The Cackalacky Heritage Garden is a demonstration garden at the Duke Campus Farm. In it, we grow a variety of North Carolina cash crops: tobacco, cotton, okra, peanuts, benne, indigo, and more. The garden is offered as a resource and a teaching tool to connect with plants of cultural significance to our region, and to honor North Carolina's many communities.
Cackalacky teaches us about the complex history of the Duke Campus Farm and its connections to plantation agriculture and enslavement. The plants we grow here bear witness to forced and chosen migration and exchanges between people and cultures. We hope to braid these more violent histories with the resilience of this land and its communities.
This plot cues us to consider the economic pressures and institutions that impact agricultural practices and to imagine a different relationship to land. We do this by discussing the challenges of our current food system and asking what it would take to build a resilient food system that nourishes both land and community.
All the crops grown in Cackalacky are heirloom varieties that have featured heavily in the agriculture of the Piedmont, or that have persevered because of their important role in their communities. This plot honors the role of open-pollinated seeds in preserving biodiversity and creates opportunities to teach and learn about seed sovereignty, and seed saving practices.
Practicing Biocultural Restoration at the Duke Campus Farm
A team of students from Duke's Story+ program investigated the Cackalacky Heritage Garden as a site of biocultural restoration, or "the healing of place-based relationships alongside the revitalization of cultures and the environment." Explore their storyboard to learn more about the history of the land we're farming and the crops we honor in the Cackalacky Heritage Plot.