Seeds And Their People - EP. 17: Mycelial Networks of Seed Growers & the Truelove Seeds Listening Project

Episode Date: December 1, 2022

Chris Keeve is a former Truelove Seeds apprentice and current seed grower in Kentucky who drove out for our annual Truelove growers gathering at our farm on October 22nd, 2022 to deliver seeds and conduct interviews for their dissertation: the Truelove Seeds Listening Project. With Truelove business manager and web wizard Sara Taylor recording the audio and interjecting occasionally, they talked to growers about their involvement in our network, including occasional seed stories, testimonials, suggestions, and which seeds they'd bring to another planet. This episode is a compilation of some of the interviews.  SEED STORIES TOLD IN THIS EPISODE: Korean Hong Gochu Pepper Paul Robeson Tomato Charleston Grey Watermelon Bitter Melon Mississippi Purple Hull Pea Cherokee Purple Tomato Potawatomi Pole Lima Shawnee Calico Bean Astronomy Domine Sweet Corn Heilige Boon (Holy Bean) Butternut Squash Seminole Pumpkin Kernza Grain MORE INFO FROM THIS EPISODE: Truelove Seeds Growers Gathering post Chris Keeve featured on Seeds and Their People Care of Creation Ministries, Kenya SeedEd Farm Arcadia University Veteran Farmer Program Appel Farm Arts Camp Rowen White's Seed Seva Seasonal Mentorship Online Course Food as Public work by Pantaleon Florez of Maseualkualli Farm Poor Prole's Almanac Strawflower Farm Experimental Farm Network 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   FIND OWEN HERE: Truelove Seeds Tumblr  |  Instagram  |  Twitter   FIND CHRIS HERE: Sankofa Community Farm at Bartram’s Garden   THANKS TO: Chris Keeve Sara Taylor The Cassell Family SeedEd Farm Amy June Olivia Gamber Jonathan Minick Nathan Kleinman Cecilia Sweet-Coll

Can you imagine I was always in the house, but I never went beyond to the farm area. So here's my first time after all these years I went to the farm and because I wanted to know about how he was doing the Charleston Gray. So it made me connect with my own family and talk to him on a different scale. I never talked to him about the watermelon and how to grow it and all the things like that. I was asking him, I was like, wow, I known him how many years? I mean, I'm 60 years old, and I never talked to my cousin about the watermelon. But because of true love, now I'm growing.

and it. I was just lacking at normal. Welcome back to Seeds and Their People. 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're so grateful to all of you who support our seedkeeping and storytelling work through our Patreon at patreon.com slash true love seeds. This is an unusual episode. You'll notice that

Chris Bolden Newsom is not here, but we have two other folks helping to introduce this one. Chris Keeve and Sarah Taylor. You may recognize Chris Keeves' name from a previous episode where I interviewed them about their seed stories, of course, and about being a true love seeds grower and former apprentice, about their dissertation work on seed networks, and Sarah Taylor is my sister, and true love seeds, business manager, web wizard, graphic designer, and more. The two of them took on interviewing attendees at our annual true love seeds growers gathering at our farm in October, where around 50 growers and community partners shared good food, and good company. And I'd love to hear from the both of you, what were we doing that day?

Hey, everyone. So we at the Growers Gathering were officially launching the True Love Seeds Listening Project, which I've been working collaboratively with True Love on this for several months now, I guess. And the idea behind it is kind of informing part of my just work around seed grower networks and the power specifically of true love for building forms of solidarity and exchange among its growers to articulate, you know, new kinds of approaches to seas and farming and agribiodiversity, but also find ways to articulate itself to the world. So at the gathering, we were kind of starting this process of getting folks talking with each other and with us. We had four questions around kind of what brought you here.

to the gathering, as well as to the network, people's connections with ancestral food, what the network has done for them and how it's impacted their work, as well as how the network itself can improve and how it can support each other. And we had a first question also that was like oriented towards kids. That was like, if you could bring three seeds

to another planet, what would they be? But then also the adults want to enter that one too. So we got really great answers on that. Great. So basically, we were asking our growers in the network and the extended friends and family what it's like to be part of the true love seeds growers network, how it's impacted them, and what are some ways we can make it even better and stronger. Sarah, what was your role that day and what are some things that really stood out to you? I was the audio tech recording and checking levels, etc. What stood out to

me, a lot of the discussions centered around what does the growers network, how does it serve growers and how can it serve growers better or more. I got a chance to really talk through some of the ways that we've tried to set up technical solutions and online solutions to connect growers and how those have and have not worked for people. It's a thing that Owen and I, you and I have been working on for a while with others in the office and trying different kind of social media networks or, you know, forums. And to create a space where growers can connect and communicate and ask questions and share knowledge. And I think one of the more interesting ideas that came out of it was thinking about instead of an open kind of, hey, do you grow peas? Can I connect with you

about peas? Or, hey, you know, how do I process these seeds to the general group and getting a general response? more of an idea around mentorship and connecting more experienced growers and particularly more experienced seed producers, seed farmers, with newer folks so that they have specific people they can reach out to for, you know, any sort of insight. Because we work with so many new seed growers, so many of the people at the farms and growers that we work with have never grown for seed before. And part of the process is mentoring those growers on their at farms. And that's a lot of work for you for one person to do with 50 plus farms. And so thinking of ways that we can provide more inconsistent mentorship through connecting people in our growers

directly to each other. Great. Yeah. So you mentioned 50 plus farms. It may be closer to 70 at this point. So just to give the listeners an understanding of what we're talking about, we work with seed growers all around the country. And a lot of times, they're very new or brand new to seed production since true love is really focused on supporting cultural preservation. And we love working with farms committed to food justice and community work and work with a lot of urban farms, a lot of small-scale family farms. And so part of our mission is to support them in adding this revenue stream, but also cultural practice to their food work and their farm work. And so in the beginning when it was 12 farms in 2017,

mentorship was one thing. And now with 70 or so, you know, as Sarah is talking about it, can be difficult to connect everybody and make it go beyond, you know, true love or just me even as the hub with all these spokes. But instead we're trying to build this network, this mycelial network, where the farms are connecting to each other and learning from each other. And so the growers gathering is one way to do that, introducing people to each other. You know, our Google group is another. Our monthly Zooms is another. And so this was an opportunity to hear from people.

What else, you know, would be helpful? I am curious, Chris, what did you walk away from these conversations with? For you personally, thinking through how you as a grower could be better, supported by the network. This also goes back to the shift towards more of a mycelium approach. Shout out to Maeve for that idea. But so thinking about like more of like a mycelian approach is as someone who is a grower and the network who is a little bit distant from the hub. So I'm in Kentucky, right? So thinking about how building out the mycelial community of the network itself can allow for certain like regional, like decentralized forms of like organizing and support.

right. So if folks in a certain region wanted to like get together and kind of like work through what they're going through and kind of organize things on their own. So thinking about how like, I guess like decentralized relations can form. But also thinking of things like local and regional formations around just things like seed cleaning supplies and materials and techniques, right, of being able to like exchange those sorts of like material supports. with folks who are within, like, a day's drive would be really helpful, which is something I think that the kind of, like, mycelium model provides. But, yeah, and then otherwise, I'm just, I have a lot of,

I have a lot of grower thoughts and a lot of other thoughts, but I'm trying to, like, suss them all out. But, yeah. I have a thought, as true love seeds grows and there are more growers around the country, it's going to fill in, slowly fill in some of those gaps so that there's more potential to build community around the, even if you're far from the hub. But it might be interesting to think about targeting areas. Like if you have somebody growing Kentucky

that's really far away from others, thinking like, can you identify other growers or can you, you know, you Chris or maybe even you Owen, like think, oh, I want to prioritize bringing more people in to create kind of hubs in different areas. If it's possible, I know that we look for very specific types of growers with very specific goals and interests, but it might be cool to think about like,

hey, let's find somebody that's close to Chris so that they can have a partner, you know, grower nearby. I'm just thinking of like the folks from Seed Ed Farm, we're talking about like nodes, right? around the hub. Yeah, and this has come up before too in our monthly Zoom calls with the growers. I remember Mr. Bernard from Nebediah Farm

bringing up a couple times, you know, the idea of welcoming people in that part of the South to, you know, North Carolina to visit his farm and wanting to have regional gatherings. And this really echoes that. And it's true we are really careful about building our network

with a focus on cultural preservation, with every grower growing their ancestral seeds, and with a focus on community-based farms. So it's not like we're exponentially growing, but it's a nice thing to consider how, as we add new growers in these specific regions, how to connect them better or help them connect themselves better, and even think about maybe talking to our growers in the more far-flung places, like Kentucky or North Carolina or wherever about recruiting people who they trust because we're really trying to move at the pace of trust, the speed of trust, rather than just kind of

piling on people and expanding exponentially. So how to think about that is like, okay, Chris, who are the people in your community or within a day's drive that you think are doing amazing cultural work through farming and through seed? So then that's an interesting way of thinking about how the network grows still at the pace of trust. So we're going to start with an interview from You Can Do It Farms, and you'll hear also from Seedad Farm and a few other interviews, portions, some of the highlights, will include those here and there as well. But I'm really glad that we get to hear from a bunch of these growers and their kind of extended networks. So thank you both so much.

Thank you. Thanks. Up first, again, is You Can Do It Farms, who focuses on African-American and Korean seed crops. Hello, everyone. First off, can I get your names as well as your farm name and location? I'm Andre Kassel, and we're at You Can Do It Farms. And we have a location in Philadelphia, also in Maze Landing, New Jersey.

And where in Philly are you? We're in Northeast Philadelphia, Northeast. Can you get the rest of your names? I'm Sheila Kassel. I'm Joseph Moy. I'm Vashti Kassel. Samuel Kassel. This is our first year to grow for true love seeds.

So this is our first time, and we're so excited, it's been pretty incredible day. So my dad recently started this new job where he grows seeds for a catalog, and I was willing to help, so I dug up a bunch of ground for him. It's been really cool, so I'm looking forward to where this goes. I also helped too, and there was stomps in the ground, and it was a lot of work, but we're happy to see what happens. Thanks. Can I ask what you how are growing this year? We are growing the Charleston Grey Watermelon, the Korean Hong-Goshoe, the Whippoorwill Southern Pea, the Paul Robeson, and the Pippin Honey Pepper.

I am also growing the proverbs and tomato actually yeah they did not do all that well this year but I was in Kentucky we were going through it by going through it Chris means epic rainfall and flooding in Kentucky so with this experience so far how has true of impacted your relations to seed work and also to ancestral foods I would say that we've realized the importance of seed keeping. I think we didn't do that before.

We would just grow for the fruits and the vegetables. But now with all the GMOs and the other things coming up, we're seeing the great importance of seed keeping and these varieties that True Love has, and I've seen so many varieties that I've never heard before, and I've realized, wow, there's so much that's missing. and it's great to be a part of a group that keeps seats, yes. I'll also comment on that because my dad was, he seemed pretty excited to grow

for like his ancestral roots, like for the Hogan Shoe, his grandmother's Korean. So like we're growing that. He was, he seemed pretty excited more than I don't think he knows, but I thought he was more excited than he thought, so it was great. Do you cook with it? Is it part of your life now? Sure, the peppers. Do we use them for like crushed up?

Yeah. He's been doing that. As a matter of fact, Moe has helped, too, after I dry the peppers in the oven and bring them out the skins after I've taken out all of the seeds. I'm a seed picker. I love picking. So I just natural. So he crunched them up in the plastic bag. And so we had all of these dried pepper flakes. Yes. He really powdered the first ones really well. But with more skill, he's learned how to leave me a little bit more. We put it even on pizza, the crushed pepper flakes. So Korean, I don't know if people put the Korean peppers on, but it's great on pizza. Are there any other varieties that you have been introduced to through this process, that you're kind of excited to work with in the future? There's a bitter melon. We didn't plant it this year because we spent a lot of time putting up a new fence. So I didn't do that.

When we were living in Africa, I didn't mention that we lived in Africa for some years in Kenya and we growing over there care of creation was one of the groups that we were grown with and the bitter melon my wife and I we've start to learn the importance of the health benefits so we got to see but we didn't grow up but in the future we hope to grow it the next season yes I'm excited about the the watermelon seeds the Charleston Gray variety that we planted it didn't do so well because there wasn't a lot of rain. But to see the watermelon come up and the seedless watermelon for so long, it's just so refreshing. In Kenya, all the watermelon

had seeds, and I would save the seeds. But here, we just get watermelon with no seeds. Seeds are very important. And so the, I think it's magnesium that makes the seed to be black and gives it's that nutrient that we also need for our bodies. It's just really thrilling to have those seeds. So I hope that next year we have a lot of rain and we have a lot of land to plant a lot more. And also to see a watermelon grown in your backyard is pretty something incredible because, like, wow,

this is a really big fruit grown in your backyard. You're not believing it, but wow, and you eat it and then it tastes really good. You're like, oh, that is great, it's paid off. I have a problem. I like eating the watermelon seats in addition to the watermelon. So that's part of the product. It's hard when you want to grow for the seeds because the watermelon seeds,

they have a nice nutty taste to them, yeah. You have to watch how many you eat so you can save them. So we are here with the Trulose Seeds Listening Project. We're trying to make spaces for growers in the network to kind of come together around what the network really does for its growers as well as how it can be improved. So for the first part of that, I wanted to ask y'all how being in the True Love Growers Network has impacted your seed work and your farm work and, you know, has it, like, brought about, like, maybe new sorts of resources or has it, like, made certain things possible?

Yes, it has opened up a lot of varieties that we never even heard before. It's just, like, amazing you can live for years and never even know that this existed before. And so then you realize how much you're missing. And yet there's a group of people that are preserving this for future generations and present generations. And so to me, that's pretty powerful to know that there's a great variety and that there are people out there that see the importance of that. Maybe I didn't see it until later in life. And hopefully my children that are here, that they understand this at a younger age, and they'll see the importance. And then maybe also there'll be preservers.

I hope so also. Also, yeah, when he said that they're growing seeds that are non-GMO and that can grow back a second time and a third time and a fourth time, I thought that was really important. So hearing that and hearing the way the world is with climate change and all that, you know, it's scary. So when I heard that, I was like, wow, this is a really good one for the future. It might help you. So I was really into it when he said that. Had you been interested in growing food before this project or have you been involved with it with your father before?

Yes, yeah. back in Africa we used to help them clear the ground as always and you know we're there we're helping we're living it's on our backyard so like every day we would go out water every morning cover the ground so it doesn't get hot and you know all that so yeah definitely before this it was something that was part of our lives it was especially exciting beneficial to me personally when my husband began with learning how to farm God's way or to use the natural cover on the ground.

No dig. We did no digger. No digging. No till farming. And using, like the forest floor method where you go and you get the mulching, you put it down on top of the seed. Because the equatorial sun of Kenya is, you know, kind of devastating on the ground. So they have that cover. And so the first year he had that, I had a cancerous growth.

And I had surgery and all. And I knew that cancer eats sugar. So I stopped eating meat. I stopped eating all sugar. I stopped eating all dairy. And he had the farm, the organic farm, right outside my door. And so I will go out there and pick my lettuce and my greens and my herbs and my what. And that's what I ate.

And I survived. Yeah, that's great. You know, without any chemo or anything like that. Also, with natural, with herbs and stuff. So it's just really encouraging to see that nutrient dense, food is so necessary to the body for health and for life and for strength, that it's enough for the body to regain health, to heal itself. So, yes, in Africa, we were not growing for seed per se, although a lot of people did

keep seeds. That wasn't in our thinking, but coming after getting connected with true love seeds, I saw the importance of that. And like I said, for us to be a part of that, to add that dimension to our growing is pretty awesome. So you're all at different stages and your seed journey. So I'm wondering with each of you with the stage you're at both how how might the network better support your work as well as in general how can folks in the grower network support each other like what would you kind of like to see happen? I would say like the Charleston Great Watermelon and my family in Virginia they were the growers for generations. That's why I chose to Charleston Gray as one of my cultural seeds because

there's only one cousin who still farms that. And I was down at his farm this year my cousin talking to him and I was trying to get all the tips and pointers that I could from him. Like I saw a picture of his dad with a huge watermelon and, you know, it's his prized watermelon. And I was like, well, what did you do? What are the things? So I would say tips, growing tips. specific to maybe watermelons. If somebody says, these are the growing tips for watermelons. In other words, this is the accumulated knowledge from your growers. These are the top, maybe 20 tips.

If I had something like that, I think that would be fantastic. I would also like to add, like, little tips on, like, what tools you use for, like, different projects because we had to, like, take a bunch of the grass up from the ground so that we can get to the dirt. And my dad had a tool that was, he was using. but I broke it when I used it. And then he brought another one, and it worked really well.

So, like, tips, like, which tools you use for different projects could really help new farmers, I would say. Yeah. I think it's really wonderful all of the resources that True Love has to offer. I think that we haven't exhausted them enough, you know, and we will. But that's exciting to see everything that you all have to offer. And for me, working with the Hokon Shoe Pepper this season, going out to the crop and seeing those beautiful red.

And they really grew so well. And just to have a connection, I walk into that environment. And I'm grateful to the plants for doing what they do and for growing so well and for being so beautiful. I want to say that true love really helped. me to come out beyond my natural borders. Yet it's within me. I was born in Korea and I to connect with the Hong-Goshu Korean pepper is pretty awesome. My mother has passed on, but she would be so excited that I'm growing a Korean pepper. She just could, she wouldn't believe it because

I didn't like hot things, but at this point in my life, I love a lot of hot things. So to make that connection with my Korean side is awesome. Also with the, um, Charleston Great Watermelon, as I mentioned, I went back to my family's farm down in Virginia, and I talked with my cousin. It's my first time to go on the farm. Can you imagine? I was always in the house, but I never went beyond to the farm area. So here's my first time.

After all these years, I went to the farm, because I wanted to know about how he was doing the Charleston Gray. So it made me connect with my own family and talk to him on a different scale. I never talked to him about the watermelon and how to... grow it and all the things like that. I was asking them. I was like, well, I know him how many years? I mean, I'm 60 years old, and I never talked to my cousin about the watermelon, but because of true love, now I'm growing it. I talked to him. And then also, the other side is that my have some family who are Indian. I saw that you have a Lenape type of corn. And so even that corn, I saw that Nanico, we have Nanakote in our, one side of my family. And I thought about growing,

I thought about the growing the corn. I saw that you have the seed for that. So it made me talk to my cousins who are on the Indian, have the Indian side. So true love has made me come past my borders, made me reconnect with my family in ways that I didn't do before. And so I'm really grateful for that, and I think that's pretty awesome.

My dad, when I told him about true love seeds, he remembered that he grew Purple Hall, peas from the south through Mississippi. He recalled that, and I told them I would look into that because I understand that's our ancestral something that my father remembers. He used to plant as a child. So I want to do that as an ancestral seed. We can make that happen. We've got those.

Yeah, it's wonderful. That's great. Up next is seed. farm in Virginia, where they focus on African-American heirloom crops. I'm Sam, and our farm is in Alexandria, Virginia, and we're seated farm. I'm Gabe. I'm River. And on the phone is Monica. Hi, I'm Monica. All right, so what brought you here today? We came to be together with the true love community and network.

Yeah, it's the end of our first season. as seed growers and as seed growers for the true love community. So just to be together, kind of wrap it up, share food, share stories. True love is kind of where me, salmon gave, to me, was the thing that said, you know what, we're going to do this. So I felt like being there, though I'm there in spirit, being there today meant completion of our first go-round as a seeded farm. I met Sam through Arcadia's, Arcadia has a fellowship program and there's an educational portion where we would meet on Zoom on Saturdays and Sundays and some days who would meet up at different farms in the area.

And so from that fellowship, Sam came out a few times, you know, to volunteer to help us on the farm. And then I actually met Gabe through social media. and Gabe came out and volunteered at the farm. And from the conversations that I would have with Sam and Gabe separately, it just started to sound really familiar. Like a lot of the ideologies and what we wanted to do as far as becoming farmers, as far as networking with other community farmers, and just having that education of how do you farm?

You know, what was the land like prior, you know, when our ancestors were here. So I told Sam, like, hey, you know, I had somebody you should meet. And I told Gabe the same thing. So we had an introduction and the rest is just, I don't want to say it's history, but it's more so like magic. You just have this great community now. That's how we met. Let me just say that.

Monica, what brought you to Arcadia? So I actually came to Arcadia. I was searching for different farms where I could learn how to be a farmer. COVID. The world shutting down actually brought me to Arcadia because I wanted to find out more about, you know, what did my ancestors do when, you know, there was no TV or, you know, there wasn't all these other places that you could go to. And so as I started researching some of my family's history, I found out that a lot of my family, both on my maternal and paternal side, a lot of my family members were farmers and they owned land. And when I started calling around to some family members, you know, everybody can tell the story of, yeah, we had farms and we had this, but we don't have it anymore. So being a veteran, I just kind of started looking at what veteran programs were around, and that's how I found Arcadia.

Being here today feels very kind of sped up. I feel like we talk about this all the time, where it's, I think it was probably a year ago, if not a little over a year ago. that we even all met, me, Sam and Monica, all met and started even dreaming about the farm that we have now. And having come to the end of the season, it feels like a huge culmination of all of these things that we've talked about. And every moment that we've had from like our first gathering that we had on the land to our first seed harvest or our first food harvest, everything that's come together, having our community come together and support us the way that they do has just been unbelievable. to the point where it feels like the future, right? And it feels like a reality that I had been dreaming of for a very long time and still coming to terms with it being my present reality

and not something that I'm still dreaming of. So how has true love, how has being in the network impacted your relations to seed and your relations to ancestral foods into history and to land? One of the seeds that we grow is the Mississippi Purple Hall. pea. And when we started, it was really interesting because I was like, black eyed peas are a huge part of my family and the Mississippi purple whole pea was introduced to me through true love seeds when we were kind of going through the catalog and trying to figure out which seeds that we want to grow. And I was like, first of all, purple is my favorite color. And I love me some

hop and john. And so it's definitely an important crop to me and an important bean. And throughout the season, like having people come onto the land, including family members and other things like that, and sharing with each other, I found out that my, one of my grandma's, like, core food memories growing up in Alabama and Louisiana were people growing this Mississippi Purple Halpe and how glad that she was to just kind of see it growing. And even, like, having her come out and tell us when they were good to eat. So she was going through and being like, okay, this bean, you can eat it now. Or, like, this is good for drying and saving.

Just knowing that one of, like, my grandma being, like, the eldest, in our family, being our biggest connection to our ancestral foods and practices of sustenance farming and gardening that we had down in Alabama, and really being able to kind of share this new thing that she missed so much. And even without thinking about it, having brought that back to our family, which is really cool. Yeah. I didn't know a lot about true love until I met Sam, the different farmers and you know coming from different places and just even learning about the different ancestral seeds that are there it really made me want to learn more about oh well you know what what's something that my family passed down and what what seas and all these different

thoughts starts to come to mind and so when we started coming up with like our crop plan and what we wanted to do like Gabe was saying and in her family there was a lot of you know black IP And the same for my family, where we have a lot of the same experiences, but we just might cook these foods differently and call them something else. So a big one for me was definitely the Cherokee Purple tomato. I heard a story from my father that his great-grandfather was Blackfoot Indian, and a lot of those tribes were dissolved down into smaller tribes. So to me, that was one of the closest things that I found would connect to my ancestry. How has being in the network impacted your work as seed farmers? What has it maybe made possible for you?

There's so much knowledge that people are willing to share and being able to just be around that knowledge and to watch people the way that they meet seeds. There was a quote when I first started coming to true love that someone had said, by growing things to seed, you get to meet the whole plant. And I had never heard that vocabulary before. And so, you know, hearing that one, it was like before even starting to grow in seed keep,

it was just working on learning a new vocabulary was one piece of it. And then when we came here as a team for the first time, I think a year ago almost, a little over a year ago, we were sitting having lunch. And the true love team that was here just said, like, what do you all need from us? And I think just that openness and that dialogue was really able to help us be like, we don't know, but we're going to maybe think about it. we'll get back to you. And being able to reach out to the team,

I think has been one way that's been really helpful for us. I think true love also gave us this big vision of community that I think in our vision for seated was really in the forefront of our minds and coming and being a part of this community where people are sharing both knowledge, people are sharing love with each other, food, and this just kind of like openness

and the warm feelings and fuzzy feelings that we get just from being here. Like I said, gives that feeling of, like, being in the future again, right? Where not only are we working together, like, even being like, okay, so we have all of these growers so that we can support each other through being able to support other farmers who need these seeds is just so amazing. I think it's really beautiful that the survival of all these cultures through these seeds and how not only by saving these seeds, we are continuing the survival of these cultures of these histories, but we're also trying to get these cultures to thrive again, too, not just survive.

I got that thriving, not just surviving. So you all, like me, are a little out of the way in Virginia, or Kentucky, but we both had a drive, right? So I'm wondering if you had any thoughts about both what it's like being in the network, right, when you're kind of away from the main hub and maybe like what other if like maybe some sort of other kind of like regional six kind of like smaller

nodes, some things, gatherings. Yeah, would that be like helpful? I would say yeah. Yeah, that'd be cool. I think one of the things that we try to be conscious about in Virginia is connecting with other like seed growers in the D.C. area. And a lot of those people are fish pepper grows. And so that's really cool because it's a big, you know, it's a big DMV thing.

But as much as we love being up here, we also know that there is community to be tapped into in the DMV. Because there's seed swaps and other things like that. We're definitely trying to be out there. We love adding people to the family, right? So if you can connect with some of those people and have them connect with us and kind of like also create little hubs, little nodes for true love in different places, I think that would be really helpful. And I do want to say that like your question earlier, like what brought you to the land that you're on? And I have to say, it was community. Monica and I reached out to each other on social media,

and I was looking for community. I was looking for black farming community. What I got was more than I could have imagined when I first damned Monica, right? Because, like, she connected us together with Sam and all of us with true love. And, yeah, it's just been an amazing journey. And just one other thing about true love that's been really great

is true love creates space in their community for no matter where you are on that journey. and they allow new seed growers to grow for them, which is maybe scary for true love, but also really great for really great because we all get to experience that journey together in a way, and none of us have all the answers. And so it's a place where we can go

and not have all those answers and still be able to grow for that community. We love true love. It's true love. It's a point of words, but it's beautiful. It's really a beautiful thing. Well, thanks so much. Thank you.

It was great. Awesome. Thank you. Can I get your names and your farm names and your locations? I'm Olivia Gamber. I don't currently have a farm or work on a farm, but I have, although I always have, I live in Philadelphia, which is also Lena Lenape Land. Hi, my name's Amy June.

I, too, do not have a farm currently, but I am Philadelphia-based, and this past season. I was growing for True Love at Apple Farm, which is a non-profit summer camp in the performing arts for youth in South Jersey. Great. So what brought you here? I think I probably would have come to seeds no matter what in my life. I started out vegetable farming and sort of felt that there was some kind of inner connectivity and spiritual connectivity that wasn't manifesting in that world. I think my experience with disability has really informed my seed work. If you think about post-harvest work, for vegetables, post-harvest time is like really fast-paced, heavy lifting, fast-moving, short turnaround times. With seed work, you're sitting

in a circle processing, and it's actually very cathartic for me. As soon as I decided to be interested in seeds, it opened up a whole world for me in terms of accessibility. I came to True Love via a Pasa workshop in 2019, and that was kind of my first time experiencing seed work. And Owen shared some stories with us about a pot of watermelon bean and talked a bit about rematricating different Lenape corns and things like this. And I'm a member of the Eastern Shawnee tribe out of Oklahoma. And I had just started farming that year, and it just kind of, like, clicked for me that this was work that was really impactful to small communities, greater communities, and sustainable ag, and just stuff that I wanted to be doing. So I've been really grateful to be able to stay connected the last couple years, and here we are today. so how has being part of the true love network

both impacted your your approach to seeds and to ancestral foods but also like how is like the network itself impacted your like day-to-day and seasonal work yeah Owen was really I think nurturing and kind of a pushing

in a way that where he kind of I was like I'll grow seeds for you and he was like okay do you have incestinal and I was like, oh, I don't, I'm not sure. And he was like, well, when you figure that out, come back to me. So I definitely feel like I was pushed to ask questions that I was hesitant to ask myself. Like, there's a lot of, I think, fear for me thinking about, I mean, my living ancestors were kind of horrible. So there was a lot of fear around ancestor work for me, and I think I was sort of pushed to look into that further.

And then as I was meeting seed mentors like Rowan Way and people like that, I was encouraged to connect to ancestors who had relationships with seed and had relationships with land. And so I started digging, and I'm still actually in that process. Kind of lost in that in those woods right now. And I definitely think that being part of this network, I don't know if it instigated that whole process, but it definitely has been a big part of it for me.

Becoming part of the True Love Growers Network and just kind of even being tangentially related to seed work through having proximity to True Love over the last couple years has been really impactful for me. I've spent a couple days just volunteering, packing seeds, and meeting folks in the office and just kind of chatting about what friends are doing and friends of friends around the entire country

and literally made friends through those kind of conversations and linking up with different people around the country, which I'm really appreciative of. And then on a really literal level, Owen actually gifted me some Shawnee calico beans that there's like 20 of. And I haven't really had this space to grow them out in a way that they would be isolated appropriately.

So I'm just kind of hoarding these seeds and waiting for the day that I can kind of try to reintroduce them. I sent a few back to my tribe. Yeah, just that kind of like slow, patient relationship building through seeds and just partner building with farms around the country and thinking about the ever-expanding networks that we're part of is really impactful. And everyone's so nice every time I come to an event.

Seed people are the nicest people. Yeah. Like I thought farm people were really cool people, but then seed people are like the tenderest of all of the farming people. Yeah. I love that. So with where you're each at and your seed journeys, what from the True Web Network would be beneficial to you? What would you like to see?

And in a more general sense, how can growers better support each other moving forward? Yeah, something I think about a lot is how do we make a life of this work? I'm not doing a great job of that. And specifically for me also as like a disabled, person trying to make a life in the ag world feels like swimming upstream and so and I'm sure I'm not alone in that but I don't know if we talk about it that much but I know that nobody's making a

lot of money and and it can be hard on your body and I know some people are drawn to seed work because it's ag work that's less hard on your body I think it would be cool to to start having conversations I know that nobody here has maybe has the answer to how are we all making money how are we all actually making this this work that is deeply healing to the world making time to either do that and make money or do that and have it make money so that we can sustain ourselves how do we sustain ourselves and our communities yeah in a very in a very basic way like basic needs food housing shelter money medical care you know insurance like how are we how are we meeting the bare minimums?

Yeah, I echo a lot of that. I think that gatherings like this one are really impactful for me because it just reminds me that, you know, I was farming my last two seasons basically by myself, like just alone in a field. And I think a lot of people have that sort of solitary experience, especially in seed work when you're, you know, it's the tail end of the season and you're like operating in this vows.

vacuum and things are hot or cold or things are molding and you're like, oh, no, the world is ending. And then you come to an event like this and you're not necessarily talking about the failures so much as like how we're all just kind of drawn to this work and enjoy it despite its hardship. And yeah, just going back to what Olivia was saying, I think that business training or just kind of like zooming way out and kind of understanding the system that we're trying to be a part of or break down and create something else. I think could be really cool conversations to start having with each other, but I'm going to name drop a total stranger here as if, like, I know this person,

but Masoalquale Farms in Lawrence, Kansas, he's actually, his name escapes me, but he has developed this sort of plan to pitch to local government there about farming as public work. He was just on the Porpo's Ammanac, podcasts and it was really amazing just this whole concept of this structure to kind of think of food workers and farm workers and seed workers in place is this like necessary thing that feeds people on like a very basic level and how that should be funded and he's created this

like he's extrapolated out into like city budget and like levels it's amazing and I need more time so I can actually like read all of this documentation but I'm excited to like talk to you all about that and like think about ways that we can start implementing it. He was like everyone should share this with everyone like my name isn't on it like we should just be doing this. Yeah and I just want echo what you're saying around failure because I feel like I feel like being at this event was like the first time this season that I have not felt like I was in like a series of like cascading failures. with my seed work because it has as it has just been like me alone like you know we're taking among like you know four different sites this season um and this was the first time that I was

like oh okay like I did produce something um and I'm part of a project yeah um but yeah so just so I want to wrap up um so whitening round um if you could take three seeds to another planet what would they be? Well, I think there's corn, beans, and squash. I mean, it's the three sisters for a reason. That was really wise teachings. I guess I have corn, beans, and squash that are in my kind of personal seed stewardship basket that I would have to bring because they're what I have been growing for so many years already, so I'd probably have to bring astronomy, Domede, sweet corn, which I've been growing for as long as I've been a farmer. And my first ancestral crop ever, which was Heiligabon,

which translates to holy bean in English, which is a Dutch bean that looks like the eye pattern, looks like angels. Squash is harder. Butternut squash. Just butternut squash. Okay, my knee-jerk reaction is corn beans and squash, because I'm native, I'm like, okay, we're in the zone, but I'm thinking about new planet, right? So what's happening on this planet? I have questions, is there water?

What's the sun like? What's the day length? Assuming best possible growing situation for anything that you want, like, what would you bring just for like, this is what I want? It's not like you're being exiled. Yeah. There's like a new earth. Wow. Couldn't we use that? So I think I would do the Shawnee Calico Bean, because new earth, nobody's around.

It's my new zone where nobody's getting in the way of my bean. And then the squash I would pick is probably a seminal pumpkin, which I forget if it's in the true love catalog. There is one. Yeah, I'm not sure if it's for sale yet, but we do have one. Okay, I grew that a couple years ago, and it was like the most prolific wild vine of my life. Being seminal, it's from the Florida region, and it grew really, really well in Philly, and we had dozens and dozens from, like, one plant. But it's really good young as like a tender green squash as well as a storage squash.

It's awesome. It produces a bajillion seeds. And then my third one is going to be like a real weird one. one that's like not a heritage crop but if anyone has any familiarity with the land institute i literally am coming off of a trip from kansas so i'm like on this kansas kick but um they're developing perennial grains and have you heard of this yes so they have the only one that's like out in the world right now is called kernza um which is derived from it being on the Kansa Prairie, the Kha homelands, but it's basically a cousin of wheat, and I had some pancakes with it

this morning, and it's really delicious. And their whole thing is that they're trying to develop grains that will produce for a minimum of five years before it needs to be turned over and tilled again. And that sounds like something that would be nice on a new planet. So that's my trio. Love it. Anything else in your heads? I've had this dream marinating in my head since my first seed crops that I ever grew on my first farm. I want to have a seed cleaning dance party. So you know how some seeds are easiest to clean by like putting them in between two tarps and just stomping on them? Seed cleaning dance party.

End of the season. Super fun. Super cathartic. That's all. Okay. Love it. Final thoughts. Everyone can grow seeds. I think that's the coolest thing and something that's been really empowering for me when I like haven't necessarily had access to land. Like, you know, if you have a couple containers or whatever, I just want everyone to grow seeds and I'm so excited to be hanging out with all these lovely folks and grateful to the true love network for being there for me.

Thanks so much. Thank you. Here's an interview with Jonathan, who is 11 years old, who spends a lot of time at his grandmother's farm where we rent our land for true love seeds. Okay, can I get your name and your farm name and your location? My name is Jonathan Minnick, and my farm is strawflower farm, and I live in MediaP.A. This is my grandmum's farm, and I always want to get involved when Owen and true love seeds are around because it's just so fun to just be with all the people that work here and just

learn new things about seeds and plants. So you're a fan of true love? Yeah. I've learned quite a bit just from like coming down to the farm and watching them clean seeds and put them in packets and stuff. It's just really impacted me and just taught me a lot more about seeds. I thought you just take it out of the tomato or whatever and put it straight in the ground, but that's definitely not the case. What's one of those examples of, like, a plant that you've learned how to keep seeds from? Either tomatoes or watermelon. Watermelon being probably pretty easy because you just get the seeds out of the fruit and then eat it. Tomato, I remember, like, pretty much last year, I would help out with cleaning the tomato flesh off and then cleaning the tomato seeds. and drying them for a few weeks.

So that was really cool. So do you want to be a seed keeper? Definitely. I've always wanted to help out around the farm, and now that I've learned how to take care of seeds and how to preserve them and stuff, is really cool, and I want to try it out. So Chris asked you earlier,

what were some seeds that you would want to take to another planet if you needed to travel the universe? Do you want to share what your answers were? Sure. My answers were watermelon, corn, and tomatoes. Watermelon being one of my favorite fruits, and it's so easy to eat. You just open it up and eat it. Corn being one of my favorite, like, vegetables, and I just really like eating corn all the time. And tomatoes, I just always love, like, picking them off the vine right after they're getting ripe, and then just eating them there. I love that. That's great. Did you come up with a name for the planet that you would go to?

Vegetabletopia. That's so good. That's awesome. And last but not least, here's an interview with Nathan Klyman of Experimental Farm Network. Just an excerpt because unfortunately most of the interview was not recorded. But we did get a couple little gems here that we'll finish off the episode with. The vast majority of the people who grow for True Love are, first-time seed growers. They haven't grown seeds professionally. And there is a large, you know, there is a professional seed world in, in this country. And it is largely white and

largely older. And that community is all, it is, it's, it's an interesting community that I'm only, you know, I'm still learning myself, having only been a part of it for the last, not even a decade. But I think that broader community could benefit in a lot of ways from the energy and the passion and the ethos of the true love community, the true love grower network. And I would love to see ways to have that group sort of come in and start kicking ass and taking names in the in the broader seed world I mean I feel like we could keep going but it's also almost dark out getting dark getting cold the sign of setting Chris might have one more question though if you could take three seats to another

planet three seeds what would they be to another planet yeah okay well wheat because bread is my favorite food I know it's most people People don't grow it from seed, but you can get seed for it, and I would need this on whatever other planet I'm going to, garlic. And do I have other people there who are going to have something green for me to eat, or it is this me? It could be just me. I need some chlorophyll.

Yeah. I need some chlorophyll. Well. I mean, rainbow chard has, like, a lot of different colors. Yeah, rainbow chart. I was actually just thinking chard. I do love chard. I make chard tuna salads all the time with tuna, a can of tuna,

and a buttload of chard. You can have garlic and wheat salads with your chard. I could eat the garlic greens. That's a little bit of green. Because I really want to say potato. But, yeah, I'm... It's a real one. No, I'm probably going to have to go with...

It's probably just lettuce. Like, I probably just need lettuce to make salads. Like a nice romaine. Yeah, great. Love it. Thank you. Yeah, thanks. Thank you.

Thank you so much again to Sarah Taylor and Chris Keeve. By the way, Chris Keeve is featured this month, December, 2022, in our seedkeeping calendar. And that reminds me to let you know that we have our 2023 seedkeeping calendars. I think this is our seventh year ready for you. This year, our focus is on different seed-keeping practices that we use at our farm, and they're all very low-tech. I also want to thank each of the people we interviewed, those that ended up in this episode, and those that didn't, and all the farmers that came to our growers' gathering, and all the farmers who grow for our catalog. Thank you also for listening and sharing this episode of seeds and their people with your loved ones.

Please share this episode with someone that you love and subscribe to our show in your favorite podcast app. Thank you also for helping our seedkeeping and storytelling work by leaving us a review, ordering seeds, t-shirts, calendars, and more from our website. And you can even donate to our campaign to buy permanent farmland on GoFundMe on the donate page of our website, true loveseeds.com. And again, please join our Patreon. at patreon.com slash true love seeds. Your support keeps the episodes coming. And there's been many more of you that have joined since our last episode. I'm going to wait till our next episode, which I'm very

excited about, so that Chris Bolden Newsome and his amazing Mississippi Delta voice can thank you personally by name. And remember, keeping seeds is an act of true love for our ancestors. and our collective future. Thank you so much for listening.