Hopi Farmers



One of the secrets of the Hopi survival has been their development of dry farming techniques. The fathers of the Hopi families are most often the farmers responsible for providing food to their household, and to help their mother's household should it need food. Standing at the edge of a mesa, looking down to the valley below, one can see dots of corn, fruit trees, beans, or squash growing in hand-formed round earthen moats designed to capture the rare rain ... or to receive and well-up the labor-intensive hand watering carried from a spring in the near-by canyon walls. Each plant is tended with great thought, with great respect,



and with great hope that it will yield the fruits that sustain the Hopi life.