FROM THE FRONT, Ts’uyya Farm looks like an unassuming adobe in Albuquerque’s South Valley. But as I follow farmer Reyna Banteah behind the terra-cotta-colored walls, she reveals an agricultural oasis of fragrant herbs, waving wildflowers, peach trees, and native prickly pears, all standing guard over a large area of cleared and shaped red-brown earth that looks, unmistakably, like the surface of a giant waffle.

Banteah’s farm tour ends in this intriguing spot as she explains the traditional A:shiwi (Zuni) technique that’s now called waffle gardening, a growing style that has been used by the Zuni people for thousands of years as a way to help plants stay cool when it’s hot, warm when it’s cold, and moist when it’s bone-dry.

“It’s basically making an adobe home for each plant,” she explains. Banteah mixes water with the heavy clay soils common in New Mexico bosques, and then, like a potter, uses her hands to form one-foot-square depressions in the dirt. The bottom rests an inch or two below ground level, with four thick clay walls, or berms, around each waffle cell. Into these miniature, roofless adobes she plants heirloom varieties of food and fiber crops not unlike those that Banteah’s Zuni ancestors would have grown.

Waffle gardening provides a nurturing microclimate for plants, balancing temperature and moisture perfectly. Photograph courtesy of Ts'uyya Farm.

The magic of the waffle garden is rooted in the idea that everything adobe homes do for desert-dwelling humans, they also do for plants. In the heat of the day, the clay walls absorb the heat, helping keep the plant cooler, as well as keeping tender plants like cilantro somewhat protected from harsh, drying winds. During the cold desert nights, the clay radiates the day’s heat, keeping the plant warm. And most importantly, when the waffles are filled with water, the clay holds the moisture, helping the onions, tomatillos, and even thirsty cotton plants stay hydrated longer.

Banteah first learned about waffle gardening while studying at the University of New Mexico. For the project, she asked family and friends back home what they knew, or could remember, about this agricultural tradition. Banteah chuckles as she explains her grandfather’s memories of working in his own grandmother’s waffle garden, and how particular those matriarchs could be about weeding and fertilizing the cells with forest soil, aged sheep manure, and straw. Then came the challenge of watering. Historically, waffle gardens were created in riverbeds, especially along the Zuni River, where water could be collected straight from the source. It’s a practice being revitalized today.

“The youth enrichment program operates right on the bank of the Zuni River,” says Kenny Bowekaty, a Zuni archaeologist who spent his youth helping in his grandparents’ waffle gardens. Today, however, most waffle gardens on the pueblo use well water or harvested rainwater, like Banteah’s farm in Albuquerque.

Waffle gardening became less common on the pueblo after the construction of the Black Rock Dam, in 1908, which reduced Zuni River flows and disrupted this ancient way of life. But the farming method is making a comeback.

Reyna Banteah focuses on teaching and seed preservation at Ts’uyya Farm, maintaining heirloom seeds suited for waffle gardens and promoting agricultural heritage through community workshops and the Zuni Youth Enrichment Program. Photograph by Ts’uyya Farm.

Bowekaty estimates that about 20 percent of people have waffle gardens planted around their homes, mostly with the traditional cilantro, onions, and chiles. They remind him of the rituals involved in clearing the land before planting, the practice of burying turquoise at the garden’s corners to imbue it with strength, and the careful work his grandmother did to create circles in the dirt. Those became the waffle cells as the mounds between depressions got pushed up over the course of a few days.

“Ninety-eight percent of my adolescence was spent out there with my grandparents,” Bowekaty recalls. “This has been my way of life, for generations and generations, thousands of years.”

Today, Banteah spends a lot of time teaching, both with the Zuni Youth Enrichment Program as well as community classes and workshops at her Ts’uyya Farm. Seed saving and sharing has also become a big part of Banteah’s work to preserve and cultivate these ancestral traditions. Hidden in cupboards of the farm’s casita are jewel-like corn kernels—emerald green, ruby red, even opalesque—alongside jars of cow-hided appaloosa beans, tiny amaranth seeds that pop like popcorn, and dozens of other seeds grown across New Mexico that Banteah cultivates, harvests, and shares with growers in Albuquerque and around the state. “I like to plant heirloom varieties in these beds,” she says, “to make sure the seeds that have been grown in waffle gardens stay adapted to these conditions.”

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