Seeds And Their People - Ep. 10: Chris Keeve: Seed Keeper, Chaotic Gardener, and Cooperative Geographer

Episode Date: July 21, 2022

In this episode, we hear from former Truelove Seeds apprentice and current Truelove Seeds seed producer and collaborator Chris Keeve in an interview from last fall 2021 when they visited during our annual growers gathering at our farm outside of Philadelphia, PA. There is also a short clip from the summer of 2019 while a group of us harvested peas and Chris narrates, and a short update from this month so we can hear the awesome things Chris is up to this summer. Chris Keeve is a seedkeeper, chaotic gardener, and PhD student in Geography at the University of Kentucky. Their work focuses on the political ecologies and cooperative geographies of participatory seed work, especially through lenses of Black, queer, and liberatory ecologies. They've been known to write things here and there about seeds, politics, ecology, histories, futures, and materiality. Their apprenticeship with Truelove has led into their work with projects like the TradeRoots Culinary Collective in Wisconsin, as well as their current work in central Kentucky as a seed grower for Truelove, as well as for Ujamaa Seeds and Experimental Farm Network. This season they are most excited about the Paul Robeson tomato, with an upcoming growout of blue collards a close second. You can find them at c.keeve on Instagram, christiankeeve on Twitter, email [e-mail], or through their department page.   SEED STORIES TOLD IN THIS EPISODE: Spilanthes (Bullseye) Spilanthes (Lemon Drop) Hill Country Red Okra White Velvet Okra Green Glaze Collards Tulsi (Kapoor) Tulsi (Vana) MORE INFO FROM THIS EPISODE: Interviewee: Chris Keeve Chris on Instagram: @c.keeve Chris on Twitter: christiankeeve Chris on email: [e-mail] Chris's department page Resources and organizations mentioned: Zora Neale Hurston on Florida Food: Recipes, Remedies & Simple Pleasures, by Frederick Douglass Opie Heirloom Collards Project TradeRoots Culinary Collective Lobelia Commons Southern Exposure Seed Exchange Experimental Farm Network Ujamaa Seeds ABOUT: Seeds And Their People is a radio show where we feature seed stories told by the people who truly love them. Hosted by Owen Taylor of Truelove Seeds and Chris Bolden-Newsome of Sankofa Community Farm at Bartram’s Garden. trueloveseeds.com/blogs/satpradio   SUPPORT OUR PATREON! Become a monthly Patreon supporter! This will better allow us to take the time to record, edit, and share seed stories like these.   FIND OWEN HERE: Truelove Seeds Facebook  |  Tumblr  |  Instagram  |  Twitter   FIND CHRIS HERE: Sankofa Community Farm at Bartram’s Garden   THANKS TO: Chris Keeve Althea Baird Amirah Mitchell Maebh Aguilar Sara Taylor

The day-to-day seed work, I think, is like where a lot of that theorization happens, right? I think is where, like, you end up rethinking a lot of your assumptions about yourself as a human, right? Yeah, it's less like, is the data crunchable or is the okra pod crunchable? You can use that if you want. Just kidding. Keep that one in. Keep that in. Thank you. Welcome back to Seeds and their people.

I'm Chris Bolden Newsom, farmer and co-director of Sancofa Farm at Bartram's Garden in sunny southwest Philadelphia. And I'm Owen Taylor, seed keeper and farmer at True Love Seeds. We are a seed company offering culturally important seeds grown by farmers committed to cultural preservation, food sovereignty, and sustainable agriculture. This podcast is supported by True Love Seeds, and now also you. We just started a Patreon so that you can help support our seedkeeping and storytelling work for as little as $1 a month. Not to get all numbers-y, but we already have 18 patrons covering about an eighth of our monthly costs of making this podcast, with an average of $4 per month per patron. Thank you all so much.

At this rate, we're hoping to find 125 more patrons. We also received a special donation from Mel in Canada, who writes, Thank you True Love Seeds for your inspiring and informative show. I hope other listeners will continue to donate and support to keep it coming. Shout out to my farm moms at Sweet Diggs Farm, smiley face. Thanks so much, Mel. Thank you also to our patrons, Kai, Megan, Julie, Patrick, Amy, Tracy, Ali Sheba, Joe, Dan, Bill, Zade, Deborah, Stephanie. mom, Sarah, Cecilia, Lauren, Gian, and D. This episode features an interview with Chris Keefe, who, as you'll

hear in the interview, was an apprentice with true love seeds, well, first a volunteer, then an apprentice, and now a seed grower for our catalog and friend of ours, and also is working to kind of study our network of growers and learn more about how it works and how it could be better and how to represent it to the world. This is part of this idea that we had to start interviewing our mentees and apprentices and former apprentices. So this is the first in that series with more coming soon. So, yeah, before we jump into the episode, I wanted to kind of hear some reflections from

you, Chris, having listened to the interview. Yeah, well, it's another great episode where it's anytime we start talking about seeds and people, it always is powerful and has a potential to go in so many different wonderful directions. I'm excited for people to listen to the whole interview, but there were definitely parts that really stood out to me. I think Chris talks about the seeds on the floor, sort of the seeds that fell on the floor during processing at True Love headquarters.

It's sort of his fascination with these seeds that are now all mixed up. and are now ready to be swept up and cast aside. But he takes a special interest in no seeds that fell on the floor. And I think that really spoke to me in a very powerful way. I'm also fascinated by seeds that fall on the floor. Of course, in a home with two farmers and seedkeepers, we have seeds on the floor all the time. And I think about that.

And I will often sweep them up and throw them into the backyard with a prayer. So, yeah, I think that that was one part of the interview that really fascinated me. He's talking about, you know, what does it mean to have all of these sort of mixed up seeds and that he actually, you know, taking and grow them out sometimes and just to see what comes up. And I think that that for me was a powerful reminder that all of us are the results of scattered peoples, you know, scattered seeds in some way. And, yeah, so there was just something really beautiful and powerful about that. yeah it's like a parable you said yeah yeah it was it was like a sort of a seed parable you know in the bible there are lots of parables and lots of plant related parables but it certainly certainly sort

of reminded me sort of the parable of the soul in the gospel of matthew and it also reminded me too of the parable where uh jesus is talking about the woman who loses a coin and turns a whole house upside down trying to find that when she finds that coin she has this big old party and invites all her girlfriends over because she found her money and there's something about those seeds that we don't really maybe recognize as a value because they've fallen you know they've lost their purpose they've lost you know their intended destiny but they actually do hold great value and in great prices you know and just like I think all of us so I think particularly as a son of the African diaspora that spoke to me, seeds on the floor.

Yeah, and I know another thing that stood out to you is that Chris Keeve is also studying the kind of geography of the movement of seeds, and that's their attachment to this work now, both, you know, being a seed grower, but also kind of a theorist or an anthropologist or a geographer. I mean, I know that a lot of your work has been kind of both as a farmer and as a thinker. And I'm wondering, like, what stood out to you about that. I mean, I think the movement of seeds, again, and it's similar to to that story. I think they're kind of connected, you know, the seas that fell off the table onto the floor, you know, they, they've shifted, you know, geographical borders also in a way, right?

They were intended to go into certain packages, to go into certain containers, and to have a name and to have this very definite story. But they fail. And I think in the same way, you know, I think it's very fascinating to think about Chris's work with seeds and seeds that move beyond the borders of where they come from. That's always been something that really fascinates me.

You know, I think of it, especially as a, cook this morning we just made a curry for dinner and you know I was as I'm throwing all of these different vegetables you know and my curries just contain whatever vegetables we got and so I've had a big harvest of potatoes and carrots and onions and garlic and tomatoes and everything and so as I'm chopping all this stuff up and putting it all in the pot I realize that these come from vastly different places you know continents you know they had to cross oceans and you know know, in centuries and so many hands to get here. So yeah, I think the, you know, I think that Chris's work talking about seeds, particularly seeds that, you know, sort of have changed their

story, their intended story, because they've moved beyond, you know, the places where they come from. Again, I mean, I think it's just another powerful way that seeds reflect people. And yeah, I mean, I think, you know, as an African-American, Afro-Celtic person, you know, there's a lot of stories in me, some, you know, that are powerful and exciting and joyful and so many others, you know, that are not exciting or not, rather, you know, joyful. But all of it is what goes into making me who I am, and that's the same for every single other human being. All of that is super fascinating to me and I'd love to find out more about what he's doing and how he talks about that. And I hope that that fascinates you all as

you're listening to it and encourages you to explore more about the geography of seeds moving across borders and the taking on of new stories. That seems like a great intro to the episode. But I want to ask you another question. two chris is from the south, part of the African diaspora, both of you, and I'll say that Chris Keeve uses he and him and they and them pronouns, so we're going to alternate. You come from different parts of the south and have very different stories. And Chris Keeves from Florida, as you'll hear, and talks about citruses and mangoes and so on and things that grow there that that aren't necessarily growing in the Mississippi Delta.

And now they farm and live in Kentucky, another part of the south, from both of those places, and work with black farmers there. So I'm just curious your reflections. I know that you and I stopped in Florida when we were visiting an uncle. That's all right. We live in a city.

We live in a city in there. City noises behind us. It's part of the story. Okay. So we were in Florida and we stopped at the Zora Neal Hurston Museum and got a Florida food book kind of written by her. So I'm just curious just if you could speak for a minute on kind of these connections to the South and your kind of mutual interests in southern black food. Yeah, I mean, well, the South is a big kingdom. It's a vast kingdom. And it's a patchwork of different cultures, different dialects. When you are a southerner, you can hear these differences. and they stand out very starkly even when we recognize the things that really connect us. And just something really interesting to me.

I don't know. I mean, not being from the north, I wonder if Yankees have the same kind of like sense of connectedness to, you know, to other Yankees, you know, from different parts of it. But it is always, to me, as a Southerner, it's always super exciting to hear about how other parts of it. the South of the cultures in the South live, what they eat, how they speak. Yeah, and certainly in Mississippi Delta, we didn't have any orange trees or grapefruit or anything like that. And I always have always sort of joke that in Florida, everything that we can grow grows there plus more. And then you know, when you're talking about Kentucky, you know, a whole part of the South, you know, with a completely different and very, very distinct culture and dialect. It is very

very exciting to me to sort of hear the differences, especially, I think Chris comes from Collar Green Country. I think that where he is from, that the raining green is the Collard, and I come from Mustard and Turn of Green Country, where collards sort of take second place, if not third place, you know, a lot of times. So that's always exciting to hear how the other half eats. Yeah, I mean, I think that hearing and knowing these very distinct ways of being, Southern and especially being, you know, African-American Southern fascinates me because I also remember that we are one people, you know, I mean, most Africans in North America came here through one of those ports in Southeast, you know, and then we spread out and, you know,

migrated or were pushed, you know, into other places. So I recognize that Mississippi black culture is relatively new and recent, certainly compared to Floridian culture in general and black Floridian culture. And so it is very fascinating to see, like, what are the things that connect us and how are we different? So, yeah, I love all that. And I added to my teaching, you know, when I'm teaching about diaspora culture. It just really reminds me that we are a diaspora. We are, you know, a people of sort of scattered seeds that, again,

moved past our borders. And it's super interesting to listen to and to learn about. Great. Well, let's get into it. So we're going to start out with an interview last fall, 2021 with Chris Keeve at our farm, True Love Seeds, when they were visiting from Kentucky for our annual growers gathering of all the farmers that grow for our catalog. And we'll be walking through the field, checking out some plants that. are near and dear to them. So let's get into it. Thanks for listening. So these are the subtle sounds of Chris Keefe picking. Spylantys. When you eat it, It feels like sour-skittles taste.

Maybe it tastes like sour-skidlidless feel. It's like an electric buzz. And also, I just love the sort of, like, very practical use of having, like, a toothache plant and sort of the medicinal use. And it gives a lot, and it's very prolific. It's also, like, a really stunning, visually, like, a sort of flower. I guess True Love has two varieties.

They're all kind of a ground-covered plant. there is maybe nine inches tall and they produce these bright yellow button flowers these little fuzzy I guess are they in for essences yeah the sunflower right yeah yeah they're cousin of cousin of the sunflower they're astor right so they're kind of these right these bright yellow buttons and then the balsized bylantis which have these really deep red and maybe maybe like even mowlve um centers with the yellow around them. I'm like a bull's eye. I just think they're great. I used to do a lot of work around like with like youth gardening and they're both like

really easy to grow and also like kids get really into them. Even like just like kind of like one leaf gives you the kind of like sensation. Can you hear it? Can you hear the feeling? I can hear it. And what ways have you used it? medicinally. I currently live in Lexington, Kentucky. When I grow some at home, I'm a little fire escape, my apartment. And if I'm having, like, tooth or gum issues, I'll just kind of like throw some into my mouth on my way out. That's mainly it. The Aspen dries, but I haven't done a lot with yet. But I have plans for a tincture. Are there any other plants out here right now

that we should visit while we are in the field? The Tulsi or the okra. Okay. Or if they're, I guess cowards you think well those are three great things where do you want to start okay okay we're entering the okra patch in the background you can hear Amira and Ruth harvesting gondulis and tit-chatting here we are here's the okra the end of the season why would we come to the okra it's one of the seeds that tells my story it's okra is really a major part kind of growing up with my family's cuisine my mom would always look with okra and i just love it and love the kind of miscellaginous taste and i think it's a really it's a really fun plant to grow especially for seed back in like 2017 you gave me some white velvet

okra seeds which these here are not but you gave me some white velvet ochre seeds that i kept for a while and I gave them all to a friend of mine this season to grow in their backyard and I've been kind of like coaching them through how to grow them for seed. It's been a really cool experience to kind of like walk them through the process of growing it, deciding on which pods to select

for seed and which ones to save and also just being able to renew those seeds and that gift for another, for more seasons in the future. It's also just a very cool pod. This is actually my next tattoo is going to be an okra pod. She's very excited for. What kind of okra? Likely a white velvet. Oh nice. Yeah. Can you describe how a white velvet okra pod looks? Or why did you choose that one? It's just the one I'm most familiar with and it's the one I've had kind of the most

success growing in different places in which I've lived. I can only describe it as like it's less thick than the whole country for it. It's a little slimmer, it's more streamlined. I'm kind of got this like not furry it's a fuzzy yeah so it's got a very white fuzz around it um though it's really cool especially like in the mornings one's dewy yeah and it doesn't have these ridges really not as pronounced yeah i do like these ridges though yeah this is the hill country red we're standing next to right working at it we're looking at a tripod right that has already started sweating open and you could see it's audio but you could see the kind of mature seeds rattling around so what did you tell your friend to help them learn to keep the

seeds i told them grow out their ogre and at some point in the season if you kind of see one that like you really see like a plant individual plant that you know maybe it's produce the earliest or maybe it just like looks like visually the best for you or maybe you just have like some sort of connection to it that you can't put into words or maybe it tastes the best mark off that one and the rest you can harvest from and then that one plant you want to save for seed and so it's going to be a point in the season in which the pods get too big to like really be like great to eat but you want to kind of like keep caring for the plant and then at one point the pods will grow to their full size and then it will start to kind of turn brown and start sweating.

I told you that it's done pumping nutrients and energy into its seeds, and that the seeds are probably ready to be harvested. And then you kind of take this like kind of crunchy dry brown pod and split it open along the seams and then your seeds will just fall out. And you can save those. Awesome. What was your friend's kind of favorite part of this process? process. They did on the Tech City recently that there is at least one pod that is

probably going to make it to see which is very exciting. It's kind of like a different sort of orientation to the plant I guess than if you're just growing for food like it's a different kind of like care work. They seem like they have really kind of enjoyed this like new relationship and also just kind of the project of not just thinking about food for this season but also food for coming seasons and thinking about like, you know, being able to save their own seed and then give that seed to other people. Awesome. And just to describe this patch a little, you can see just a few pods at the top of each plant because we've been harvesting them as they fully turn brown

in their little stem or umbilical cord to the plant turns brown as as the season goes on. So it's a thin looking crop now, which was robust like a month ago, full of big leaves. and it's getting gearing up for the fall now even though it's pumping out some new little yellow flowers and buds it's kind of on its way out which is how it goes it's still beautiful where should we go next we could do the collars or the holy basil or the sorghum which doesn't if we tell us or it's cool great well the collars are under the sorghum Perfect. I'm uncovering the row cover because we still have some harlequin bugs in the field who

love to eat collards. You can see that we've had caterpillars eating them as well. We're going to uncover them fully next week when the harlequins have kind of died back more. A lot of pests after them. Everyone likes collards. What draws you to collards? Oh, man. It's also a food I grew up with.

You have collards every Sunday. I love a really big, dense leafy green. I feel like collards are like not pretentious. They're just, you know, tasty, and it's like got this really kind of like hearty bitterness to it. What else? So last year, when I moved to Kentucky, so a friend of mine was a friend of mine was, grower for the Air Room Collard project that happened last year last season and just kind of like gave me, gifted me like a few varieties for the move. And I kind of planted them where I live now

and I successfully overwintered them, which is like their biannials. So I overwintered them and then they went to seed this past season, which is really exciting. And I did not get mature seed because my landward got rid of them. But they quote unquote like they were done, but which is whatever. That experience was really fun. And, like, maybe in some parallel universe, I got some seeds that were across with all these varieties. And then wouldn't now be seeing kind of what they would produce. Yeah, I get college forever.

How do you like to eat them? Oh, man. So how I grew up was, like, kind of like a slow cook with a handbone in a pot all afternoon, which I don't have the patience for. Where does that recipe come from, do you think, originally? My impression is I just kind of like how black folks in the South would make collards. Just how my mom made them every Sunday. And I will usually kind of raise them or saute them.

And also maybe just like simmer them with some like broth for a while. But yeah, because I'm a very sort of like snappy cook. Well, these ones are the green glaze collards, which we were growing when you were here. Right. So it's time again. Last time we tried to grow the species on our farm, we planted them too late. And we learned from Mama Ira Wallace at Southern Exposure that they need to grow to the size of your pinky finger if they're going to make it through the winter and then know that it's time to flower to trigger their flowering.

So we're hoping, you can see they're pretty thin right now, their stems, that they size up in the next couple months before the deep cold in order to get a good amount of seed, or any seed. next year. So that was helpful to learn from her, from one of our seed-keeping elders. But this is just a beautiful variety, glossy green. And we, sometimes some of the more traditional-looking bluish matte ones come out and we just rogue them away and eat them. They're actually planted at the... What's that? I like a matte collard. Yeah, it's good. I like a blue-gray collard. We put the blue-gray ones at the end on their own, treating them the same under the road cover and the irrigation and everything and we'll just eat them and enjoy them but this green glaze is kind of hard to find except for a few catalogs and Amira particularly likes it and

I like it too so we're just trying to keep it around doing our part okay let's check out the Tulsi here we are this the Tulsi you meant the Kapoor holy basil Yes, yeah. It's one of five or six holy basils or Tulsi's were growing this year. Probably the most popular one or familiar one for people here. What draws you to it? The thing I love about Tulsi is that it's, in one, it just like smells amazing. But it's like unapologetic about taking up space.

It will readily sell seed and it will spread and kind of like go where it will. And it's kind of like go where like, go where it will be welcomed. And it's really enjoy a plant so I do that. It really just like is incredible. Sort of like smell and taste. Can you describe the smell? It's, why don't you take a leaf and maybe it'll trigger the descriptive words. It's like it's like a confident purple breeze.

It smells like, I mean that in the best way of possible. It smells like you're going to be okay. Like it's like, like it's late summer and the door is propped open and kind of, you know, the wind is kind of blowing in from the outside. And you're just sort of like letting yourself exist at dusk, you know? It's sweet, but not too sweet. And there's a little bit of spice in there. It's like it's wrapping you in satin or something. Or silk.

Silk, it's better word. Yeah. That's beautiful. Thanks. I don't know. I don't know what you smell with a script. And I definitely know what you're talking about. It's like a very calming plant. Yes. Last season, I grew some just so I casually on my porch. And then when they kind of started dying back, I made a tincture. And I've just been kind of like gifting it to friends.

And I can open it whenever I need that calming aroma. Nice. Do you say, keep seeds from your plants from the Kapoor Tulsi? I did, yeah. I think last season I was growing Kapoor and Vana together. So I kind of kept those seeds. It was just like a mix. And then I grew, I started those along with some more like Kapoor and Vana that I knew were Kapoor and Vana, because that was part of a project that my friend and that were doing in Lexington. I was just like starting dozens of seeds and giving them away to people who wanted seedlings. I gave a bunch of Tulsi's. I gave a bunch of Tulsi starts to this person who was connected with.

A friend of mine posted by the project and like this mutual aid group in Lex. So then some people were kind of like contacting me that like very starts I want because a lot of them were like kind of hard to find things. And that's kind of like doing little like porch job offs of these seedlings. And then I dropped off a bunch of Tulsi to someone

and then they kind of like emailed me afterwards. So that it was very kind of like kind email of like, how it was so important to their family and like they were looking for us for a long time and all that stuff. It just felt like fun, good to do. But yeah. Thank you for sharing your connection to these plants right in front of us.

That's really the focus of the podcast. And it also brings us into like hearing more about you. And I feel like that this is a good time to ask you about your seedkeeping journey in general. What's your relationship to seedkeeping been and where is it going? Let me think. I mean, I have always been kind of a chaos. gardener, I think. Back to when I was like a kid, I think my dad had saved, like, a corner of the backyard for me to very sporadically grow things sometimes. And it was, like, I grew up in

South Florida. So you can kind of, like, grow whatever you want. I would save, like, seeds from, like, oranges that I would eat and try to start those. And they, and some of those were successful. And just, like, various, like, random, like, kind of, like, kind of, like, kind of, kind of fell into, like, various food and ag things. And I was really interested in the, like, in the environmental things, I was really interested in, like, seeds as an idea, as a concept, it's kind of like small things that do so much work, and that, like, travel in ways that go with human stories and, like, human movements as well as, like, sometimes their own movements and their own stories, so that makes sense.

I got into seeds, I think, through Owen's work. I had done some seed work here and there. I think in college, I was volunteering with, like, kind of some prairie restoration stuff, and we'd do some seed stuff. After that, I was doing some food and ag work, and I ended up getting great to eat this through following Owen, and I kind of tried to start little seed projects. So at one point, I was working for this urban ag community gardening initiative in Montana that we had like a workshop about both like seedkeeping and like native plants or something. And then I moved to Philly a few years ago, and I started volunteering for what was not yet true love seeds, what would become true love. seeds and just got like really into it. I kind of started thinking through both like kind of like

the relations that you form with plants through seed work. It ties you both to like the past and also the future and usually cool ways. Sort of thinking through like community memory and like cultural history and like ancestral foods. I think being from South Florida, there's a lot of unique things being grown, especially just thinking of like people of color, especially like black folks in South Florida. My mom was not telling me stories about, like, how there were all these things that people would just, like, grow in their yards when she was growing up. It also was, like, tropical fruit trees are growing people's yards. And that still are, but how, like, there are so many, like, plants and fruits and veggies that were readily available in her

childhood and her neighborhood that you can't find anymore. You remember what any of those things are that are hard to find now? I know there was a variety of, there's a purple shelling bean, and there was some type of orange, some type of citrus that was growing in someone's yard that she would tell you about. My grandmother, who was her mother, in their, in their backyard had, I guess what you would not call a food forest, so they have, like, a lot of trees, and the majority of those trees are, like, fruit trees. From a very young age, I grew up learning how to pick mangoes on my grandma's mango tree, and also my parents have one, too. I grow as two varieties that's grafted. They bloom a few weeks apart. So like kind of like one side tree

blooms and then the fugues like the other side blooms and one side has right fruit and the fugues side of the other side has right fruit. But anyways, so I started getting into seed work outside of home and then ended up hearing a lot more stories from home that were inspired by that. And then so I ended up in grad school studying geography and I resided seeds in my head. Or I was really fascinated with the palm ropes and tomato, actually. And I really kind of like wanted to dig into how those seeds traveled and how they kind of like weave through people's both like seed work and food work and a lot of like radical politics.

And that kind of snowballed into like kind of thinking about a lot of ideas around the work that people do with seeds, both like the day-to-day work like this here. and what that might kind of tell us about certain, like, relations between people and, like, plants and people and, like, non-humans or whatever, and then also cultural memory and community memory, thinking about, like, seed projects as alternative sorts of archival practices for people who have not had the privilege of having their stories saved in, like, quote-unquote, traditional archives and how, like, a lot of seed workers about saving those stories through seed, and also bringing back a lot of those stories through seed and kind of seeing in the ways in which it's the same which. specifically thinking about like black folks in the south how seed is is a way of both thinking through and like finding and like maintaining certain connections to land into history and how land in history of deeply deeply intertwined which also directly impacts people's ability to fortify themselves in their communities for the future right through seed work and through food work so it's thinking through a lot of that of like kind of like certain historical questions cultural questions and then I ended up starting

or helping to start or just being involved with this project in Madison Trade Roots Gardens which was sort of a black diasporic food and seed project this was summer 2020 I was working with them in Madison, Wisconsin

that was a lot of fun so from there I was kind of thinking about these connections of like growing out ancestral foods how seeds travel and adapt and how people travel and adapt and how like the movement of seeds and people often occur together but sometimes separate. Seeds And, like, stories and humans are always moving around each other and, like, connecting and, like, disconnecting and reconnecting.

And so I think a lot of the seed work that I do now lately is thinking through, like, more informal, decentralized sorts of projects. And now in Lexington, the means of friends started an idea, I guess, for, like, a decentralized seed bank, which was inspired by these folks in New Orleans, Lillia Commons, we're doing a lot of, like, decentralized plant nursery work. the idea behind that was thinking through kind of what it looks like to bring people into like seed projects in which like maybe there isn't a central location to grow things or a central location to like save them even and kind of like what it looks like to coordinate seed work

across like a landscape of like kind of very fragmented locations and also like what it looks like for people to do seed work when it's maybe not the main thing they do or maybe not something they have a lot of experience with it was also something I think true love is really good at trying to educate people trying to make seed work more accessible, I guess.

So that's kind of what I work now is tapping into various little seed projects here and there. Seeds are embedded in your studies, right? You mentioned that a little bit, but I'm wondering if you could explain a little bit, especially for people outside of academia as well as people who are in academia, what that looks like. Yeah, what is my elevator pitch? In general, I tend to focus on the things that people do work. we don't do with seeds and the things that seeds may or may not do on their own, which you could also call, like, quote, unquote, in-situ agribi biodiversity conservation. Like, a lot of my work

has been oriented more towards the human element of agribiobiodiversity and the kind of the human and plant relations between among agribi biodiversity. So a lot of it has been about thinking through how seeds and how seed work can, like, provide these connections to history, both personal memory as well as community memory and community histories while simultaneously allowing groups to grow their own food right and to adapt to like unpredictable climate in addition to kind of like finding a certain grounding in the land so a lot of work has been about that especially about kind of what that looks like for like black folks in the south so also some thoughts around how seed work kind of changes your relationship to plants or even like a relationship to other people right

So to think about how a lot of seed work is focused on cooperation between like both people and people as well as people and plants. So the thing about having to plan around isolation distance or around temporal or seasonal isolation, right? Thinking through the ways much like seed projects have these sorts of like shifting spatial relations, shifting geographies over an entire season. and also how doing seed work oftentimes requires you to have like these really strong cooperative networks with other growers that are like both but both locally and regionally right so thinking like work like that true love does have having like two dozen growers now it's over 50 over 50 growers right so like all these people who have different sorts of relations with seeds with seed work are coordinated in this network so that true love can like the work that does and in providing good seed

to people and also to providing like people's like ancestral foods. So I guess to give background. I'm a second year PhD student in geography at the University of Kentucky, so I'm kind of like putting a project together now. So like my master's work was a lot of it was about these like small companies like true love seeds or like southern exposure seed exchange as well as formal seed collections that are focused on like historic gardens sort of this intersection of like historic museum sites as well as botanic gardens and kind of how like that, how the work of doing seed work in a historic garden kind of like reorients your impression of like history and memory, like living memory, you could say, or like living archives or whatever. I've been thinking

a lot about sort of like the informal side of things. Decentralized seed networks, both locally and regionally and how they kind of might inspire new sorts of seed politics as well as human politics, I guess you could say. I do a lot of thinking about seeds, but I think like my most like exciting for me, intellectual interventions came about just like being at true love and doing the day-to-day work and like kind of like realizing how the things that these like plants were doing and how the things that I was doing with these plants were like causing me to rethink a lot of my own thoughts about about like a lot of this work and about a lot of like my own ideas and a lot of the

literature or whatever that I was like working in I genuinely think that people are kind of just like are like are re-theirizing on the spot all the time right um and and how I think this work really pushes you to like rethink your own sort of like idea of what it means to be human Beautiful. I'm wondering if we could end on a couple quick questions. In one just inspired by what you just said, like your time at True Love, how it made, there were moments that made you rethink things. I'm just wondering if you can paint a picture of any of those moments, specific moments for us. So this was summer 2019. This is when Owen first brought out the sound equipment to the farm. And we were walking through, I forgot which variety of peas. these were but we walking through one of the one of the one of the one of the peed beds Owen was sort of like teaching us how to identify when the peas were mature and ready to be harvested for seed because they kind of visually it's it's kind of like

brown and like dry and then we had to like listen for the crunch and you have to like and if you shake it in a certain way it's like it'll kind of like it chicks in a very particular way when it's like ready for seed visually yes and I was thinking about how, like, one, there's like multiple sorts of, like, sensory experiences that kind of, like, are going into, like, identifying these things that are also tied back to, like, your own relationship with these plants throughout the entire season, right? Of, like, of seeing them develop, right? Throughout, the season, but also without, like, previous seasons, right?

Of, like, seeing how they behave in different circumstances. Because, like, ostensibly, it's, like, you know, that pee has co-evolved over the past, like, what, 10,000 years, with various humans for its own, like, reproductive success, as well as for, like, human reproductive success, right, of being a thing that people eat and save both, you know, nutritionally as well as culturally. So think about how, like, those individual pepods were sort of, like, they were letting us know that they were ready, right? Like, they were, like, we will tell you through, like, sight and sound and touch,

like, we will let you know when we're ready, right? And how, like, like, lets you step back a little bit. Like, the humans aren't, like, in charge. of the space like we're just guiding the project and how like the plants will tell you when when the seeds are ready and then you can go for it like they got this not yeah that was just like one of my favorite moments on the farm so i went back and found that audio where we recorded in summer 2019 on the farm and it was althea baird and amira mitchell's second year of apprenticeship and they're there and it was maive aguilar and chris keves first year of

apprenticeship and they're there so you can hear most of their voices and hands working in this little clip. Anyone want to narrate what's happening? I think we'll do it. I have a narrator voice. Wait, experiment. Oh, here are some peas. We're harvesting them and we're looking for, we're whistonsors.

for it's really crispy crunchy sound this one's kind of weathery not the best a mirror might have one listen to that good a load of that it's what we want why because that's how you know that the keys inside are mature seeds that will have the highest germination rate Nice. Any tips or tricks or thoughts or comments, anybody else? That was an impressive narrator voice. Thanks. Now you're really good at narrating.

What happens next after this? With the peas. I take the snails off. Take the snails off. So we're gonna show them. Well, first we'll lay them out on like paper bags, labeled, because we have three or four types of peas. So we're going to put them in the seed room where we have pretty low humidity because of a dehumidifier and it's a basement. For like a week or two to really dry out.

And then we'll shell them. And then we'll germination test them. And then we'll package them. So we're both right. We're both right. Yep. You were 100% right. Right, summarized.

Yeah. And I'm just adding a few more things. How much do you have to send out for a germination test? How much seed? Good question. Good question. So we send it to the Department of Agriculture in Maryland, Annapolis, Maryland.

And they want us to send a thousand seeds per... Oh my Lord. harvest but they'll allow us to send as few as 400 seeds so you know each one of these that we're picking has maybe like six or eight seeds in them so we really have to grow enough for the germ test and for sharing with people Wow. Who knew? That's a lot of seed. I love this. Wow.

Chris followed the story about the pea harvest with another one about tomatoes that they wanted to share. Here it is. Oh, the tomato one. The tomato one, we were, I think we were harvesting. the Makado tomatoes for seed and there were a bunch that were catface, they were doubled or otherwise kind of like they look weird. So we've been discussing off-typing a lot and I was intellectually really into the idea of off-typing and like what that means kind of who gets to decide like what the right luck is anyways and we were kind of like it was a moment in which we were harvesting these tomatoes and you know I

think I think Amira was like oh we can't save those for seed because we need to save like the ones that like have this particular like quality look to them or for seed and they had this whole like back and forth I think in which I was like really I really wanted to like save the weird tomatoes oh there was uh there's a syrian cucumber that had like a lacy coppery kind of like web over it also and I was like really fighting to save that Syrian cucumber seeds in the collection when I was like writing I got like really really into this idea of like abnormality and off typing and like what it means to select for one thing and against another thing and kind of like who gets to make that decision and I think like

a lot of it was kind of coming from like my own like weird fascinations with like abnormality like strangeness and like and I was like what if what if you just had a farm that looks like like the beginning I have always been a very chaotic gardener and I was like what if I had a seed farm in which, like, we just had, like, off-times. And we're kind of just, like, deliberately saving a lot of, like, the weirdest, the weirdest things. And the strange, like, kind of, like, mutations. I mean, these are all, like, ancestral foods, right? And, like, you're trying to grow both quality, quality food and quality seeds that also, like, will, like,

what can taste and feel, like, people remember them, right? Which is, like, really important. Then kind of, like, thinking through, like, all the things that plants will still do, to do their own thing and to kind of like push against your own like needs in that regard which I always like really appreciate when kind of plants are just like

actually not we're not going to we're going to do our own thing and you know it may not meet like what you want out of us but we're just going to do our own thing which I really love when plants do that this goes back to also to like you know agronomy for the past

like century or whatever around like crop varieties and like like plant breeding and like selection right and how like how a lot of this is like still kind of like caught up in a lot of like human sorts of politics and how like the kind of weird mutations and off types among the plants can kind of like maybe allow us to embrace the weird mutations and off types among like people but yeah well it reminds me of the conversation we have sometimes just about this obsession with purity yeah and the seed world because of this you know duty or promise we have to customers to provide a

certain seed but it's a very kind of Eurocentric approach to growing food like I've heard from some indigenous friends of mine that it you know this is just not how it's always been like the off types the abnormalities were not always rejected from these seed crops and that's often how things shifted and and we're shaped over time and it's It's kind of a modern phenomenon. I will update you that with the Makado, we've decided to save seats from all of them. Cat-faced.

Well, not Cass-face so much, but as the doubles, because we just figure it's part of how they are. And so we just make sure we isolate them far enough. The problem with doubles is the open flowers that makes their flowers more open, so we worry about hybridization. And now we're just sure to isolate them enough that they can be their full selves.

And they're beautiful, And absolutely delicious, especially when they're gigantic like that. And it reminds me of my last question. It's like maybe a segue, similar to like your compassion for the off types and the rejects. I've heard, noticed that you like to collect the seeds from the seed room floor. And I wonder if you could talk about that a little bit. When I was resting at true love, so when seeds fall to the seed room floor, because there's no way to defend it, we identify.

that seed with like its correct variety, it's like a quote unquote dead seed. It's out of the collection. It can't be kept. I was thinking about that and how like kind of the seeds from seed and poor kind of like get swept up with like dust and debris and like you know riffraff and maybe get like swept up and like put outside somewhere, but they still grow and they're still alive and they still like have they have like afterlives, right? So it's like they're kind of they're grown for the collection. They're grown to be in this collection as this variety. But then they have this, like, after life because they got misplaced or lost. I was thinking about, like, how they are then able to, like,

live a different sort of life on their own terms, if that makes sense. So that's kind of, like, removed from being, like, a McConnell tomato. And then maybe it gets to be whatever it wants. So thinking about, like, kind of what happens to seats when they get misplaced because they're extremely good at being dormant, and extremely good at traveling, and extremely good at like kind of like making a home wherever they end up. In all likelihood, they don't like, they won't reach, you know, maturity or produce their own seed, but like they might. We're going to live a life of some

sort without necessarily, you know, going through the full cycle maybe. So I think with that if I kind of would like to like to have like a seed debris collection and just kind of like dump it into a field and see what pops up. I'm always like really into really into like volunteers, plants that pop up in your garden, could be like weed seed or it could be, you know, seed that was dropped in previous seasons or whatever. And it's talking back up and how like they weren't put there deliberately and they aren't wanted there, but like they're still like, I'm here. I got life to live for however long that is until, you know, they get pulled or mowed over or something. But yeah, I would really love that. Yeah, I think I was talking about

That was Julia. Yeah, they've been saving all the seed room floor seeds for you. Oh, that's what, okay. We have a little jar with your name on it. Oh, okay. Okay, so then I got to find somewhere to grow it on. Yep. I often throw them into vacant lots or, you know, when we left our last farm field,

I threw all the seeds we had that didn't have names and that were in a big jar together into one of the fields. I mean, that's part of why I love, and you mentioned it too, the Kapoor Tulsi and the Spilanthis, they both like to reseed, and this Wakatai that you're sitting under. They all like to reseed in the garden, and we try to leave them if we can, because it's a beautiful kind of friend that's decided to pop up. I'm glad you popped up, that you keep popping up, even as you travel the world doing all these awesome seed and food-related things. Thank you for everything, for all the time that you. you've spent at true love and for continuing to kind of be part of our constellation in this way. Thanks for having me. I love being in a constellation. I love that. Yeah. Cool. Oh, how can people,

do you want people to find you? Sure, yeah. I am c.combe on Insta. I'm Christian Kiev on Twitter. I have some web page through my department. If you like Google Christian K-Y, that's it. I think. Christian K-Y-Y-E-E-V-E. Yes. Awesome. Thank you. So that was last fall, 2021 at our farm in Pennsylvania, True Love Seeds. And I asked Chris Keeve to send an update about what's been going on in their seed life since then. So here you go. So it's been several months through a weird turn of events this past winter and spring. I've become a seed grower now for true love as well as for experimental farm network and Ujama seeds. And this is on two sort of three growing spaces here in

central Kentucky, just thanks to like some. farmers in the area who offered to let me use their name, which is very generous. But for true love I'm growing... Ooh, okay, so, Ethiopian blue mustard, Jamaican pumpkins,

a golden-red amaranth, but the ones in the fields might be imposters, so we need to figure that up. But also Della Sorghum, white velvet ogre, Alpha Kalangua, and Paul Ops and

And I hesitate to, like, whisk all them off because I've had a good lot of, like, pest and small animal pressure this season. So, and I don't want to, like, jinx it. But I'm most excited about the poll ropes and tomatoes, mainly because it's sort of a full circle moment, assuming I get them to produce a significant seed crop, which it looks like they are. So the okra are producing, the tomatoes are producing, which is really exciting. So we'll see. But I'm optimistic. But also, and this is, so this is just me working as a seed grower, but it's also part of my dissertation work for my PhD here in UK, which is, I guess, loosely about the, like, quote-unquote cooperative geographies of seed work, by which I mean.

I mean, this is inspired by a lot of stuff that a lot of seed folks have been saying for years, especially Arabolis, around the ways in which the cooperative politics of seed networks are really important for, like, pragmatic reasons, around sustainable and robust agribal adverse food systems across spaces and across geographies, but also how these. cooperative models run seed work, produce other forms of mutual support and exchanges of like politics and ideas and community through the movements and abilities of these seeds. And through that, I've been working with True Love for a few months. So now this summer, I guess, we're soft launching this idea that is tentatively called, I guess the working title is the True Love Seeds listing projects, so a bunch of the growers will be having some planning meetings in the months to come, putting together a sort of critical look at True Love's network model. Thinking about what benefits seed growers are getting out of being in the network, as well as

how the network can be improved, as well as being able to better articulate what the network is and does to the world. So there are some, like, really exciting conceptual things around cooperativity, but also, you know, some maybe creative projects, some might come out of it, right? So I'm thinking about, like, an interactive map, for example, where much people could really see where their seats are coming from and where they're being grown, but also, like, theoretically, if, like, when people buying the seeds could put themselves on them out if they wants you or something and give a little more like a visualization around how these seats are moving

and how they're adapting to different locations and contexts and how they're being selected in different locations in the context, stuff like that. So we'll see. But I'm excited for what's to come. Thank you so much to Chris Keeve for visiting us. doing this interview with us and sharing all of these gems of information and perspectives. And thank you, listener, for listening and sharing this episode of Seeds and Their People with your loved ones. Please also subscribe and leave a positive review. Thank you also for supporting our seedkeeping and storytelling work by ordering seeds, calendars, and more from our website. TrueLoveseeds.com. And again, please sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com.

slash true love seeds, we can really use your support. And remember, keeping seeds is an act of true love for our ancestors and our collective future. Blessings.