Adaptations
ON THE POWER OF SEEDS, SISTERHOOD, AND ADAPTING WOMEN WHO DIG INTO A DOCUMENTARY FILM
Seeds are tiny marvels of survival, adapting over millennia to new conditions and environments. Some seeds are designed to soar on the winds, while others hitch rides on feather, or fur. There are buoyant seeds that drift across oceans, seeking land to put down roots. Some seeds sleep beneath the soil, waiting for the right moment to awaken.
Sometimes, a ‘seed sister’ comes along…
*****
In 2018, shortly after Women Who Dig, a book I wrote about women farmers and land stewards from around the world, was published, I received an email from an emerging filmmaker based in Edmonton. Her name was Anna Kuelken.
Anna, who’d grown up on her family’s bison farm in northern Alberta, had read Women Who Dig, caught wind that I was “in the process of adapting the book into a documentary film”—and wanted to be involved. Anna’s passion for the themes of the book— women, land, food, and community health—mirrored my own. I liked her immediately.
“I call my dad ‘the farmer Buddha’,” Anna wrote in that initial correspondence. “…he reads the land, he doesn’t use chemicals or overwork the soil. He has a beautiful outlook on the world we live in, I attribute that to who he was raised by! My badass Oma.” Then she added, “…I can be an extra hand for audio or filming! Anything! I am not looking to be paid, I would just love the opportunity to be a part of a project such as this.”
I’d recently had several conversations with a producer about the possibility of a film adaptation. I’d always imagined the stories I’d written about translating onto the screen; I wanted to show people the love, dedication, exhaustion—and sometimes devastation—that’s often associated with women’s work stewarding the land. But the vibe hadn’t felt quite right. The producer suggested involving a well-known Hollywood actor as a narrator, an idea that was probably meant to entice, but had the opposite effect on me.
I feared the project would stray from my grassroots approach. I struggled to imagine a large film crew crowding into the same gardens and homes where women had generously shared food and stories with me.
Also, I was burnt out. The book had been a very ambitious undertaking. I’d interviewed over a hundred women from communities in eight countries and had largely financed the costs of travel and research myself. I was broke and culture shocked, having recently moved back to northern Alberta, after three years living in southwestern Uganda.
And even though Women Who Dig had turned out to be somewhat of an indie-success, leading to invitations to speak at events—and even an invite to speak at a United Nation’s conference on gender and agriculture—I also struggled with its shortcomings: It had been my first book; inevitably, I’d made mistakes. I knew that it needed a more substantive edit. I hadn’t included all of the voices that I should’ve included. I’d undertaken too many interviews at the expense of going deeper into narratives and the issues that women were confronted with. I cringed at one review that called the writing “Victorian-era”. The last thing I had wanted to do was write through a colonial lens, yet it could be argued that, in parts of the book, that’s what I’d done.
For all these reasons, I had conflicted emotions about the idea of adapting the book into a film.
Months later, I was, once again, engaged in discussions with two Albertan filmmakers with whom my approach to storytelling was more aligned, but I couldn’t seem to summon the energy, or will required to get such a project off the ground—and so the idea went dormant.
*****
Three years later, a message appeared in my Instagram inbox.
It was Anna, again. She wanted to let me know that she’d graduated from film school. Her short documentary, Father Like Son, had won a national award. She was still interested in making Women Who Dig into a documentary film. Would I be interested to meet with her?
I clicked on the link to Anna’s documentary. The opening shot—49 seconds long—peers through the window of the front door, as her father steps outside and walks through the snow towards a red barn. I was immediately struck by the profound and poetic nature of Anna’s approach to storytelling. The cinematography was stunning; I was spellbound. Father Like Son quietly captures the relationships between grandchild and grandfather, child and buffalo, child and death on a small family farm. It’s Anna’s love letter to land and bison, family and food. It was exactly how I envisioned the essence of a Women Who Dig adaptation.
And thus began the first of many conversations between Anna and myself about what a book-to-film adaptation could look like. Neither of us had attempted such a thing before. We didn’t know any of the rules, or guidelines to the art of adaptation, but, in hindsight, I think our creative instincts were pretty good!
We knew we didn’t want to create a literal translation of the book. Seven years had passed since it was published and nearly a decade since I’d dug into the research. Some of the women whom I’d interviewed had since left farming. Also, a lot had happened in North America and around the world: the COVID-19 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, national pipeline protests, and an intensifying climate crisis, including widespread wildfires.
The topic of food security felt even more pressing. However, the idea of filming in eight countries felt financially prohibitive to me. I didn’t want to go down that road again and risk burn out. Why don’t we film women living closer to home? I suggested—and Anna agreed.
We decided to focus on a diverse range of voices, perspectives and types of farming, or stewarding land, including those of several women whom I’d met and interviewed after writing Women Who Dig. My dear friend, Tiffany Traverse, a Secwépemc seed saver. Rachel Herbert, a 5th generation grass-fed rancher and author in southern Alberta who was advocating against coal mining in Alberta’s eastern slopes.
We also wanted to include the voice of author, beekeeper and small-scale farmer, Jenna Butler. Her organic vegetable and flower farm turned out to be a short drive from Anna’s family’s land in the boreal forest. Anna had also recently been introduced to Audrey Logan, an Indigenous Knowledge Keeper in Winnipeg—she’d bring a perspective of what it means to grow food in the city.
And finally, we reached out to Peace River country powerhouse farmer, Lisa Kitt, whom I had written about in the book. Lisa had since married and moved to her partner’s family’s farm where they were raising grass-fed pigs, chickens, and bison, and growing the organic carrots Lisa had become famous for.
Anna told me about her love of cinéma vérité, or “truthful cinema”, which takes an observational, ethnographic approach to filming. It would require filming over months, even years. It meant the documentary wouldn’t happen fast, it would develop slowly over time.
This approach appealed to me; it would mean it was just Anna and her camera, and occasionally a sound-person, visiting with women on their farms and in their homes. That would create the right conditions for building relationships—and trust.
I gravitated back and forth about how involved I wanted to be in the project; in our contract, I was referred to as a “creative producer”. I helped with grant applications and various administrative tasks. But when it came to the filming itself, it was Anna’s artistic and thoughtful lens guiding the film.
I kept thinking about the quiet magic of her short film, Father Like Son. I didn’t want to get in the way of that magic. Then again, sometimes it was hard to just surrender total creative control. I yo-yoed on this constantly, but Anna was always kind, patient, and gracious with me.
She was the epitome of inclusive, even inviting me to join her at the Camden International Film Festival in the fall of 2023 when she was selected by Hot Docs to pitch Women Who Dig to producers and distributors. It was an incredible opportunity to meet other emerging Canadian filmmakers and learn more about the inner workings of the film industry. Moreover, it was a chance for Anna and I spend time together and deepen our friendship and trust.
The highlight, for me, was getting to join Anna in the field as she filmed. I wasn’t able to participate in this as much as I would’ve liked, with my remote geography and finances being a factor, but sometimes the stars aligned and it worked out for me to come along.
In 2023, I had the opportunity to meet Audrey in downtown Winnipeg as she was reviving an urban agriculture project at the Spirit Park. Anna filmed us planting blackberry vines that would take root.
And a month later, Anna and I were road tripping from Edmonton down to the Old Man River Dam in southern Alberta, which had turned bone dry, due to a four-year drought. We visited with Rachel at the Trail’s End farmhouse in the Porcupine Hills and we could see the worry written on her face: if the drought persisted, they’d have to downsize their herds.
Rachel and I saddled up her horses and we rode across the golden hills. She told me stories about the land where her family had ranched for five generations. She pointed out where they’d found grizzly bear tracks and the time they encountered a cougar. I loved the way Rachel spoke about her wild neighbours—the way they belonged there, too.
Anna flew her drone above. The golden light was perfect. I savoured the moment.
*****
In early 2025, Anna sent me a rough cut (film speak for a ‘first draft’) of the film. The footage she’d captured of the five women land stewards was so beautiful it made me cry.
And every cut, since then, I’ve cried, laughed, and felt anger, frustration, fear, grief—and hope. In spending so much time with the women, Anna was able to get beyond ‘talking head interviews’ and, instead, humanize what it means to grow food, tend seeds, raise animals, and care for family and community, in these precarious social, political, and ecological times.
There was only one thing missing to anchor the narrative, I mused. “Your own story”.
And so, Anna, rooted on her family’s small bison farm in northern Alberta, became the narrator in the Women Who Dig adaptation, offering us a window into who she is and why she wanted to tell this story. (As it turns out, it was Anna’s Oma, a farmer, who first gave her a copy of my book, thus planting the seeds for this one-of-a-kind friendship and collaboration).
Since embarking on this incredible journey with Anna, I’ve since learned more about the theory of book-to-film adaptation. I’ve learned that the goal of adaptation shouldn’t be rigid, or have fixed outcomes, but instead, adapt to the current environment. The goal should be to create a second original, a story that captures the essence of the first, while also putting forth something new into the world. I think that’s exactly what Anna has done.
Today we are on the brink of sharing the film with a wider audience, so I don’t want to say much more, other than that I promise that you will fall in love with the women, their work, their words, and their vision for land, food, social justice, and community health.
My dear friend, Tiffany Traverse, an Indigenous seed steward and self-described “seed sister” whose own story is featured in the film, recently shared with me about the act of seed adaptation:
“…when we care for the tmicw (land) and prepare the conditions to have plants thrive and survive for our sustenance, select/save the best, eat the rest, while also allowing them room to adapt alongside us in an ever changing climate, this is the cornerstone of ancestral reciprocity.”
When I think about Tiff’s words, I can’t help but think of Anna, also, as a kind of creative “seed sister” who is continuing the story of women, food, and farming in her own unique, artful way—all while building friendship and reciprocity. I want to acknowledge everything Anna’s put into this creative project over the past four years.
I also think of the women in this film as “seed sisters”, too. I want to acknowledge Rachel Herbert, Audrey Logan, Jenna Butler, Lisa Kitt, and Tiffany Traverse, and their families, for opening up their stories and perspectives with us. The strength of the Women Who Dig documentary film stems from their generous wisdom and reflections.
Their stories gently remind us—there is power in the collective.
We are stronger together.
*****
If you’re in Edmonton, please join us at the Metro Cinema on October 23, 2025, at 6:45 PM for an advanced screening of the Women Who Dig documentary film before it goes to festivals in 2026. Tickets are available at the door for $14, or online here.
Edmonton-based poet and podcaster, Rayanne Haines, recently hosted us on her podcast, Crow Reads, about the process of adapting the book into film, which you can listen to here.
In addition, CJSR host Christian Zyp recently hosted Anna on the show and facilitated a really thoughtful discussion—you can catch that beautiful conversation here.
Please stay tuned for details of the film’s premiere at festivals in 2026—and for info on community screenings, too. We can’t wait to share this film with you all.