Returns
This growing season, we welcomed back a long-awaited friend.
Requested by our Edad de Oro elders and families visiting the Free Food Mercado, epazote is both a culinary herb and a traditional medicinal plant. Native to the warm regions of the Americas, its unmistakable aroma has a way of transporting people back home.
In many Mexican and Guatemalan kitchens, epazote is traditionally cooked with black beans and other crops grown in the milpa — the Indigenous companion planting system that has nourished communities for generations. It’s an essential ingredient in many Indigenous food traditions, and we’re honored to welcome it back to the soil of Working Theory Farm.
When the farm was first established, Justin grew epazote alongside many other culinary herbs, hoping to supply local chefs with unique, fresh ingredients. While there ultimately wasn’t enough demand to justify continuing the crop, its story at the farm wasn’t over.
This year, epazote returns for a different reason.
Not because it commands a higher price, but because our community asked for it. Because some flavors can’t be replaced. Because the fragrance of fresh epazote carries memory, nourishment, and home in a way that only freshly harvested herbs can.
