The heat of summer causes many garden greens to bolt and flower right around June here in northeast Iowa, and though spring salads of lettuce, spinach, arugula, and mustard aren’t quite in season anymore, there are plenty of heat-tolerant (or heat-loving) leaves to enjoy this time of the year.
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In my role as an inventory technician for the Preservation Collection at Heritage Farm, I encounter the mundane and meaningful in almost equal parts. There’s no reliable rhythm to it. Some days are complete numbers-data tedium, while others are full of gratifying meaning.
My work over the past few weeks has been leaning heavily (in a good way) toward the gratifyingly meaningful. We have in just the past week received at Heritage Farm a large seed collection comprising just over two hundred bean varieties. This collection came to us from Mary Ann Fox, longtime listed member of Seed Savers Exchange from Shelbyville, Indiana, who died this past February at the age of 71. Mary Ann’s relatives, realizing the worth and importance of the collection and having to confront its monumental scope, were especially anxious to identify someone who could not only take the mass of seed off their hands, but who could also find eager stewards of Mary Ann’s seed-saving legacy.
Enter Jim Kelly, SSE member and friend to Mary Ann. Not only did Jim find a temporary storage location for the collection and move the countless plastic seed-filled bottles to the location, he also began imagining ways in which the collection could be shared among seed savers. Eventually Jim contacted Heritage Farm to find out if there were a way the staff here could collaborate and assist. Together, we came up with a plan to distribute Mary Ann’s seed collection at the Seed Savers Exchange 2013 Conference and Campout.
An important step in preparing the collection for distribution is a thorough inventory and labeling of each seed sample. This has been my task over the past few days and will likely take another few days to complete. While the work may seem tedious and mundane to the outside observer, handling these artifacts of Mary Ann’s legacy—noting the care with which she filed and labeled each variety—is a profoundly meaningful “chore.”
Would you like to celebrate and honor Mary Ann’s seed-saving legacy right in your own garden? Will you be attending the July 2013 Conference and Campout? Look for the tent with racks of beautiful bean seeds in clear plastic bottles. I’ll be there with a collection catalog to help you choose the two or three (or four or more!) varieties that you want to take home to your garden. Or just come by to meet and talk with me and other seed savers. There will be great conversations about the ways in which we have all benefited from past seed savers, and you might even be inspired to get more actively involved in seed saving yourself. See you there!
Nora stated the following about her Italian Vegetable Ragout:
“This eggplant ragout draws its inspiration from ratatouille. Include tomatoes when they are ripe and in season. It’s good eaten hot, lukewarm, or cold. If you happen to have any of this flavorful ragout left, celebrate brunch by stirring some into scrambled eggs—or stuff it into pita pockets, add some feta cheese, and enjoy a memorable sandwich. Serve with steamed Romanesco broccoli or baked beans.”
Sauté the onion in the olive oil in a large sauté pan for 3 to 4 minutes or until soft. Add the garlic and eggplant, stirring to combine and coat with the oil. Season with salt to release the juices of the eggplant. Sauté until the eggplant becomes soft, about 5 minutes, stirring from time to time. Add the zucchini, stir and sauté for 2 to 3 minutes. Add the peppers, the mixed herbs, season to taste with pepper, and sauté for another minute or two. Remove the ragout from the heat while the peppers are still firm. Set aside and cool to room temperature. The heat of the pan will finish cooking the vegetables. Serves 4.
View all the heirloom eggplant in our catalog here.
The Seed Savers Exchange mission is to conserve and promote America’s culturally diverse but endangered food crop heritage for future generations by collecting, growing, and sharing heirloom seeds and plants.
It is urgent to gather the stories and histories of heirloom seeds by all possible means: phone conversations, emails, letters and personal meetings. Seed Savers Exchange is in a race against time to contact the seed donors and their relatives so that their first-hand accounts are not lost. Read one such story of the "Aunt Molly Bean" here.
Read MoreJeannette Beranger and Alison Martin will be at the 2013 Seed Savers Exchange Conference and Campout representing the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy. They will be teaching a workshop titled Evaluating a Poultry Flock for Breeding. We asked them to fill us in on what to expect from their workshop.
Backyard Chickens Are Back!
By Alison Martin, American Livestock Breeds Conservancy
Look around you: more than ever, chickens are showing up in back yards or being incorporated into sustainable farms. No matter the size of your flock, a question that comes up each year is “which of these chickens should I keep as breeders for next year?” Our workshop, Evaluating a Poultry Flock for Breeding, will give you the hands-on skills and knowledge to make those decisions.
For those of you who don’t know us, the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy (ALBC) works with farmers to conserve heritage breeds of livestock and poultry. Like heirloom plants, America has lost many of the breeds that were important in times past. In fact, in 1976 organizers of a Bicentennial celebration at Old Sturbridge Village in New England had trouble finding animals that would have been on the farm in 1776. The more they thought about it, the more this bothered them, and together with concerned breeders and scientists, they formed the (then) American Minor Breeds Conservancy. In the 36 years since, we haven’t lost a breed!
Unlike Seed Savers Exchange, ALBC doesn’t sell animals. For one thing, they’re harder to gather and store than seeds! We do facilitate participatory conservation. Like Seed Savers Exchange, we help breeders network with each other so they can share and exchange breeding stock and best practices. Our Master Breeder project documents the wisdom of long-time breeders, and passes that along to new breeders. We have restored productivity to breeds that have been neglected, and brought other breeds back from the brink of extinction. All this and more conserves agricultural biodiversity and maintains options for farming.
The time is right for heritage poultry and livestock. Many have regional adaptations and history that fit right in with the local foods movement. Farmers are discovering that their hardiness and thrift make them a wonderful fit for small farms, and consumers who care where their food comes from are discovering the benefits of rich and diverse flavors. And heritage animals complement heirloom seeds well, as you’ve probably seen at Heritage Farm.
Jeannette and I are excited about our first visit to the SSE Conference and Campout. We want to meet with you and hear about your homesteads. And we want to share our experience – between us we have more than 50 years experience with poultry! This year we helped Seed Savers Exchange source some excellent Buckeye chickens, and that’s what we’ll be evaluating in the workshop. The birds selected as breeders will be banded, and at the end of the season they will go to the winner of the Mother Earth News Heritage Chicken Giveaway!
If you would like to learn more about Buckeye chickens, chicken assessment, or ALBC, check us out online at www.albc-usa.org. See you in Decorah!
"The Story of the Root Children" written by Sibylle Von Olfers was a book I read over and over to my children. Each spring I am reminded of this tale when my garden is bare, completely void of any life on the surface, with a tremendous plant source lying beneath—the volunteers.
Soon after the first spring rain and the soil warms I see evidence of life after winter, small sprouts all looking familiar and similar. The beauty and challenge of self-seeding annual flowers, herbs and sometimes vegetables is identifying them as volunteers. Over the years I have learned to recognize the plants by their leaves, the order in which to expect their arrival, and where they reliably decide to grow. I feel protective of these sprouts because they do not look much different than many weeds at this point. Most plants are photographed when they are blooming and mature, not when they are just little sprouts. Below are a few of these root children that I found in May while exploring my garden. Look for them coming to your garden soon!
I appreciate nature's perfectly designed vignettes, combinations not found in any book or ones I want to compete with... so I don't. I know 'Grandpa Ott's' morning glory will sprout and grow up the side of the barn, my 'Grandma Einck's' dill will volunteer in front of the 'Kiss-Me-Over-the-Garden-Gate,' the calendulas are fine companions for any plants, 'Love-in-a-Mist' will scatter themselves everywhere knowing they can blend into any group and be just fine. Borage is in the strawberry patch, 'Outhouse Hollyhock' along the fence, and violets are usually blooming before I even get into the garden.
Visitors sometimes say my garden feels so natural… well it truly is, one that naturally volunteers itself.
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Check back to the blog throughout this summer and autumn for more posts and pictures of my garden.
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Founded in 1975, Seed Savers Exchange operates an 890-acre farm in northeast Iowa where thousands of rare fruit, vegetable, and other plant varieties are regenerated and preserved in a central collection. Its mission is conserving and promoting America’s culturally diverse but endangered food crop heritage for future generations by collecting, growing, and sharing heirloom seeds and plants. For information visit www.seedsavers.org
By Jeremy Cherfas
The European Union’s current seed laws operate from a fundamentally strange foundation: everything not permitted is forbidden. In other words, if a seed variety is not registered on the Common Catalogue, it cannot be marketed. And marketing covers giving seeds away and swapping them. The new proposals do not change this fundamental principle. Instead, they expand somewhat the list of things that are permitted. Gardeners, for example, can now swap seeds.
These new proposals have provoked an outcry, especially among people who weren’t familiar with the existing regime. People have also rejected the whole notion of rules and regulations concerning seeds. As one person commented on my website, “Also, WHY would you NEED regulation for seeds?”.
Because seeds are fundamentally different from other goods one can buy and sell (except possibly computer software and 3D printers). As Jack Kloppenburg [editors note: Kloppenburg will also speak at SSE's 2013 Conference] has pointed out, they are both the product **and** the means of production. That is, you can eat a seed — possibly inside a fruit such as a tomato — or you can use it to produce more seeds. Furthermore, there is nothing visible on the outside of the seed that gives a clue as to the genes inside, and it is the genes inside that growers are actually interested in, because they determine the final product. As a result seeds have been subject to all sorts of sharp practices over the years.
We need regulations to protect people from fraud, to ensure that when you get seeds of a specific variety, they are what they say they are and that, given the right treatment, they will germinate. These conditions can be taken care of by existing legislation. In England, for example, we have the Sale of Goods Act, first passed in 1893, which says that things must be fit for purpose and of satisfactory quality, with tests for both.
Some seeds need more protection. Commercial farmers, for example, may want varieties bred for their specific needs. Seed companies exist to meet those needs (although some would say they also create many of the needs they meet) and they’re not going to invest in research and development to create a new variety unless they can be reasonably sure that they will get their money back, with a profit. That’s one reason why commercial breeders really like F1 hybrids, because they don’t breed true, and therefore growers who don’t want to get into breeding for themselves have no choice but to buy new seeds each season. F1 hybrids break the link between seed as product and seed as means of production. It is also why commercial breeders have lobbied long and hard for additional forms of protection, such as plant breeders' rights and plant patents.
More power to them, I say. If a grower is convinced that the extra cost of those highly-regulated seeds is worthwhile, why shouldn’t they have the freedom to buy them? But the reverse is also true. If I want to grow a different variety which, for one reason or another, doesn’t even try to meet the standards for additional regulation and protection, why should I not be equally free to make my choice? Of course there’s a risk that the seeds aren’t what they claim to be, or will fail to germinate, but I know that, and I know that existing laws might help me get redress if I really think that’s what I want.
Around the world, that’s possible. There are seed registration schemes, but there is also freedom not to take advantage of registered seeds. Except in Europe where, even if the new proposals are accepted without changes, everything not permitted will still be forbidden.
Our mission is to conserve and promote America’s culturally diverse but endangered food crop heritage for future generations by collecting, growing, and sharing heirloom seeds and plants. Visit seedsavers.org
Here at Seed Savers Exchange, to say we grow a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, and flowers would be an understatement. With decades of experience growing hundreds of vegetable varieties in production and garden settings, our crews at Seed Savers Exchange have learned a thing or two about support systems. Here are some trellises we like to use around the farm.
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Recently I returned from speaking in Pennsylvania at a Slow Food Harrisburg Farm-to-Table dinner. Next door was Hershey. Milton Hershey’s legacy is remarkable and delicious, but the legacy he left that impressed me more than milk chocolate was the Milton Hershey School. The school was founded and endowed more than 100 years ago by Milton and Catherine to fulfill their vision of helping children reach their dreams. Today the school is a year-round home for 1200 children. I met with the school garden club who were very quick to point out they were there because they wanted to be, not because they were required. The story of how Seed Savers Exchange also began with only a vision was inspiring to them. Seeing the joy and hope that seeds bring to a group of students was just as inspiring to me.
I then traveled to neighboring Ben Franklin School where I spoke at a general assembly of the Math/Science Academy — an experience resembling a pep rally for seeds. I spoke for about 15 minutes and opened the floor to questions. Hands were raised all over and unfortunately time ran out before I could answer them all. Their thoughtful questions ranged from “Is a tomato a fruit or vegetable?” to “How do you save seeds from a banana tree?” (I’ll admit I had to look that one up!). Math/Science Academy teacher Judd Pittman later wrote, “Our students were really excited about your visit, which has also sparked a lot of conversation. The students have enjoyed looking at the catalogue and are excited about the seeds you left for the school garden.”
I am thankful to be part of an organization that offers hope and solutions. Witnessing the excitement of young people holding a pack of seeds for the first time and understanding the living connection of our past to the future is one of the most rewarding feelings.
Decorah, Iowa — Seed Savers Exchange, Inc. is pleased to announce the election of Hope Shand and Marty Teitel to its board of directors. The two nominations were approved at a special meeting of the board on Wednesday, April 24, 2013, bringing the total number of board members to nine directors.
Shand and Teitel both have extensive experience as advocates for agricultural biodiversity and have had long standing relationships with Seed Savers Exchange (SSE).
Hope Shand, of Durham, North Carolina, is an author, researcher and consultant who has conducted extensive research and written on the topics of agricultural biodiversity and intellectual property, as well as the social and economic impacts of new biotechnologies. Her most recent consultancies were with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and the Canadian-based civil society organizations, ETC Group and USC Canada.
Based in Sheepscot, Maine, Marty Teitel is an author, editor, and genetic diversity advocate. He has authored numerous articles and books, including “Genetically Engineered Food: Changing the Nature of Nature.” Marty has extensive experience with international development and foundation work, having devoted the entirety of his career to nonprofit organizations focused on a wide range of humanitarian and environmental causes. He is the author of the Safe Seed Pledge, a standard many seed companies have signed stating that they do not knowingly sell or grow genetically engineered seeds and plants.
SSE board chair Keith Crotz called the addition of Shand and Teitel an important step in SSE fulfilling its goal to conserve and promote America's agricultural biodiversity.
“Marty and Hope are extraordinary people who are committed to our mission,” Crotz said. “The two of them will bring valuable experience and expertise to our board.” Shand and Teitel were both elected to three-year terms.
For more information, contact: John Torgrimson, Executive Director john@seedsavers.org (563) 382-5631
Founded in 1975, Seed Savers Exchange operates an 890-acre farm in northeast Iowa where thousands of rare fruit, vegetable, and other plant varieties are regenerated and preserved in a central collection. Its mission is conserving and promoting America’s culturally diverse but endangered food crop heritage for future generations by collecting, growing, and sharing heirloom seeds and plants. For information visit www.seedsavers.org
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Seed Savers Exchange is a nonprofit, member supported organization that collects, preserves and shares heirloom seeds for our future. Since 1975, SSE and our supporters have collected the seeds and stories that would otherwise have been lost.
Seed Savers Exchange is a tax-exempt 501(c)3 nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation of heirloom seeds.
Seed Savers Exchange
3094 North Winn Road
Decorah, Iowa 52101
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