoms in springtime. “This is it,” says Ferrell. “This is what people need to see – that we can do it if we are willing.”
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