Seed Savers Exchange
“Saves and shares the heirloom seeds of their garden heritage, forming a living legacy that can be passed down through generations. It is the largest non-governmental seed bank in the United States. Their members have distributed an estimated 1 million samples of rare garden seeds since their founding nearly 35 years ago.
Those seeds now are widely used by seed companies, small farmers supplying local and regional markets, chefs and home gardeners and cooks, alike. They permanently maintain more than 25,000 endangered vegetable varieties, most having been brought to North America by members’ ancestors who immigrated from Europe, the Middle East, Asia and other parts of the world.
Heirloom Vegetables
Their rare heirloom vegetables are stored in its various walk-in coolers, freezers, nurseries, and root cellars. Members donate these inherited seedlings to the Exchange, where they are both stored and propagated for further dissemination among other exchange members, who have since passed along a million or more samples of these rare seeds to gardeners in the U.S. and beyond. In short, Seed Savers has become a huge bank of biodiversity.
The whole collection is listed in a copy of the ‘Seed Savers’ 2010 Yearbook’. The book is as thick as a big-city telephone directory, with page after page of exotic varieties of beans, garlic, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, and has detailed descriptions of their flavorsome essences; and hundreds of antique fruit varieties, like antique apples with such enchanting names as ‘Beautiful Arcade’ and ‘Prairie Spy’. One called ‘Sops of Wine’, is among the oldest apple varieties on earth, dating back to the Middle Ages, with a mild, aromatic, sub-acid flavor.
New Mexico Cave
Equally inspiring are the personal histories behind each of the heirloom varieties listed in the catalogue. A bean known as the ‘New Mexico Cave’ is said to have come from seeds found in a 1500 year-old ‘pine-pitch sealed clay pot’ that archeologists found in New Mexico while searching for fossils of pygmy elephants.
Estonian Yellow Cherry Tomato
‘Estonian Yellow’, a variety of cherry tomato, was collected by Seed Savers’ member Lila Towle from an elderly Russian lady at the covered market outside Tallinn, Estonia while a rare garlic called ‘Palestine’, with a mild flavor and late bite, was donated by Kahlad Hardan, in whose family the garlic has been cultivated for many generations (W6 27692). Seed Savers, one soon realises, isn’t merely about preserving biodiversity. It also preserves and perpetuates the living pieces of various peoples’ pasts.
Their farm perimeter is patrolled by Bald Eagles, red-tailed hawks, deer, raccoons and other wildlife. It’s ringed by 8.5 miles of hiking trails that take visitors through majestic scenery, passed some of their 23 acres of certified organic preservation gardens, historic orchard and ancient White Park Cattle.
It seems somewhat counter-intuitive: a farm dedicated to collecting rather than growing seeds, but then most everything about Heritage Farm is a break from the norm. Most people today don’t realise that behind the seemingly abundance of food on the shelves is a potentially dangerous lack of variety. Seed Savers, have made it their responsibility to safeguard this diversity by preserving and distributing to its more than 12,000 (and growing) members the seeds of rare or ‘heirloom’ crop varieties.
Diane Ott Whealy and Kent Whealy
Seed Savers Exchange was founded in 1975 by Diane Ott Whealy and Kent Whealy to honour this tradition of preserving and sharing. Their collection started when Diane’s terminally-ill grandfather gave them the seeds of two garden plants: Grandpa Ott’s Morning Glory and German Pink Tomato, that his parents brought from Bavaria when they immigrated to St. Lucas, Iowa in the 1870s.
Everything from the peppers, tomatoes, and potatoes in the produce section, to the poultry and beef on the butcher shelves, are each developed from one or two high-yielding varieties of those respective vegetables or livestock. While this has allowed for mass production, it has also led to a diminishing of the food sources’ genetic makeup: a vast monoculture that is highly susceptible to disease precisely because it lacks the vigor that comes from genetic diversity.”
Interested in MORE, check them out in their website. Theirs is a wonderful mission :: “saving the world’s diverse, but endangered, garden heritage for future generations by building a network of people committed to collecting, conserving, and sharing heirloom seeds and plants, while educating people about the value of genetic and cultural diversity”. Consider doing it yourself, where you are, among your family and friends.
