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Subtle Agroecologies
First Know Food
From food all things are born.
By food they live,
Toward food the move
And into food they return.
Taittiriya Upanishads
Through the medium of food, naturecultural entwine. Touchstones Earth draw on the power of food as
a way of knowing to co-evolve contemporary food rituals within the felds of ecological food cultures,
regenerative agroecology and social healing. Central to this ritual practice are embodied encounters with the matter of the living food cycle – the cycle of soil and water care, food growing, food
sharing and food composting where food waste is returned back to the soil. Cultivating food rituals
as refugia engages the bodymind in enlivening encounters with agricultural methods, culinary traditions and the geographies of food cultures. This extensive and refexive experience with food provides space and time for participants to sense, imagine and awaken memories, feelings and thoughts
(Curtin 1992). They enact threshold containers for remembering forgotten wisdoms, reviving artisanal
skills and generating new possibilities in respect of naturecultural living. Such embodied explorations
cultivate a politics of participatory consciousness where the bodymind is in a coming to know and a
becoming-with the world, in an integrated expression of care as an ethics of the everyday.
Touchstones Earth’s rituals as refugia respect, reframe and improvise within an existing lineage of cultural and agricultural food ritual traditions. Within Jewish culture, the ritual table of
the Haggadah with its Seder plate recalls the experience of Passover and, through symbolic foods,
remembers the signifcance of the Exodus from Egypt. Agricultural traditions that acknowledge
and work through and with the subtle energies of nature include: the Vedic ceremony of the daily
fre ritual Agnihotra performed at sunrise and sunset; and Rudolf Steiner’s teachings that elaborate
the application of biodynamic preparations for soil and plant health in attunement with celestial and
diurnal rhythms. Agrarian harvest festivals are celebrated across the world to honour the frst fruits
of the season with thanksgiving rituals and feasts. These rituals of the table and the feld are healing,
purifying and restorative as they encourage an awareness and a focus of intention to histories and
geographies through spacious, sensuous and sympoietic interactions. They respect the energies of
genius loci, the agency of human experience and the regenerative power inherent in plant, animal
and mineral – all in a dance with seasonal rhythms, natural elements and the Earth’s solar system.
INTRODUCING FIELDTABLE
The food ritual FieldTable grew from Miche’s impulse to create an edible intervention as an embodied agricultural alternative to a Union Carbide advertisement within the 1976 Scientifc American
journal addressing ‘The Future of Agriculture’ (Scientifc American 1976). The text within the
double-page spread reads, ‘We are expecting a few extra people for dinner tonight’. The dramatic
image is of a long, white-clothed table which curves into the horizon within a ploughed feld of
barren soil denuded of all plants and biodiversity. At the table, the green velvet chairs are empty.
The plates and glasses are empty. Below the image are promises of the power and effciency of the
‘green revolution’ to grow more food using artifcially synthesised insecticides, gels, crops and plant
treatments for the 213,000 ‘extra people’.
The precursor to FieldTable was conducted in 2006. In collaboration with an organic farmer
in Shropshire, UK, Miche hosted an environmental dining experience CloverField Feast in a feld
of clover grazed by cattle. Here, participants experienced an embodied taste of eating as an agricultural act (Berry, 1993). As part of the ritual, the 12 participants were invited to engage with the
question, ‘What is food’? A decade later in 2016, the opportunity emerged to manifest FieldTable
on a biodynamic farm near Stellenbosch in the Western Cape of South Africa. During Miche’s
Living Cultures: Kitchen culture meets agriculture Artist Research Residency at the Sustainability
Institute she and Flora met a local landowner who gave them a tour of his biodynamic farm in
the Lynedoch region. Whilst walking in and with the land, Miche shared her idea of hosting a
Subtle Agroecologies
First Know Food
From food all things are born.
By food they live,
Toward food the move
And into food they return.
Taittiriya Upanishads
Through the medium of food, naturecultural entwine. Touchstones Earth draw on the power of food as
a way of knowing to co-evolve contemporary food rituals within the felds of ecological food cultures,
regenerative agroecology and social healing. Central to this ritual practice are embodied encounters with the matter of the living food cycle – the cycle of soil and water care, food growing, food
sharing and food composting where food waste is returned back to the soil. Cultivating food rituals
as refugia engages the bodymind in enlivening encounters with agricultural methods, culinary traditions and the geographies of food cultures. This extensive and refexive experience with food provides space and time for participants to sense, imagine and awaken memories, feelings and thoughts
(Curtin 1992). They enact threshold containers for remembering forgotten wisdoms, reviving artisanal
skills and generating new possibilities in respect of naturecultural living. Such embodied explorations
cultivate a politics of participatory consciousness where the bodymind is in a coming to know and a
becoming-with the world, in an integrated expression of care as an ethics of the everyday.
Touchstones Earth’s rituals as refugia respect, reframe and improvise within an existing lineage of cultural and agricultural food ritual traditions. Within Jewish culture, the ritual table of
the Haggadah with its Seder plate recalls the experience of Passover and, through symbolic foods,
remembers the signifcance of the Exodus from Egypt. Agricultural traditions that acknowledge
and work through and with the subtle energies of nature include: the Vedic ceremony of the daily
fre ritual Agnihotra performed at sunrise and sunset; and Rudolf Steiner’s teachings that elaborate
the application of biodynamic preparations for soil and plant health in attunement with celestial and
diurnal rhythms. Agrarian harvest festivals are celebrated across the world to honour the frst fruits
of the season with thanksgiving rituals and feasts. These rituals of the table and the feld are healing,
purifying and restorative as they encourage an awareness and a focus of intention to histories and
geographies through spacious, sensuous and sympoietic interactions. They respect the energies of
genius loci, the agency of human experience and the regenerative power inherent in plant, animal
and mineral – all in a dance with seasonal rhythms, natural elements and the Earth’s solar system.
INTRODUCING FIELDTABLE
The food ritual FieldTable grew from Miche’s impulse to create an edible intervention as an embodied agricultural alternative to a Union Carbide advertisement within the 1976 Scientifc American
journal addressing ‘The Future of Agriculture’ (Scientifc American 1976). The text within the
double-page spread reads, ‘We are expecting a few extra people for dinner tonight’. The dramatic
image is of a long, white-clothed table which curves into the horizon within a ploughed feld of
barren soil denuded of all plants and biodiversity. At the table, the green velvet chairs are empty.
The plates and glasses are empty. Below the image are promises of the power and effciency of the
‘green revolution’ to grow more food using artifcially synthesised insecticides, gels, crops and plant
treatments for the 213,000 ‘extra people’.
The precursor to FieldTable was conducted in 2006. In collaboration with an organic farmer
in Shropshire, UK, Miche hosted an environmental dining experience CloverField Feast in a feld
of clover grazed by cattle. Here, participants experienced an embodied taste of eating as an agricultural act (Berry, 1993). As part of the ritual, the 12 participants were invited to engage with the
question, ‘What is food’? A decade later in 2016, the opportunity emerged to manifest FieldTable
on a biodynamic farm near Stellenbosch in the Western Cape of South Africa. During Miche’s
Living Cultures: Kitchen culture meets agriculture Artist Research Residency at the Sustainability
Institute she and Flora met a local landowner who gave them a tour of his biodynamic farm in
the Lynedoch region. Whilst walking in and with the land, Miche shared her idea of hosting a