Green Thumb: Guide offers taste of Santa Cruz Valley foods

For 4,000 years, the Santa Cruz Valley of Southern Arizona has held the title of one of the longest continuously cultivated region in the United States.

While early farmers weren’t privy to this title, they were well acquainted with the abundance of drought tolerant crops they could successfully grow, as well as the wealth of edible foods in the wild.

Four millennia later, many of those food traditions continue today. From harvesting wild food from the desert, to growing traditional Tohono O’odham crops, to carrying on the agricultural traditions by sustaining modern farming, Southern Arizona is ripe with opportunities to taste the heritage foods of the Santa Cruz Valley.

The non-profit Santa Cruz Valley Heritage Alliance, through its “Heritage Foods Program” is working to increase consumer awareness of regional heritage foods, support local food security and economy, and preserve these cultural food traditions.

Heritage foods are locally produced food tied to the region’s history and cultural identity, including traditionally grown Native American crops, culturally traditional foods unique to this region and plants that grow in the wild unique to the Sonoran Desert.

As part of its goal to promote local and place-based foods, the Heritage Alliance has published a guide to the local food producers and vendors in the Santa Cruz Valley, titled Local & Heritage Foods Directory: A guide to producers, grocers, restaurants and farmers’ markets throughout the Santa Cruz Valley and southeastern Arizona.

In addition to connecting all levels of the local food supply chain, the directory also includes background information about local heritage foods, such as mesquite meal, prickly pear, and tepary beans, locations and schedules of regional farmers markets, and a seasonal availability chart for the Santa Cruz Valley.

The Heritage Alliance will be discussing the Heritage Foods Program and the role of the proposed Santa Cruz Valley National Heritage Area in promoting and preserving heritage foods, at the Green Valley Gardeners weekly seminar on Thursday Oct. 1.

The seminar begins at 9:30 at the East Recreation Center, but please join us at 9 a.m. for coffee, socializing and “ask the Master Gardener.”

This column is provided by the Green Valley Gardeners.