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Anne Evans and Peter Segger, Welch organic farmers, are featured in the film “Soil in Good Heart,” showing Friday and Saturday as part of Aspen Shortsfest.
In the short film “Soil in Good Heart,” a man picks up a handful of dirt and remarks that there is an entire world, literally billions of organisms, living in that small bit of earth. The scene sets the tone for the 13-minute film about soil: Director Deborah Koons Garcia is going to lay out a doomsday scenario, but aims to draw us into the world of dirt.
“There are a lot of films about these terrible problems we face — and hats off to them. But I didn’t want to make another one,” said Garcia from her home in Mill Valley, a town just north of San Francisco that she adores for its approach to food and farming. “So I decided to make a film about soil, this wonderful system, and how it grows and how we grow out of it. I hope it might affect how people treat their soil, their yard, what they choose to eat.”
“Soil in Good Heart” is an offshoot of a larger project Garcia is working on, a feature film, “Soil and the Mystery of Fertility,” which she expects to complete by the end of the year. The short film was made at the request of The Organic Center, and it has also been screened at the Mill Valley Film Festival and at the Soil Association conference in England.
The bulk of the short film is devoted to the Welch couple Anne Evans and Peter Segger, who operate an organic farm. A more upbeat pair of farmers can hardly be imagined, as they demonstrate how they have taken soil in miserable condition and quickly coaxed vegetables out of it. At the end of the film, Evans and Segger look off to the metaphorical horizon, noting that the next generation, including their own children, are seeing farming not as low-paying drudgery work, but as an interesting career choice that makes an enormous contribution to society.
Garcia sees cause for optimism all around — in Michelle Obama’s organic garden at the White House, to a recent report from the World Bank and the United Nations dismissing the need for genetically modified food, to the possibility that virtually any soil, treated properly, can be made clean and fertile within three years’ time.
“There’s all this positive reinforcement for what we already knew,” said Garcia, a vegetarian and confessed “radical” on food issues, who took a place in the organic movement with her 2004 feature, “The Future of Food.” “There are problems — abusing soil, maybe running out of soil. But I see these solutions as being really possible. Soil scientists are a pretty interesting group of people. And it’s a field where science is joining with the average consumer to change things.”
“Soil and the Mystery of Fertility” will address not only agricultural issues but what Garcia calls “the big picture of soil — what goes on in soil, the history of soil, how soil affected the development of the planet,” said Garcia, who is shooting the film in Norway, India, Egypt and various locales in the U.S. “Soil isn’t just dirt. It’s an entity; it’s alive. It’s not the same as rock.”
Garcia is such an optimist that she can even take a sanguine view of the health of her late husband, Jerry Garcia. A writer observed that Garcia, who died of a heart attack at the age of 53, succumbed not so much because of his appetite for drugs, but for the more routine neglect of his body: cigarettes and a poor diet.
“When he was with me, he was actually pretty healthy, ate healthy,” said Garcia, who became romantically involved with the musician in the mid-’70s and married him in 1994. “But in the ’70s, it was really hard to get healthy food on the road.”
Garcia added that, in the ’90s, the Grateful Dead had chefs who traveled with them, and prepared bags of healthful food for the band and crew’s post-concert dinners. Jerry, she said, even ate his sometimes.
“He wasn’t as bad as people thought,” she said. “But there were years when he was really, really bad. When he ate good, he ate very, very good. And when he was bad, he was horrid.”
stewart@aspentimes.com
“There are a lot of films about these terrible problems we face — and hats off to them. But I didn’t want to make another one,” said Garcia from her home in Mill Valley, a town just north of San Francisco that she adores for its approach to food and farming. “So I decided to make a film about soil, this wonderful system, and how it grows and how we grow out of it. I hope it might affect how people treat their soil, their yard, what they choose to eat.”
“Soil in Good Heart” is an offshoot of a larger project Garcia is working on, a feature film, “Soil and the Mystery of Fertility,” which she expects to complete by the end of the year. The short film was made at the request of The Organic Center, and it has also been screened at the Mill Valley Film Festival and at the Soil Association conference in England.
The bulk of the short film is devoted to the Welch couple Anne Evans and Peter Segger, who operate an organic farm. A more upbeat pair of farmers can hardly be imagined, as they demonstrate how they have taken soil in miserable condition and quickly coaxed vegetables out of it. At the end of the film, Evans and Segger look off to the metaphorical horizon, noting that the next generation, including their own children, are seeing farming not as low-paying drudgery work, but as an interesting career choice that makes an enormous contribution to society.
Garcia sees cause for optimism all around — in Michelle Obama’s organic garden at the White House, to a recent report from the World Bank and the United Nations dismissing the need for genetically modified food, to the possibility that virtually any soil, treated properly, can be made clean and fertile within three years’ time.
“There’s all this positive reinforcement for what we already knew,” said Garcia, a vegetarian and confessed “radical” on food issues, who took a place in the organic movement with her 2004 feature, “The Future of Food.” “There are problems — abusing soil, maybe running out of soil. But I see these solutions as being really possible. Soil scientists are a pretty interesting group of people. And it’s a field where science is joining with the average consumer to change things.”
“Soil and the Mystery of Fertility” will address not only agricultural issues but what Garcia calls “the big picture of soil — what goes on in soil, the history of soil, how soil affected the development of the planet,” said Garcia, who is shooting the film in Norway, India, Egypt and various locales in the U.S. “Soil isn’t just dirt. It’s an entity; it’s alive. It’s not the same as rock.”
Garcia is such an optimist that she can even take a sanguine view of the health of her late husband, Jerry Garcia. A writer observed that Garcia, who died of a heart attack at the age of 53, succumbed not so much because of his appetite for drugs, but for the more routine neglect of his body: cigarettes and a poor diet.
“When he was with me, he was actually pretty healthy, ate healthy,” said Garcia, who became romantically involved with the musician in the mid-’70s and married him in 1994. “But in the ’70s, it was really hard to get healthy food on the road.”
Garcia added that, in the ’90s, the Grateful Dead had chefs who traveled with them, and prepared bags of healthful food for the band and crew’s post-concert dinners. Jerry, she said, even ate his sometimes.
“He wasn’t as bad as people thought,” she said. “But there were years when he was really, really bad. When he ate good, he ate very, very good. And when he was bad, he was horrid.”
stewart@aspentimes.com
“Soil in Good Heart” shows at Aspen Shortsfest Friday at 5:30 p.m. at the Wheeler Opera House; and Saturday at 5:30 and 8 p.m. at the Crystal Theatre in Carbondale.
Aspen Shortsfest opened Wednesday and runs through Sunday. There are screening programs at the Wheeler Opera House through Saturday, and at the Crystal Theatre in Carbondale through Sunday.
Aspen Shortsfest opened Wednesday and runs through Sunday. There are screening programs at the Wheeler Opera House through Saturday, and at the Crystal Theatre in Carbondale through Sunday.
For a complete schedule, go to www.aspentimes.com/shortsfest.
