You hear a lot of talk today about “saving heirloom seeds”, but what does that really mean?  Who really does it?  Most heirloom seed companies these days merely buy their seed from other large companies and package them in a way that looks “wholesome”, “Old Fashioned” and “American”.  In reality many of these seeds have nothing to do with being grown in the USA, in fact many have been grown thousands of miles away in a foreign land.  This has nothing to do with supporting the local rural farm life that is quickly disappearing in this country.

Who really actually saves heirlooms seeds from extinction anymore?  What seed company actually grows their own seed?  The sad truth is I can only name a couple, but we are one of those few!  That is one of the biggest reasons this company was founded.  Seed is the foundation of our food.  Food is the foundation of our bodies existence. We need healthy food to nourish our bodies.  Most of us depend on corporations to send food to stores, to feed us.  Most corporations have one thing in mind…the bottom line.  Food cost is on the rise and the quality of our food is headed in the opposite direction.  Today most people consume foods that were engineered out of such things as viruses!   Amazing 3 minute video to watch on the topic.

So now you understand that in order to have healthy food we have to have open pollinated seed.  Seed that we as individuals can save and replant the next year to feed our families. This seed is the very foundation of our independence from corporate control.  For centuries companies, governments and kings have controlled the masses with food.  You control the food source you control the people.  Today, we are controlled by our wallets and have been lulled into a false sense of safety that food will always be on the grocery store shelf and we will be able to afford it, but as many recently unemployed people are discovering that is not always true.

What can you do?  Learn to save seed and support those who are doing it as well. We at Sustainable Seed Company have dedicated our lives to saving seed.  It is a fascinating tale how it all begins.  The journey of a forgotten seed can start deep in the dusty pages of a old seed catalog.  The only place where this long forgotten variety exists anymore.  It has been forgotten by time.  No longer planted in an age where hybrid or GM crops dominate.  Yes, hybrids might perform a bit better, but this forgotten variety has something a hybrid does not.  The ability to save its seed and produce the same thing next year.  Yes, anyone who knows a little about saving seeds can grow this variety, feed their family, save its seed and do it all over again next year.   No need to pay a corporation or wonder if that company will even offer that particular variety again. This seed can be all yours and in fact many people have handed down such seed in their families for generations.  It was a living legacy.

So how does this seed transform itself from the pages of the dusty seed catalog to a living organism?  Well, that can happen in so many ways.  Perhaps the USDA seed bank still has it kept deep within one of its seed vaults.  Maybe, we get a call from someone who is doing an estate sale and found a box of seed in the bottom of the deep freeze. We have gotten seed from abandoned farm houses where to variety has continued to reseed itself for decades in remote isolation.  The stories are endless, but the possibilities of bringing a seed back are always exciting!

Next, we need to know what folks back then knew about this variety, but anyone that would have known is most likely gone now.  So, we go back to those dusty catalogs and books to research this variety.  How did it grow?  What were it’s characteristics?  How long did it take to produce?  What conditions did it do best in?  Then we plant the seeds in the greenhouse under careful and guarded conditions.  These precious jewels may indeed be that last of their kind and getting them to sprout/grow is of paramount importance. In many cases we may have only a few seeds to start with.  Sometimes we may have a few more like in the case of a barley we recently received.  We had the contents of literally one head of barley or about 30 seeds.

This barley was one developed by the famous Luther Burbank at his farm only minutes down the road from us, but from the research we have done it hasn’t been grown here since 1933!  If all goes well we might get 20 plants from these 30 seeds accounting for gophers, germination, disease and picking only those plants that perform well.  From these 20 plants we hope to get at least 20 grain-heads containing about 30 seeds themselves bringing us to a total of 600 seeds for next year.

Next year the process will start again, but this time we will start with 600 seeds.  From these seeds we will grow the next generation and pick only those that meet strict criterion to save for next year.   From these seeds, over 3 years later we will share the bounty of our harvest with you and the rest of the world.  A variety reborn after decades of sleep. Awakened again to feed a new generation.  Hopefully, a generation who understands what their grandparents knew.  That healthy food is the foundation of life.  Feeding one’s self is freedom and when a man is not hampered by pains in his belly he is free to make right choices for himself, family and community. A seed is freedom, a seed is hope.  Learn to save seed, keep hope and freedom alive for your children.  Teach them to respect the earth, to nourish it and protect.  As humans we face a challenging future, but there is hope…plant that seed now.