CONSERVATION

of bringing people on a visit of farms and flavors
in the borderlands of southeastern Arizona.
The idea for the tours emerged out of innovative
collaborations among the University of Arizona’s
College of Social and Behavioral Sciences and its
the Southwest Center, the Santa Cruz Valley Heritage
Alliance, the City of Tucson, and Pima County Parks
and Recreation Department. We focused on foods
recently nominated or already boarded onto the Slow
Food Ark of Taste. Our journey began in Tucson, at
the San Agustin Mission Garden, where the Friends
of Tucson’s Birthplace have worked to create a fouracre
reconstruction of the original mission garden. It
features heritage fruit trees such as Sonoran quince,
Papago pomegranate, Mission grape, Mission olive
and Mission fig trees, as well as traditional field crops
of the region. We then visited the San Xavier Coop
Farm where racks of a variety of O’odham 60-day
corn dried along with red chiles and mesquite beans.
A Tohono O’odham elder explained the process of
grinding the dried corn and grinding the mesquite to
make traditional dishes. Tour participants also had
the opportunity to purchase green striped cushaw
squash, yellow-meated watermelons, mottled lima
beans, and tepary beans—all foods with a long tenure
in the desert Southwest. We followed the Santa Cruz
River upstream toward the Mexican Border, retracing
a river corridor that has served as a circulatory system
for farming peoples, migrants, and explorers through
millennia. We also visited the Tumacacori National
Historic Park to visit the mission, learn of Spanish
acequia (canal) systems and see the young Kino Fruit
Trees Orchard with its heritage fruit varieties. The
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