Deep Food is a 10-day intensive communal learning environment taking place in Paoli, Indiana from August 16-25, 2024 focused on growing, cooking, eating, preserving, planning, thinking about, and celebrating food.

Deep Food is a 10-day intensive communal learning environment taking place in Paoli, Indiana from August 16-25, 2024 focused on growing, cooking, eating, preserving, planning, thinking about, and celebrating food.

The agroecology track will equip participants with practical skills for organizing collective growing projects to cultivate food, financially sustain growers, and build resilient landscapes and communities. Informed by the conditions of stagnating economic growth and intensifying climate instability, the program will be grounded in an adaptation of the flexible pedagogies developed by peasant-led food sovereignty movements. Together, we will experiment, fail, and fall in love with horticultural practices and techniques ranging from market gardening to agroforestry and nursery propagation. The track will be enriched by engagement with the local growing projects and diverse food cultures of south central Indiana. 

The cooking track will focus on practices of mass cooking, canning, fermentation, and food preparation experimentation. This track will be responsible for preparing meals at the camp using a variety of different kinds of kitchens which may include off-grid field kitchens, commercial-style, mobile, etc. Participants in the cooking track will alternate cooking, attending cooking workshops, and will have opportunities to attend some workshops from the agroecology track as well.

Deep Food will be taking place on land with uneven trails and many classes will happen outdoors. Please be prepared to be outside in all weather and bring what you need to be comfortable learning outdoors. Participants will be camping and you will need to bring your own gear. There are showers and toilets onsite.