A Precautionary Tale

by Philip Ackerman-Leist

  As tools and technologies were further refined and developed in the subsequent eras, subsistence and survival in the land of Ötzi would become a little bit easier. Gains in efficiencies mattered, but it was the inherited wisdom and the conservation of resources that made the difference.

  With around two hundred generations between Ötzi’s disappearance and his reentry into a high-tech, chill world, what Ötzi ate is a powerful reminder that it’s a problem when one farmer’s choices negatively impact his neighbor’s reality, but it’s a travesty when those choices impact generations to come.

  CHAPTER 5

  Seeds

  As Edith Bernhard unfolded the yellowed newspaper, her husband, Robert, pointed to the date, shaking his head: 1895. The mason who had brought it over to them was renovating a house attic several hundred feet up the village street from their house when he found the crumpled newspaper stuck in a dark corner. In a region where relics dating back several hundred years are nearly commonplace, he almost didn’t think twice about the old newsprint, but something made him wipe his hands and pick it up. When he saw that it was much more than just an old sheet of newsprint, he headed to the Bernhards. At the time, he was one of the few people in the village who seemed to understand, much less appreciate, their obsession.

  Two perfect heads of grain were carefully wrapped inside. Astounded by what appeared to be the find of a lifetime, Edith reverently picked up one of the two heads of grain, its seeds aligned in perfect alternating sequence along the tip of the stem. She delicately pulled out one of the pointed, reddish brown seeds and gently squeezed the outer hull to see if the grain inside still seemed intact. To her amazement, it felt solid. “Na, na, na . . . unmöglich,” she muttered; impossible. Shaking her head in disbelief, she passed the kernel to Robert and began checking the other seeds on both heads, hardly able to fathom what a treasure they might have in hand. They looked at each other.

  “Dinkel?” he asked. Spelt?

  Edith nodded in silence, but it didn’t stop a huge smile from creeping across her face, lifting her dimples beyond their usual points of prominence. If the seeds were viable, it was a chance to bring back not just a piece of history but also a missing nutritional link that had been casually cast aside in the region when, decades ago, grain imports and a taste for white bread had pushed out tradition in favor of ease and progress.

  Spelt. One of the oldest cultivated grains in human history. Two spelt seeds were discovered in Ötzi’s clothing, and it had remained a staple of the region’s diet all the way up until the twentieth century when it began to fall out of favor, in part because of its tight protective hull—the very thing that now made the spelt seeds from 1895 look like they still might be able to grow. For thousands of years, that sturdy hull had been one of spelt’s most cherished properties. It helped protect spelt from birds, insects, disease, and the vagaries of Alpine weather, making it a favorite of the pilgrims and Crusaders of the Middle Ages, who also valued the ancient grain’s taste and ability to nourish. However, the hull also made spelt more difficult and costly to mill. Eventually, in a cost-benefit analysis like many in the modern food story that consider only economic costs and ignore environmental and nutritional ones, grains that lacked a tough outer shield eventually replaced spelt.

  Edith and Robert were betting that, sooner or later, the negative consequences of simplistic calculations that didn’t account for human and environmental health would become obvious and society would wake up to the fact that a more complex and therefore more accurate cost-benefit analysis was necessary. In the meantime, they had work to do.

  In the fall they carefully planted the seeds in a protected plot where they could tend them with the utmost attention. They anxiously watched the seedbed every day until, finally, a few days later, they saw the miracle begin to unfold and push its way up above the tilled surface, in search of autumn’s waning light. With the memory of millennia, each single stem emerged and quickly branched into two leaves, spread into tillers, and gradually created small, green clumps that would withstand winter’s bite and hold fast until spring. When the weather finally began to warm and the days stretched into spring, the spelt stems began their skyward leap, transforming into hardy, thick stalks. By early summer, the spelt was about 3 feet (90 cm) high, with its tightly knitted seedheads beginning to arc ever so slightly with the weight of the ripening grains. Finally, as the thick stalks hardened, the seedheads began to shift from green to a light reddish brown color, and Edith and Robert prepared for the most exciting harvest of their lives.

  Throughout the growing season, they began to see that the spelt was indeed an ideal match for the fields surrounding their village of Burgeis, high in the uppermost basin of the Vinschgau Valley, bounded within the township of Mals. Relatively short in comparison with many modern grain varieties, these rugged spelt stalks resist breaking or bending and are therefore well equipped for the Vinschgau’s intense spring winds. As winter begins to ease its grip each year, cold air pours out of the surrounding mountains and converges to create days and even weeks of wind that sometimes arrives in intense gusts and other times in the monotonous form of a relentless gale that makes trees bend, animals cower, and humans stoop for days on end. Historically, grains growing there were left to their own evolutionary devices to adapt and hang tight until the seedheads ripened to the dry, golden hue that gave the signal—time to harvest.

  As the harvest approached, Edith and Robert were ecstatic. Their century-­old spelt had made the cut, and now it had a name: Dinkel Burgeis. “Burgeis spelt” would go down in history . . . again. Within a few years, Robert and Edith had a field full of Burgeis spelt and were beginning to provide seeds to interested local farmers. Fortunately, the rebirth of the Bernhards’ heritage grain coincided perfectly with a renaissance of grain growing and traditional baking in Mals. Local farmers and bakers were just beginning to embark on an initiative to restore the region’s historical reputation as “the Breadbasket of the Tirol.”

  Unfortunately, Big Apple and its covey of lobbyists and politicians were cooking up other plans for Mals and the rest of the Upper Vinschgau, and it was a recipe for disaster.

  Wer der Saat hat, hat das Sagen. Whoever has the seed, has the say.

  Edith and Robert took the old farmers’ proverb to heart, even though they knew all too well that the forces they were up against—at a regional level, much less a global scale—had the bigger mouthpieces. It was bad enough that multinational corporations were scrambling to patent life and turn seedsavers and homegrown plant breeders into outlaws, but the lack of public knowledge about the basics of conserving agrobiodiversity made the corporate takeover of the home garden and the farmer’s field all the easier.

  However, the Bernhards were more concerned with action than words. What they created in two decades of retirement is more than what most people create in an entire career—and it would eventually win over the imaginations of farmers, bakers, chefs, historians, scientists, journalists, and tourists.

  Originally from Austria, Edith began her professional career, somewhat ironically in hindsight, as a chemist. In her job with a pharmaceutical company, she worked in a lab testing and researching different drugs before the South Tirol—and Robert—lured her across the border with mountains and romance. She soon switched careers and became the “manager of their household” in 1970. They raised three sons together while living in the city of Bozen where Robert had his career, but they both felt the constant tug to return to Robert’s childhood home in Burgeis, the village that he had to leave for his job when he was twenty-eight.

  When they were finally able to “retire” to Burgeis in 1994, trading in what Edith notes was the benefit of a “regular vacation” for the constant demands of farming, Edith transformed her urban balcony exploits in tomato cultivation in the city into a full-blown trial garden that would eventually include more than three hundred heirloom tomato varieties. When I first met Robe
rt, he teased that her tomatoes ranged in color from black to white and everything in between. Upon later visiting their gardens for the first time in the fall of 2015, I couldn’t help but wonder if she actually didn’t invent some colors on her own.

  Edith was unwilling to stake her reputation solely on tomatoes, however. It wasn’t long before she added 250 heirloom herb varieties to her collection, along with carrots, beets, beans, and salad greens of all colors, almost every kind of edible berry used in the region, and a number of antique fruit tree cultivars. The bulk of the plants were regional specialties, although any plant with an interesting history, nutritional quality, or medicinal trait was a candidate for their garden.

  Complementary in personality, Edith and Robert approach conversation in ways as distinct as their roles in the garden, where Robert takes care of everything from the ground down, and Edith is in charge of everything from the topsoil up. Edith is the slightly reserved pragmatist who readily switches from the perfunctory laboratory supervisor in the seed room to a concise garden encyclopedia with an anecdote for every plant and a plant-based antidote for almost any ill. Robert, who is more effusive and philosophical, gesticulates so animatedly in his descriptions of compost that one becomes totally convinced that compost is a dynamic living organism of a higher spiritual order than we lowly humans.

  Such a division of labor makes for a harmonious partnership. It also mirrors, in a sense, their mutual goal of advocating for farmers and gardeners to create a biological balance in which a healthy soil supports healthy plants, healthy animals, and healthy humans. Their approach must be working because the Bernhards now have six different sites that they manage, with a constant stream of international visitors. Their recent recognition is ironic, however, because they worked in quiet anonymity for many years.

  Few locals paid much attention to what they were doing for the first two decades. In fact, they were virtually the only example of a substantial private seedsaving operation in the region, with few collaborators in the vicinity and no local network for the exchange of ideas and seeds. That all started to change, however, when the people of Mals began to see the transformation of the landscape that was working its way up the valley.

  Sometimes it takes a crisis for a community to recognize the resources it might otherwise take for granted—and what it has to lose if no one takes action. Big Apple offered a stark contrast with the extraordinary show of biodiversity that Edith and Robert had created through their display garden —a vibrant counterpoint to the one-way dead-end monocultural highway heading their way.

  The first time that I went to visit the Bernhards’ display garden, I had the sensation that I was winding my way heavenward. The main highway going to the upper end of the Vinschgau Valley weaves its way through the agrarian villages of Schluderns, Tartsch, and Mals before opening up to a parceled patchwork of green fields that cover the tilted valley floor. Mesmerized by the dance of seedheads of grain and hayfields barely tickled by the cool air descending the valley, my fascination was interrupted by a sign for Burgeis, with the arrow indicating a sharp left that drops visitors into that village and back in time.

  Like all eleven of the villages that make up the municipality of Mals, Burgeis has a character all its own, appreciated not only by its eight hundred residents but also by cyclists who seem to commandeer the village and its outskirts during the warmer months. Located about 500 feet (150 m) in elevation above the village of Mals, Burgeis commands a stunning view of the valley and its patchwork of villages, all set within a basin framed by some of the highest peaks of the South Tirol. Tucked into the western flank of the Vinschgau, the medieval village was constructed in an era when adapting to the landscape, rather than manipulating it, was the rule and natural building materials were the only option. As a result, Burgeis’s architecture is a contoured mosaic of stucco, stone, crafted timbers, and cobbled streets, originally carved into the mountainside along waterways that would be harnessed for water and the power that it brought for grinding grains, sawing timber, making textiles, and powering blacksmith hammers.

  Multistory houses built to hold multiple generations sit on thick, flared foundations, the omnipresent white stucco contrasting with the darkened woodwork of balconies, doorways, and roofs. Barn walls and roofs blend seamlessly into the architecture of the houses, and every square foot of earth in the village appears to have a designated use. Perfect right angles are a luxury in a village where storage is coveted—if there is an open space that can be covered, it will be co-opted. Such a mentality has led to what might best be called passageways that weave their way through the varied topography—streets or thoroughfares would be too generous a designation. Drivers need not abandon hope, but I did decide that it was a good idea to abandon my car on the outskirts of the village and enjoy the rest of my tour on foot. Flowers, fountains, crucifixes, and frescoes reward the slower traveler, as do the vistas.

  It seems that any stunning vista in the South Tirol with strategic importance has been rewarded with a castle or a church. Burgeis got both, with an added bonus of gaining one of Europe’s most famous monasteries. Marienberg Abbey was initially established as a Benedictine outpost in 1150 and is now a sprawling white enclave perched high above the village. While nine centuries may seem like a long time ago, it is likely that some elements of a settlement in Burgeis were already present, even at that time, since the name Burgeis probably stems from the Roman era, when a fortification was called a burgus.

  At an elevation of approximately 4,400 feet (1,340 m), Marienberg is the highest Benedictine monastery in Europe, but its real claim to fame is its stunning array of Romanesque frescoes, hidden for centuries in its ancient crypt. Constructed in 1160, the crypt is part of the original compound, but in 1643 it was renovated to provide a burial space for the monks, and the original twelfth-century frescoes that adorned the crypt were covered, only to be discovered again in 1980.1 Protected from the elements for so many hundreds of years, the frescoes are not only intact but also extraordinarily vibrant in color, attracting tourists and scholars from around the world.

  Although the monks of Marienberg have partitioned themselves from the world, the abbey itself still plays a vital role in the life of Mals. As it would turn out, having an abbot who is an organic gardener and a monastery that produces cheese can be a good thing when questions about the future of local agriculture begin to arise. Of course, the abbot and his fellow monks may also feel blessed that they can peer down from their windows and catch a glimpse of Edith and Robert working in their garden of botanical diversity, putting to good use the lessons of the world’s most famous abbot, Gregor Mendel—another gardener whose interest in plant genetics wasn’t fully understood or appreciated until decades after his death.

  The Bernhards’ display garden is less for show than for education and seedsaving, but its power certainly dwells in its appearance. A ten-minute walk from Robert and Edith’s home in the village, the garden is just on the opposite side of Burgeis’s other historic landmark, the castle of Fürstenburg. Built upon a rocky promontory between 1272 and 1282,2 the primary feature of the original castle was its tower, constructed with walls nearly 10 feet (3 m) thick at the base. Its outer walls were added in the seventeenth century, during which time it became a getaway residence for the region’s bishop.3

  Ironically, the castle now serves as the South Tirolean province’s School for Agriculture and Forestry. Separated by nothing more than a brook—across which there is a small bridge—there remains nonetheless a much larger, unseen gulf between what is taught in the predominantly conventional agriculture curriculum of Fürstenburg and what can be learned in the Bernhards’ garden. A step across that bridge and through the Bernhard’s arched metal garden gate is a step into both the past and the future.

  As I walked across the bridge, Robert’s long arm mirrored the gate’s arch in its sweep as he waved me in with an enormous smile that seemed to keep the edges of his mustache pu
shed upward. He tipped his hat and appeared to make it to me in about half the strides it would take most mortals.

  Edith wasn’t far behind him. She made her way over, pushing a lock of salt-and-pepper hair off to the side of her damp forehead with the back of her dirty hand and extending her other callused hand with a dialect greeting of “Grüßti, Philip!” Getting an informal greeting usually reserved for locals made me feel welcome.

  The Bernhards’ 0.75 acre (0.3 ha) garden is a long, sloping strip that parallels the contour of the mountainside for about 300 feet (91 m). Verdant would be the wrong word to describe the first portion of the garden simply because there are so many hues of green that they seem to form their own spectrum. Herbs that creep, climb, and clump fill beds of various shapes and sizes, with inflorescences shooting up and using the backdrop to dramatize their fleeting appearances. I wondered for a second whether the garden would better supply a pharmacist or a chef—but then I realized that those are two professions we never should have delineated so distinctly.

  Edith and Robert led me along the main garden path toward a small greenhouse where seedlings, some potted plants, a watering can, and a few tools were stored. All along the way Edith pointed out herb after herb, turning the landscape into a litany of recipes and prescriptions. I gave up on taking photos and notes of everything lest we not get from one end of the garden to the other before nightfall.

  Suddenly herbs transitioned into fruit trees, and I was glad to see Robert pull out a knife and begin plucking different fruits for me to sample. Some were overripe stragglers from an earlier harvest and others weren’t fully ripe, but we caught a few apples at their peak. All of them hinted at sunshine with their sweetness, cool nights with their crisp textures. None of them were the usual suspects—the standard varieties that you would find in a mainstream European or US market. Robert held up a perfect specimen: “Keinen Pestiziden,” he noted with a twinkle. “No pesticides—not like most of them down there.” He pointed farther down the valley where perfectly symmetrical rows of green and black hail netting covered row after row of apple trees.