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Authors: Mark Sundeen
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swings a hoe at Sol Food Farms, a private farm with no paid employees, where a handful of volunteers are reviving an abandoned orchard andfallow fields with tomatoes and greens and cucumbers. In exchange for their labor, they take a portion of the harvest. I wondered if this wasn’t barter—something Suelo refuses, as it violates the principle of giving without expectation of return. I asked the farm’s owner, Chris Conrad, how he compensated Suelo.
“I tell him to take as much as he wants,” Conrad said with a shrug. “But I don’t even know if he takes it, to be honest. I don’t keep track of that kind of thing.”
The most reliable source of Suelo’s nutrition in recent years was a volunteer-run free meal program that served lunch in a Moab city park 365 days a year. Each day, a rotating crew picked up leftovers from restaurants and school cafeterias, then served a hot meal to whoever came. Over the course of three years, without any government or church sponsorship—without even a permit from the health department—Free Meal served thousands of lunches. Suelo went nearly every day, occasionally staying afterward to wash dishes. It was a pretty festive event: a combination of the grizzled homeless men you’d find at a shelter, along with transient young rock climbers and backpackers, and office workers who stopped by on their lunch break—people who would never visit a food bank. The group’s mission was not merely to feed the hungry, but also to prevent food from being hauled to the landfill, and in the process take the stigma out of eating free food.
“Free Meal is not classist or hand-down like your classic soup kitchen or welfare program,” Suelo has written. “It is hand-across. Folks from all classes and needs and no-needs show up and sit down together for food that would otherwise be thrown out.”
While Suelo appreciated the free food, what really brought him back was the community. “We crave community and friendship, but we want to have our own stuff,” he says. “We don’t want to bethat way but we’re addicted to our own isolation. A lot of it has to do with shyness in our culture. You have to overcome that. When I think about Latin America, there is a communal land tradition. The community goes out and harvests, and everyone works and celebrates and has fun. You can see people crave it here.”
. . .
A T DUSK ON a cold night, Suelo and Phil, the apprentice and Qigong instructor, strike out in search of bananas. Suelo wears a black hoodie and backpack, with his hat hanging from his neck. A friend who lives on the other side of Moab has captured seventy pounds of bananas from a dumpster and sent word: get them while they last.
The twilight is clear and moonless, the rimrock black against the last pink in the sky. We pass several trash bins that Suelo assesses. “That one usually just has boxes and office papers. I might check it once a month.” A source of perpetual griping among town scavengers is that the largest supermarket keeps refuse under lock and key. There is a single bin in the parking lot, however, where customers occasionally dispose of valuable items. “That’s where I found my Therm-a-Rest, and those binoculars,” Suelo says.
Although Moab is a small town, its sprawling layout is suited to drivers, not pedestrians. We cross the vacant grounds of the high school toward the ribbons of neon along the highway. Suelo and Phil tread silently the empty sidewalk between motels and car dealerships and fast-food outlets. 3.9% FOR 60 MONTHS OAC. M OAB’S BEST DEAL . K ITCHENETTES-HBO-GUEST LAUNDRY. 10 LBS BAG OF ICE99¢ . Eighteen-wheelers rumble past, toward the Navajo Nation.
Approaching Pete’s house, we pass a grocery store just closed. We creep down the alley to the loading docks, where electric lightpools on the asphalt. Big machinery whines. I smell the acrid slicks of something sticky seeping across the lot. Suelo and Phil flip open the lids and peer in. The
“I tell him to take as much as he wants,” Conrad said with a shrug. “But I don’t even know if he takes it, to be honest. I don’t keep track of that kind of thing.”
The most reliable source of Suelo’s nutrition in recent years was a volunteer-run free meal program that served lunch in a Moab city park 365 days a year. Each day, a rotating crew picked up leftovers from restaurants and school cafeterias, then served a hot meal to whoever came. Over the course of three years, without any government or church sponsorship—without even a permit from the health department—Free Meal served thousands of lunches. Suelo went nearly every day, occasionally staying afterward to wash dishes. It was a pretty festive event: a combination of the grizzled homeless men you’d find at a shelter, along with transient young rock climbers and backpackers, and office workers who stopped by on their lunch break—people who would never visit a food bank. The group’s mission was not merely to feed the hungry, but also to prevent food from being hauled to the landfill, and in the process take the stigma out of eating free food.
“Free Meal is not classist or hand-down like your classic soup kitchen or welfare program,” Suelo has written. “It is hand-across. Folks from all classes and needs and no-needs show up and sit down together for food that would otherwise be thrown out.”
While Suelo appreciated the free food, what really brought him back was the community. “We crave community and friendship, but we want to have our own stuff,” he says. “We don’t want to bethat way but we’re addicted to our own isolation. A lot of it has to do with shyness in our culture. You have to overcome that. When I think about Latin America, there is a communal land tradition. The community goes out and harvests, and everyone works and celebrates and has fun. You can see people crave it here.”
. . .
A T DUSK ON a cold night, Suelo and Phil, the apprentice and Qigong instructor, strike out in search of bananas. Suelo wears a black hoodie and backpack, with his hat hanging from his neck. A friend who lives on the other side of Moab has captured seventy pounds of bananas from a dumpster and sent word: get them while they last.
The twilight is clear and moonless, the rimrock black against the last pink in the sky. We pass several trash bins that Suelo assesses. “That one usually just has boxes and office papers. I might check it once a month.” A source of perpetual griping among town scavengers is that the largest supermarket keeps refuse under lock and key. There is a single bin in the parking lot, however, where customers occasionally dispose of valuable items. “That’s where I found my Therm-a-Rest, and those binoculars,” Suelo says.
Although Moab is a small town, its sprawling layout is suited to drivers, not pedestrians. We cross the vacant grounds of the high school toward the ribbons of neon along the highway. Suelo and Phil tread silently the empty sidewalk between motels and car dealerships and fast-food outlets. 3.9% FOR 60 MONTHS OAC. M OAB’S BEST DEAL . K ITCHENETTES-HBO-GUEST LAUNDRY. 10 LBS BAG OF ICE99¢ . Eighteen-wheelers rumble past, toward the Navajo Nation.
Approaching Pete’s house, we pass a grocery store just closed. We creep down the alley to the loading docks, where electric lightpools on the asphalt. Big machinery whines. I smell the acrid slicks of something sticky seeping across the lot. Suelo and Phil flip open the lids and peer in. The
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