FOR EVER GREEN
Flavor of Guanxi 關係 (Trust Building Exchange)
What if "regenerative" financing felt like a warm hug, and tasted like sweet bonbons?
For this flavor message, we partnered with reNourish Studio from Farmer’s Footprint, who are working to shift large scale ag from “better living through small molecule chemistry” to “regenerative" farming by evolving how we think & feel about the flows & pools of capital through our food landscapes.
Join us for a Nut Cracking Party where we explore the flavor of guanxi 關係 (trust & reciprocity).
MEMES
FLAVOR MESSAGES
We are trusting (believing) in belonging to the greater whole.
Open your soft and cozy "money bag" dumpling to reveal a "medicine travel pouch" of delicious flavor messages from a future in which we are all, ALL in careful and caring relationships with people, plants and place.
Lay the medicine pouch flat on your table like a diamond. Put...Hickory Nuts and Walnuts due West...Kiki’s Cocoa box due East...white parcel and Three Tabaccos bottle due North...Yondu bottle due South.
Now, allow these flavor messages to awaken your curiosities...
How do we flow nourishment to people, plants and places by encoding the healing in ourselves? Creating fertile soil? Planting the seeds? Investing in the fertility of our communities? Of The Dream?
How do we nourish farmers who are economically and emotionally depleted?
Can economic relationships feel like a hug?
Hickory Nuts (kin to the Walnuts) are some of the hardest nuts to crack.
These shagbark hickory nuts were gathered by Wyatt in Wisconsin to buy himself a Nintendo Switch. (A few hours of gathering hickory nuts for endless hours of video gaming, sounds like a good deal).
Cracking the Story of Separation—that some beings deserve more, can take more, be more than others—is another hard nut to crack. The pain of separation feels like broken hearts, broken hopes, broken ecosystems.
Kiki cracked these Hickory Nuts between two bricks, and then slow-simmered the nut meat (cracked shells and all) in water for hours to make HICKORY AMBROSIA. Hickory milk is mocha-colored and tastes a little nutty, slightly bitter, and umami-ful. Our Wunderland.Kitchen smelled ephemerally of sweet maple syrup and rich forest soil.
We gathered the walnuts from Be Love Farm, a regenerative farm in Vacaville CA and site of reNourish Studio’s first gathering. During the 3 days together, we felt the sweetness and warmth of working through the discomfort and pain of separation.
“Regenerative” is a multi-faceted signifier of trusting in BELONGING to the greater whole. To the all, ALL.
Once the nuts are cracked, we are embraced by trust. Trust feels cozy. We are not alone. We do not abandon one another. We ask for consent. We feel ease. Trust feels easy.
How does a warm hug taste?
To us, "regenerative" tastes sour-spicy salty that gives way to melt-in-your-mouth bitter-sweet umami.
GOOD for me and GOOD for not-me. Two bon bons.
Regeneration melts away the pain of separation to reveal the Greater Whole of trust and reciprocity. Moments of connections so deep, we remember we belong. We see Mutually Beneficial Outcomes. Trust Building Exchange.
Kiki made these bonbons with Ecuadorian cacao, hickory milk, and walnut meat.
Taste which is Hickory and which is Walnut. Feel the bonbons melting away the story of separation, giving way to a creamy comforting sweetness.
How do you make bonbons everlasting?
MAKING
EASY COSY SIPPING BROTH
Far West Fungi Matsutake Mushroom, Lawless Botanics 3 Tobaccos Essence, Fairfax CA Bay leaf, Sempio Yondu
The texture of regenerative finance is giving, receiving and weaving golden threads of reciprocity.
The work of regenerative finance is building relationships that nourish new ventures with agency and care in order to manifest potential.
Snuggle up together to go where you have not gone before. Cozy up to feeling the discomfort of trying new ways. Ease the way for complexity and transformation.
How do you nourish yourself when you're exhausted and depleted? How do you like to nourish others?
We make EASY COZY SIPPING BROTH. Here's how:
Add HOT WATER to a JAR. Feels like a warm hug already!
Add YONDU until it tastes good to you. This Korean soy sauce is umami in a bottle, transforming hot water into broth.
Add MATSUTAKE MUSHROOM famous for regenerating broken forest ecosystems, used in reciprocity rituals to maintain, repair and initiate relationships.
Add THREE TOBACCOS ESSENCE, which feeds soil, and acts as nourishment, medicine or poison depending on the context.
Enjoy this easy cosy warm hug. Share half with a your favorite plant kin outside.
THIS IS THE FLAVOR OF GUANXI 關係 (TRUST & RECIPROCITY)
THE PARTY
Wunderland 06 __ For Ever Green [Fermentation] (2021-10-29 at 09_07 GMT-7).mp4
Leading reNourish Studio at Farmer's Footprint
Partner at Biome Captial Partners & Board Member at Farmer's Footprint
WUNDERLAND is an open-sourced Community Supported {FOOD} Art Project and EARLY SIGNALS Research Group lead by June Jo Lee, Kyra Kristof and Kirsten Ritschel. We produce 48 CSA boxes + Digital Wrapper of a flavor experience designed in dialogue with artists working at the edge of food systems change circa B.G. (Before Googlable). We ship these boxes to our community members and host an online party to Unpack (ideas), Make (new lived experiences) and Taste (the flavor of transformation) together. We use frameworks to guide our thinking and to make emergence more legible. We aim to inspire and resource food leaders to be/do the change that only they can do.
