Día de la Candelaria marks a sacred seasonal threshold, when what has been held through the colder months of winter is brought back into the light.

In our Indigenous and campesino traditions, this time of year is dedicated to the blessing of our seeds, the honoring of maize, and the preparation for the coming growing season. It is a moment of offering, of life, nourishment, and intention, before the earth is asked to give again.

In this workshop, we gather to honor maize as ancestor and sustainer through the living tradition of tamal-making. Together we will learn about nixtamal, the ancestral process that transforms corn into nourishment, and prepare farm-to-table tamales with our own hands.

Through story, song, land-walking, and shared food, we remember that corn is not only something we eat. it is something we are.

This gathering is an invitation to slow down, observe the season in between winter and Spring, to tend seeds, to the relationships we care about, and to step into the last weeks of Winter in reverence of the earth our mother, our body temples and our seeds as ancestors.