Seeds And Their People - EP. 41: the Siling Labuyo Pepper Portal from Philly to the Philippines

Episode Date: June 30, 2026

Nicky Uy, Omar Buenaventura, Maria Dumlao, and Bitter Kalli have been coming together over Filipino foods, seeds, and stories for many years now. In this episode, we hear about the ways they weave their connections back to the Philippines and within their networks in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, growing portals to memory, meaning, and each other.  We conducted this interview on January 30th, 2026 at Nicky and Omar's dining room table in South Philly after a delicious dinner featuring many of the ingredients we explore in this conversation. We especially focus on Siling Labuyo, and many other plants and dishes (see below), as well as collaborations with Truelove Seeds such as their art project with the Philadelphia Museum of Art, an exhibition with the Acadamy of Natural Sciences, Bahay215's mobile seed library, and many other ways the four of them share Filipino culture.  Here are their bios:  Bahay215 is a Philadelphia based art collaborative by Nicky Uy and Omar Buenaventura. Inspired by experiences living in Lenapehoking and growing up in the Philippines, their installations include  materials such as plants, bamboo, natural dye and soil and include activities like cooking and seedkeeping. Maria is a visual artist working in combined media, including film, video, animation, sound, photography, & installation.  Her work explores individual and collective history as mediated experience. Her most recent work History in RGB combines images of Filipino history, popular culture, mythic folklore, landscapes, and creatures to propose alternatives to the systemic representations ordered by colonial narratives. Born in the Philippines, Maria immigrated to the US with her family at age 13. She received a BA in Studio Art & Art History from Rutgers College and an MFA in Studio Art at Hunter College-CUNY. Maria's work has been exhibited, screened and performed in the US and internationally. Maria teaches art at Bucks County Community College in Pennsylvania. Bitter Kalli is a writer and landworker born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. They work across mediums including soil, seeds, and printed matter. Bitter is the founder of Star Apple Nursery, a project focused on increasing access to African and Asian diaspora heritage crops. They are also the author of the essay collection Mounted: On Horses, Blackness, and Liberation. Bitter is based in Philadelphia. SEED STORIES:  Siling Labuyo Tamarind Ampalaya (Bitter Melon) Gabi (Taro) San Francisco (Croton) Calamansi Malunggay (Moringa) Sawsawan (Filipino Dipping Sauce) LINKS: Bahay215 facebook and instagram Star Apple Nursery instagram Bitter Kalli linktree, website, and instagram Mounted: On Horses, Blackness, and Liberation Maria Dumlao linktree, website, and instagram 'A tiny Filipino chili pepper takes root in Philadelphia', in the Philly Inquirer, by Juliana Feliciano READ HERE Support Mindanao's first seed bank Ancient Salt Rock in the Philippines (Tultul in Guimaras) Philadelphia Museum of Art / Community Spotlight - Siling Labuyo Academy of Natural Sciences / Heirloom Plants: Ancestral Seeds in Philadelphia Bitter and Nicky's Ancestral Seeds workshop VietLead   THIS EPISODE SUPPORTED BY: YOU! Please become a Patron for $1 or more a month at Patreon.com/trueloveseeds Scribe Video Center and WPEB, West Philly Community Radio 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  

I was just whacking it normal. Welcome to Seeds and their people. I'm Chris Bowden-Nusom, farmer and co-director of Sankofa Community Farm at Bartram's Garden in sunny southwest Philadelphia. And I'm Owen Taylor, seedkeeper and farmer at True Love Seeds. We're a seed company offering ancestral seeds grown by farmers who present. their beloved tastes of home for their diasporas and beyond through keeping seeds and their stories and community.

This podcast is supported by True Love Seeds and by our listeners. Thank you so much to our Patreon members who support this podcast for as little as $1 a month. You too could sign up at patreon.com slash true love seeds. So this episode is with our friends Nikki, Omar, Maria, and Bitter. And we will be focusing on Filipino food with a particular interest in the sealing libullo pepper, the wild Filipino chili pepper, and many other foods as well. I actually recorded this interview and parked my car on a bank of deep snow to walk to Nikki and Omar's house in South Philly. And here we are recording the introduction in late June in 80 degree.

humid weather. But we're doing it. The episode is getting out to the people. And we're going to take a moment to tell you a little bit about these folks that we're interviewing. Baha 215 is a Philadelphia-based art collaborative by Nikki Ui and Omar Buena Ventura. Inspired by experiences living in Lenape Hoking and growing up in the Philippines, their installations include materials such as plants, bamboo, natural dye and soil and include activities like cooking and seed keeping. Maria is visual artists working in combined media, including film, video, animation, sound, photography, and installation. Her work explores individual and collective history as mediated experience. Her most recent work, history in RGB, combines images of Filipino history, popular culture,

mythic folklore, landscapes, and creatures to propose alternative to the systemic representations ordered by colonial narratives. Born in the Philippines, Maria immigrated to the U.S. with her family at the age of 13. Maria's work has been exhibited, screened, and performed in the U.S. and international. Maria teaches art at Bucks County Community College in Pennsylvania. Bitterkali is a writer and land worker born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. They work across mediums, including soil, seeds, and printed matter. Bitter is the founder of Star Apple Nursery, a project focused on increasing access to African and Asian diaspora heritage crops. They are also the author of the essay collection, mounted on horses, blackness, and liberation. Bitter is based in Philadelphia.

All right, well, we're going to get into this episode, but as usual, we're going to make a little space for some reflection. The Celine LeBuyo Pepper probably first came on my radar in terms of use. I know that we sell it, you know, and it's in the catalog. It has been now for a bit. But in terms of it being used was through one of our former farm apprentices, Layla Lindsay. And Layla, who is of Filipino heritage descent, she's an Afro. Filipino,

raised African-American, but she, in some of her efforts, you know, in Sankofa Farm, we encourage people to explore their own cultural narratives,

even those that have been lost or forgotten or whatever. And so, you know, she embarked on that journey with the saline LeBuyo Pepper and her connecting with it and using it in dishes

and letting us try things that contain that pepper. And to see the emotion that it brought for her to reconnect with that small piece of her story was really powerful for me. So to see the Celine Lubuyo pepper hyped up, you know, and hear people go into detail about it,

I think it was really beautiful. And I hope introduce people to it. And it's a staple around our house. It's such a wonderful pepper. I don't know if it's considered a bird pepper, that class of peppers that sort of grow with their tips upright. But, you know, I keep it around the house. And as a dry pepper, it dries very quickly.

It's great to throw in any dish that. needs pepper real quick. I also really appreciated bidders engaging the connection between African diasporic and Asian diasporic foods specifically talking about, you know, those commonalities, Filipino and African. I'm always excited to have any conversation about the Colombian exchange. I think in the talk, you all refer to as the Transatlantic Exchange, but however we call it, sort of that that history of how the food and cultures and people moved and shaped our stories now, I think was really insightful. And more people need to know about the Colombian Exchange and the monsoon exchange, which I think

was also named and talked about, you know, because a lot of us don't know that. It made me think a lot about how, at least in Philadelphia and y'all can, or listening in other places, can maybe look into this to see if it's true in your communities as well. many of the African stores and Caribbean stores are run by Asians. And vice versa, I think there are some African stores also do to carry a lot of Asian products. And I've often thought about that when I go to shop at African and Caribbean stores. You know, I see folks engaging with these shared crops. I don't know how much we know, though, that we have a shared history through them.

So, yeah, all of that was really powerful. Can you say a little bit about the research that you and our research, sister Londen did in the past and stories you told about the monsoon exchange. Yeah. Our sister, land, a sister farmer Lon Dean, Vietnamese farmer and justice worker here in Philadelphia. She and I, for years, put together a presentation based on research from our shared experience around foods that our coaches had in common. And it all really sprang, I think, from a dinner.

way back when, I don't know, now 15 years ago, who knows? I don't know, maybe that's too far back with, at least 12 years ago, right, in our house in southwest Philadelphia in which we, you know, eating black eyed peas, sort of both recognize that we had a claim to us, you know, and had sort of this, you know, wait, that's my traditional food. You know, no, wait, that's my traditional food. And we talked about how neither one of us knew that the other culture held that same P and such a theme.

And so it sparked sort of this, you know, fire of interest and passion for us to see how deep this connection that we had noticed at our kitchen table and my kitchen table, how deep that connection went. And so we explored and did a lot of a study around the monsoon exchange, which refers to sort of the climactic weather patterns that happened for hundreds, if not thousands of years in the area of the Indian Ocean. right now in the Eritrean Sea in which you would have winds that would blow so perfectly and so consistently that they could be timed almost down to the day by sailors. And that in one part of the season, you know, I believe that in autumn, the winds were blowing favorable to carry one from the east coast of Africa to the subcontinent of Asia.

And then, of course, you know, later on, the winds would reverse carrying people back to Africa. And that pattern, that weather pattern ended kind of abruptly in the 1400s. But having gone on for so long, there was this deep history of exchange of people, of stories, of culture, food, faith that has marked, I think, both Africa and Asia and, you know, our respective diasporas, in powerful ways. that we almost, that most of us do not recognize and do not know that we share. And so, you know, it's always interesting to see, like I see in modern contexts, especially in urban contexts where Africans and Asians, you know, African descent and Asian descent people in the U.S. live together and work together and share things.

And so, yeah, so Lina and I came up with a whole sort of a then and now sort of presentation that talked about this monsoon exchange and its implications for our work as food sovereignty workers. Yeah, that's London of Viet Leed. Viet Leed gets a lot of mentions in this episode, as well as Tautran, who works there as well. So it's also an example of how, you know, we're seeing these food connections across continents, but also within continents and across different cultures within Asia, for example, Vietnamese to Filipino. And so as usual, we love that kind of unearthing and sharing those types of connections

with the listeners to see where there are crossover foods and where how people can learn with and from each other. Yeah, let's get to the episode. We were sitting around Nikki and Omar's table. which is where they've hosted many meals, specifically focused on Filipino food, as you'll hear in this episode. And we started recording right after this amazing meal,

which you'll hear about as well. And so we're in the room with the five of us and a very vocal bird, as you'll hear. One of my favorite parts of this episode is when we actually sing a song, or not we, but they sing a song, and the bird sings along. as well. So stay tuned for that and enjoy the episode. And thank you so much, again, to all of our

recent Patreon members. Your support really helps us make this podcast happen. So thank you and enjoy the episode. Okay, here we are. We're going. It's been a few years in kind of dreaming this up and it's happening now. And I'm so happy to be in the room with the four of you and your bird. and all the delicious food we've eaten and are still eating right now. And I wanted to start this episode by asking each of you to briefly say who you are and your kind of relationship to seeds and culture and each other. Like what brings us all in the room together today? And I'll start over here with Omar.

Hi, my name is Omar, one of Ventura. I was born and raised in the Philippines, so when I was, in, I guess, kindergarten, we were, like, growing this, Selina Buya. That's how long I've been trying to, like, grow this guy, so. Hi, my name is Nikki Uli, and I have a lot of memories about gardening, even as a child in the Philippines. And then when I was a young adult, I also garden a lot in New Jersey. But I would say I didn't really get into growing Filipino crops

until maybe the last five years or so. And that's been really wonderful to do that and to learn about seed keeping as well. Hi, my name is Maria Dumlau. I am also born in the Philippines. Growing up there, I took for granted the food that I grew up with, including the plants that grew around me.

In fact, my grandmother had, one of my grandmothers had a farm in her front yard, and this was in Kaysan City, which is an urban city, and I also grew up in an urban city. And she came from a province, Nova Vizcaya. And I always just watched her, but I didn't really pay attention to anything that she was doing. I wasn't in touch with the farming or the food that I was consuming. It wasn't until I moved to the U.S. and 20-something years later, luckily I met these beautiful people around me who taught me a lot and they've been my great

teachers in getting me in touch with the seeds and their relationship to seeds and how that's actually I'm part of this story as well so I embrace that and now I've only been also growing some Filipino plants recently only about two years I would say so that's my relationship Hi, my name is Bitter Colley. I am a writer and land worker originally from Brooklyn, New York. And I grew up gardening and being involved in youth urban agriculture projects. And then for a while, I was pretty disconnected from working with plants and the land. And about five years ago, I learned about true love seeds and became interested in seed saving and connecting to my own and natural crops. And after I moved to Philly, I participated in a seedkeeping fellowship with Amira Mitchell, which is how I met most of the people in this room. And that kind of started me on a journey of farming and seed saving. I started my own operation called Star Apple Farm and Nursery, which is focused on increasing access to African and Asian diaspora crops.

And in all of my work, whether it's educational writing or with the land, I am committed to telling stories about migration and culture and food and also supporting other people in telling their stories as well. Nice. Thank you all. And to get a little more of a sense of each of you in your relationship to food, I'd love to know a plant relative, let's say, that opens a point. portal for you to kind of memory, belonging, place. That's a piece of your culture that you feel very connected to, or just that brings you very good memories and feelings that you could share. Maybe we'll go the other way this time. A plant that is a portal for me is the Tamarind plant. A lot of my work focuses on the connections between African and Asian diasporic crops. and this is one plant that shows up in both of those cuisines. I grew up eating candied tamarind from the Caribbean grocery in Brooklyn.

It's also used as a souring agent in Senegalong and other Filipino dishes. And I just associate it with childhood with, yeah, like sweet memories. I love tamarin juice. It's just a plant that I still engage with today. Yeah, they're delicious. I mean, I'm glad that they're also available now. in supermarkets all over the sweet ones so they're nice snacks but so my answer is I picked Ampalaya or a bitter melon because when I was younger I actually did not like it

because it was so bitter and it was always around and I actually was unhappy every time it was on the dinner table but it was something that my my father really liked he's Ilochano and he that was one of the things that brought so much delight for him to have that on the table, but then as a child, I really did not like it. But it wasn't until recently that I got back to trying it again because I never saw it around. And now it's, I see it in different markets now. Apparently, my friends here have grown it. So I can actually get it from a fresh harvest. And now I've learned to actually really appreciate it and know how to cook it. It turned around how I see a lot of Filipino foods, actually.

So that is a beginning point for me. And now I feel like I need to do that with other foods that I may not have liked when I was younger. A plant that's a portal for me is the Gabby plant. Omar and I started this pandemic project by 215, kind of intermingling art and agriculture. But we really didn't have any Filipino seeds. So we had been buying our plants from, I think a lot of Filipinos do this when they moved to a new area. We'd been getting our plants from the Halbin Plaza, from some Vietnamese growers there, some nurseries in New Jersey, things that kind of like reminded us of our own plants, but weren't really our own plants. In fact, I remember being at Rulov seeds with Amira, and she said something like, but Nikki, you need your own stories and your own seeds.

And I was like, we do, you know. So when we started this project, I was talking to my friend Alice about it. And Alice's mom is really talented. She was a very well-known Chinatown chef. And not only was she a good cook, but she was an excellent gardener. And she spent most of her life trying to grow a garden that is similar to the one that she grew up with in this place. That was China until the year her mom was born, and then it became Vietnam. So she's on that border.

And she's a wide network of relatives in America, and they all grow different things from their childhood village that they sent to each other. And one of the things that she's growing is Gabby, and they grow it with these really long stems because in her culture, her mom pickles the stems, and they make a soup with it throughout the year. And we used the leaves.

So the mom used to pickle the stamps and then give us the leaves, and we get a big bunch of, we'd make laing with it. When she heard that we were starting this project, Alice got some of the Gabby starts from our mom to give to me and Omar. And that's really, I think, one of the first Filipino crops that we grew here. It's not exactly like the ones back home. Like, it's less itchy, actually. It's nice to work or nice to cook with. And now we actually really look forward to the laing that we make here that's made with the big stems, which you can't find back home because

It's what you learn to make with what we have here. So anyway, it was a real portal for me because it reminded me of the Gabby plants that used to grow by the creek behind my grandma's house. A lot of people were asking me if it was itchy to work with because a lot of the Gabby back home is itchy. And for some reason, the one from Alice's mom's garden is not. And so I learned also a lot of different, like folklore around why guys. Gabby's itchy. But also, I think most importantly, it made me realize that there were so many other diasporic cultures here in Philadelphia and that our experiences could overlap through the plants and the food that we were eating. And so it's been a really great kind of thing to share in common

with Alice and other people in the city. Can you remember anything you learned about why Gabi is itchy? Yes. Well, the truth is that it has the sign of compound that you have to cook for about half an hour otherwise it feels kind of like fiberglass in your throat but they would come up with all kinds of folklore things like like maybe if you were a gossip you know that's why your lying was itchy like ways to kind of silence you know the people cooking it the women so that kind of thing like it was pretty funny is it my opinion or the consumer that it's it's a cook so probably

Probably the consumer was like, you know, a manly type. There's a lot of stories about how people during wartime had to hide in the caves and stuff, and then they would come out like at night or when they could to gather food. And that Gabby is one of the food, wartime foods that sustain them because it's a colonizing. It's indigenous of the Philippines, but it's a colonizing plant. And so it's one of the food sources that they would be able to find. So. So I actually got two.

I mean, I grew up in Makati, which is like a city. I lived with my grandparents. So my grandma had a lot of plants and a lot of animals. We actually had like we're in the city, but we had ducks. We had chickens. And then we had like coconut tree in the back. We have a star apple in the front. And a lot of this ornamental plant, we call it Santosh.

Francisco, but over here you call it croton. It's like a very colorful plant. Yeah, my grandma was just like growing it. I think from cuttings and he's just like spreading it. So it's like it was everywhere. I don't have that here. That's probably the next plant I'm going to buy. The other plant that I, you know, reminds me of home is also the calamansi,

which is also called calamondine over here. I remember growing up, like after I play outside with my friends, I would ask my grandma to make me a calamansi juice, which is just water and a bunch of, you know, this tiny little citrus calamansi and some sugar. And that's like very refreshing. It's so hot in the Philippines and drinking that, like you're ready to come out again and go play again. So those are the two. Thank you. That reminds me that we just ate some delicious food that we should talk about, too, just to give an example of what you might serve at a gathering like this.

And so could you talk about some of the ingredients that you included that you feel are important to speak about? Like a lot of Filipino cooking is actually very simple. It's just basically salt, pepper, garlic, and onions. Like it's like really very basic. You don't need a lot of things. Like when I make a fish, it's basically just salt. You just like salt it, put it on the grill. And you let the fish be highlight itself.

It's like you don't need anything because the fish is delicious when it's fresh. And we're really lucky. We were able to get Pompano. Yeah, yeah. So today we had Pompano, a grilled Pompano. And Nikki made some condiments for it. We can talk about the condiments. I like eating pompanie here because I also eat it in Manila at my mom's house.

So it makes me happy that we can find it here at 11th and Washington. Omar used salt that we got from Ilocos when we were back home. And then I also made, well, we put little dishes out so folks could make their own sausuan if they wanted to. So in mine, I put Kalamansi that was grown by. Leah Panda's mom in California. So we got some of those calamansi from her. And I put a little bit of sealing labuyo that Owen brought from us that was grown at Trulof Seeds Farm. I put a little bit of to yo, which is soy sauce to make a toyo. So that's soy sauce with calamansi. That was my sausanne to go with our fish today. I also baked the dessert that has cassava, it's a cassava cake with buco strips in it,

was young coconut and then I made a coconut cream dulce de lece to go on top. That's what we're eating for dessert. So good. And then we also used this pepper sauce that you made for an exhibition we were all a part of. Can you describe that? Yeah. Omar and I made this sousa and you can see in this picture here that Owen brought how white the coconut vinegar was before all these ingredients kind of marinated in it. And to make this south sound, every home makes their own.

But this one has ground pepper corns, smashed garlic, and sealing libullio. Awesome. I guess I want to ask, before we jump further into sealing libulli, which is really where we'll stay for a while, if you can describe a little more about your group, Bahay-215, and why you formed and what it looked like, what kind of things you do together and did together in the beginning, just to give a little sense of that work. Well, one of the first things that by 215 did was build a planter outside the Asian Arts Initiative. That's actually, I think, the first time we met you because we had ordered some seeds from Owen that were reminiscent of the Philippines, but not really.

I remember asking about Kalilu, because I was thinking we could use the Kalilu or Amaran, because we were thinking. we could use that to make lying because we hadn't like figured out how to grow gabby yet. That year we put some kankong in that's water spinach and I think there were some maryngas seeds in there. By that time Alice had given us some gabi. We had given us some saluyot. Well look here, our jute, but we call it saluyut. So we were learning, you know, as we were going as well. we just found it like a really good way to connect back home and back to the culture and it's just something that you know when we've had the opportunity to do it it's been nice to share with other Filipino people in Philadelphia I really like that box because it was outside of Asian arts initiative for years and it changed quite a bit because it was it survived the winter and some of it came back and then you were coming back and replanting some things or just cleaning it up up and it had this presence outside of AIA that I really loved that every time I went there,

it's like I would visit this friend that I was like, oh yeah, these are friends and of Nikki and Omers taking care of them and they're here and I would pick up some of the stuff that people left on it. Like people would put the garbage, but it was also, wasn't it also available to other people to harvest some of the fruit? I think you offered that, which I thought was really great. Yeah, there was. somebody Filipino working at AAI that year, Rodney. And so it was really nice to hear from him. We grew Ampalaya, Bittermelon.

So he would, it would like greet him and stuff. And also, I forgot about this, because a while ago now, but Omar took apart a few silophones, I think like seven or eight, right? So that you could play this very iconic Filipino song. Maybe Maria will sing it first. Or are my singing? Or the listeners can look it up. It's called Bahai Kubo.

I'll sing it if you guys sing it. And it lists like 17 vegetables, 17 or 18. Which, you know, before when I moved here, they sounded so exotic, but you can, you know, from so far away. But actually, if you break it down, a lot of the vegetables in that song are in your catalog, Owen. And it means that it's like you can grow it here. So things like sesame, you know. It's a good way to learn about the vegetables too because it does list all these vegetables.

And some of them I actually didn't even know what they look like or if I've ever had them, but I'm pretty sure I had them. But yeah, it's like learning the alphabet. If you know that song, you would know so many different kinds of vegetables from the Philippines. It is like learning the alphabet. A lot of people, even if they don't speak fluently, they'll like remember that their mom. Like Rodney was saying he remembers that song because his mom sings it to his kid. We have to hear this. We can't talk this much about the song and not hear it.

The problem is I actually don't know the list of vegetables. I only know the very big idea of it. We can sing the beginning. Okay. I'm just going to say like the beginning part is Bahai Kubo Kyi, Munti, the halaman do on is sari-sari. And it means a small hut, right? Bahia, a home, a hut, even though it's small,

the plants around it. are so varied or is that a good way to I mean it's a lot more poetic than that but it's like the halamand do on the plants that grow around it are sari sari it's such a great word but I don't know how to it's just so diverse maybe or I don't know it's like trying to say that the house is very you know small and humble but it has this like wide variety of vegetables around it yeah yeah Bahai, cubo, Cahit munti The alamand doon

Is sari-sari Singkamas and talong Sigurilias and mani Sitao-bataw-patanin Kundol, Patola Upot canabasa And so thereon Labanos Mustasa

Sibuya as Camatis Bawang and Lua'uia In the Aligid, Ligid There are many lingua I think that's it I think Bing Bing was singing along

So lina is sesame Yeah Yeah And I heard The long bean. Yeah, long beans. Kalabata. Yeah.

It's the first one they said sincamas, that's hikama. Oh yeah. So. Oh, Kalabasa the squash? Yeah. Yeah. And the Sigurias is really pretty. I've seen it here.

What's Sigourius? It's the- It's the wing bean. Yeah, the wing beans. And they mentioned upo. That's the Italian Ku-cote. Upo.

Bottle. Wow. Upo. Okay, that was perfect. We got an introduction to so much in that song. Thank you. Well, let's introduce people to the sealing labuyo pepper. Well, I had been volunteering with Owen, a true love seeds, and there was going to be a seed swap at Asian Arts Initiative. Owen let me know that bitter had been looking for sealing laboyo seeds online, and maybe the germination rate wasn't turning out. And I said, well, I have some seeds that my mom gave to me, but they're from a while ago.

I hadn't been growing the plant outside. I'd been growing it like in a candy jar on my windowsill. So the peppers had been getting smaller and smaller. So I offered them the bitter, but honestly, I wasn't sure how the germination rate was going to be. Yeah, that was pretty soon after I moved to Philly. And I participated in a seedkeeping fellowship at Greensgrove Farm that was led by the seedkeeper Amira Mitchell. And I really wanted to grow both Jamaican and Filipino seeds as a way to connect to my heritage. I was growing the chocolate Scotch Bonnet, which is a very spicy variety of an already spicy Jamaican pepper. And I was looking for sealing labuyo seeds, and it was pretty

hard to find, like, verified genuine sealing labuyo. They're often substituted for other small red hot peppers. And my friend, Dacia, had told me about Nikki and Omar and how they were growing Filipino plants. And I met them, I think that fall or winter, and got some seeds from Nikki, and I started growing the pepper in the Lehigh Valley the next season, which is pretty cold relative to Philly and was not an ideal growing environment, but they still did pretty well. And that was the first summer that I was growing them for seed. And I've kept growing them every season since then. Well, the Siling Labuya is a very integral part of our seasoning in the Philippines.

Like some people can't eat without having Siling Labuya mixed with their sauces. So, like, it's like for dipping sauce when you eat it, it makes you want to eat more, and it makes you want to eat more rice, more, you know, it's like, it's like MSG. Yeah, one more saying it's Pangana, which kind of gives you appetite, and, you know, sealing libuyo definitely does that, gets kind of gets you salivating and stuff. But, you know, sealing libuyo is part of. like a number of different things that make up condiments in the Philippines.

And condiments are like so important to Filipino food. I like the way during Gamboa Fernandez, she writes about how the condiments are kind of a collaborative effort between the chef and the eater, because the chef kind of allows you to doctor it up the way you want to eat it. You know, it's not like an insults considered like something you do together. I love the design that Maria made for the seed packet because I think it captures how sealing the buyo is eaten so many different ways at the table. Like some people, before they even put food on their plate, they're making their bowl of sowsawan to get ready, you know, like with their soy sauce sauce or calamansi or sili so that, you know, when they get the food in the plate, they're ready.

They can, like, put it on their fish or their rice. condiments are really important. And so I feel like the sealing laboyo is kind of iconic because you can see it like on a salsawan bowl. It's usually smaller than the one I use today. You know, you cut it into rounds. You can already tell that it's like your sasuan is ready. You know, we're almost ready for food.

The siling labuyo in the Philippines, it literally translates to wild chili. And it really is a wild plant, or at least back in the day, you can see it growing as a little shrub on the side of the road, and you see it everywhere, and they just grow. I don't know if that's a case anymore, but I love that it's called wild chili.

It sounds so poetic, and it's so cute and powerful and mighty, and it's so beautiful. It almost looks like Christmas, but it actually has this huge punch for such a little cute thing. Have you seen it growing wild recently? How has sealing Lablio kind of changed? in the Philippines over the years. Well, Omer and I grew up in the city.

So I don't know that we would... It's not true, though, that we wouldn't see it in the wild. Like, actually, what tends to happen is, you know, like the birds eat it. So, for instance, at my mom's house, they have to buy the sealing laboyo because the birds are always eating it first, to be honest. And then the birds kind of gift you

with a sealing laboyo in your garden. But I think it's getting more. more rare because there's less and less green spaces in the Philippines. But I have been trying to take pictures of sailing labrillo, like when I see them in the city or in people's gardens and stuff like that. So Juliana, who wrote about sealing laboyo here in Philly. She lives in Manila now, and her dad has planted like a row of sealing labuyos. I took a picture of those.

But I would love to see one, like, you know, up in the hills or something like that. You know, sealing labuyo is a weed. You know, it's like it, it, or I mean, it's difficult what is a weed really, but I mean, it grows very easily in the Philippines and also here, like given space, you know, enough space. And each, even though the peppers I was growing had become smaller and smaller, each, each pepper still has so many seeds in there. And so, um, even though I probably would. wasn't growing it in the best way possible, it still grew for me. Even when I had it in a candy jar that didn't have any drainage, it seemed to do okay. And actually, I think it liked the humidity in there. Omar's also spent a lot of time with the ceiling of buyo.

Yeah, I mean, I've been planting it in our backyard, and it's very easy to grow, actually. It's just like, you know, just put a bunch of seeds around and they'll just grow because like Nikki said, it's a weed, it's a wild chili. I mean, they grow really nice and big and then you get a lot of little chilies. The sad part is when they, you know, when it's winter, you'd lose them. I wish you can have it like all year round. I try to like keep it indoors to, you know, to have them all year round. but unfortunately, you know, with our weather, it's really, really, really difficult to do that. But so every year we just plant it and we always have one.

It's been really interesting to grow a lot of different tropical crops in the Northeast and see the ways that they adapt to this climate, although this climate is also changing and getting warmer because of climate crisis. I think that Philly's gardening zone has actually changed in the past few years. But yeah, sealing Labuio has always been pretty easy to germinate. Like I mentioned, I grew it outside of the city the first season, and it was pretty prolific. And then last year and the year before, I grew it at the former Greens Grove Farm site. and they also did really well.

It's been interesting seeing the ways that they grow each season and seeing how that sometimes changes, talking with Nikki about how the sealing libbyo in the Philippines looks, and yeah, just thinking about what it means to save seeds, like how much we want to keep the characteristics the same versus letting the plant adapt to its new environment. And they are very resilient plants. Like I had two rows this year.

One of them, all of the plants grew pretty big. One of them I transplanted a little bit later, and they were fairly small, but all of them still produced ripe peppers with mature seeds. Yeah. Yeah, we grow them each year now, too, thanks to you both. and last year the last couple years the plants are so tiny but like I think with hundreds of fruits per plant like it's an incredible amount of fruits and absolutely delicious so it's such a

cool plant but anyway I think I'm interrupting I would love to hear the rest of the story of your connection to this plant how how it's taken shape so whoever would like to go next project with the Museum of Art, right? And then we put you in touch with Maria because we had long admired her work and we love working with her. Yes, so the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which I drove past on the way here, contacted me about a project. And we had done this awesome collaboration with an artist with our African Diaspora Collection who illustrated four and then eventually another one, five packets from our African Diaspora collection

for the Oakland Museum of Arts Afro Futurist Exhibition. And so when the Philadelphia Museum of Art approached us, it was like, oh, this is an opportunity to do that, but locally with the awesome people that we work with in Philadelphia who work with cultural seeds. And so, of course, Baha 215, was one of the groups that we reached out to, and then they connected with both of you.

So that was a really great opportunity to be working once again with both Omar and Nikki and also to meet Bitter in this process. Well, first of all, I met Nikki and Omar through a potluck group that we have here in Philly, and I clicked with them really well. So this is just a rewind because we were, as soon as we met,

couldn't stop talking about food and how we adapt different recipes, Filipino recipes, to what is available around us. So I got a lot of recipes and ideas on how to experiment with food and to bring in or to keep cooking and trying Filipino recipes that I was researching and failing miserably. Anyway, so we became friends through that. So this was another opportunity to continue having this conversation. I think it was in this same table that we talked about the Siling Libuya and we had a spread here in the table with the different iterations of the Sile and some of them were refreshed, the actual plant was here, some of them were chopped up small or we did chop them up, we had food. Deja was here also. We were actually eating them and doing our own

sowsawan here and then we were even experimenting with chocolate. I don't know if you remember this. We were trying it on everything. something sweet that you took out also that I was sprinkling some of the Siling Labuyo on something sweet and then on the chocolate and we were tasting it. So we had this really fun, you know, experimentation and while we're talking about food, I really enjoyed the stories that were told by Nikki and bitter and also with Dacia and how they grew up with this, with the Siling Labuyo. And I think for me at that time, I was just an observer, and I was really excited to have the opportunity to tell the story that I was hearing back from all of them and their own experience. So with those stories, I envisioned a collage of the stories, like some kind of a commonality that we have at the same time, including the individual experiences we had with the food or feasting together.

and also somehow recreate the feast we had in the conversation we had at this table. So on the poster, I had bidder's hand as the farmer holding the ceiling, La Buyo. So that's actually a photograph on the foreground of the image. And in the background is a feast of Filipino food, different kinds of food, something that you see in a lot of Filipino feasts, that there's different kinds of food that are people brought. in and it's just all shared in big plates. And all around it are the different sowsawa and the different sealing labuyo dipping sauce

that are individually catered to the individuals. And I added the hands all around it that shows the diverse Filipino, I guess, tones. I wanted to show the presence of the different kinds of Filipinos that are participating in this feast. So a lot of the food here are actual real meals that I constructed based on real dishes. And on the top of the table, I wanted to have a child or a young person to be on the head of the table, to be eating the way. You see a lot of Filipino kids eat this way where they shove this big spoonful of food with rice and they just like shove that whole thing in their mouth and it just goes away.

And so I had my son model that part. You can see the fried fish there. Oh yeah, that's a Pampano right there. That's exactly what we were eating. Yeah, and the Sausawan. Look, there's Owen Sao-Sawan. See? The materials I use here are actually all from fab scrap,

but used to be in Philly, where they process a lot of fabric from different businesses, and they sort them out to see if they are, recyclable or how sustainable a business is depending on the materials that they use and they recycle. So I volunteered there to sort out the different fabrics and I got tons of fabric from them and I use that as a material for this collage that I also embroidered. I remember that lunch we had with Deja because I had this like running theory that you could like invoke memories through like condiments, that little salsawan bowl with the Labuio, you know. And I remember that Deja was

suddenly, like, at our meal was like, I remember that my grandma had a hedge of these little peppers. And so I like love that. Yeah, in Texas. They just like great grandma had come from the Philippines. Yeah. I think that's what I was trying to invoke how just us sitting here or eating food, there's everyone the individuals have their own memories and I love that Deja remembered it this story from childhood that I don't know if they would have remembered that story but it wasn't until we were sitting all here and all of a sudden they just like oh I remember these shrubs that my grandma had in Texas and I was like what you know and it was it was amazing you know he had like known Deja for a while so it was like really nice yeah it was really nice also like

after growing these peppers kind of in a solitary way to come together with people and see them on the table and see how they function in a social setting. Because I think the point of growing food is to bring people together and to bring them from the soil to people's plates and into people's gatherings. So that was really fun just to take a more collective and like experimental approach to tasting these peppers and talking about them. And so ultimately, this project kind of our concluding event was at a community garden at Edie Brown's Garden, North Square, Neighborhood Project at Lavia Africana Colabo.

So there were, I think, four groups that all presented their art together. Each group had selected an artist from within their community. and I'm curious what that experience was like for you, clearly very meaningful within your group, but then what kind of came from kind of having this parallel experience with these other few groups? So I really enjoyed the meeting that we had when we were first introduced to each other. I feel like Tao and I talked a little bit in the beginning, and we were working parallel somewhat, so I remember she was sharing. some of her thoughts and I was sharing some of my thoughts and she was more she was ahead of the

project so she was really inspiring me to just keep going forward and working on this project. She's an activist and an artist as well so I feel like we had another connection that we're not actively in touch but I can reach out any time and I see what she does outside of this project. So that's a really, really nice connection I had with her. Yeah, I remember that initial meeting, just like meeting everyone, sharing food together. And yeah, it was great connecting with Tao also. Like, I've become really good friends with them. And it was really exciting seeing everyone's ideas for how to visually interpret these plants that were so important to them.

And then to see it presented and see the final products at the garden. Nice. And then the next year we had this other opportunity with the Academy of Natural Sciences where they were interested in coming to collect specimens for the herbarium. And I'm wondering if Nikki and Omar, if you could share which specimens you chose to collect from your backyard garden and anything that you want to share about that project. One of the plants that they collected was one that Omar mentioned, the Kalamansi. And I think we definitely did the Gabi and maybe Malungay. And then we ended up pressing and presenting on the ceiling Labuyo.

We had a really interesting conversation that included Chris and you, where we had talked about how, in addition to collecting specimens, we didn't want to be like specimens for the Academy of Science. And so we very much wanted the exhibit to reflect like the living people who are kind of using the plants and and stuff like that. So I think the even though the exhibit included things that the academy usually includes, like specimens was really interesting to see that. They also had current things like recipes and sausalan, things that are in current use. Right. The sausanne that we just used here is the one from the, exhibition case. Yeah, so we we found ways to make the specimens which are dried plant

material come alive through living culture. And I think there were a lot of videos too which were nice, right? I seem to remember that. There's other ways that you share Filipino food culture and one of them is Nikki and Bitter, you offer workshops. So I'm wondering if you can share a little bit about what you're doing with that and what your hopes are for those workshops. Yeah, so far we have taught at the UPenn Asian American Studies Symposium. We've also taught at the free library and on site at the former Greensgrove farm site through my project, Star Apple Nursery. And these workshops bring together writing, storytelling, and seed saving. And for me, as a writer and a farmer, my goal is just to encourage people

to use story as a way to connect to their own family heritages of displacement, of colonialism, and to think deeply about their current and future relationships to the landscapes that have shaped them. And it's been really beautiful to develop the workshop together, to have different prompts over time, and also to lead the workshop in a way that is responsive, to the conditions of our world.

This past year, we led a workshop where we read a poem by the writer and Tizakyu Shange, and we also read a poem by the Palestinian poet Fawaz Turkey about seeds. And I think that our conversation was definitely shaped by the fact of the ongoing genocide in Palestine and the ways that people were also bringing their own histories of, yeah, like, violence and displacement and talking about that and how that had affected their relationships to food and to plants. It's been a really nice experience doing these workshops with Bitter and hearing the different participants' answers. when we always ask them, like, what, if they're thinking of connecting to a particular plant or if they have in the past. And we also usually bring the seed library that Omar built, and then the participants after they do a journaling session with Bitterer are invited to get some seeds for, like, their future growing projects and stuff.

But maybe you want to talk a little bit about the seed library? Yeah, the seed library. We had that for how many years now? Like five years? It's inspired by the old Filipino copy's windows. So he has the copy shells on the side. And the wood was from an old water tower from Asian Arts Initiative. The legs is the sewing machine legs,

which is a very common thing that you see in the Philippines, the sawing machine with the metal base. And Owen usually gives us a lot of seeds to give away. In the past, Owen's helped of stock it with seeds of vegetables that are common to the Filipino diaspora. But also for one of our other art projects, We were able to collaborate with Vietli, and they were really nice about selecting seeds that they knew overlap between Filipino and Vietnamese culture. So we had some hyacinth bean seeds in there, which we called Batau. It's in that song.

We had the Saloyut seeds, the jute seeds in there, and bitter melon seeds, and definitely the upa seeds. Those are the bottle-gored ones. So that was kind of fun to have them kind of include those in there. In case people didn't catch the double meaning of sewing machine, I want to make sure that we speak it out loud. Was this intentional? Oh, the sewing machine. Ah, yeah.

What did we say? He said sewing seeds, sewing stories. I think people really enjoy interacting with it and being able to look for some heritage seeds. So and also just hearing how you, you know, how you incorporated other Filipino things into it, like the capis and like memories of your grandma with the sewing machine legs. Can you explain what capis is? Yeah, capis is, it's a shellfish that's endemic to the Philippines. Windopain oyster. The traditional Filipino windows, we didn't have, you know, glass readily available.

so capice is like easier to get back then so a lot of um the like my grandparents house had um those windows um they're very resilient um i mean um it went i remember it going through storm and everything and it was still fine nowadays you don't see them much you see them in museums and um you see them like on like really, really old houses. They're like traditional window paints on historic homes that are typhoon-proof but let a little bit of light through it. And one of our projects, Omar built some capi screens to kind of like as a throwback to his grandparents.

And then we were also able to bring back windowpane oysters, like uncleaned ones. So you could see, it looks like it had like barnacles on it. So you could see that it actually came from a living thing. I read somewhere that the United States of America is the largest importer of capis right now because you can see it like if you go to West Elm, it's on their chandeliers, or sometimes you see it in placemats and stuff like that. And it's hard to remember that they're like this living thing, you know, so we brought back some shells that were unclean so you can kind of see how they look and they look like a scallop shell, you know, or like an oyster shell, but more flat.

So, Bitter, you also grow Jamaican and other Caribbean. crops as we've heard. And I'm wondering if you could say a little more about those crops, which crops you're growing and kind of what it's meant to you and people you've been able to help connect to those foods. Yeah, I also grow Caribbean crops such as Scotch Bonnet peppers, Kalaloo, Saracie, which is a Jamaican bitter melon, and Meringa, which is used in both Jamaican and Filipino cuisine, Cuban oregano. A lot of crops that are are used in both culinary and medicinal ways throughout the Caribbean. And it's just been really amazing over the years to learn about the ways that African and Asian diaspora share so many crops,

both because of histories of the monsoon exchange, weather patterns, and also migration patterns, such as, of course, like transatlantic slavery, indenture, various ways that people brought seeds with them through histories of forced labor. Yeah, so it has felt really meaningful to draw out those connections and also to connect with people who are from countries outside of those regions who also use those peppers or use those herbs in their cooking. And it's been a way to meet more people in Philadelphia.

who are looking for Caribbean peppers and maybe haven't been able to find them in the grocery and to hear people's food stories, to learn recipes. I actually helped to put together a zine that's coming out this month, which is a collection of food stories from Star Apple Nursery and Friends, and Nikki has a piece in there. And that's just like one illustration of the relationships that I've been able to build through this problem.

process, just people coming to me and sharing photo updates of their plans that they've bought for me, or telling me stories about meals that their parents or grandparents used to cook. Can you explain the name of your nursery? Yeah, Star Apple Nursery. I think Omar mentioned the Star Apple tree that used to be in front of his home as a child, and I chose this name because it is another common plant between the Caribbean and Southeast Asia. And even though I have never seen it grown in the U.S., I just thought it was beautiful. And just like a really beautiful reminder of the commonalities between those two foodways. I love that.

Is there a plant that helps you tell the story of the monsoon exchange for people who aren't familiar with that? Yeah, I would say Hibiscus is one of those plants Also thinking about okra Thinking about the various kinds of Like historical exchanges of seeds that happened Because of the monsoon Because of storms and waterways

And the ways that Yeah, like even outside of the transatlantic slave trade plants were already moving across borders. And then I'm wondering if there's one in particular that you lift up or several around the slave trade or the transatlantic trade. Yeah, I would definitely say that yam and cassava and okra are all plants that came from West Africa with people across the Middle Passage. And specifically with any kind of root vegetable, there was a history of something called provision grounds, which are small gardens that enslaved people, usually women, would tend throughout the Caribbean. And they were often on more rocky or unwanted portions of land. And these were

crops that enslaved families were able to grow for themselves and sometimes to sell at market. And so there's a really rich history of people being able to nourish themselves and find some form of autonomy through growing these root vegetables, which are very calorically dense and were able to sustain people when they didn't have many sources of food. And you have a book that has come out called Mounted on Horses, Blackness, and Liberation. And it's interesting because it's looking at. culture and history and relationship to equestrianism and specifically to a horse. And you're this powerful storyteller around the ways that humans relate to other species and to each other in relationship to those species. And so I'm wondering if you ever think of it that way.

And if you could speak about your work as a storyteller related to culture and the species that we're closest to. Yeah, I definitely see my work with plants and with animals as being connected. I think that our interspecies relationships have always been at the heart of people's relationships of land, and specifically for colonized people, whether that was through forced agricultural labor or through the relationships that we had with working animals, or through the ways that, for example, enslaved people often rode horses to freedom while escaping from slavery. I think there are so many ways that plants and other living beings have sustained us and have helped us enact freedom and build relationships with each other. And in my book, I talk about histories of black people riding and tending horses, but of course that history is also tied with farming.

And in one of the essays, I talk about Frederick Douglass giving a speech to newly freed black farmers in the South. And he was talking about establishing their own businesses and kind of the ways that they should treat their families and their animals and how to, I guess, be in good relation to people into the land. And he was saying, every man should make of his horse a friend. And I thought that was a really sweet example of the ways that black thinkers, abolitionists, have always thought of our relationships with animals as being so important to our shared liberation. That's beautiful. I love a liberation story. And I'm wondering if there are other liberation stories you like to tell connected to either you work with horses or you work with the land with plants. Yeah, well, I guess I'll talk about two things. One is that I feel continually inspired by the ways that black, urban cowboys and other horse riders have been able to form communities, form like intergenerational support networks around horses.

Here in Philly, we have the Fletcher riding stables where I grew up in Brooklyn. There are organizations. of black cowboys in Queens. There are also local urban stables where a lot of children learn to ride. Of course, throughout the country, there are various urban stables that are stewarded by black cowboys. And in one of the essays in my book,

I also talk about the presence of black cowboys at Black Lives Matter protests and the very powerful figures of black people riding horses almost as a protective presence. among these crowds of people protesting police brutality. And then work I've also been involved with is with Leong Network, an organization that works to support environmental and human rights defenders in the Philippines

in Mindanao. And learning about the stories of indigenous people in the Philippines has given me more insight into relationships to land, especially in the context of U.S. colonialism and colonization, hearing about the ways that farmers are forced to grow monocrops for companies like Dole, the ways that the Philippines has enough natural resources to sustain the entire population, but instead it has become export-oriented and dependent on imports. And the ways that people are like very literally forcibly removed from their lands and separated from oral

traditions and histories of growing and stewarding land. Awesome. Thank you. And that is, you know, makes me think also of kind of what we were talking about earlier before we started recording about our intentions about this episode. And one of them was recognizing that one of those ways of separating people from their food culture is through kind of migration and the feeling that we must assimilate to a new place. And what is lost in that assimilation process. And this is an opportunity to record for the future and for our children and for our grandchildren

and the young people we have in our lives, you know, a little bit about who we are, where we come from. And I'm wondering if whoever feels so moved can talk about the ways that you work to make sure the next generations are familiar with and in love with the cultures that we come. from yeah so um when we started by 205 it's mostly because we're trying to get our kids to meet more other Filipinos in in the area and to like make more friends who are Filipino we don't go to church but um

so that's usually like the the main route of uh Filipinos to be like get to know each other but um so this is how we did it and then a true potlap to, which was like, actually, I think it's a lot more fun. We do it through food. So this way we were able to expose the kids to more brown people, more people who are from the same culture. You know, my kids are, they're Americans. They, you know, they're born and raised over here, but they know they're Filipino because

we expose them to all the food. like their taste but it's probably more Filipino than than most Filipinos around they live on their own and they cook Filipino food at their own homes yeah I have this joke that before bye 2-15 and before we discovered the Filipino potluck that the only Filipinos we knew were like ourselves you know in our own home so this project has been a really great way for us to meet other folks even before by 2 and 5, I think a big goal for me, myself personally, as somebody who's lived in North America since 1985, I just wanted to be more comfortable in my own skin and to be fluent

not just in the language, but in cooking Filipino food, you know, to just kind of be able to still follow a recipe but not look at it every single time or to kind of know, just to have some kind of familiarity and fluency with it was really important to me and something that I didn't think I had before until I started growing some of these vegetables myself. I hope that other people will maybe feel more bold and courageous than I did in the past and kind of gaining some fluency around this and to know that this kind of knowledge shouldn't be gate kept and doesn't belong to any particular group or people. It's like it belongs to you, to me, to us, and to just kind of be bold about exploring that and being comfortable with it. Because I know that for a long

time, I wasn't, and I'm a lot happier now that I am and in community with other people who are doing the same thing. I know what Nikki's talking about, because for me, I think my interest in working with my art or just being in company with the people that I choose to surround myself with, is there also a personal journey that I also grew up, you know, 1.5 immigrant in the U.S. with a culture where my parents were really insisted that we are assimilated and spoke English and spoke English really well. Otherwise, we would not succeed in the U.S. or anywhere in business or anywhere in in capital. So that was a big thing in my family. So that's a big part of what had been,

I had internalized as a person for a good chunk of my life. So it wasn't, I have to say, it wasn't the last 10 years that I made the choice of intentionally reaching out and looking back and creating a life that's more authentic to me. And that means me, me digging through things that were not necessarily taught to me or not necessarily part of my background in the family, but something I actually had to research and introduce to my life. And some things I know, but knew from a distance, and that goes for not only food, but folklore, folk tales, stories, practices, ways of living.

So I have been intentionally living a certain way and making sure that I have a household that is more Filipino than standard American heteronormative life. Yeah, so this is all part of the journey of myself living a life that I want that is more authentic. And I think the rest follows. And I think that could be seen in my art and my company. And I know I am somewhat effective because of the people who have approached me and want to work with me and are just asking me questions and want to talk more and want to learn more and want to have continuous conversations about these things. So that goes for working with Nikki and Omar and Bitter, and that goes for my family, younger generations in my family, who are realizing the importance of our own identity and how our parents have raised us in certain way that is a way of survival. I'm not thinking that maybe part of our survival has erased a lot of the things that are actually

valuable to us. So I do feel like successful in that that I am considered an elder to my nephews and nieces. My son will catch up, I think. I'm not forcing anything on him. Yes. Do you have anything you'd like to add about the next generation called keeping culture moving forward? Yeah, well, I guess first I wanted to expand on what I was saying about the Philippines because I think it's important to also talk about how people are resisting these efforts to separate them from the land. I know some people who work with a public health organization,

and they're supporting farmers who are trying to establish a seed bank in Mindanao. Maybe we can put info about that in the show notes. And I just feel inspired by the young indigenous activists in the Philippines who are working to establish their right to the land and the national democratic movement and the ways that so many people are actively struggling in order to stay on their lands in the face of the state. so much like foreign development and environmental destruction.

Also, I guess as a seed keeper, like one thing that often surprises people who are not familiar with growing plants is that one seed can literally lead to hundreds more. Like people have asked me like, oh, I can plant this pepper seed and then it'll create maybe like 50 to 100 peppers and each of those peppers will have more seeds. Like, I think the scale of it is something that can be really mind-boggling to people, but that also gives me a lot of hope, knowing that those seeds will be carried forward, and, like, those generations of seeds will outlive me and outlive all of us. And it feels like, whether it's through seeds or through writing, there are things that I am collaborating on, working on right now that will continue into the future. future and be able to be passed down to people who will come after me. Awesome.

What have we missed? What needs to be said that hasn't been said? We've said a lot. This is an hour and 26 minutes so far. How many hours of editing is that? I guess just thank you all. And thanks Owen for bringing us all together, including the other farmers and seedkeepers.

and I really appreciate you. Thank you. It's been a really great project to work on, and I know it's going to be ongoing, and the kind of relationships we've made through this project are definitely ongoing, and so we want to thank you for that. Thank all of you.

Do you want to sing us out? Go hear from the bird. The bird will scream for you. Sometimes he has a human voice. Can you talk for us? Hello, hello. You want to talk? No, you're just hissing.

Can you use your human voice to talk? No. Okay, let's turn the heat on. All right. Thank you all. Thank you again to Nikki, Omar, Maria, and Bitter. I loved talking to you, and we appreciate all the stories that you shared in this episode.

And thank you for listening and sharing this episode, Seas and their people with your loved ones. Please share this episode with someone else you know and subscribe to our show in your first. 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. Trueloveseeds.com. And again, 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.