Meet the Senior Director of the Indigenous Farm Hub, Alan Brauer, as he dives into the story behind the farm and the farm's community impact.

Do you have a favorite spot on your farm and why is it important to you?

"We have about 12 1/2 acres, and my favorite part is our cornfields. We do rotational cropping, so we don't always have the cornfield in the same exact spot every year. I love being in the middle of the corn. I grew up on a dairy farm in Maryland and corn was the crop that we had, and I've always just loved being in between the rows and things of that nature. 
We grow white corn and blue corn. All the fields, after we get them planted and weeded a couple times, start to really take off. Just getting inside there and kind of getting lost a little is a beautiful thing."

Can you share what motivated you to start your farm and the story behind it?

"Our farm is called the Indigenous Farm Hub and we're part of a larger organization called Naka Inspired Schools Network. 
In 2015, I helped launch NAKA Inspired Schools, which was centered around supporting indigenous leaders to open up schools of excellence and relevance, where students can be secure in their identity, college prepared, and be holistically well. As well as help other people develop curriculum around those kinds of things. Land based learning and farming is all just super connected to indigenous communities. 
A lot of language and culture is deeply rooted in the place and the land. There were, over the course of a couple years, just a lot of our school leaders who were really interested in setting up a small farm or a small garden, however, trying to do that while running a school is really hard. Finding enough space, especially when you have a really small school with not very many staff, it's super hard to try to do that. 
In 2020, during COVID, my boss, who's Navajo and Dakota, and I were both working up in Santa Fe at the public education department. When COVID came and we got shut down in March 2020, she was like, ‘Why don't we start farming my little backyard and providing that food to one of our schools that we work with?’ We started with an extra couple of hours every day from not having to commute to Santa Fe. We ended up doing that and serving over 25 families with about 20 weeks of produce from about ⅓ of an acre, which is fairly small. At that time, in 2020, we were thinking about how some of our schools and the schools that we met across the state, were really interested in farming and developing a farm. 
We used that moment to kind of launch the Farm Hub. The Indigenous Farm Hub was set up to not replace but enhance what's already happening in communities. We thought about three main areas that we wanted to focus on. One was working with young people, kindergarten through 12th grade, to connect them back to the land and reconnect language and culture. That has been disrupted due to U.S. policies. The other big thing was we wanted to figure out a way to support leadership development for people who were really interested in farming. We run a farmer in residence training center. They build prosperity for people who really want to grow food for a living. 
The final thing was if we're going to do all this, let's grow at a scale that we can start to do our fair share around creating healthy food systems. Right now, we have over 1,000 kids that came through the farm last year. We expect about the same this year, through outdoor education and farming experiences at our farm. 
We have had about 13 or 14 farmers in residence over the last couple of years who have come to us and who work with us. We pay them a fair wage, and they work with us for about 20 hours a week to learn about farming, but also to bring their knowledge to our farm and to hopefully start their own farm, business, or create a plan for a business. Finally, we grow about 8 acres of produce every year. Last year, we raised about 50,000 pounds of produce that we got out to community members. We both sell and provide families with produce. We have a mixed model in that respect. 
We grow about 75 different crops throughout the year. Just to give diversity of experiences. We work with a lot of different indigenous organizations to get food out to people."

What are key practices you use to farm this land?

"One of the things that we do is embrace the tension between the old ways of farming and the new ways we have to use given climate change. The biggest thing we’ve experienced here is water use. We know we’re not going to be able to flood our fields very frequently this year; we'll probably only get 4 or 5 waterings off the river. We do use drip tape irrigation, which isn’t necessarily inherently Indigenous, but the idea behind it using water as life and using as little as we need is. We also use new technologies like hydroponics that use water in a very limited way, so we can grow enough food and sustain ourselves as best we can. So, we use old practices and newer practices, but all of it is centered around restoring and regenerating the soil. I probably shovel or spread about 100 tons of manure every year just to regenerate the soil and make sure it’s as healthy as possible. We use no-till practices and follow the land, letting it lay without mowing it off so it can repair. Instead of deep tillage, we use shallow tillage for our vegetables, going only 4 or 5 inches deep so we don’t break up the entire soil structure. Some people say never break up the soil at all, but for us, since the ground gets hard and compacted quickly, it’s actually healthy to open it up a little, let it breathe, and allow it to repair itself. We also do crop rotation so we’re not always taking the same nutrients out of the ground. We use different crops that take different things and provide different things throughout the year. Those are some of the main things we try to do. Using drip tape irrigation and different types of mulching is important. We try to keep the land covered so it doesn’t blow away. We keep the land busy, so it always has something in it and we’re not just taking from it. We have about 6 or 7 acres in perennial grasses that come to life when we get water. Right now, they look dormant, but they’ll turn green. We rotate our fields so we’re not constantly taking without letting the land repair. Crop rotation and companion planting are really important when we’re planting different things. We use organic practices for managing insects. We do spray, but we use organic insecticidal soaps or a chemical derived from the chrysanthemum plant called pyrethrins. We use that to support plant health as we move forward. We’re intentional about how we use those organic treatments because they still kill bugs. We also want to protect beneficial pollinators like bees, so we teach our team how to use these chemicals properly. We think about timing spraying in the evening or early morning so we’re not harming beneficial insects."

What perspective do you want the next generation of farmers to gain from your farm?

"I think the biggest thing I want them to do is feel a deep connection to farming, especially in a day and age where a lot of us are in front of the computer more, and that’s only going to increase as AI takes over. Farming is one of those things where the more you put into something, the more you’re going to get out of it, and the less you put in, the less you’re going to get out. It’s plain and simple. When we have kids come out, we have our farmer-in-residence start the day early so you’re harvesting at the right time. No plant wants to be touched at noon in the middle of July. Having that intention around getting things done earlier keeps the plants healthy and lets you see that your work is really paying off. Starting early and finishing early is important, because no one wants to be outside at 2 o’clock in June before the monsoons when it’s 100 degrees. If you take a day off, which is important, someone still has to water the plants. If they don’t, there’s a clear consequence. If you don’t weed when you’re supposed to, there’s a clear consequence. You’re going to starve the plants you want. The most important thing I've seen with young people interested in farming is that it has to be a passion. You have to be clear about your “why.” Is it to make money? To support healthy food systems? To find joy in providing food to families and strangers? For me, it’s about providing great food to people. I love seeing their faces when they get it. There’s something truly connected about sharing food with someone. All of that takes a ton of work. It’s a lifestyle, not a job. You have to commit, because what you put into it is what you’re going to get out of it. The earth, the plants, and the bugs all know what to do, we’re the uncontrolled variable. If you stay consistent with your actions, the soil and plants will provide. If you don’t, you’ll get exactly what you put into it. There’s so much work to be done, and we need more people involved. It takes effort to restructure how we think about food. Even something simple like a carrot, people usually picture baby carrots or long, uniform grocery store carrots. But on a farm, carrots come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. They’re not just orange. It’s important to show people that diversity. Food doesn’t have to look perfect. It’s okay to see imperfections like small bug bites. It’s not gross, it’s natural. A lot of this is about re-educating people on what food should look like. We’re only a couple generations removed from growing our own food. Our grandparents or great-grandparents were much closer to that reality. I was lucky to grow up around farmers and gardeners who showed me that food doesn’t have to be standardized. There’s diversity not just in how it looks, but in taste and flavor too."

In what ways is the community involved in your farm? If not, what would that community involvement look like to you?