Becca Skinner: Dirt is Magic
written by Kelsey Merritt (Weyerbacher)
images provided by Becca Skinner
published in Issue No. 6: May/June 2020
Becca in her garden
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about where food comes from. As a farmer’s daughter, it’s always been something on my periphery, as I grew up spoiled with eggs in the chicken coop, meat in the freezer from a local rancher, and garden vegetables canned for the winter months filling shelves in the basement. And now, in the face of a global pandemic, I’m thinking more about food than I ever have.
Grocery stores are empty of rice, flour, yeast, and so much more. I’ve walked through my pantry, making lists of items I can make that will stretch to fill the weeks of social distancing and quarantines, gazing into the freezer multiple times a day as if checking to make sure it hasn’t disappeared while quietly cutting my dinner portions on my own plate, thinking about how privileged we are to have any food at all. Friends keep losing jobs and I worry about those who have no jobs and no food. And during it all, I keep thinking of Becca Skinner— a permaculture gardener and conservationist photographer— and a conversation we had over coffee about gardening and food preservation and chickens and weeds. She said, “If everyone could grow just one plant, I think it would make a difference. Because I truly believe that dirt is magic.”
A National Geographic Explorer, Conservationist Photographer, and Writer, Becca Skinner’s knowledge surrounding the outdoors has only positively influenced her fiery thirst for knowledge regarding sustainable food systems. I’ve followed Becca on social media for quite a while. Long enough to know I’m in love with her elk ivory wedding ring and jealous of her abundant garden and adore her for her antique rolling ladder in her cozy home office outside Bozeman, Montana.
Born and raised in Colorado and Wyoming, Skinner lives on a small farm with her husband, Eduardo Garcia. Eduardo’s livelihood is immersed in food, as a professional chef and co-founder of the food brand Montana Mex. Together, the two sustain their permaculture garden and dote on their beehives, chickens, and ducks. With Instagram photos spilling over with sunflowers, tomatoes, garlic, herbs, and so much more, Skinner acknowledges: “I didn’t start gardening until I met my husband and moved in with him. He started this permaculture garden when he moved in 9 years ago, and this is my third year of taking over. I have so much respect for people that go out to work in nature every day in agriculture. It is so much work!”
While conventional gardening utilizes a “one-size-fits-all” method, permaculture gardens focus on a more holistic approach. According to Green Global Travel, permaculture gardens ask: What plants best work in this particular climate? And how can soils be gradually built up to be nutrient-rich and well-balanced? Well cared for permaculture gardens are intrinsically sustainable, with an ecosystem being developed that complements its surrounding environment. “The woman who helped us start our permaculture garden was working full-time helping us get it off the ground for five years. Then, she moved on to a new project doing reclamation. [I learned] through watching her and reading all the books the library had on permaculture, and trial and error, and our neighbors and friends that sometimes help, but the majority of the work and the joy we harvest is ours.”
Becca’s garden
In the midst of the Montana winter, I began dreaming of gardens and thinking of what I could do differently in my small backyard in Belgrade, Montana, to bolster my plants and supply my pantry. I lamented to my fiancé that I needed a greenhouse. Two days later, I read a caption on one of Becca Skinner’s Instagram posts, where she wrote, “I can’t get some things out of my head— like having rows and rows of marigolds, and growing baskets full of hot peppers. I’m going to put a big, old patina’d [sic] dinner table right in the middle of a greenhouse so we can smell the tomatoes when we eat, too.” I turned to my fiancé and read him the post, saying, “See? She gets it too.”
When we finally met a month later, I handed Becca a small jar of grape jelly my mom had taught me to can using grapes from her overgrown vines and trellis in her yard. Becca clutched the jar to her chest, beaming from ear to ear. When I told her of my new adventure learning to can and preserve food, she related, saying, “I’ve never really had an in interest in [canning] until we had a garden. Then, it was like, okay, what are we going to do with all this?”
Now pursuing a degree in Sustainable Food and Farming, Skinner is leaning into her love of food systems. She smiles, saying, “I think that Eduardo has encouraged me to pursue these ideas I’ve always had. He works so hard that he makes me want to work hard too, and that has rolled into me taking these really amazing leaps of faith. I’m excited to go back to school.”
While studying Social Work and Technical Writing at the University of Wyoming, Skinner won a National Geographic Young Explorer Grant in 2011 to photograph post-tsunami Sumatra, Indonesia. Understanding that this was what she wanted to do, she left her undergraduate degree after 3.5 years to pursue a career in professional photography.
Working for big names like Patagonia, Orvis, and REI, Becca also has work published in The New York Times and National Geographic Online. Her next big challenge? Marrying her photography, storytelling, and love of food.
“I’ve found the best way to connect with people all across this state is to ask what kind of weeds they deal with. And they are always like, ‘Ugh! The bindweed is terrible!’ or ‘The knapweed is terrible’ and all of a sudden you have a common ground.” Skinner has spent the last year working for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and their Sustainable Ranching Initiative telling stories of families in Eastern Montana who are ranching sustainably
According to their website, the WWF recognizes “[t]here are many ways beef production— when sustainably managed— can achieve conservation benefits. Grazing maintains the health of grasslands, improves soil quality with manure, and preserves open space and wildlife habitat. Additionally, carbon is sequestered in the grasses and soils of grazing lands. Beef production also provides social benefits by sustaining livelihoods and community vibrancy in rural areas where grasslands dominate.” Focusing their attention on the Northern Great Plains, their initiative aims to empower ranchers, cattlemen’s associations and organizations, retailers and food service operators, state and federal agencies, and other organizations.
Skinner acknowledges the negativity with which agriculture is met on the conversation on climate change: “The ranching industry just gets put under a spotlight all the time that says, ‘You’re bad, you’re doing bad things, and you’re ruining the planet.’ When there are so many ranchers who are doing beneficial, sustainable, wonderful things for the grasslands, for the planet.” Having been to Eastern Montana before, Skinner was aware that “in Eastern Montana, there is so much tradition. And the prairie is so under-represented in everything, even in advertisement. It’s a shame. Because it’s incredibly beautiful.”
Being a self-employed photographer, writer, and conservationist isn’t easy. As dreamy as the job always sounds to those on the outside, Skinner admits that conservation work can be discouraging at times. But, she says: “I feel like when I actually get to go out in the field and talk to people, that motivates me. I was outside of Winnett, MT, talking to this rancher who has been doing transect monitoring since the mid-1990s, and was just doing it because she wanted to and wanted to be able to defend herself to say, ‘No, no, my ranching practice is not damaging the land, it’s actually benefiting it.’ I think when I actually get to talk to people like that who are equally passionate and are actually neck-deep in [conservation] and it’s just part of how they live their life, that makes it worth it.”
I keep thinking about what I can do. What can I do to help during such an uncertain time? How can I help as local economies struggle and small businesses fight to stay open? COVID-19 has left many unemployed and as I write this, we’re only in our second week of school, restaurant, and bar closures in Montana. Just over a month ago, I asked Becca a similar question: What would you encourage people to do to make a difference?
“You know, I was just listening to a podcast on Mountain & Prairie with my friend, Cate Havstad, who is a farmer and hat maker. She made the point that farmers harvest every day. But, if the majority of the people that show up to farmer’s markets are only fair-weather farmer’s market goers, when it’s beautiful and perfect and it’s just a fun Saturday thing, and they aren’t people that depend on it as a consumer, then it’s just an add on for them. We have to be there every day, so we really need people to be there at the market no matter the weather. So, I’ve really made an effort to show up, no matter the weather. I think we should all do that as much as we can.”
I thought about that today as I diced onions my mother pulled from her neighbor’s root cellar and sautéed them before opening a jar of canned tomatoes from last summer’s harvest to add to their fragrance. My son came running into the kitchen screaming, “MOM! My seeds are sprouting!” Referring to his newly planted terrarium, I couldn’t help but giggle, thinking of my conversation with Becca, when she said:
“If everyone could grow just one plant, I think it would make a difference. Because I truly believe that dirt is magic. And if we can get our hands in that dirt and cultivate it and watch a seed grow, I think people will see the magic that comes with growing your own food.”
