On April 15th, 2022, from 3:00-5:00 P.M., the YSFP hosted a workday followed by an event called “All Pib Slow Play: A sedimentation of history and sound,” organized by MFA student Miguel Gaydosh, SOA ‘22, which featured pibil style cooking. In the early afternoon, volunteers started off the workday by preparing for and planting strawberries. They used “flamethrowers” to cut perfectly shaped holes in a black tarp, laid the tarps over a lower field, and planted strawberries in the circular openings. Using silver rods, they pushed the yellowed, spindly roots of the nascent strawberries into the dirt and packed them in with their fingers into the wet mud, careful to leave the fragile web of roots intact and buried deep in the dirt, but the green bud at the top exposed to the sunlight. Long-time and first-time workday participants squatted side by side over the bunched tarps and planted three rows of strawberries; conversation sprouted between graduate students at the School of the Environment, farm managers, and first-years meeting each other for the first time.
At 4:00 PM, volunteers migrated upwards to the Lazarus Pavilion, where the culinary events team had been hard at work preparing food for the event, alongside Guatemalan chef Sandra of La Cocina de Sandra, her husband, and her son. The family slow-cooked some truly spectacular food for the undergrads and many School of Art students in attendance. Throughout the event, Sandra stood supervising several large silver pots with an array of bowls full of chopped and diced vegetables, steam billowing out; she was working on preparing pupusas and tamales. In front of the Farm’s brick oven, culinary events managers heated up a silver tray full of cilantro and lime rice, slowly stirred a basin of beans, and cooked Guatemalan-style chow mein. At the wooden picnic tables, Catherine Rutherfurd ’22 mashed coconut rice pudding she made in a tray with gloved hands. Underneath our chalk sign sat a few pots of agua de jamaica (hibicus water). As all this culinary goodness unfolded, Miguel and his fellow students soundtracked the event with slowed Xumbia and ambient music, reflecting the slow cooking which was happening in the pib.
Back behind all the action under the Lazarus Pavilion was the star of the event: the pib. Before the event began, culinary events managers took turns digging into the hardened earth to create a 3-feet-wide by 3-feet-deep pit. Once it was dug, the pit was lined with rings of stones stacked atop each other. The team then lit a fire at the bottom of the pib, which heated the stones for several hours and created tons of hot coals. Attendees dropped in sweet potatoes, wrapped in banana leaves and tinfoil, directly over the coals and rocks. Miguel and others then worked together to cover the potatoes with the soil, leaving them to cook underground for an hour. After digging up part of the pit and finding they weren’t yet fully cooked, we re-covered the potatoes with soil for another hour or so, letting them bake underground in the slow cooking pibil style. When the potatoes were finished, they were smothered in honey butter with Cobanero chili and lime. The event was a beautiful fulfillment of Miguel’s vision, which intended in part to teach, practice, and evolve a tradition long held by his Guatemalan family.
Big thank you to Miguel; Sandra and her family; Geo Barrios, who helped organize this event; and everyone who turned out to make this event such a beautifully unique and meaningful evening on the Farm.
Photographs by Reese Neal ‘25. To view all the photos, please follow this link.
Post by Sarah Feng ‘25.