Seeds And Their People - EP. 27: Improving Vegetable Crops through Seed Production with Bryan O'Hara of Tobacco Road Farm

Episode Date: January 25, 2024

Bryan O'Hara speaks about wholistic reasons for seed production on his vegetable farm, including working with natural processes such as growing winter annual crops for seed from summer to summer for better pest control and better flavor. He also discusses hybrid vigor and how to achieve this with genetically diverse populations of open pollinated plants, and explains how he selects for winter hardiness, more or less uniformity, earliness, flavor, and so on. In line with our theme of ancestral seeds, he talks about being both Polish and Irish and some connections to his farming practices through plants and ways of being and seeing. We end the episode with a traditional Irish song, Moorlough Shore, featuring Bryan on guitar, his daughter Clara O'Hara on vocals and flute, her boyfriend Sparrow Belliveau on Piano, and his brother Raven Belliveau on lead and backing violin.  Bryan O’Hara and Anita Johnson have been growing vegetables at their three acre farm for over 30 years. Tobacco Road Farm produces high quality, nutrient-dense food using no pesticides and working with nature as much as possible in a close relationship. With an intensive focus on building the health of the soil, they use no-till natural farming methods. They also introduce indigenous microorganisms (IMOs) from the surrounding forest into their compost systems and foliar sprays to feed, protect, and invigorate their field soil and vegetable crops. Bryan is also the author of No-Till Intensive Vegetable Culture: Pesticide-Free Methods for Restoring Soil and Growing Nutrient-Rich, High-Yielding Crops. Tobacco Road Farm provides ten carefully selected open-pollinated seed varieties for the Truelove Seeds catalog, which are listed below:   SEEDS GROWN BY TOBACCO ROAD FARM FOR TRUELOVE SEEDS: Ice-Bred Arugula Tokyo Bekana Wonnegold Turnip Polish Watermelon Mizuna Landrace Big Pink Tomato (not in episode) Vit Mache Presto Cress Vertissimo Chervil (not in episode) Claytonia   MORE INFO FROM THIS EPISODE: Tobacco Road Farm at Truelove Seeds No-Till Vegetable Intensive Culture from Chelsea Green Publishing Several No-Till Growers Network podcast episodes featuring Bryan O'Hara 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 Facebook  |  Instagram  |  Twitter   FIND CHRIS HERE: Sankofa Community Farm at Bartram’s Garden   THANKS TO: Bryan O'Hara and Anita Johnson Clara O'Hara, Sparrow Belliveau, and Raven Belliveau Ruth Kaaserer

Nature is very finely developed and is very complex and small things matter a lot to natural systems. And so the more we work fully with natural systems and allow nature to come to its full complexity through careful work cooperation with natural forces as in this kind of seed growing, you can really have the rewards of nature's beneficial relationship to you. Welcome to Seeds and their people. I'm Chris Bowdoin-Nusom, farmer and co-director at Sankofa Farm at Bartram's Garden in Sondy, southwest Philadelphia. And I'm Owen Taylor.

seedkeeper and farmer at True Love Seeds. We're 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 by our listeners. Thank you so much to our 65 Patreon members at patreon.com slash true love seeds. This episode features Brian O'Hara of Tobacco Road Farm in Lebanon, Connecticut,

which is just down the road. next town over from where I grew up. And I visited him the day after Christmas. I think you and Brian were sleeping in. And I went to interview him about his work on his farm, and including with 10 seed varieties that we have in our catalog that they grow for us. And him and his wife, Anita Johnson, and now their daughter Clara, have been growing vegetables at their three-acre farm for more than 30 years. I have a whole blurb here, but I think I'm just going to take out a few things because you hear about all this in our interview. So I want to say that he just released a book called No-Till Intensive Vegetable Culture, Pesticide-Free Methods for Restoring Soil

and Growing Nutrient Rich, High-Yielding Crops. That's with Chelsea Green Publishing. It's a great book that really catalogs all of the methods they've been developing over the last few decades, especially the last decade or so where they've transitioned to no-till farming. They also do a lot with indigenous microorganisms or IMOs, kind of capturing them in the forest around their farm and introducing them to their fields, this fungally dominant ecosystem of microorganisms. And we don't get into that in this episode.

So please check out that book and other interviews he's done about his work with soil. But here we'll really focus on seed keeping, seed saving, seed production at the small farm level where they're primarily focused on growing vegetables for market. And so I think it's actually really great the way he summarizes his approach to seeds and gives some kind of fundamentals to people thinking of producing seeds, as well as getting into how he's developed a lot of these varieties that he shares through our catalog. But let me be quiet now and pass it to you. What do you want to say about this episode before we dive in? Well, this was a very exciting episode. It's always very exciting to talk to Brian and to get his perspective on things. He's, you know, very interesting, very unique, I think in the farming world kind of person.

But I think that knowing how much, you know, he was an inspiration and really, a foundation for you in the work from a young age, you know, also is really powerful. So to hear you all talking, you know, sort of the student, you know, interviewing the teacher after all of these years. I found that to be very powerful. I think there are so many exciting parts of this for me, especially as a natural agriculturalist, exciting parts of, you know, this interview. where he goes in and talks about, you know, the relationship of human beings to these plants. You know, that this is an actual palpable, you know,

very real relationship that we have and that the plants remember the conditions that they're grown under, you know, and that they transmit that. For those folks who are interested in going deeper into the ideas of sort of, you know, the spiritual and relational aspect, of farming between farmer and his land

this will be I think very very very exciting I keep using the word exciting I don't have another adjective that I can really think of readily but for me that's what it was you know I mean it for folks who

you know are plant nerds I think you'll get a lot out of it for people who are into history and culture as well you'll get a lot out of We are always, you know, super excited to talk to Brian about, you know, the role of Irish culture and Celtic culture in general in how he lives and how he approaches his work. He's a proud Irishman, Irish American, and really has a powerful perspective on the role of his Irish culture, you know, in this work, but also just in his life. So it's also very nice, you know, to see how much he has raised Clara May with that same tradition that she will know where she's from and who her people are.

And for me, you know, such an African-American person of Celtic descent, you know, who does think a lot about these sorts of things in culture and how it shows up. and in our lived experience, I found that to be something, you know, deeply, deeply fascinating. Yes, and spoiler alert, we will have Clara May singing an Irish folk song at the end with her boyfriend, her boyfriend's brother, and with Brian accompanying her. So stay tuned for the very end for that. So let's dive on in. I'm going to transport you now to a cozy winter room by a fireplace and a rotary phone with Brian O'Hara at Tobacco Road Farm. Okay, I'm here at Tobacco Road Farm with my good friend, Brian O'Hara, but I'm wondering if you could introduce yourself, maybe an Irish.

Well, let's see, my Irish name is Brianoara and Tomic O'Brien. Magalore, Shinshin, and Iwa. Awesome. What did you say? Let's see. I said, things are going really well. I told you my name. I said things are going really well again and here, here, and good night. Nice. Meanwhile, it's almost noon. noon we're sitting by the wood stove drinking tea and we just walked and took a tractor tour to

teach me some things thank you for that and uh just really glad to be here in your home at one of my favorite places on earth thanks for talking to folks on the mic oh glad to have you here oh you know it's always a pleasure i appreciate all your work down there you're doing great job I'm always happy to see you when you come up. And thanks for being you. Thanks for being you. Can you, do you remember how we met just to put in context our relationship? Ah, sure.

Let's see. I think you were up visiting your mom or staying with your ma. And we knew your ma from down to local corp and town. And I think, I can't remember if she told us or some friends of yours. I think, told us that Stephanie's son Owen is visiting, and he kind of needs a summer job or something. And so we're like, oh, great, you know, send them out because we were totally overwhelmed.

We had, I think, Claire, our daughter, who was just a couple years old, and we had grown way too many crops, which is pretty usual for us, you know. And so we had, like, I don't know, maybe like 500 or 1,000 tomato plants that we had way behind on harvesting. And so you came up and you look really promising being you, you know,

and we're like, all right, oh, here's the tomato crop. You know, we're way behind on harvesting. Harvest all the red tomatoes and we'll see you in a while. And then I swear it was only maybe like less than an hour. All of a sudden you showed up up at the house and you're like, I'm all done, boss. What's next? And I was like, what?

And you were totally covered from head to foot in green tar from harvesting a thousand tomato plants in like an hour flat and you had crates and crates of tomatoes and I'm like holy moly I was very very impressed Owen very impressed and I tried to not let out how impressed I was but I was very impressed and you know your hairs were all standing straight up because you had a green car on your arm hairs and stuff and I was like all right on to next task but right from the first moment you set foot on the farm I knew that you were up to great things that was a beautiful summer 2005 yeah and then and then I worked here again 2012 basically between cities right yeah would come back home and work with Tobacco Road and

learned so much so much that when I teach people at my farm they were suggested we had an acronym to shorten the phrase at Tobacco Road you know they're like just the ATR you know I would be training everyone the things I learned here and they're like okay Tobacco Road, Tobacco Road. So this is really my foundation in farming as I'd done it before, but this is where I did it the most and learned the most. And always what I loved about working here, well, it was a million things, you know, farming barefoot, being with your family and all the cool people you gather here.

But also that any time I had a question in the field, you pretty much would just stop and answer it in a really deep, complicated, awesome way, which felt extremely generous to me as like a budding farmer. And I just feel like I'm constantly learning from you. So thank you for the ways you teach people and me in particular. Oh, yeah. You're welcome. It's, you know, we prioritize, you know, people trying to learn

so that they can carry on the traditions of farming. Like my mentor taught me, took the time to teach me to farm, and his father had taught him, taking the time in his father's father. And so the knowledge and capacity and wisdom to be able to farm is directly translated from one human to another, you know, and it goes beyond anything we can learn on books or internet. It's the importance of that is primary in our lives. You know, we don't, we're not, we didn't get into farming to make a big profit. Like I often say, you could do just about anything else besides farming if you wanted to make a big profit. and oh what's the what's the easiest way to make a small fortune farming uh why don't you tell me

all right start with a big one it sounds very uh true in my experience even though i didn't start with a big one oh i know i see either you know it's probably better that way you know you're not a lot to lose you just keep moving along and making a little headway yeah well when i moved to philadelphia which is right after i worked with you the second time and started working with seeds and eventually started true love seeds you know i think we started working together that first year and year seven now um with you growing seeds for our catalog which was so such an exciting way to continue this relationship. And I'm here today to interview, but also to bring you seeds and pick up seeds. And it's just great to continue kind of trading seeds that way and working together.

And at this point, you have a lot of seeds in our catalog. And I'd love if you could, you know, tell people why they're so special. I mean, I know why. But I love people to dig into these tobacco road farm seeds in a big way because they have so much intention put into them and so much work put into them to make them the amazing crops they are today. And I feel like even getting into how you've developed some of them would be fascinating to some of the seed people listening. Kind of as I was saying about the mentorship of the human in being able to evolve humans and human farming through direct mentorship, it's really the similar relationship with the actual crop and plant. And our role as humans is a co-evolutionary process where we're choosing and using

our will to grow these plants in a mutual beneficial relationship. So to have that level of regard for the crop that you're working with can be very rewarding on deep levels. And the crop responds to people that are their caretakers. So when we, grow seed, we are perpetuating and improving that crop so that it can perpetuate and improve us. As the seeds acclimate to your climate and are more appropriate for growing in your exact environmental conditions, you know, you see improved growth and improved yields and profits and all that goes along, healthier crops, with that kind of evolution. But there's another really important aspect that I realized was when we were doing research

on the Coetzea glomeratus wasp, which is a predator of cabbage caterpillar. And I was working with an entomologist Kim Stoner down at the Agricultural Experiment Station. And we were monitoring Coetzea glomeratus wasps in, the cabbage family crops and i remember we were we were watching them over winter and the wasp itself which is very small wasp the wasp lays its eggs on the cabbage caterpillar and then the pupil stage emerges the larva stage devours the insides of the caterpillar and the pupil stage emerges and spins a cocoon often on the caterpillar carcass or nearby it the cocoons look similar to tomato hornworm parasites, you know, they're little white cocoons on the backs of the caterpillars.

And then a wasp emerges out of the pupil stage, and the wasp feeds on the flower nectar of the cabbage family. So what that essentially meant is because we, with the entomologist, we were watching the pupil stage, the wasp overwinters in the cocoons. So in the fall, when you're harvest in your cabbages, you'll see all the cocoons on the bottom leaves or on the collared leaves or you'll see the pupil stage and that is how the wasp is going to overwinter. In the spring, when the flowers emerge from the cabbage or the collard or to kale or whatnot, was timed precisely with the emergence of the wasp from the pupil stage. Well, what that clearly pointed to us was that in order to have these wasps in place you have to overwinter and provide the habitat on the

undersides of the leaves for the pupil stage to survive winter and then you have to allow the plants to flower for the emerging wasps to have a food source to then prey on the next season's caterpillars well what does that really equal that equals seed production of overwintering your collars and your cabbages, let him go into full flower, and then you have the seeds in place. So with that kind of simple example of beneficial insect control of cabbage caterpillar, you can see the rewards of a full cycle relationship with the crops that were growing. You know, and we've seen that repeated in many other crops, and there's many other benefits. I'm just given that one as very tangible, something we really looked at carefully.

but the benefits to seed production can be extraordinary in these kinds of regards. And nature is a conscience sentient being. These relationships are very tangible and nature is very finely developed and is very complex and small things matter a lot to natural systems. And so the more we work fully with natural systems and allow nature to come to its full complexity through careful work cooperation with natural forces as in this kind of seed growing you you can really have the rewards of nature's beneficial relationship to you so you know it's kind of

one of the overarching you know reasons that we like seed growing is to be able to have these kinds of deep relationships with the crop that we're growing and then of course along those lines there's all kinds of you know as i was saying definite means of improving the crop for insect or disease resistance or attributes that you're looking for whether that's you know we do a lot of winter hardiness improvement and i could point out like the ice bread arugula from Brent, Brett, Gorgeshaw, I believe is the name down in Maryland. Well, when we brought it up here, overwinter in Connecticut, you know, the arugula overwintered, but some of the plants would die.

But we did notice that within a single generation of overwintering that arugula in a hard environment, harder environment, that the next year's survival rate from the first year survival, the next year survival rate went up to 100% in a single generation of seed selection improvement through just natural environmental seed plant selection. We didn't even, you know, select the plants, nature selected the plants for survival. And then so we've repeated that with numerous other brassica species, you know, the Tokyo, Bacana, the cresses, and we continue to have worked with mustards and other crops doing similar things. So those crops aren't commercially available.

So, you know, we like to improve things to where there is no commercial option for those kinds of winter hardy greens. And so we try to develop things that are, you know, not otherwise available. so we're trying to focus our efforts on that and then we'll select for things like like we got the golden turnip well the original seeds from the golden turnip had green shoulders and somewhat not consistent shape so we've been selecting for more consistent golden coloration and for more consistent shape on a of turn it. And that's been an effective selection process as well. But then on the other hand, we take the Polish watermelon that we got from our neighbor. In this case, we're trying to continue the genetic diversity of the crop through raising essentially what's a land race

to give us more vigor through more diversity. So in the case of the, watermelon. We are essentially encouraging diversity, which is the basis of hybrid vigor. So through a diverse pool of diverse types of melons, all still maintained within a basic marketing parameter of similar size and shape, but they have some different colorations on the skin, that genetic diversity has allowed us to maintain a very vigorous, very productive, reliable, early, extremely sweet water mountain. So, you know, we select for all those traits. You know, as time goes on, we've been selecting the watermelon for almost 20 years now. Essentially in seed saving, it seems like there's two basic mechanisms for crops to improve. So we have your, you have your self-pollinating

crops. And then you have your crops that generally do better if they are outcrossed. They cross with other plants, like a spinach has male and female plants. And so they're always going to obviously be crossing with a different plant. But a lot of plants, of course, have the male or female flowers on the same plant. Now some of those outcrossing plants are self infertile, meaning they can't pollinate themselves, and some can to some degree. But those plants are the ones that do really well with genetic diversity. So then the self-pollinating plants that have male and female flowers on the same plant and generally pollinate their own flowers often even before they have opened to maintain their own genetics and rarely outcross with other

plants. So that'd be like your beans or peppers, lettuces are like that, right? And so it's handy for seed savers, a self-pollinating crop, you know, can be planted. closer and you get a lot less genetic diversity and whatnot so you know when you think about those in terms of survival and the improvement of the crop you're looking at two dissimilar ways to approach environmental conditions for the crop the self-pollinating crop essentially what it is doing is it achieves a pinnacle type plant like the best bean that grows the best here and then it propagates itself to fill that area with its own top type comes to dominance one type comes to dominance and that is

its means it is not diluted it maintains its genetics the best genetics are replicated over and over to a larger and larger degree. And so when you look at self-pollinating crops like that, you know, again, they're very easy for seed savers because they don't appreciate genetic diversity. They don't readily outcross. You can maintain small populations of top-notch individuals and have a really good seed. But most or, yeah, definitely the majority of vegetable crops are actually outcrossing crops. and a lot of them actually experience genetic rundown through if there's not enough of a genetic seed pool.

You know, a bean is not going to run down genetically by breeding to itself. It is the mechanisms for its survival are set up to continue its pinnacle type. And there is not genetic rundown in low populations. that is often not the case with a lot of our outcrossing crops, like the cabbage family or onions or, you know, carrot family, beet family. So the outcrossers thrive under genetic diversity, like America. And so they often are obviously wind-pollinated, insect pollinated plants. You know, you'll see they're either pollens are blowing in the wood.

wind or insects are frequenting them. And large populations of diversity bring the plants what is known as hybrid vigor. So when you combined two dissimilar types of cabbage, and you combined the two dissimilar parents, the offspring exceed the vigor often of either parent. The genetic diversity has a phenomenal impact, well noted in the seed trade, as called hybrid vigor. Now, of course, the seed trade, obviously, when they create a hybrid, are generally taking a very consistent, usually low genetic diversity parrot. And another low-diversity parent that lack the vigor, and they sterilize one of the parents, generally chemically, to only have female flowers, I believe.

So it cannot pollinate itself. So in corn, for instance, they would cut off the male tassels. You know, that would be mechanical, but they've come up with chemicals to do this. And so you have just female flowers on this one parent, and then the other one becomes the only pollinator. So every seed is then a hybrid. And they're completely consistent because every parent is the same on each side with low genetic diversity. And the offspring of that hybrid seed is then also consistent for at least that first generation. Now, to get that same vigor, we can just have broad genetic pools of churning diversity

and allow that diversity to constantly hybridize without having stabilized parents and doing this whole process, chemical or whatever, and allow the genetic diversity to be so abundant that you get the hybrid vigor. Now, this runs counter to, unfortunately, market demands because the markets like consistency. They want every tomato to be the same. They want every watermelon to be the same. Well, you know, that's fine for self-pollinated pepper.

You know, non-diversity is fine. You know, you get the same pepper every time and the pepper grows great. But to apply the bounds of commerce to outcrossing crops invariably leads to their rundown as the genetic pool is narrowed to meet the demands of commerce in terms of shapes and sizes and things like that. So you really have to be careful with outcrossing crops to keep up enough of a genetic pool and some diversity without getting it too refined.

that you still have vigor in the crop. You know, this is what they often talk about. A lot of open pollinated crops can get run down genetically because they're trying to limit its genetics too much. All right. That's great. And so you have a lot of great examples with this since most of the seeds in our catalog that you provide,

I don't know about most, but many of them are outcrossers, especially the ones in the cabbage family. and you already mentioned the arugula, but I think that original mix started with a genetically diverse combination of maybe four types of Dutch arugolas. And so you started out with a very diverse gene pool. And then I know that with the Missuna land race,

you intentionally crossed several types. And then it would be cool to hear a little more and how you approached it with this Polish watermelon too. Okay. So we'll start with the Missuna. And so the Mazuna, yes, we did a couple things with that. We wanted to improve its vigor through hybridization and also improve its winter hardiness. So in that case, we took Mazuna, just a commercially available Mazuna.

It was a long time ago. And we allowed the Mazuna to breed in a field that also. had taut soy and maruba flowering which are two other overwintered leafy brassica greens we're using in the salad mixes and things and then we just we just saved the seeds from the mazuna crop which allowed some input of diversity from the taut soy and the maruba but yet because Mazuna can, of course, you know, was allowed to self-pollinate as well. So maintained primarily Mazuna genetics, but brought in a splash of other diversity through pollination, male pollen from the other crops.

So then we then took that seed and, of course, overwintered it and grew it in winter environments and improved its winter hardiness through successive seasons till at this point it's extremely winter hardy and over time just bred that pool of plants with itself so that it started to what was initially had more shapes and forms of moving more towards tautsoil or a lighter colored maruba now is standardized into a pretty similar leaf shape of a kind of a wide, bladed mazuna crop, which is still not, you know, it's still diverse in form, but just with it breeding to itself for probably almost 30 years now, you know, it has stabilized its forms to some degree over initial crossings.

so that was a development of that and it's a is it featured in your spicy mix or how do you use that one here on the farm that one is used in both salad mixes it's not spicy mazuna

pots are not particularly spicy so it does go into even just a regular non-spicy blend of salad greens good flavor you know we generally grow a lot of the leaf brassicas basically after the summer solstice into the winter when they're in their natural growth cycle and have, of course, the best flavors during the colder seasons, cold temperatures

because, of course, freezing temperatures dramatically improve the flavor of frost-tolerant plants because the plants saturate their saps with higher sugar contents, which I guess also on a side note, occasionally we will grow something like a mazuna. We'd plant it this time of year and harvest it in the spring, especially if we're trying to stagger Brassica rapa seed crops to have, because say we're growing you know, Tokyo for Tokyo for seed. We're growing a turnip for seed and we're growing

Mizuna for seed, which are three of the ones we provide you. You know, those are all going to intercross, but we generally don't want those to intercross. You know, they're diverse enough in and of themselves. And so we will stagger the seeding dates of the different crops so that the flowering periods don't overlap. So most of the brassicas are already in the field and are overwintering, and, of course, they're going to flower early. But if we now seed Mazuna or Tokyo Bacana now, obviously a turnip is a transplant,

although you could do a direct seeding of turnip seed and just have smaller plants and flowers. you could start it now and get a flowering. So we do stagger them in order to produce, you know, same species type plants like that. But in general, the Brassica family, many of the winter hardy vegetables are all winter annuals. And they do much better if they grow in their natural time period of growth,

which is a turnip or a mazuna is meant to be in flower in the spring and maturing its seeds by early summer and then depositing its seeds on the earth to grow through the summer into the fall over winter and then flower and deposit its seeds. So it's a yearly cycle that starts in summer and ends in summer. And that time period for winter annuals is very beneficial for appropriate growth, appropriate flavors, insect and disease resistance. So, for instance, like a flea beetle. Now, if you do not plant your Brassica family in the spring, and you wait to plant them until it's appropriate time of natural seeding, the flea beetles, as far as I have ever seen, and I think this is probably true across the board,

are not present and do not attack the crop. The flea beetle needs to have spring-sown brassica plants to feed on to perpetuate itself through into summer. And so if there's nothing available for it in the spring, if no plants are growing, they are out of their natural cycle, the flea beetle doesn't have the food source to persist and your crop is going to be completely clean, a flea beetle. Now that is also true of overwintering the arugula or the mazunas and the overwintering plants that are still flowering in May or April

when the flea beetle is emerged. The flea beetle will not assault those plants in flower, even though there are leaves right there that they could assault. even though they're in flower, they have still leaves, because natural cycles are in place and there is some kind of natural mechanisms that indicate to those flea beetles that this is not an appropriate crop to attack. Now, and so we've experimented even planting, I remember we did one year mustard greens. We had flowering mustard greens in May and we seeded mustard greens in April and had them emerge. And the mustards that were seeded in April were totally attacked

by the flea beetle right next to flowering mustards of the same variety that were completely left untouched. So again, this speaks to natural cycles. And it is important for seed growers, you know, if you're getting into seed growing, to really comprehend that winter annual cycle of growth and for being able to raise seeds in appropriate times, obviously we can tweak them, like I was saying, you know, a little bit here or there, especially if you're really strong soils and things, you can get insect resistance, even growing up Brassica in the spring. But a lot of these, you know, working more in natural cycles is much easier for healthy seed production. Can you say a little more about the Polish watermelon? And also I want to throw in here that this is, you know, since all of our growers grow some ancestral crops, this is the one.

You know, I'm sure you could have ties to some of these brassicas too ancestrally, but this is one that you identified as a ancestral crop. But can you speak to that and also like a little more about what are the variations and the genetic diversity you're looking for and how you keep it going? Oh, sure. Yeah, we love our Polish watermelon. Let's see, I was given some seeds away recently, and somebody asked me, what's the name of this? And a variety? And I said, oh, my Polish neighbor. And they said, oh, my Polish neighbor.

When actually I was going to tell them, my Polish neighbor gave me the seeds and I was going to explain the story. But they're like, nope, name of the variety is now my Polish neighbor. And so, but we do refer to it as Polish watermelon. The fellow that bred it, his name is actually Eugene. So sometimes we call it Eugene's melon. But so basically, you know, I am part Polish. You know, I had a Polish grandmother. She came over from Poland, although most of my family is obviously Irish and Scottish and things.

But she was a fantastic woman, you know, we really hold her in high regards. And although she's not related to Eugene, we did really hit it off with my Polish neighbor around who, you know, came over from Poland. And not that long ago, maybe 30 years ago or so, 45 something. He came over as an older teenager. He managed to get out of communist Poland by getting into the seminary and studying to be a priest. And the Polish seminaries was the route to freedom in those days because you could travel outside the country and things like that. And so he got over to America and married an American and state here and stuff like that,

but his father was still in Poland, who was a super avid gardener. And Poland has, you know, he told us a lot about Poland and described, you know, modern Polish agriculture. And they are a very serious vegetable production region. A lot of Europe's vegetables are coming out of Poland. It's very good soil, very well-trained farming. They didn't collectivize the communists when they were in control over there, did not collectivize Poland to the extent that they collectivized a lot of other farms in other communist countries.

It was a little more independent, a little more left landholders alone and to keep up production and, you know, was very successful. He did tell me that this great story about the communists, he said they were really general. trying to help the people you know they weren't good at it and everybody hated the government but you know they he was like yeah they they actually were really trying to help you know as opposed to get to some other countries and your governments are a little more corrupt than that you know but he's like yeah they really a lot of them were really trying to help they were just they just were

terrible at it but they would take all the people and workers and things and kids and everybody had to work on a farm. Russians were telling us. The Russians did the same thing. Everybody had to work on the farms for a month out of a year. So, you know, it was fine for Stefan. You know, he'd go out and work in gooseberries and currants and black currants and things like that.

And he said, it's a funny thing, you know, black currants don't really taste good. You've tried black currents, you know, and they're maybe not the best flavored thing in the world. But he said that, you know, as Polish youth, when you're out working in these huge black current fields. And your job is just to harvest black currents and it's hot sun in your working all day that eventually you just eat black currents because, you know, there's so many and they're juicy. And then eventually he said, as time goes on, you start to like the flavor of black currents. And so then what that does is then as you get older, you would actually buy black current jam. and things like that, because you actually like them at that point.

And so, like, the communists were smart enough to develop their own market, you know, by having everybody work in the fields and then later on want to eat black currants. But the Russians, they were telling us that it was just, they were like, they were like, really heady mathematicians, and they were like, it was terrible. They would put them on to turnip lines sorting, you know, rotten turnips and rotten cabbages when they could be doing, like, high, high math problems. and like, you know, they'd be some overseer that started vodka drinking early in the morning. It's telling them to sort the cabbages, and they didn't have it as a rosy picture about.

But everybody over there had to work in the agricultural fields, which was an interesting idea. But again, you can see it's not real popular, you know, like they meant well. Yeah. So, but anyway, Eugene was an avid Polish gardener and, you know, developed, you don't usually think of watermelons from Poland. But wow, did he ever, you know, he spent a long time developing the genetic base. And like I was saying, it's, you know, earlyness, sweetness, you know, genetic diversity, but not too diverse, you know, still, you know, in the similar shapes and sizes. And so Stefan brought these overdoses, brought some other crops too that we've tried out over the years. But that was just a clear winner for us.

So we just brought it here, and we started growing it. We give him seedlings every year to grow. He grows up his place too. And so we've just maintained a genetic diversity while also, you know, acclimating it to the American climate, which Poland and America are pretty similar, you know, environment-wise. and but we have certainly selected for earliness and flavor

and size simply by saving the best of the melons you know which is similar to what we do with the tomato as well and so just you know which is pretty standard way to improve your genetics of your crops you save the best and you use them

So, you know, just basic program like that with the melon. Yeah, my memory from working here those times was that we would have a watermelon every coffee break, which is what you call lunchtime. Coffee break. And go pick the best one out that's ready and then sit around the table and kind of decide together, is this one worth saving seeds or is it not? Spinning them out and collecting them at the end, which is what we've replicated. at true love seeds with our watermelon now that we can grow a nice sweet watermelon. For a while we are growing a Nigerian igusi melon which you don't eat the flesh of. You just eat the seeds and luckily we found a friend

in Mississippi to grow that one who's connected to it through Nigeria. So now we can grow a nice sweet eating watermelon and we do the same thing as you. Does that accurately describe how you had been saving the seeds? Well yeah I mean that's how we got started in selecting the best but obviously at this point you know our production is ramped up and now we we basically we do more selection like that for our own and make sure that you know we're for we have the top variety type like so we try to really and make sure that the mother plants are really improving every year but then of course for for commerce for so you guys and

stuff. You know, we grow a lot of melons. And so we can't eat everyone, you know, and we've got a shuck out. But, you know, the genetics are just, they're consistent at this point. You know, the flavors are great. Vigors great. The disease resistance is great. You know, so. Well, I think it's worth noting for any of our growers. And at this point, it's around 75 of you out there who are listening that we're really going to do a special focus this year on selection. Obviously, we all do it all the time, but we want to create selection goals with each of our growers this year that we kind of write down and support people towards.

And that one way to really focus on selection is differentiating which ones you're saving for planting at your farm next year versus which ones you're offering through the seed catalog, which might sound like, oh, why don't we get the best ones? but it's selecting from the cream of the crop for your next planting, which then translates to next year's seed sales. So we're investing in many, many generations by keeping back the best ones for next year's planting.

Yeah. Yeah, and obviously you can't eat thousands of watermelons and evaluate everyone, you know, as much as I'd like to. I texted a couple of our growers who grow watermelons, and one of them, Amira Mitchell, who's on a previous episode from Sista Seeds, who grows, is the primary grower of our Odell's white watermelon, which we also grow on our farm,

which is a great kind of soft-rinded, very pale, both skin and flesh, like a pale pink flesh, a pale green rind. Watermelon, she said that in order to deal with large amounts of melons, she's used the chipper function on her BCS. and would put them either whole if they're small enough or cut in half through this wood chipper, I guess. And then kind of let the flesh ferment a bit in buckets with like a high surface area. So not deep, you know, small necked buckets, but like for a slight fermentation with a lot of surface area in a shallow bucket.

that's a good question it probably would be about a day or two most of our ferments we do at our farm are three days but watermelons go very quick like it yeah all the sugars and the watermelons yep yeah actually with a mirror years ago we tried to make watermelon juice to drink with using an apple press actually we've got all the flesh out tried to use this as a way to get the seeds out as well and then the watermelon juice within a day went bad. So, yeah, watermelons ferment very quickly. Yep.

Yeah, because they're very challenging to get the seeds out of. It is the hardest crop for us to produce seeds from, you know, because the flesh sticks to the seeds so much. It'll float with the seeds or it'll sink with the seeds, you know, dependent on the conditions. So we're constantly trying to screen it and get the, get the flesh out of it. Very, very challenging. It's not like a cantaloupe where the seeds are all on the insides or cucumbers, you know, they're all embedded in tremendous amounts of flesh. It just wants

to stick to the seed. So if someone's listening out there, I'm not talking to you, seed farmers who only grow seeds and can invest in special watermelon seed removal equipment, but for other farmers who are primarily growing vegetables for sale, but also seed crops, what suggestions do you have for watermelons? We'd love to hear it. Yes, that's true. I read in the, I think it was seed to seed, Susan Ashworth, she just would send all her watermelons down to the school system and have all the kids eat watermelons, you know, a small town in probably the 70s or something,

but then all the Californian school kids would eat watermelons, but promised to return their seeds. And then she would get all her watermelon seeds back from the, school system, but it doesn't seem like it'd be an effective method these days, you know. Luckily, we have a lot of visitors at our farm regularly with huge amounts of lunch, you know, lunchtime people so we can eat two or three watermelons and at a time. Okay, let's take a quick break to hear from some friends who actually also interviewed Brian O'Hara a couple times on their podcast, and I'll link to those in the show notes.

and then we'll go out into the field and look at some crops there. Hey everyone, if you're enjoying this show, you may also like the No-Till Market Garden podcast with co-host Mimi Castile, Natalie Landsbury, and yours truly, Alex Ball. We interviewed growers, researchers, and others in sustainable ag community about everything from soil first farming practices

to foreign business management in the wild world of soil biology and health. So head over to your favorite podcast platform today and subscribe to the No-Till Growers Network. Let's go look at stuff out here. Yeah, supposed to get in the 50s today. A lovely Christmas weather. Yes, yes.

It actually feels maybe I've never been to Ireland, but it feels like what I imagine Ireland to feel like. Yeah, well, it is heading towards, you know, that kind of environment, you know, coastal, uh, high humidity, high, lots of rain and uh moderated temperatures yeah now i know you're more irish identified oh we're walking past a bucket of bones where are those going to end up uh bones we generally grind and make fertilizer or uh people like them they take them home too this is collector's items

and stuff they're deer mostly yeah a lot of deer yeah well i was going to to say you know you're very irish identified you're learning the language you know the music what are the ways your kind of irish identity manifests on the farm well let's see how's the irish manifest on the farm you know my ancestors came over in the potato famine which was of course uh intentional starvation of the irish to move them off the island and uh so the irish people have gone through a lot of oppression obviously and so that kind of gives you a different outlook than a lot of people that might not have experienced that level of difficulties from other segments of the colonial empires and things like that so you know it gives you just a kind of different perspective on things it

also makes me like to grow a lot of potatoes, you know, because obviously the Irish were surviving on eating potatoes because everything else was taken from them. And then, of course, when the potato crop failed, nothing was left for them to eat. It was interesting intentional starvation of a population through taxation and rental payments. And, you know, Irish, you couldn't own your own land and you're basically just a surf and then your food was removed from you you know which of course moved Irish out to other English speaking lands so a lot of them came over here to the northeast of the country came into Boston and New York and so there's a lot of Irish people around here you know and but yeah so I'm a potato enthusiast you know I love growing potatoes we

grow a lot of potatoes, getting into growing more and more potatoes. And yeah, you know, I like the soft day like this, you know, as environment changes. You know, I'm looking forward to getting over to Ireland. You know, we just got our passports and stuff like that. And yeah, I like other Irish people. I like the Irish music. One thing that can be said about the Irish, you know, is that the repression led to really good music, you know, which is difficult for maybe the English to say as much or, you know, other more oppressive regions, you know. You know, the level of repression made for great music.

Also, you know, the Irish, you know, ability and fortitude to survive under oppressive conditions and still enjoy life, you know. So, you know, those things are kind of integral to the, to the Irish experience and things like that. Yeah, and we're just having a great time with it, playing the Irish music, you know, learning a language, get over there. It's such an important country and really, you know,

because when you think about it, I mean, things haven't changed that much, and we're all severely oppressed by the system, of course, worldwide at this point. And so to still have that same level of enjoyment, and happiness, you know, is important for all people, not just Irish people, you know. And so, you know, Ireland has a lot to offer us through their attitudes and their music and the ability to survive under difficult, you know, situations, including our new weather,

which highly resembles Ireland. It really does right now. It's really, really heavy fog, warm. Yeah, it's a great, beautiful gray day in Ireland. Yes, yes. Yeah, New Ireland. New Ireland, right, right, not New England. Yes, yes.

Oh, that was a great answer, better than I could do. You know, I'm also mostly Irish. I think I might know that if you break it all down and have a good Irish name. I think that's by mistake, by coincidence. Owen. But I, too, as I'm farming especially potatoes, since I know that particularly one of my great grandmothers, Mary Lenehan, she grew up growing potatoes and cabbages and fish her family fished in the Galway bay in a thatched roof house you know so when I'm out there with my hands in the soil especially with

potatoes I just like to have this like portal of connection to my ancestors who were doing the same thing right and like portal of like gratitude to have that in my bones you know yeah so anyway nice to be Irish with you yes what can you show us here in terms of because you're overwintering system has been decades in the making and actually hasn't changed much. Your farming systems have changed radically since I've known you in terms of using machines but without and not and no longer tilling much at all and writing the book. Can you say the name your book? Oh yeah the book no till intensive vegetable culture. Yes and you've been interviewed by other podcasts about this so we're going to stick with seeds. But I wanted to mention that you

are kind of a very important person in the no-till world for people to check out the book and other podcasts about that. So those systems have radically shifted since I've known you, but this over-wintering system is pretty rudimentary and effective, so I'd love to hear about it. Okay, so we primarily overwinter these brassicas and lettuces and spinach and things, mosses in there, Claytonia. We primarily overwinter them under low tunnels in the feet. We generally no longer use high tunnels. The low tunnel seems to be superior in terms of maintenance of soil quality. High tunnels tend to run down soils.

So we really appreciate low tunnels for the ability to maintain soil fertility and qualities. The low tunnel is a double layer of plastic over steel hoops with a with sandbags holding them along the sides of the covers. So, you know, the specifics of all that would be in the book. The inner cover is a perforated plastic that allows us to vent the tunnel, to allow airflow or rain into the cover to a small degree. Let's rain in. If you want full rain, you can open the cover all the way.

The ability of it to integrate to environmental conditions through removing the cover or allowing it to vent or perforated cover only allows it to be in closer relationship to natural environmental conditions, which I think is the reason why they don't run down soil the way a high tunnel does, which is just much more cut off from the natural environmental conditions. So these integrate better. they are very inexpensive you can cover large areas very inexpensively and they remove out of the way for when you want to do summer culture of the land so you can get your equipment and things over the beds that were previously covered well let's take a look under one can we see claytonia or moss just because we haven't talked about those much yet when you have those seeds in our catalog This is one we've been saving for a few years. It's a smaller leaf. It's not the large leaf mosh. Oh no, this one is the large leaf mosh.

Yep. Pretty long leaf. And, you know, extremely winter hardy. We're very happy with it. It is very tasty. We really like mosh. Mmm, good. It's very good.

What a flavor. So we really enjoy growing mosh, really flavorful winter. flavorful winter salad green. Now when do you harvest this for the winter salad greens? It already has started being harvested. I see here, but it's really just getting underway with harvest now. We certainly can seat it earlier and have it ready in the fall, but this particular bed, you know, seated later.

And it's just coming into harvest now at Christmas time. So for the salad grains you're harvesting now, can you talk about what's going into those mixes? their mixes, correct? Yeah. Right now the salad greens are still primarily lettuce and they have mosh, claytonia, and then some of the brassicas, it would be the mazuna. And then on a spicier salad blend, it would have cress, mustard, and arugula. And at, oh yeah, and both of those have got the P tips still going, which is abnormal for this time of year. You know, it's just because we barely hit 20 degrees, and, you know, they're under a row cover. And normally the peas have, you know, died back or damaged by this time of year,

but they're still going gangbusters out there. And today, just for listeners, is December 26th up here in Lebanon, Connecticut, town over from where I grew up. and how long do you think you'll be harvesting for those mixes with the current, you know, crops in the ground? Yeah, it doesn't stop. It's going to go straight through the year. Just constant harvesting of salad green spinach is basically coming out of the field this time of year. The primary crop is going to be spinach and the salad green mixtures of lettuces and the other winter hardy greens. Certainly we'll harvest a few other things like cilantro's or parsley.

But, you know, the bulk of it is the spinach and the salad green mixtures. Okay. So even though up here it usually goes not just below 20, but towards zero, in January, February, you're going to be harvesting throughout. Yeah, even under those conditions, you know, we generally can harvest throughout. The last few years, the ground here barely freezes. And most of the time now, we can continue to see. and grow crops straight through the winter, whereas, you know, 20, 30 years ago, the ground would be frozen starting after Thanksgiving, and it was either covered in growing things or not. You didn't have the option of just continuously growing, planting new things.

So basically, you know, with the assistance of a low tunnel and, but even open culture, I mean, you could certainly just prep up a bed right now and plant spinach, and it would be ready in the spring you know you can start your basically any any winter hardy crop in the wide open at any time of the winter at this point up here it's it's warmed up in the winter anyway significantly the summers are actually a little cooler but much more humid and you know and basically the what's happened here is the the summer's cooler with more humidity there's too much particulate matter in the atmosphere so it's trapping in all the humidity and moderating the temperatures so it's being moderated so that the summers are cooler the fall is extremely it's we live under a blanket so

the summer's been cooled because we're under a blanket hot temperatures can't penetrate but super humid the fall is very extended because we're under the blanket the winter is temperatures are moderated and it's like consistent like the temperatures are not spiking up and down nearly as much as very consistent temperatures but very moderate like ireland and then the spring is delayed because we're under a blanket and it's more difficult for the sun to penetrate and start to warm up the spring temperatures so that's been the basic uh situation for i don't know eight years 10 years now wow so greens all all year more than ever yeah more than ever some of the upsides of a very sad situation yeah yeah yeah well we'll adjust and survive things

will improve yeah yeah yeah great yeah so there's moss and then you want to see some claytonias those are just coming along yeah yeah Nice. Why would someone grow moss or claytonia or cress if it's not already in their kind of cropped plan? Oh, well, they're delicious, you know, for starters. The, you know, mash is just so good tasting. And claytonia is pretty good tasting too. They are easy to grow. Claytonia is basically a wild plant. You know, it's wild miners lettuce from the Rocky Mountains, I believe. and you know it's capable of just growing itself you know year after year it's self seeds grows in the winter and you know i love cress you know very flavorful you know kind of spicy in the winter

like a watercress except for it grows on land and you know very healthful benefits and you know real winter hardy just give these all give your salad mix like a real complexity you know that you can't find usually when you're getting a mix at the store. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, the flavors are largely due to environmental conditions. So like I was saying, the cold temperatures, just, you know, you can't grow a green in California where there's barely any freezing and achieve nearly the complexity and a flavor of a winter grown green in New England or New Ireland.

And so it's, you know, great flavors. And, of course, you know, our attention to soil quality details because the soil is, results in the flavors. And I often say, you know, when we talk about soil quality and food quality, flavor is one of the primary indicators of well-grown, healthy crop. because the flavor components, things that we identify as flavorful, require a level of metabolic complexity for them to really fully develop. So if the plant had, and this is true of pigments too, enough complexity to develop very appropriate, vibrant pigments and excellent flavor, you get all other characteristics of quality,

which are insect and disease resistance, long storage, and contains all the vitamins and nutrients and antioxidants and things that translate to health in us. It's the same compounds in a plant that give it vitality and lack of insects and disease. Then when we consume it, we get those same qualities of vitality in us. So I often say to a customer that you, the customers walking around with their own quality meter, simply with their taste buds and their

eyes and their ability to identify what's vibrant and flavorful. And when you consume that, you will get the results of that kind of vigor in you. So you don't need fancy inputs and laboratory. You have right on you. And of course, the opposite is true. There's a lot of washed out watery, terrible tasting, you know, taste like nothing, foods out there. And those are all nutrient deficient and not going to bring about vitality. And they're the ones that are loaded with pesticides because they required pesticides that keep insects and diseases from destroying them. So I often say, you know, to a customer, if the, if the fruit or vegetable is really, and it's true of other foods too, but if it really tastes,

excellent even if it was conventionally grown and not necessarily an organic certified crop or something like that if a crop is grown so well that it tastes really good it did not require pesticides so a grower is not likely to apply pesticides I mean sometimes I do but generally you know growers are not going to apply pesticides when they are not required. It takes a lot of effort and money and it's not profitable to apply pesticides. So, you know, and usually a grower that's got that level of quality knows what's going on and is not going to be applying pesticides. So really, you know, certifications, all this kind of thing

aside, I mean, every human is walking around with excellent quality meters capable of really, you know, determining what is what is appropriate for their health rate on them, you know. Yeah. Yeah, for my quality meters, I mean, this place is a wonderland, a tasty wonderland. Well, that's a beautiful way to wrap up because it really gets to the heart of your work, which is so much about investing in your soil as a way to invest in your vegetables and invest in our collective health. Yeah. So thank you for your decades of work, making us healthier and having more delicious things to eat. Ah, that's the life. Ah, yes. Thank you.

Do you want to say anything to sign off? Let's see. Slaan lot, health to you. Slaan lot. Health to you too. Maybe if we're lucky we can insert some music from you. Well, can you tell us what we may be hearing? If we are to hear it, what will we be hearing?

Oh, well, let's see. My daughter plays Irish music with me. her boyfriend and his brother and we like to cover irish songs i don't know which one they're going to play for you maybe more low shore or uh maybe water is wide or something but uh i'm sure they'll play something real appropriate and uh you know that's great to listen to them what's the name of your group oh they're called kinfolk well we're called kinfolk they let me play with them even though i'm the old guy i can't wait to hear it all right thank you Thank you.

I think so. For our outro song today, we'll hear Moorlo Shore by Kinfolk with Clara O'Hara on lead vocals and flute, Raven Bellevaux on lead and backing violin, Sparrow Bellevaux on piano, and Brian O'Hara on guitar. Your hills and tails and florrie. veils that lie near the moorl ashore. Your varns that blow by board and grove, may I never see you more.

Where the primrose blows and the violet grows, Where the trout and salmon play With my line and took Delights I took To spend my youth took To spend my youthful days. Last night I went to see my love and to hear what she might say my love, to hear what she might say. if she'd take pity on me, best I might go away. She said I love an Irish lad, and he was my only joy. And ever since I saw his face,

I have loved that soldier born. Well, perhaps you're such a lot is not a lot is not. Sail it over the sea of May Or perhaps he is gone with some mother lover You may never see him again Well if my Irish blood is lost He's the one night to adore And seven long years I will wait for him by the banks of the mortal shore.

Farewell to sing-less castle grand, Farewell to the folly through Where the linens wave-like bleaching sill and the falling stream run still. Near there I spent my useful days, but I lost the old I go. For cruelty has banished me, far away from the more loud shore.

Thank you so much to Brian O'Hara for taking the time for this lovely interview. And thank you for listening and sharing this episode of Seeds and Their People with your loved ones. Please share this episode with someone you love and subscribe to our show in your favorite podcast app. Thank you also for helping our seed keeping and storytelling work by leaving us a review and also ordering seeds, t-shirts, and more from our website. true loveseeds.com and can you maybe send us a note if you like our episodes? I'd love to hear from you. We'd love to hear from you. It helps us keep it going. And if you'd like to support our podcast for $1 or more monthly, please join our Patreon at patreon.com slash true love seeds. And remember, keeping seeds is an act of true love for our ancestors and our collective future. God bless you.

Thank you.