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Presenting stories, insights, and efforts of those who interface with the natural world.
So I think just the fact that we call nature nature is so insane because we are nature. We are animals. We are part of the entire ecosystem. But the fact that we go to the grocery store and we get our food that probably comes from California or Mexico instead of going to the farmer's market and getting the food that I grew down the road is a huge disconnect.
Host:This is Surface Exposure presenting stories, insights, and efforts of those who interface with the natural world, its inhabitants, resources, and temper. Horticulturalist Niccole Radhe joins for this episode. She breaks down the importance of reconnecting with our food through gardening and sourcing locally grown products. Niccole makes the case that, in addition to being healthy and tasty, consciously grown food promotes positive impacts to the environment, ecology, community, and society. Niccole describes methods to overcome barriers to growing and sourcing local organic food.
Host:She shares ideas on how to become involved in your community garden and farmers market, and the benefits to be had in doing so. During the episode, Niccole mentioned a number of organizations involved in local food production, native seed propagation, education, and conservation efforts. If you're looking for a great cause to get involved with, I'll leave some links in the show notes for you to check them out. There too, you'll find ways to further connect with and support the program. I do hope you enjoy the conversation.
Host:Here we go.
Host:So you've shared with me that you believe a society's disconnection from nature is the cause of many problems in the world. Can you illustrate what these disconnections look like and the problems that they cause.
Nicci:Yeah. So I read this fact. I read this, like, fact that kids can actually identify more logos today, business logos, than they can plants. They can identify over 200 logos and tell you what each company is that owns that logo, but they can't identify plants. I think of Big Pharma a lot.
Nicci:So a lot of people don't know this, but Big Pharma still uses plant medicine. But we don't even know that because we take pills instead of using plants. You know, we're we have higher depression. We have higher disease. We have higher obesity.
Nicci:We have higher we have all of these diseases and stuff are higher than they've ever been, and I think that a lot of it is a disconnection from nature and the fact that we are indoors sitting on screens and not engaging with the natural world, which should not even be a separate thing than us. We are the natural world. We are nature. Nature is us, but we have divided ourselves and been like, well, that's nature out there, and I'm not nature. So I think just the fact that we call nature nature is so insane because we are nature.
Nicci:We are animals. We are part of the entire ecosystem. But the fact that we go to the grocery store and we get our food that probably comes from California or Mexico, instead of going to the farmer's market and getting the food that I grew down the road is a huge disconnect. I think that people don't even know that you can go to the farmer's market and buy local food because we're so accustomed to just going to the grocery store and, you know, buying our stuff from there. Like, very few people have ever picked their own food or grown their own food.
Nicci:And I think that when I got into gardening about six years ago, it really helped heal a lot of the problems that I was having mentally, physically. I was obese. I was really depressed. I was very disconnected from myself, from nature, from everything. And then when I started growing, I started seeing parallels with the ecosystem and my body and my health.
Nicci:And when I started seeing the parallels between nature and myself, I realized I am nature. Nature is me. We are our nature, and we call it something separate as if it's something completely disconnected from us. But this idea that we need nature for well-being and for happiness and for health and for, like, a wholly connected life is getting really popular. And it's getting really popular with physicians and doctors and psychiatrists and, like, mainstream media where, like, a doctor will prescribe you a green a green prescription, which is where they say you need to go spend some time in nature.
Nicci:Just looking at the color green releases happiness chemicals in your brain. Because what have we done our whole lives? We've looked for food. We we've only lived I think this is the crazy thing, is that the industrial revolution was, what, like, five hundred years ago or so. We've only lived like this for five hundred years.
Nicci:That is not a lot of time. Before the industrial revolution, there was also the agricultural revolution, which was, what, like, another two thousand years before that. But even if you take the two thousand and the five hundred years, that's not that much time compared to the billions of years that we've been evolving as a species. That's less than 1% of our time on this planet has been spent indoors with machines, on screens, not getting enough sunlight, not eating healthy not even eating real food sometimes, eating completely ultra processed food. But the amount of time it feels for us who are in our you know, anyone who's alive right now remembers when, you know, we didn't live like this.
Nicci:But I've always grown up with processed food. Like, I you know what I mean? And so, like but my parents remember gardens, and my grandparents didn't even have processed food. So if you think of it in those terms, like, processed food is relatively new. Mhmm.
Nicci:Growing a garden used to be ubiquitous. Everybody used to have there wasn't anyone who didn't have a garden. Now it's only very special people, very rare that people have a, like, a food, fruit, vegetable, flower garden.
Host:Yeah. It's almost something that yeah. It's a special thing. It's the exception. It's something you go out of your way to do, and it's probably one of the most valuable things, in my opinion, one can start doing nowadays.
Nicci:Yeah. And when I meet people, the first thing that I hear all the time is, oh, my grandmother had a garden, or my grandfather, or my great grandmother, or but no one ever says, oh, my mom had a garden because our moms didn't have gardens. Our moms were working, some of them. Right? But, like, I'm just talking generally generationally, like, we have lived like this for such a short period of time.
Nicci:We forget that it's new to live like this, to live indoors, to live like we don't even get enough sunshine. We don't even get enough vitamin d because we don't spend enough time in the sun. That is crazy to me.
Host:Yeah. There's a trend now with the red lights people are buying to set up in their house for health benefits. You know, doing the red light therapy, I'm gonna get some myself. You know?
Nicci:And there's red light therapy at all of these massage therapist places. There's red light therapy in psychiatry. We don't even get enough sunshine. We don't so I so for me and, like, if you look at disease, especially, like, hypertension, diabetes, all of these, like, leaky gut, like, all of these microbiome things, everything leads back to diet. Every single one.
Nicci:Even Alzheimer's and dementia are starting to be called diabetes type three because Alzheimer's and dementia lead back to diet. So when I started gardening and organically, which is really important, I lost a 100 pounds. I was really obese. I was eating terribly before I had a garden. And once I started gardening, not only did I start to eat new things that I had never eaten before, but I can grow things that you can't even find anywhere else.
Nicci:You can't even find the things that I'm growing in a grocery store or a restaurant. And so I just started learning about food, and then I started learning about health, and then I started learning about the ecosystem health, and then I started realizing that, like, all the information I'm learning should be things that we're taught, but we're not. All the things that I was learning, I wish I had known ten years before, but there's no place unless you go and study biology, horticulture, things like that, you're not gonna learn that stuff. So I don't know. I feel like I feel like learning how to garden brought me back into connection with my land and my own body and my own mind.
Nicci:And my depression has gone away. I'm eating healthier. I lost a 100 pounds. I've found ways to, like, connect with my children and connect them back to nature. We've learned about bugs and wildlife and the entire ecosystem and the entire food chain.
Nicci:I don't know if how old are you?
Host:32.
Nicci:Okay. So when we were kids and we would be driving down the highway, we did a lot of road trips, Your windshield would be so covered in bug guts. You would have to stop just to clean the windshield to continue your trip. That doesn't happen anymore. Why doesn't that happen anymore?
Nicci:Why doesn't that happen anymore? Because there's not enough bugs. We're in a bug apocalypse right now. But the problem is, first of all, we've killed them all with pesticides and and other poisons. But second of all, we don't value bugs in our society, except they're the first animal in the food chain.
Nicci:So if something were to happen to bugs, the entire food system would collapse. But nobody knows that. I mean, very few people know that. Very few people care about that. When you put it into context and it's ignorance.
Nicci:But when you put it into context and you tell somebody like, hey. We're killing all the bugs, and we kinda need them to survive. All of a sudden, they care because that's our survival too.
Host:Yeah. I, was speaking with the Rodrigo from Borderlands Restoration Network.
Nicci:That's a cool organization.
Host:Great conversation. And the big this big message in conservation to you know, for anyone listening was like, yo, we're not we're not doing conservation for the whales or the polar bears. Like, we gotta do it for ourselves now.
Nicci:Yeah.
Host:We have to do it for ourselves. Like, us humans are selfish and greedy and, you know, self interested, and it's time to do it for ourselves.
Nicci:If that gets people's attention, that's the direction I wanna go. Like, I want to tell people this is for self preservation. Growing food is for self preservation because we have all these sky islands. Right? Mhmm.
Nicci:In between the sky islands, there's very little habitat for a lot of these animals. Backyard gardeners can bridge those islands by growing things that will sustain pollinators and birds and on their journeys between the islands. We used to have 4,200,000 hives of honeybees in The US. Now we have 1,200,000. We have an incredibly huge bee shortage.
Nicci:Part of it is pesticides, part of it is deforestation, and part of it is fungus that kills the bees. And, supposedly, a lot of our actions also hurt other it's not just the bees. The native bee populations are dwindling too, But it's every single pollinator is so important. The night pollinators are incredibly important. The hummingbirds, birds, bees.
Nicci:But, like, I think that we need to frame it in a way where it's like we need to take care of them so that we continue to have food because one third of the food that we eat is open pollinated. At least one third. The figures could be depending on where you are and what you It could be more. So I don't know. For me, like, insects are one of the most important things that I think that we should care about.
Nicci:And what one of the reasons I grow my garden is for the insects, for the pollinators, for the insects in the dirt, for all the microbes and, you know, making the soil healthy again. That's why I do organic gardening, and I don't use chemical fertilizers and synthetic stuff like that.
Host:What steps can individuals, communities, or society take to form this healthier connection? It's easy to say, we're gonna start a garden to encourage bug populations. And but, like, what's the first step, or where does it come from? Where do we start?
Nicci:I think we should teach kids the importance of insects. Education. Education is really important. Be and I think we should teach I have a kid who's in third grade, and they learn about healthy eating. And they learn about they learn about exercise and how important it is and stuff like that, but they have less PE class than we ever had when we were kids.
Nicci:Their PE has been cut in half. They have less recess. They have shorter lunch periods. And I think that starting with education and just saying, like, okay. It's important my kid goes to a garden school, so he's lucky he has gardens in his school.
Nicci:But I think we should teach gardening from a really young age, and I think we should put it back into our lives as a normal thing. Now I know that it's really hard to garden when you travel a lot. It's really hard to garden when you, live in an apartment. It's really hard to garden when you're, you know, when you're splitting your time between two or three locations, which happens a lot these days, and that's cool. Not everybody has to garden.
Nicci:But if you take the same money that you would go spend at Fry's or Walmart or Albertsons on food, you take it and put it into the farmer's market and you start to get to know your farmers, you're gonna be spending your money locally, and you're gonna be getting healthier food that's much more fresh. So I think that not I would say everybody should garden, but there's gonna be people who don't want to or can't, and that's real. There are so many barriers to gardening. And I think about that a lot because I used to live in an apartment or I used to rent a house. You know?
Nicci:Now I own my house. It's easy for me to garden. But when I wasn't in that, I could have shopped at the farmer's market. I could have bought organic food. I could have visited my local garden and learned about things, which I didn't because I didn't care.
Nicci:Because I didn't know that they were important. I feel like from a very young age, we're taught that that's nature out there, and we are totally separate and above. And I think that education is is number one because and then the other thing is action steps. Like you said, either start a garden or support someone who has a garden because you can take the same amount of money you would spend at a big box store and even if you're not buying food. Like, I go to the farmer's market, and I buy my mushrooms, my lettuce, my apples, my the tangerines at the Farmer's Market are amazing.
Nicci:They taste different. They taste better. But even if you don't wanna buy your food at the Farmer's Market, if you're a houseplant person, you can support a local nursery who uses organic permaculture practices and spend the same amount of money and support a local business instead of a big box store and a corporate I think we have to get away from the corporations too as much as possible. I think we need to support more local business, more local food, more local farms, more local is best for the environment for a thousand reasons. You're keeping your money home.
Nicci:You're supporting people who support the other people around you. You're not giving money to big corporations, and it products don't have to be flown and driven and shipped to use all the fossil fuels. So there's a win win win win win win win all the way around. And then when you get that food from the farmer's market, it tastes better, and it has a higher nutrient content.
Host:Where I was gonna ask and go to so, like, you're describing the benefits of economical benefits, the environmental, these impacts that are, like, higher level and at scale, but the individual doesn't see that. It makes it hard to make choices, us self interested humans, make choices where we don't two: see the benefits of Yeah. Scale. But when you taste that food, it tastes better. It makes you feel better.
Host:As I was telling you before, I had the privilege to eat out of a garden every day this summer. And
Nicci:It tastes better.
Host:Yeah. I felt better.
Nicci:You feel better. You are connected to the food that you're eating in a way that you weren't before. Mhmm. You're connected to the land that you're living on. Mhmm.
Nicci:You're connected to the people who are attending the crops that you're eating. And the longer the crop has to travel between the farm to your table, the less nutrients nutrients it's gonna have. So you're getting nutrient depletion at every single mile of transit. But when I'm buying my food from the farm that's twenty minutes down the road, I'm supporting a local family. I'm supporting making our soil healthier here in the desert.
Nicci:I'm supporting their rainwater harvesting. I'm supporting everything that they're doing to make this place better. But I'm also getting more nutrients. I'm getting more value from my food because even apples today are completely deficient of the nutrients that they were fifty years ago, and it's because of the soil and the farming practices that we use. So the less your food has to travel and the less chemicals and pesticides and stuff that is used in the processing of it, the better for your personal health.
Nicci:And if that isn't a personal self interested motivator, I don't know what is. Like, I wanna eat healthier, and the food lasts longer. If I send you home with a bag of chard right now from my garden, it'll be in your fridge for three weeks.
Host:Uh-huh. Lasts longer, and you'll see me coming back. Yes. It
Nicci:lasts longer. If I go get a bag of kale from the store right now Mhmm. It'll last a week, and then it'll turn into primordial ooze in the back of the fridge. Mhmm. This doesn't happen with fresh greens because you just picked them.
Nicci:That kale was picked six months ago.
Host:I bought a bag of broccoli at Costco last a couple months ago, and it was sour the next day in the fridge.
Nicci:All the little butts turned black. Yeah.
Host:Threw it out in the compost.
Nicci:Yeah. So and here's the thing. It's like, I don't want to say we can each be completely self sustainable. Especially in the desert, that's not realistic. But together, if you go to the farmers markets and you see what people have to offer, you can eat just from the farmer's market week by week.
Nicci:Everything is at the market from every farm that are complementary to sustain. So, like, I think one of the best things we can do right now is support our local farmers, support our local nurseries, support all the local businesses that are making honey and that are making there's a ton of local businesses growing mushrooms. Mushrooms are really important for our health too, and I think that finding ways to put more mushrooms into our diet is gonna be really important because they're anti inflammatory, and they help clean the soil. And fungi are really important for plants in general. So, yeah, I think that getting all of those all of those things more into our diets I just think of the American diet, you know, the standard American diet.
Nicci:And right now, what they're saying is that we eat 50% ultra processed food. 50% of what we eat comes out of a box or bag. It was not even like that fifty years ago. It wasn't even like that fifty years ago. It probably wasn't even that bad twenty five years ago, but now it's like that's all we eat.
Nicci:So, yeah, I don't know if I rambled on a lot. But Love it. Yeah.
Host:This is this is the this is the table for that. This is the spot for that. Yay. You used the word working together, the concept of supporting your local growers. Not everybody can or wants to be a gardener.
Host:But what what action what ideas or actions other than just handing your money over to a grower can people take to be involved? Like, what kind any ideas to network further, to become involved?
Nicci:So here locally, I know of a lot of organizations that I personally work with that I love that have gotten me involved in so many ways I wouldn't even have known what to do otherwise.
Host:But What are the organizations, Wally?
Nicci:One really important one is Mission Garden. It's right down the road. Have you been there?
Host:Yep.
Nicci:Okay.
Host:Beautiful.
Nicci:So not only do they have all of the almost original plants from the original mission that was there, but they do a ton of education. They do tasting. They teach you how to prepare native foods. So in the desert, we have 2,000 over 2,000 edible foods, and we eat zero of them. Native and indigenous Mexican Native American and native Mexican cultures have processes and dishes for each of these foods that of these plants that you see growing wild.
Nicci:So I learned from Mission Garden all of the history and context of the people who lived here before from the Hopi to the O'odham to the Spanish to the English that came and conquered the Spanish, all of those cultures are still exist here. All of those foods still exist here, and each one of those foods has its own story and has its own current use right now. Mission Garden's a really important one. Native Seed Search is another really important one. And you can volunteer at any of these places.
Nicci:They always need volunteers. I volunteered at Mission Garden only for two days because I started when COVID hit. Mhmm. And then my children got taken out of school because all the schools closed down. So I only had two I only had two gigs at Mission Garden before I quit volunteering.
Nicci:I would go back there anytime to volunteer because you can do the garden work. You can do seed work. You can be a docent and help educate people about the garden about the history. Native Seed Search is another really cool place that I love. What they're doing is really important.
Nicci:They're a seed bank, which is conserving all of these seeds from our native people, from native Americans, native indigenous Mexican people, like, all the people who have lived here, all the foods that were imported that and they're a seed bank that keeps seeds for generations, but the and save seeds for that and save seeds for variety. But they also help Native American farmers by giving them seeds and helping them to grow their food that they've lived on for centuries. And that's really important. For example, we used to eat 200 different kinds of corn. Now we now we eat three.
Nicci:We eat three kinds of corn now, and there's there were over 200 varieties. There may have even been more in Mexico. There could have been 2,000 between Mexico and Peru, but we only eat three because that's what big ag that's what big agriculture grows and sells to all the stores that aren't the farmers markets. So native seed search is a really important one. I loved volunteering there because I got to do the seeds, and I got to use their machines to, like, thresh and winnow the seeds, and that was super fun.
Nicci:It was great to see how they do seed processing and packaging on a very large scale. They also sell foods, arts. They they support our native communities almost more than any other nature conservancy community, organization in town. So Native Seed Search is a really good one. The farmers markets at the Rieto, at the Santa Cruz, at Udall, all the heirloom farmers markets, that's where you're gonna find all your local farmers and growers.
Nicci:And they're all involved in separate organizations too. And, like, I partner with Awareness Ranch. Awareness Ranch accepts volunteers, and they teach people how to do natural building works and aquaponics to conserve water in the desert. I really love working with Awareness Ranch. That's another place.
Nicci:You can volunteer at almost any of these organizations. If you want to get involved, if you wanna make a difference, if you wanna make more of an impact than just buying food from a farmer, there's a million ways to get involved. Borderlands Restoration, as you had mentioned, they are amazing. Sky Island Alliance is another really cool organization that does a lot of nature education, conservancy. Watershed management group, that's a beautiful organization that's helping to try to get our rivers to flow again.
Nicci:They actually release beavers into the San Pedro. The San Pedro used to run perennially when I was a kid. Woah. That was thirty years ago. Mhmm.
Nicci:I just turned 40. I was nine, seven, eight, nine, 10 swimming in that river year round. It doesn't flow anymore. Since watershed management has put the beavers into the San Pedro, they're starting to see the whole ecosystem of that river change. They're starting to see like, I don't know if you if you have seen the way that beavers create entire ecosystems with their dams and their rivers.
Nicci:The way that they dam things actually creates a lot of other opportunities for a lot of other animals. So watershed management group. They also teach people how to do rainwater harvesting. They teach people how to do basins. They take people out to eradicate invasive species.
Nicci:And I didn't know about any of the invasive species until I worked with Watershed Management Group. So, like, I felt so ignorant, but where would I have learned this stuff? They don't teach it to you in school. They teach you about parallelograms. You know?
Nicci:Like, you're not learning this, like, prac I think we need to teach more practical stuff in school. And I think this knowledge of nature and wildlife and food systems used to be common sense when we all needed it.
Host:Mhmm.
Nicci:Now we have outsourced all of that, and we don't really need that information anymore. And I don't think that everybody needs to go and get a botany education, but I think that our kids should be able to name 200 plants rather than 200 company logos. But this is where we are right now. So watershed management's another good one. Those are my favorite organizations.
Nicci:Watershed, native seed search, Borderlands Restoration, Mission Garden. There's also places like Tohono Chul and the Tucson Botanical Gardens. They have a lot of educational components. Botanical Gardens is actually doing something really cool right now. They have a horticultural therapist.
Nicci:Her name is Philippa. Phillip Philippa. Philippa. I think that's how you say it. It's Philippa.
Nicci:And she works with children and adults who have disabilities or autism and does horticultural therapy with them to teach them life skills and mindfulness and stuff. And they're starting a new program where they're working with ex addicts and alcoholics and doing horticultural therapy with them. So I think that we're learning that horticulture is therapy. Working with our hands, working with the soil, working with plants, and learning about nature and wildlife and bugs is therapy. And we can see that, like, in real life now because people are actually starting people are studying horticultural therapy.
Nicci:People are getting degrees in it. And I think that if we all had more contact with nature, no one would need horticultural therapy because these are things I think we used to do all the time.
Host:Yeah. Yeah. That's a real thing. I was sharing with you earlier. I had started some of your chard seeds you gave me, and it was the highlight of my day when I got home to my little starter tray and see the little sprouts, the little Yeah.
Host:Germinated starts pop up out of the ground, and the next day, they're a little bigger. It was a hit.
Nicci:Yeah. I don't know why it feels so good, but I remember sprouting I I still get that feeling, but I remember sprouting my first sprouts. And the first thing I grew was a sunflower. Mhmm. And sunflowers grow really big really fast.
Nicci:So every day, it's like another inch or two or three. And then at the end, you've got this head that's, like, bigger than your face, and you're like, this is a magnificent plant. But I remember that, and I remember that feeling, and, like, that is what I was like, I wanna do this again and again and again and again, and that was six years ago. But we eat the sunflowers, and the birds eat the sunflowers, and then we use the stalks for stakes, and we sunflowers help take contamination out of soil. But our soils like, I live next to an HOA.
Nicci:They spray pesticides all day, and then those pesticides run down into the wash with every rain event. And then that wash takes the pesticides and spreads them through the whole valley. So I think that that's the other thing that's really important as an action that we should not forget to talk about today is that if you live in an HOA, you have no control over what they do. I mean but backyard gardeners are some of the biggest resident regular private residents actually make such a huge impact because they're spraying poison in their own yards all the time. HOAs are bad.
Nicci:Farms are actually not as bad as you would think because they're so regulated by the government that they actually can only spray certain amounts or certain types of pesticides. But in your backyard, you can spray whatever you want, however long you want. And everybody's backyard is flowing into the same river every time it rains. And then all that water is just being dispersed, so then we end up with forever chemicals. And there was just a bill signed into this administration that protects glyphosate.
Host:Oh, wow.
Nicci:Yeah. Yeah. President Trump just signed a bill into law that protects glyphosate, almost giving them immunity to legal action for cancer and things, which we know glyphosate causes cancer. There's tons of lawsuits with Roundup and lymphoma. But as as regular private citizens, one of the best things you can do is stop spraying poisons.
Nicci:Stop putting poison in your yard. Stop poisoning the ants. Stop putting herbicides and pesticides in your own yard. But people do it because they're lazy and they don't wanna pull the weeds. They just wanna kill them with poison.
Nicci:It's like an atomic bomb for the bugs, And it doesn't just mess with the bugs. When you poison the bugs, then you're poisoning the birds. And when you poison the birds, you're poisoning the coyotes and the foxes and the owls, and it just goes up from there. The minute you poison a pile of ants, you're poisoning the horny toads and the birds and the owls. You know?
Nicci:And so that's the other action item that I am every day trying to tell people. Like, please stop spraying poison. Please stop spraying poison. We, the bees, cannot take it. The bees are dying in in droves, the butterflies.
Nicci:They've found owls with poisoned rats. They ate a poisoned rat. I poison my rat. The owl eats the rat. The owl dies.
Nicci:People don't think about the consequences of the chain. But I think that's the best thing we can do is support our local farmers, stop spraying poison. If you don't wanna garden, you don't have to garden. Not everyone's gonna be a gardener. I'm sure throughout history, there was tons of people who were completely uninterested in gardening, and that's okay.
Nicci:But to be ignorant and remain ignorant about our impact even in our own backyard is something that I think has to be stopped. I think we need to be really careful and mindful about our impact on our own house, on our own land, on our own neighborhood.
Host:What values or impacts do farmers markets make on your community? What function does it serve?
Nicci:It really is a gathering place for community where we eat and hang out and listen to music and make friends. So it it's like a little community hub, you know, and it's, besides getting really local, fresh, nutrient rich food and being able to talk to the person who grew it, the community that exists there and that is growing at these markets is huge. And I do think people are becoming aware because every year, the market gets busier and busier. And more and more people come, and you see the same people every week. Like, I need more kale.
Nicci:I need more chard. This was the best chard I've ever had. But, yeah, I think that they really serve for community engagement, friendship, and I think that they serve a really important educational aspect because people are always asking me questions about the food that I grew that they're gonna go home and eat, and that is incredible to me. You're never gonna talk to a farmer at Albertsons or Fry's. You're definitely never gonna see a farmer at Walmart.
Nicci:Mhmm. But you can buy produce there. And the community. Yeah. I think the community is really, really cool at the markets.
Nicci:I think that that building that community and the friendships and the networking between farms and between nurseries and between growers is really important. I love it. I really love the farmers markets.
Host:How have you seen the market change over time?
Nicci:There's a lot more people coming because we now accept SNAP and EBT benefits. So we're seeing people come who, never have been to a farmer's market in their lives. There are people who come to the market who have always been hippies and always grown their own food and always eaten nothing but organics. But what I'm seeing now is people who have never eaten like that in their lives becoming really interested in what it is that we're doing. And that to me is really cool because that means that they're getting educated.
Nicci:They're educating themselves. And then they go and educate their friends, and then their friends come back to the market with them, and then everybody's coming back to the market, a place they never would have come before because they just are so used to their routine of going to their grocery store, at their local grocery store or whatever. We're also in a food desert here. We just had one of our only grocery stores on this side of town shut down. And so the farmer's market is one of the closest grocery stores to the Tohono O'odham nation.
Nicci:So we're seeing a lot more native and indigenous people come to the markets, and we're seeing a lot more low income people come to the markets because they can use all of their government benefits, and it feels so good that they can come and spend that with
Host:a local farm. That's huge.
Nicci:Yeah. So I've seen a lot of new people come to the market who never would have come to the market before. And I love it when they bring their friends and their family because they are, like, teaching them about it.
Host:How do you what direction do you see the your market going in? How do you how do you project it to change in the future and what, yeah, what it will look like and what it will mean to your community as time goes on. How do you see it changing?
Nicci:I think there's gonna be a lot more vendors who are who I there's a lot more people who are starting farms and nurseries and stuff right now, and I think that we're gonna see a big increase in vendors and customers. I think that these markets are gonna grow. Have you been to the Rito market yet? Yes. It's huge.
Nicci:My market's really small. I don't know if the retail market has the capacity to be any bigger, but it's already so big. You can't even hit every vendor in the morning. You have no it's not enough time. My market that I do is really small.
Nicci:There's probably, like, 20 vendors. It's tiny. But there used to be, like, 10. And before that, there were, like, six. So I've watched it grow just over the last couple years that I've been involved, and I just see it growing more.
Nicci:And I just see it becoming more valuable, and I see it becoming more of a a hub where people come to get their food, their friendship, and their local little their local vibe. My market's the one on Thursday at the Annex. That's the one that I go to. I also sell at the Riutto. And then we I am on the board of Tucson Organic Gardeners, and we are doing a big fall mark or a big spring market coming up in March.
Nicci:Those have gotten bigger and bigger every year too because people are becoming more interested in growing plants and growing food and having fruit trees, people are starting to really wake up to the fact that we need to be healthier. So I just see it getting exponentially popular. I'm also delusionally optimistic. So
Host:Gotta be.
Nicci:You have to take that with a grain of
Host:mentioned salt. The markets now accept EBT cards. What other changes or efforts can be made to improve affordability and access to healthy local food for people?
Nicci:I think it would be really cool to like, I personally think it'd be really cool to make some videos and stuff to put out to talk about how important the farmers markets are, bring awareness to it. Kinda like if we can bring the market to people on their phones through social media or through YouTube or whatever and let people know that the market's there and how affordable it is and how much better it is, I think that would be something that's something I don't see a lot right now, and that's something that I think would help. But the more people who support the market, the more food the market can grow. So I think going out and supporting the market as for you as an individual is going to have ripple effects because then it's going to inspire your friends and family or your kid or your wife or your sister or your cousin or your neighbor or whatever. You know, when I see people buying their food at the farmer's market, it makes me wanna buy my food at the farmer's market.
Nicci:And the more money we spend at the farmer's market, the more money the farmers have to bring more food to the market. So I think that's one way. Outreach, letting people know that the markets are there and why they're so good, I think is another one. And, you know, eating healthy does have a stigma of being more expensive. But if you look at it from a if you look at it from an ounce of prevention is is better than a pound of cure.
Nicci:How does that saying go? Eating healthy prevents disease, which is very expensive. So paying an extra dollar for your kale isn't really that much more expensive if you think about it like that. And that's really what kale is. It's, you know, $2 for the pesticide kale or $3 for the organic kale.
Nicci:Spend the extra dollar. I know that money is a huge barrier, and I really think it's cool that we that we are letting the we that the government is allowing individuals to use their SNAP benefits at the farmer's market is really cool because you can use them at Cross Junior.
Host:Yeah.
Nicci:Take your pick. So did that answer Yeah. Did that answer all your question? So
Host:your journey has led you into seed production. Can you share more about how you got into working with seeds and the the importance and the value? And
Nicci:Yeah. So I I really I really love seeds. They're they're alive, which is crazy to me. They're alive. They're they're alive.
Nicci:They're living embryos, and they're just sitting there waiting for the perfect temperature, moisture, weather conditions. And they have metrics for all of those things inside of them. Seeds know when the temperature is perfect. How do they know that? They know when the moisture is just right for the pod to break open.
Nicci:They know when they have enough winter and they've been frozen long enough that now they can germinate in the spring. That to me is mystical. It's mystical that that's there's that much intelligence in a seed, which looks like a dead piece of just looks like a dead thing. So seeds intrigued me from the minute I started planting them. And then I realized that there weren't a lot of local seeds, because I learned that buying local seeds is better because you're gonna get better yield.
Nicci:You have plants that are better adapted to your climate. So there's native seed search. Borderlands sells seeds. Mhmm. There's a couple other there's a really cool company called Westwind Seeds, and there's a couple other local seed companies, but that's very few.
Nicci:Very few seed companies. And I was like, okay. Here's something I like to do, and here's something that is needed. And what happened first is I was not trying to start a business. What happens first is that you have so much abundance.
Nicci:Like, I'm looking at my seed pods right now, and, like, I could there's, like, there's 500 seeds in those pods. I can't I would never need 500 radish seeds as an individual. So I had to start finding people to give the seeds to. So I started giving the seeds away, and then I started giving the plants away. And then I I was just giving everything away, and then my water bill started getting higher.
Nicci:And I was like, okay. I think if I could offset the cost of my water bill by selling my seeds, that would be great for my relationship, my marriage, my house, and my my bank account. That's when I started the business of selling seeds because I knew people wanted them because everyone was really getting into gardening at that point. This was twenty twenty twenty two. So everyone got into gardening in 2020.
Nicci:Most people stuck with it. And the people who did their victory gardens in 2020, everyone I know who did it is still doing it now. But I think seeds themselves are fascinating. They're also really important because we live in a time where seeds are being patented and sold by corporations, and we are not allowed to grow those seeds. But that's all the food you can find in the store.
Nicci:That's a very big problem for biodiversity. We used to eat 200 kinds of corn. Now we eat three. This is the same story for most of the food that we eat. We're we're going down to mono cropping, which is really not good for the environment or the wildlife because wildlife needs diversity just like we do.
Nicci:Ecology needs diversity. The ecosystem every diversity is this the key of indicator of health of any ecosystem. Any so I think that, like, seeds saving seeds are really important because that gives us the power to grow a whole farm. It gives us the power to make our own food. We don't have to depend on anybody if we have seeds.
Nicci:So there's a lot of stories of times where seeds weren't allowed to be produced or saved. For example, The US did not allow indigenous peoples to sow their native seeds that were part of their staple diet. Amaranth is a really good example. But the native women, and mostly the women from what I know, save these seeds illegally anyways. They grew out these plants and saved these seeds.
Nicci:Now we have a 100 different kinds of amaranth. But if if they were not allowed to grow their food, what what did they have? They got subsidies from the government. They got flour and sugar. Processed processed shit food.
Nicci:Ultra processed food is what they got. They were not even allowed to grow their own crops. So this is where we're headed if we continue giving Monsanto and Bayer and all these other huge corporations control of our food supply is that we're giving away the diversity and the stories of the seeds that have been saved for millennia from cultures all over the world. Mhmm. So that is another reason why I think seeds are so important because it's rebellion.
Nicci:It's rebellion against a system that is only working for that corporation. You know? I I can't even I know you know how bad Monsanto is, but Monsanto is not even the only one who benefits from this system of monocropping and patenting seeds. Yeah. So that that is see that is why seeds are really important to me.
Nicci:Like, it's something that and it's this little thing of potential. Right? Yeah. It's just this little thing of potential. Every seed has the potential to be whatever whatever it can be depending on the care that you give it.
Host:Small seeds break dams.
Nicci:Yes. I think that symbolically, artistically, spiritually, seeds are sacred. Like, I think that seeds are really important. And because people are so scared to grow things from seed, people don't even grow a lot of things from seed anymore. Everyone goes and buys the plants.
Nicci:Well, the plants were grown with pesticides. Pesticides. So if you can grow things from seed, you can grow things completely pesticide free. So that's the other thing about seeds. It's like you get to determine how that seed lives out its life Mhmm.
Nicci:And how that plant has grown rather than getting it from Home Depot, which they get it from Bonnie Plants, and Bonnie Plants uses Miracle Girl, whatever. Those are just examples. I have nothing against Bonnie Plants or Miracle Girl. I just I realized that I was bringing home pesticides in my plants I was buying. It's things you don't even
Host:think about. Things people don't think about.
Nicci:Yeah. Another thing I did was I used to mulch my gardens with hay. Mhmm. I didn't buy the organic hay, so my hay had pesticides on it. So I was still accidentally putting pesticides into my garden, but this is how ubiquitous they are.
Nicci:They're everywhere. And pesticides have been linked to cancer, mental mental disorders, autism. I mean, there's a ton of things that pesticides have been linked to that are hormone hormone imbalance, messing with male and female hormones, which hormones control our whole lives. And you wanna you wanna mess with that? You wanna mess with your hormone?
Nicci:I don't. But it's really difficult. Like, supposedly, we all have pesticides within us. Like, there's no one who doesn't have pesticide. It's like microplastics.
Nicci:Yeah.
Host:When you gave me those packets of chard seeds and sunflowers, I felt less helpless on a big level. I felt I had more security over myself and my resources. Like, it was more than just a little packet of potential. Yeah. Just knowing that those seeds will be there for me if and all I gotta do is just be there for them, and they will provide for me.
Host:And I from those seeds, I can produce more seeds one day.
Nicci:Yeah.
Host:And, yeah, it was a really good feeling when you gave me those chart seeds.
Nicci:And you'll produce so many seeds that you have to find somebody to share them with. Mhmm. And that's the cool thing. Because then you're like, well, who wants seeds? Someone will show up.
Nicci:You'll find someone who wants seeds, and then they'll grow those seeds, and then they'll get seeds. And they'll be like, Katie, you want these seeds. And then you start it just starts it it's this abundance snowball is what I noticed. And it started with me having too many seeds, and it was probably sunflowers. I think it was sunflowers.
Nicci:I just I had buckets and buckets of sunflower seeds, and I was like, what do I do with all this? And I found so many people who wanted seeds, and all the people who took my seeds ended up bringing me cactus or another plant or a seed that they found. So the sharing and the abundance and, like, the sharing the communal food is so, like, is so deep to me. And I think that that that is something that brings us together, and I think that coming together is really important right now with just the way that the world is at this point in time. So coming together over seeds, over food, over farmers markets, over, you know, the guy who sells Egyptian food at the farmers market.
Nicci:Like, coming together for all of these things and supporting each other in that way is really what I think community is about. And you see this at the markets all the time. You see people who know each other and spend time with each other, and that's what we need in community. You know? We need to know our neighbors.
Nicci:I think I think we I think we need that. That's my personal opinion. I don't know. I just think that getting into nature and realizing that you're not separate from nature is really important. Hey.
Nicci:We can support local businesses and eat healthier at the same time without spending extra money or time, which applies to our self interest, but it also applies to our community interest and to supporting local businesses. So, like, the key takeaway for me is, like, go to your local farmers markets. There's probably seven or eight in this town. So if you live in a bigger city, you probably have more. And if you live in a small town, you may only have one.
Nicci:But the more people support that, the more we're gonna be able to bring back to the market and the more people we're gonna be able to support. So it's just a cycle. But, yeah, I think that's the most important thing is get to your markets, talk to your farmers, ask the questions, eat healthy food, and community. You know? Like, getting together with your community, getting to know your community.
Nicci:We live in a time where we rarely even know our neighbors anymore. I know that in some neighborhoods, it's different, but, like, in my neighborhood, people don't really they don't really hang out. They don't really chitchat. We don't know each other. It's kinda strange because I grew up in a place that was not like that.
Nicci:And I know people in Tucson who live in these really tight communities, and then I know other people in Tucson who've never met their neighbor in their lives. So, like, I think just getting that community is really important.
Host:Go to the market.
Nicci:Go to the market.
Host:It's easier said than done, but it's not that hard to do.
Nicci:No. Go to the market. Go to the market. Let's go. Meet your farmer.
Nicci:Buy some food you've never eaten before. Buy some locally grown food.
Host:It will change your life.
Nicci:Yeah.
Host:Yeah.
Nicci:Yeah.