Seeds And Their People - Ep. 6: Fish Pepper

Episode Date: November 30, 2020

This episode is all about the Fish Pepper, an extremely flavorful, productive, and decorative variety that makes an excellent hot sauce. The white unripe fruit were used to flavor seafood dishes in the Black catering community of Baltimore in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Horace Pippin, the now-famed painter, shared this variety (and many others) with H. Ralph Weaver in the early 1940s in exchange for bee-sting therapy. Weaver's grandson (William Woys Weaver, who you will hear from in the second half of this episode) found the seeds in a baby food jar in his grandmother's deep freezer a couple decades later, many years after his grandfather's death, and was able to reintroduce them via Seed Savers Exchange. In this episode, you will hear from Xavier Brown from Soilful City in Washington DC who makes Pippin Sauce from fish peppers grown by black farmers and urban gardeners in the DC and Maryland areas (including Denzel Mitchell, who you will also hear from). Soilful City offers their seeds through Truelove Seeds. You will also hear from Michael Twitty, author of the Cooking Gene. See links to the work of each of the speakers below.   SEED STORIES TOLD IN THIS EPISODE: Fish Pepper Buena Mulata Pepper   MORE INFO FROM THIS EPISODE: Xavier Brown, January 2020 Soilful City on Instagram: @soilful Soilful City: soilfulcitydc.wordpress.com Soilful City at Truelove Seeds   Denzel Mitchell, January 2020 Instagram: @fatherof5fivefifths Denzell Mitchell at Farm Alliance Baltimore futureharvestcasa.org/denzel-mitchell "Introducing Denzel Mitchell of Five Seeds Farm in Baltimore”- Afroculinaria Blog by Michael Twitty, 2012   Dr. William Woys Weaver, August 2019 Instagram: @roughwoodseeds, @williamwoysweaver Roughwood Seed Collection: www.roughwoodtable.org Signed copies of Heirloom Vegetable Gardening   Michael Twitty, April 2019 Instagram: @thecookinggene Buy The Cooking Gene Book: Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble Michael W. Twitty Facebook Page The Cooking Gene Facebook Page Michael W. Twitty on Twitter: @koshersoul www.Afroculinaria.com Article Owen wrote from this original interview [PDF]   ABOUT: Seeds And Their People is a radio show where we feature seed stories told by the people who truly love them. Hosted by Owen Taylor of Truelove Seeds and Chris Bolden-Newsome of Sankofa Community Farm at Bartram’s Garden. trueloveseeds.com/blogs/satpradio   FIND OWEN HERE: Truelove Seeds Tumblr  |  Instagram  |  Twitter   FIND CHRIS HERE: Sankofa Community Farm at Bartram’s Garden   THANKS TO: Xavier Brown Denzel Mitchell William Woys Weaver Michael Twitty Horace Pippin Sara Taylor

I was like, this is this Negro pepper, the African pepper. I mean, there's a reason why it's a part of us. It's a reason why it's in our community. Horace Pippin doesn't have his hands in us for no reason. These A-Rabbers didn't have their hands in for no reason. So what are these uniquely black stories? What makes them a part of us? Oh, my goodness.

peace and blessings everybody welcome back to another episode of seeds and their people we'd like to dedicate this episode first and foremost since we are celebrating around the time of the traditional Thanksgiving feast day here in the United States we want to take a moment to lift up in power and in peace all of the indigenous native peoples of the people of the this land, and in particular the ancestors, for all of those righteous grandmothers and grandfathers on whose soil we have the blessing to have lived and grown up. May their memory be for a blessing, and may the descendants live in power and in peace. We also want to lift up a young mentee and co-worker of Brother Xavier Brown over at Soilful City. We like to

dedicate this episode in part also to young Kareem Palmer, a young brother of 16 who lost his life recently. He was a faithful member of the farm, a worker, a student, and someone who was very important in the life of Brother Xavier and of the community in which he lived. May he rest in power and peace, and may he sit with his ancestors in paradise until we all meet again. Ayesha. Ayesha. So we recorded an intro to this episode back in June, and we're actually going to keep it. So I'm going to keep this short. But the one thing that wasn't really included was what's going to happen in this episode.

So just so you know, we're going to start off with an interview with Xavier Brown and Denzel Mitchell. Xavier runs Soilful City and makes something called Pippin sauce out of fish peppers. and Denzel Mitchell, he grows those peppers for Soilful City for their hot sauce and has been growing those peppers for many, many years before that as well. Then we talked to Dr. William Moy's Weaver himself, whose grandfather received fish peppers and other pepper seeds from Horace Pippen. And then we're going to talk to Michael Twitty, author of The Cooking Gene, who also talks a bit about his relationship, both to the fish pepper and foods and plants of the African diaspora in general.

So without further ado, here's our introduction from June, and here we go. Welcome back to Seeds and Their People. I'm Chris Bowdoin-Nusom, farmer and co-director of the Sancofa Community Farm at Bartram's Garden in sunny southwest Philadelphia. And I'm Owen Taylor, seed keeper and farmer at True Love Seeds. It's a seed company offering culturally important seeds grown by farmers committed to food sovereignty, cultural preservation, and sustainable agriculture. And we're back after several months away. What's been happening? Well, you tell me, we've been we've been indoors a lot of time.

Well, I mean, I guess also we as essential workers, this newly created category, have actually been out in the field. So that's not true, we've been definitely indoors more than we would previously. But so much more than that has been happening, just on the social level, interpersonal level, and then our spiritual world. and in the way we do farming and the way we relate to our community during a time of worldwide sustained panic. So, yeah, I think a lot of unexpected and completely unimagined blessings and, you know, doors have been opened up as a result of what's happening in the earth and in our bodies right now. but it's also been very hard as most meaningful and powerful things tend to be.

Yeah. I mean, starting at the beginning, a few days after our last podcast was released, you know, the world went into kind of lockdown. And we, you know, I had to move overnight our seat operation to the house here away from where it was at Bartram's Garden. And since then, I've probably filled close to 2,500 orders by myself because people suddenly wanted seeds more than ever since suddenly, just like many people around the world have experienced before, you know, having a hard time accessing fresh food, affordable food, something that I know poor people and a lot of people of color have

already been experiencing. Everybody's experiencing. So people decided they wanted to grow their own gardens, which is awesome. And it means we're selling out of seeds we thought may last a few years. So it's had a big impact on my work and the work of seed companies and seed savers all over the world. So we're growing, you know, more rows, packing more rows into our farm than we planned on to replenish the seeds and hoping to help people learn how to keep their own seeds this year. Yeah, and I think also, I mean, we're growing more rows definitely, but we also are, trying to both by intuition and just by what we know from our community grow more nutritionally dense varieties and not to put a plug in for true love but the shoe fits

seriously we you know we've been really blessed by the varieties both that we grow you know for for true love for distribution throughout the world as well as those that um that we've encountered through our connections and relationships um you know with with true love and in in other people all our community so yeah trying to grow more beans trying to grow more dense roots trying to grow more pumpkins and storage carbon what is it low carbon zero carbon um storage foods i think isn't it what uh my sister went on a Duke refers to them as. Yeah.

Yeah. Pumpkins and winter squash has zero carbon because you store them with no need for refrigeration or anything like that. And they keep for months and how the ancestors of this land ate and survived and thrived to other wonders. We honor just the spirits of all these ancestral foods that are coming back to help nourish us. So I just want to give a big shout out to the creator moving through these wonderful species and to also have raising up in people's hearts and minds to want to get these species again. You know, so I'm particularly grateful for black and brown folks who are getting these seeds

and taking a new look at it or, you know, as well as to everybody and anybody, but particularly to people who are reclaiming, you know, you know, are following that instinct to move towards their grandmother's foods and nourishments and wanting to get that back, whoever they are, wherever they come from. So, yeah, hard time, but also some beauty. Yeah, and, you know, now in the last few weeks, obviously our focus has shifted as a country and as the world

to Black Lives Matter, movement to the violence against black people by the police and beyond, and that has been really overshadowing our work and our lives and our everything. You know, we met through this work around racial justice. That's literally how we met. And we've been doing this work for a long time, but it's really underlined and grounded this moment in the importance of lifting up black people and changing the world in a way that somehow we create a new reality where

this isn't happening every day, where we're not hearing about black people being murdered this often without justice being served. So today we have an interview, actually several interviews. we're going to focus on the fish pepper. I'm curious what you have to say about the fish pepper. Or even just about, and why are these interviews important right now? So for me, the fish pepper is,

wow, what to say about the fish pepper? You know, I was initially flummoxed, except the word I really want to use that word. I don't know that I ever have in life, so thank you for the opportunity. But I was very flummoxed when thinking about what I say about. ye old fish pepper. And it's, you know, I think the first thing to start with, of course, is it's dramatic

appearance, you know. It's a beautiful, a striking plant, which, you know, I know, and I know people always start with that. But I, I, as a farmer and as a natural agriculture practitioner, I'm very impressed by its very distinct spiritual energy in a garden. garden. I can't quite describe what, you know, I mean, that one could describe any spiritual energy, but I can't quite describe exactly what it is, but I think it's, uh, its appearance evokes so much beauty. So white coloration is modeled white leaves for those who've never seen

it and modeled, uh, sort of swirled white fruit, uh, that sort of changes color, uh, you know, It's brilliant. So the coloration is it matures. And for me, I think just moving into its story, it's powerful to me as a southerner, as a Mississippian, because it is not my ancestors pepper, my direct ancestors pepper. I can lay claim to it as an African in the diaspora. But it is a very distinctly eastern, east coast, sort of mid-atlantic African-associated pepper. Now, in West Africa, my people say that all food is just a vehicle for pepper.

You know, if you ever had fish pepper, then you know that that is one fine pepper flavor to ride with. We make a pepper sauce, a very delicious pepper sauce out of it every year. It's just marvelous. It comes to us through African-American chefs and farmers who, I think the story is largely that it's use in African-Americans, and that's a socialized. with that we have to remember this pepper like all chilies is from south america you know the south and central american origin um so it made its way up here and became sort of adopted and adapted by african americans uh in this powerful way in the chesapeake bay and so to me it's a

distinctly uh you know eastern seaboard african relative uh and my hats off to that so i'm very excited every time i see african people in the diaspora find ways to reconnect with what has always nourished us with what we've created. And I think that the power of a story, in these times especially, is so crucial for black folks throughout the diaspora, particularly right now in North America, because we have to honor what we have created. One of, you know, if I can just put my Cornell West hat on for a minute,

I'll take it off in a second. But it, it, seriously, you know, I do feel often that one of, of the things that holds my people back from really realizing our own, you know, power and beauty is so often much because of trauma, much because of just, you know, the exhaustion of constant, the constant race to survive psychologically, spiritually, physically, emotionally, you know, relationally, you know, we lose or put aside. many of the things, you know, the cultural jewels and cultural ropes and lassoes that our ancestors left, you know, that would pull us closer to who we really are and to what nourish us and what helped them to survive.

And so I believe that the fish pepper is an example of that. One of the stories is one of the things that we created with what we had. And that's a very distinct and beautiful African process in this country. We take what we've encountered because we are so far from home in so many ways. And we recognize that of us. And I would say that of God because of that in this thing. And we call it what we call it. And we make it our own.

And I think that's what happened with the fish pepper in. Yeah, I could go on and on. But maybe I shouldn't so that we can get to these interviews. I will say. No, that it also stands out to me, you know, from an African spiritual standpoint, because in many of my ancestors, spiritual traditions, white is a color associated with the ancestors. It's associated with the spirit world, you know, and there's so much to say about that, but the color white is often used in ritual for that reason, you know.

You know, you go to funerals in white, you know, you, you know, you, We wear white during rituals for your ancestors. And that also, you know, I think is in the West also too. This white is associated with the spiritual world for different reasons. This whole notion of purity and that sort of stuff that was that never came from our people. You know, it wasn't about purity. It was about power and spiritual power. And so just the physical affect of this pepper and it's modeled whiteness, you know, white and greenness, you know, to me also carries a story in and of its.

self, you know, that it, so it is sacred in that way, in the way that all of the stories that we keep and hold on to and pass on become sacred because they help us to survive, they help us to live, and they help us to remember who we are. This pepper has a vibrant reminder in its own green body, green and white body, I think of that. So I love it for that and I want to get to know it a little bit more. It's not from my ancestors, my direct ancestors, but I'm excited to be brought into the East Coast African-American community to grow it and eat it and spread it. So here we bring you to January 2020 in East Heightsville, Maryland at the Future Harvest Conference put on by the Chesapeake Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture or Casa. I attended and recorded a workshop led by Xavier Brown of Soilful City.

He makes a spicy and sweet pepper sauce with fish peppers grown by black farmers in the Baltimore and D.C. areas. He calls it Pippin sauce to honor and lift up the story of famed African-American artist Horace Pippen. So the story is that, or the story goes, is that, you know, Horace Pippen and H.R. Does anybody familiar, William Woisweaver? He's like a world-renowned seed keeper. He's a well-known old. I guess he's not that well-known. But if you to Google

his name, you go to his website, he has from all over the world, all over the place. His grandfather and Horace Pippen knew each other. I guess when you were friends, their acquaintances, they were friends up in Pennsylvania. There was a remedy, maybe. I guess

for lack of a better term, to stick your hand in the beehive that would help to kind of deal with the numbness or the arthritis that Horace Pippen was going through was being shot during World War I. H.R. Weaver and Horace Pippin are friends. And of course, we all know that if you, if you have a hive, your bee sting, they're going to die. And so, you know, Pippin's, you know, coming to Weaver is like, this is my interpretation. He's like, bro, can I stick my hand in your beehive? He's like, come on, man, you know, you're going to kill all my bees. So he has, you know, he has the seeds, and he's like, you know, we can swap and trade. And so I actually just recently learned that, you know, people were saying that horse Pippen was getting seeds from chefs. And he wasn't. a gardener himself. But I just learned actually today that he was a garden. So he had his own

garden. So he just kind of saved with these seeds. And at the time, the fish pepper seed was used by African-American chefs to make a fish pepper sauce that's like totally different from mine. But a fish pepper sauce, and that's how they got the name. They can be traced back to the Caribbean. You know, so Horace Pippin and H.R. We were making, you know, they make the swap. Time goes on. The only way, does anybody know, like, the number one way to save seeds? Anybody? That's the only way to save seeds. They're gonna recreate, you know what I'm saying?

The only way to save seeds, I'm sorry. The only way to save seeds, you have to grow them, right? So if the seeds aren't being grown, and essentially they like cease to exist. And so as time goes on, black people move away from the land, people start growing seeds, urbanization happens, people stop growing fish pepper seeds. And so the seeds kind of like die off, kind of, like,

off, kind of like, you know, if people not grown them, they don't exist anymore. So they die off. William Wordsweaver, H.R. Weaver's grandson, I believe that when his grandfather passed away, he said they were cleaning out his refrigerator, his freezer, and he finds Pippin seed. So Pippin, I think he has like multiple, like, seeds kind of in his collection. These are the ones that I was given. And so he finds the seeds and he kind of brings them back to, it brings them back to life, for lack of a better term. them, you know, give them the people, start selling them, and they kind of bounce back. Their connection is deeply rooted in this mid-Atlantic between Baltimore and Pennsylvania.

So that was another reason why I grew them. So like I mentioned before, I was a part of a Sea Keepers Collective. Owen was a part of their collective, taught a lot of us how to save seeds and keep seeds. Owen worked for William Wars Weaver. They worked together. And so I was able to kind of get the seeds kind of through the direct lineage of, you know, Horace Pippin, which kind of add into the, to like, okay, I've got to keep the vibe going with these seeds, right? And so that's kind of how it started with those seeds.

And that's why I think it's important to, like, for any product that you use, I think, like, the story behind it, it adds to it. Now that I told you that story, it makes you more like, you want to be like, hey, this is a dope. At a minimum, you want to get the seeds from me. And you'll probably want to buy a sauce, you know, just to know, like, what it's about. that's kind of like the story behind the sauce you have more here yes I definitely have bottles here you have seeds

I do have seeds I didn't bring any with me this guy right here might have seeds he's like he gave me the seeds oh yeah we sell his seeds yeah oh that's another so I'm sorry it's a lot of move apart so at true love seeds

yes so another kind of added layer on to it is I saved the seeds I send him to on he sells the seeds He sells the seeds, and he gives me a check. So he sells the seeds that I save for him. Xavier will be sending us his next round of fish pepper seeds shortly, and at that point, you can get his seeds at true loveseeds.com.

As with all the growers we work with, this directly supports his work through our profit-sharing model. After this workshop, I brought the recording equipment downstairs into an empty hotel conference room, and recorded Xavier and Denzel as they talked about their love for this pepper. its story and the ways they've collaborated to make Pippin'Sauce happen. My name is Denzel Mitchell. I'm a grower, a cook, educator. I've been working with food for about 20 years. Xavier Brown, Soville City, just a grower, educator, community builder,

connected. I learned about fish peppers from another farmer who was starting to work with restaurants, and he specifically was like, if you want a farm, you should grow fish peppers. And I was like, what's fish peppers? And he was like, look it up and then come holl at me. So I went and looked them up. And then he said, grow them. And then there's somebody I want you to meet because there was a chef that wanted to make hot sauce to remove Tabasco from his, from his restaurant and replace it with a Maryland hot sauce. So that's how I learned about fish peppers.

And so then that sent me to Michael Twitty. And then more research into Michael Twitty sent me to William Moyes-Weaver. and then yeah I was like totally hooked and like locked in on the fish pepper after that and so then we started growing them we grew a fair amount um that first year that was like 2011 and then I essentially grew them more we grew a higher quantity every single year because this guy was making peppers in it or pepper pepper sauce also um and then a couple of years a few years later then Xavier came came well you know we like reconnecting Xavier came back and said he wanted more fish pepper. So, you know, so I've been rolling and winning him ever since. Yeah. So when I used to go up to Denzel's farm, his farm used to be like a spot for black farmers and it was a dope spot.

He was the first person I heard talk about fish peppers. And then meeting you, you were the first person. I think that gave me some seeds and I learned about the history. And he told me about William Roy's Weaver. And then just kind of going down there, took me down the

yeah, just the ideation phase. Right. Oh. Yeah. of um like what can you make i don't know what can i make you know what can i make you know i'm saying because i had a bunch of peppers and it's like well it's either pepper jelly or hot sauce you know it's just started with pepper jelly and then move to the hot sauce oh you were making pepper jelly first you know that was like the recipe i initially had was a pepper jelly recipe and so the pepper jelly was good and the pepper jelly actually had fish peppers and braynamulata peppers but i didn't write down a recipe so i forgot

it and people still ask me about that recipe speak to this day because the the texture of the sauce came out, came out different. It was like a little bit thicker and it had like a, the brain of mulata peppers added, these are when they were

purple. They added like a they added something. I can't even explain. They added like something extra to it. And so people ask me like still to this day is like, yo, people who still have that original like backs like this much, they ask me about that. So I might ask each other. I might

order some point in a lot of peppers from me actually just to try that again but yeah so that's like my opening seed story yeah yeah i could send some to you for sure but what what really drew you to the fish pepper and like what do you what can you say about kind of your connection to its origins you know um man really just that history that that story was amazing that was like the first you know pepper i just know a lot of like people folks from the caribbean and the scotch bond and stuff like that but folks like african-american folks from this that were raised here you know i didn't know hear about too many like peppers that like were through that landing age and i was like that was dope um and they just read more and more the story of like horace pippin and just the trade the swap

how they faded away how they bounced back just like the whole thing it was just amazing to me and then they just they look they look they're beautiful pepper you know what i mean just like when they grow they're beautiful like the different kind of colors that it goes through everybody loves them when it's white and green it's just a beautiful so it's just that but really that just like the story was like amazing you know and then read them more about like

the group of soldiers that Horace Pipman was with in World War I and reading about those dudes and how vicious they were like the Harlem Hell Fight like he was like before he became like Horace Pippen the painter or the gardener his life in war was crazy, you know. So just the whole story is just like amazing, you know, so that's for me. He's served in World War I as a Harlem Hellfighter.

And then after the war, he started to paint. But then I felt like he was kind of nomadic. He was like moving around a lot. This is at least to me. And I was reading the bottom just to refresh myself yesterday. He's born in, I never thought he's born in 1888, which seems like he's born like, his parents may have been in enslaved. You know what I'm saying?

If you look at the time period, definitely his grandparents. He's like an old dude. He died in like 1940 something, I think. And so I think before that, he didn't, he registered for the war. And like, when he was 30 years old, so he went to fight in war. That's kind of like kind of old, I guess, in military kind of age bracket. Yeah, he was like that old. And he was reading about, he kept a journal in the war and like had all these pictures.

and stuff like that. I was just talking about, like, how rough it was in the trenches. They were getting bombed, and they would have to, you know, crawl and just do all this crazy stuff. And they went, like, 1901 days in battle straight, which is, like, the longest for any regiment in the entire World War I. And they weren't recognized after the war was over. And I think just reading about it and thinking about it, like, in war terms now, how people

have, like, PTSD. And I think, like, painting was something to help him get through it. Probably gardening, too. Gardening, too. Yeah. Yeah, and they said, like after, interestingly enough, after World War I, the Ku Klux Klan, like, rose back up afterwards. All these black soldiers coming back. So it was like, you know what I'm saying?

It was like a reaction to that. And so a lot of his paintings kind of dealt with that kind of race, that racial tension and, you know, that white supremacy and stuff like that. So, you know, just all of that, you know, just all of that, you know, see that he was able to kind of almost like reinvent himself in a way by healing himself. thing. There was also another thing that I thought, remember, I thought that the original seed stock that Horace Pippin

got was from his grandfather, who was also a gardener. I feel like that's what William Woy's Weaver's told. It was from William Woy's Waiver's grandfather. Well, he got it from Horace Pippin. Oh, it was William Woy's Weaver's grandfather. He got the, and he got those

seeds from Horace Pippen. Okay, okay. But Horace Pippen got them from the black catering communities that he was friends with in Philly and Baltimore. So that's, that's as much as we know, though. Because everybody was growing, essentially what I remember reading is that everybody was growing fish peppers because they had their own fish pepper sauce recipes. Like whatever oyster house or fish house you went to, everybody had fish peppers sauce, but everybody was a little different. So they grew their own peppers, made their own sauce for their particular restaurant. I have a question.

My thing is that if it was so popular, how did they just, like, stop, you know, how did the, you know what I'm saying? It's interesting. Like, you'd think somebody, at least one or two people would have kept growing up, just some home garden, this backyard garden, but it seems to have been, like, a point where it's like. So what I learned, so the chef that I connected with said that the reason why fish peppers fell out of his favorites because they were so popular with oysters. So then in the 1940s,

when the pollution, the pollution started to raise in the Chesapeake and there was essentially a campaign to eat less oysters than a lot of the seafood houses were closing. People were eating less oysters. Tabasco was coming online and becoming like way more popular, way more available. And then, and then, and then, you know, as we moved into the 50s, people were just gardening less, like there were less people gardening, you know, with industrialization. That answers my question. I was interested to know, like, how do they just, like, you know,

because there's still a lot of varieties of peppers that are still around, and this one just kind of, like, stopped for a second. And there's a whole generation of people that haven't even heard of it before, you know. Right. And people originally use the white peppers, unripe peppers, and that you couldn't see the flakes in the fish dishes, in the oyster dishes. And the oyster stew, yeah, exactly. Right, right, right.

And I've heard murmurs that it's not like it was fully lost, Like, some people say, you know, there were still people keeping it. But William Moyes, we've reintroduced it through Seed Savers Exchange in the 90s, and it became more widely grown because of its powerful story. So, you know, and I think people talk about maybe it's origins before the black caterers, but it's all kind of just kind of guesswork. Yeah, because I had read something, maybe Twitty said this, that the indigenous folks gave the pepper to enslave people and then enslaved people that were then growing them because

Twitties, Twitties list was specifically, Twitties, like African-American heritage culture, heritage collection were all varieties that enslaved people had grown. So he was saying that enslaved folks grew them and then they found out that there were, there was this like recessive gene for white peppers that then they would take into the homes to use to you know to not muddle cream base sauces and stuff like that but but who knows you know because like peppers don't peppers are not uh natural to this region right they're off they're from south america so they would have had to have gotten here some some other way so i don't know yeah so that that's that's they come from the caribbean i really said that's somewhere like i think like central

America, Caribbean, South America, they're a little more tropical, you know. But, you know, there's been, you know, thousands of years of trade routes up and down the continent. So who knows, you know? Right, who knows? Right. Well, cutting in here to say, I looked in a couple of my pepper books to find a clearer answer to this question of origins. First of all, the fish pepper is the same species as bell peppers, jalapenos, cayens, pueblanos, my Italian frying peppers, and so many others, Capsicum anuum. While many species of peppers are native to South America, this one was first gathered and eaten in what is now Mexico, around 7,000 BCE, and first cultivated sometime between 5,200 and 3,400 BCE. This info is from the book Anarchy of Chili's. Now back to

Denzel and Xavier. So the thing that made me fall in love with that particular variety of pepper was its story. So essentially that it had, you know, I almost like personified the pepper in a way that like it had lived through enslavement, it had lived through the Jim Crow era, you know, the Red Summer of 1919 and the Black soldiers' connection to World War I and World War II,

that it had been cherished and used throughout Chesapeake Bay cuisine in the early 20th century. So even though the industrialization and pollution of, you know, modern society had kind of marginalized the pepper, it was still, it was still here and it was still black. Like there was nothing that I hadn't read or seen that didn't connect the pepper to the cuisine of African American cooks. And so like when I started farming, I wanted to make sure that I honored, you know, I like to, I've always liked to cook. I wanted to be a chef. And so when I started farming, I wanted to have a crop that I could particularly connect to and said that this speaks to being a black food maker, a black cook, a black chef,

and that this is something that black people were, were excited about and relished, you know, at a particular time in history. So, you know, so as I read about the pepper and, and then, I looked in a few sea catalogs, because at the time, those were only two sea catalogs ever founded in were seed savers, and then Landrith, who had that collection. And they were like, this, you know, essentially this is a black pepper. This is a black Baltimore, D.C., Philadelphia pepper, like everybody, everybody who was anybody who was eating spicy food, like this is what they were eating, you know. So I was like, damn, that's dope. And so, you know, I just want to incorporate that. But then just from a commercial aspect, like, you know, to have a

a chef come along who wanted to create a relationship with a farmer and specifically was also looking for that same item that was that was like that really helped to motivate me to you know really to be to be a farmer and really look at um you know creating enterprise it sounds like some themes of like your business model and like what you've expanded on with the pepper sauce yeah so like and i think it kind of starts like for me just to veggie back over the zelle saying like keeping the culture and like the African-American culture alive in it and how you can like I was saying earlier there's not too many you hear like folks from the Caribbean they got scotch spiners they got all types of peppers but you don't really hit too many African-American like

peppers and I can I'm familiar with at least you know and so like you know like fish pepper that was it and then like you just say it's from like this region and so and then just to kind of build off there and expand on that and I've always like I'm connected with a lot of growers of course, a lot of black growers. So how can you, like, tell you're, like, I know him. And I'm always telling people like, oh, I know this brother, you know, she's going out of his farm. Denzel, he's involved with me, you know, I know Blaine. But nobody else, like, nobody knows these people.

So they're always just, like, people in my stories. But how can, like, people who buy it, they can, like, know Denzel. They know, you know, you know, Alia. They know, you know, they know the people who are, like, behind going the peppers. In addition to knowing, like, a broader history of who Horace Pippen was. So it was like, I wanted to kind of, like, keep. that, well, like, lift that up. That was, like, important to me, like, lifting up the voices of, like, the growers.

Yeah. And I think that's important because what I remember seeing was, like, around 2000. So that first year, I don't know what else was happening anywhere else, but I know in Baltimore, nobody else was growing fish peppers. And so we probably grew a total of, like, maybe 20 pounds for this, for, for Woodbury Kitchen, who wanted to start making this with hot sauce. Obviously, that's not going to make very much hot sauce. But, like, one, there were two things that happened.

One, I just remember how much he, like, coveted, like, that little bit of, that little, that small amount of peppers. Like, he was just, like, so excited. Like, I can't believe that, like, somebody's finally growing it. And I was like, damn, this is crazy. And so, you know, so that first season, they dried them, and they essentially turned them into pepper plates. And they were using them in all their dishes. So then what I saw is that that changed the, menu offerings at this particular restaurant, which was super popular.

You know, a lot of people were coming to eat there. But then, so then that motivated me, like, all right, I want to grow some more. So next year we grew even more. But the other thing that happened was when people saw that success, and, you know, which was minimal, it was minuscule, then so many other growers then started to grow, grow the peppers. And I started to see the plants at market. So, like, you know, at the shoulders of the season, when farmers are selling transplants, now everybody's selling fish. I don't say everybody, but a lot of cats were selling fish peppers. And there was no real connection to fish peppers being a part of the African American cultural history. It was just like, oh, fish peppers. I think they're from Baltimore or whatever. You know, you could walk around. You know, people don't know who they're talking to. They're like, oh, yeah, these, you know, these are some, they're hot peppers and they're striped. And I was like, damn. So, you know, so when. people start to talk about the story of the food.

They start to talk about the story of the seed and like what it had to go through to get here to where we are. Because like every seed has this kind of story, but we don't know it, you know. So then when you start to tell that story by making sauce or like Spike is making his sauce and he's telling that story and like why it's important to what you do as a food maker, as an activist, as a teacher, as a chef or whatever, it's like that's what's more, that's what's important to me. And it's like, that's what I want to amplify. Because, you know, there's so much that we eat, we, you know, we make no connection to at all. Like, you know, we make, even if, even if it's like the particular variety that goes into making Heinz ketchup, you know, there's a story to that, you know. But, you know, nobody knows. They don't really care.

They're just like, where to ketchup be, you know? So, so that's been the thing that's been important to me. And it's like, for me, fish pepper, you know, has been like, it's been like this, like companion for me over this, you know, over this whole. I mean, I guess it was been, like, 15-year journey now at this point. That's one of the reasons why, like, I was trying to figure out a name in the beginning for, like, the sauce. You know, in D.C., they had, like, mumbo sauce. And everybody that was from D.C. was always, oh, man, it tastes like mumbo. At least that's what D.C. from D.C. would say similar to mumbo sauce.

That would be, like, their first, like, closest, like, mental connection. And so I was trying to figure out a name that, like, for a while I was going with, like, something that's had, like, a mumbo-type vibe. And then I was like, you know, I'm just going to call it Pippin sauce to kind of pay your honor to Horace Pippin. And so it's always like a conversation piece. Like, why is it called Pippin' Sauce? And then it gives you the opportunity to tell the whole story. So I wanted to kind of keep that, yeah, just hold that intact. So what's, that's an example, because you work with a lot of farmers that grow peppers-free sauce.

Like, could you describe your relationship over time with this pepper with the Pippin sauce? between the two of you yeah so like i know last year um i thought i thought i came around with i saw denzel somewhere and i was telling him like yo this is what i'm doing with the sauce like you know what i'm saying you'll be down to grove and he was like man we got like x amount of high tunnels he said like a crazy number i was like dang i got that many hot tunnels and you know he's like yeah we can do it um and he was like man we don't even need it we got our own peppers because it's usually in dc i give them the peppers like we got our own peppers man we like ready to rock and roll essentially um at least that's what i remember from my end and then i remember

like just like you know come harvest time he just i remember he called me like man um you want him red or green i was like i want him red so if you like me like a month later he got somebody coming down to dc like like big bad definitely the biggest harvest i've had you know what i'm saying because when he told me the number was like okay cool you know i'm like all right then i saw I'm like, jeez, this is like all my cold store space in the commercial kitchen is going to fill up because we had other stuff in there. So, but that was motivation for us to like figure out a process to like process, like the system to process them. So we were going there. It took us like like three, four days in the kitchen to get through like some of those bags.

We would do like, I don't know, a certain amount, amount of pounds at a time. You know what I'm saying? And just and go through it, you know. I'm not even sure we even got those big old bags from, man. There's, like, some huge, classy, like, these big, like, trash bags almost, you know what I'm saying? It's funny. Yeah, it's funny the, like, the perspectives of, like, I wish I had been, like, on your side, like, the receiving and, because I knew, so we, we had a conversation at radical geographies. Okay, yeah.

And you were, like, you wanted to, you wanted more peppers, and you wanted, you wanted to get them from black growers. And, of course, like, I was like, man, I'm all about it. You know, I want to grow fish peppers any day at a week. I was like, I bet, I got you. So I told him, just like he said, I did some quick math. I was like, yeah, we could probably do like three or four hundred pounds. And he was like, oh, all right, all right, bet, you know. But I can see in his eyes.

I'm like, he didn't really know what that looked like. I knew, I knew what it was. And this was the thing that was super dope. He actually grew the plants out for us. So, like, I had some seed that I was going to, that I was. was going to propagate and grow out, but you, you, you, you gave it. Yeah, you gave it. And I, like, I told you how many plants I wanted. And, and, I mean, you showed up. I mean, you, which, from sharps. You, you grew them out from sharps. You get, you took seeds to sharps.

Yeah, I remember, when did we leave up and I gave you that? You never gave them to me. You gave them to and then I just went and got the plants. I went and got the plants and I, and I put in, but I got, we put in, we put in 250 plants. And I think I, yeah, I did a little quick math based on, like, my, you know, the bed space and all that. I was like, yeah, we could probably do about three or four hundred pounds. And he was like, oh, that's cool. And we, you know, and then I was actually surprised too. You know, I was like, but yo, bro, we got, yeah, we got like, we got 200 pounds.

And so that first hit was like, was like, it was a lot of peppers. I was like, geez. I would have paid my last paycheck to like, because I just had, why I just sent my delivery guy to D.C. to drop them off. But like, yeah, I knew that, like, when you saw the amount of. peppers because it was us and then i think the second time it was us and then the blues had some too they had a lot too they had like maybe 30 40 pounds composed when i saw the dude i want to try and be like oh shit i was like okay cool let me figure out what the hell i'm gonna do with all these peppers

man and so like cold stories was like the biggest thing i like ran up against because i i just couldn't like he said he said 300 i'm like cool that's what's up let's do it but i didn't know like what that actually looked like so now like 2020 i have like a a a bill a vision of like, all right, I might have to talk to Blaine and them and see, like, you know, what would it cost to build, like, a little mini walk-in something or, you know. How many pounds did you end up, total pounds you end up getting? Because it was us, it was the blues. Y'all, y'all from Baltimore gave me by far more than anybody from D.C.

And I probably got, like, close, like, five, six hundred pounds total. You know what I'm saying? Folks in D.C. didn't produce nearly as much. He's like, y'all were, like, cranking them out. And the blues, I mean, they were, they were, you know, they were on it as far as. It's like, I saw her somewhere. She called me or something that was like, hey, you know, we're ready. You know, whenever you want to ready for this year, you know what I'm like?

Like, they're ready to go. So, and I met them earlier when Leah Penelman came. That's the first time I met them. Oh, at Dubco. That was the first. I didn't know them. I met them there. And we connected and then we fell off.

And somebody connected us again. I'm not sure who. And then they just never showed up, you know. So it worked out, man. And it's amazing, like, for me, like, how many seeds? Like, all, it's like, I don't know, like, 100, 500,000 seeds, maybe a million seeds, like coming from all those plants, you know what I mean? And so it's just amazing, like, like, the abundance.

That's what just made me think of as, like, the nature is, like, abundant, man. All those peppers, it's, like, crazy how, like, you know, you don't even probably have to really work hard for fish peppers to really produce, you know what I mean? If you give them the right setup, they're going to kind of, like, do their thing. and you can just sit back and watch for real, you know. Yeah, the catering company that I work with, we actually took our excess and we did. We made, we do, we do a pepper relish.

And so I was able to make like probably 20 quarts of just like straight fish pepper, pepper relish. Yeah, so that was good too because that wasn't something that we had been able to incorporate in our menu before. You know, we make all our own condiments. So I couldn't get hot sauce from you. So that was dope, too. Yeah. Fish pepper is amazing. I love, it's like definitely top five plants for me.

There's not too many of them that I know the history. And now I feel like I'm a part of that history now, you know what I'm saying? As far as like people that get it now, they have to like mention my name. It's Zazel's name. It goes all the way back up to you. You know, William Ward's Weaver, his grandfather. You know, so we're like part of the history in a way. So I think that's kind of dope.

You know what I'm saying? That's beautiful. And I really liked in your talk earlier, like your emphasis on why you do this work. You know, people are asking you about the business model and stuff, but I'd love to hear a little bit about that. Yeah, so I just like to keep that history alive. I feel like I'm like almost like a agricultural griot or something, like keeping the history and it's like passing it on, you know. So I think that's important. I like working with the different growers and like being able, even if it's like a little bit of money,

like they have a guaranteed sale, at least for me. They know, like, hey, grow peppers for Xavier, you know, check on coming or cash have however they get paid. I like to be able to have something to, like, hire young folks in the neighborhood who need an opportunity or something. So that's always been consistent. And at this point, I've been working with the same guys for like two years, three years in a row now.

So they pretty much have, like, understand, like, what we got to do when we go into commercial kitchen, you got to wash our hands, we got the gloves, we got hair net, we got all this type of stuff. They know how to operate everything. They know the recipe. They know they can really do it themselves. I mean, they're just not old enough to be in the kitchen by themselves. I don't think. They're like 17. They're like teenagers. But like just that position. And ideally I would love to like be able to step back and have them like to be able to run the whole machine. And I just might be the person like delivering the sauce and making sure all the numbers are right. So just that kind of thing. I would love to expand more. But I feel like if I didn't, I still like,

I kind of already reached my victory point already. So everything else other than this is like icing, you know what I'm saying? I wanted to do something we're connected, all the farmers that I love this, you know, in my network, tell a story, make a product, keeps African American history alive. So it checked off all my boxes. So other than anything else is like just, you know, it's extra, you know what I mean? Yeah. Thank you so much again to Xavier Brown and Soilful City.

and Denzel Mitchell, who is now the deputy director of the Farm Alliance of Baltimore. Next up, we speak with Dr. William Moyes Weaver himself. This interview is from last summer, 2019, when the True Love Seeds team, apprentices, and all, visited his roughwood seed collection to meet Will and the new seed collection manager, Stephen Smith, and to see the gardens and seed collection and lend a hand clearing some beds. For four years, I helped Dr. Weaver grow and see, save seeds from the 4,000 varieties of heirloom plants in his historic house and gardens. During this interview, we are sitting in his large, dim dining room, which doubles as a seed drying room, and which

is nestled in a corner of the once bustling lamb tavern. This inn opened in 1812 and was the last stop before arriving in Philadelphia from the west. Dr. Weaver is an internationally known food ethnographer and author of 20 books, dealing with culinary history and heritage seeds. Working with him introduced me to the world of keeping seeds and telling their stories, and I will forever be grateful for that. Just before we started recording, Dr. Weaver started talking about what he had recently learned from a curator from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, who was working on a biography of Horace Pippen.

She told me that Horace Pippen himself had a garden behind his house. So that would explain why he was seed savvy, I think. But we also noticed that the things that he gave my grandfather were all how they were filtered through his artist's eye. So this stuff was beautiful, not just interesting as food, but also showy. I like the Buenamalada pepper, you know. I mean, kind of get more beautiful than that. So, yeah, but my grandfather knew Pippin. I'm not quite sure how the two hooked up, but they were very good friends.

And he spent a lot of time at my grandparents' house. His wife worked as seamstress and took in laundry, but she also worked part-time for for a caterer, an African-American caterer in Westchester. And I met, oh, now I'm trying to think of their name, DeBaptiste's. And I met Mrs. DeBaptiste. She was an ancient lady and she catered a party for me because my grandmother knew her.

And I asked her about Pippin and, oh yes, Mr. Pippen. But I didn't think, to sit down with her and get some stories because she knew Pippin's wife, because Pippin's wife would, what do you call it, Moonlight, I guess, by working part-time for these catering events. Usually they were big African-American funerals. You know, they get big dinners and they need a lot of extra help. And I think that's what she did.

But that seed network is how Pippen got some of his things grow. And so that all came out. It was rather interesting. But I'm not surprised. I know that Mr. Pippen liked my grandmother's fried chicken. So I'll tell you also, my grandparents were Quakers, and Pippin sat at our table and ate with us. It's probably the only house in Westchester at that particular time where people were colorblind because Westchester was really segregated into the 50s and it was not a very nice scene. So I guess, yeah, there was even a separate school

for the kids and everything. You would think being in Pennsylvania wasn't deep south, but there was a certain mentality out there. Isn't the story with the Pippin Peppers that they were in the baby food jars with Pippin's name on them when you found them in the 60s? Yeah. My grandfather died suddenly and unexpectedly

and his left a seed collection down in the deep freeze. So there were baby food jars all in the bottom of the freezer, and that's where a lot of these peppers were located. Yeah. And some of them were marked. Or some of them my grandmother simply knew, oh, those are pipp and peppers, you know, blah, blah, that sort of thing. My grandfather somewhere had a list, but we never found it. So all I could go by was what was written on these.

He put tape over the top of the jars, you know, like that white tape you used to wrap band-aids, and then wrote on that. So some of them got kind of blurry, and there was a little bit of guesswork going on there. But, yeah, that's basically what happened. I won't tell you how many things I lost. But, you know, because I didn't really know how to deal with frozen seed because nobody told me. And it, of course, you know, now I know.

You'd want to let them sit out for a while and come up to room temperature and all that. And I was sort of taking them frozen and putting them in potting soil. hit or miss, you know, and then I began to realize this doesn't look right. It doesn't feel right. And I started to read up, okay, that's something my grandfather didn't teach me, but he knew all about that. He was actually a very smart botanist. He grafted franklinia onto some route. Yeah, yes. I have the tree out here, and it must be. be over 60 years old. Half of it's gone because the big ash tree fell on it. We can't figure out what it was, but Frank Linnea isn't supposed to live very long. And well, I brought that bush

over here from Westchester, and it was already old. So there are these mysteries that, I don't know. Stephen can't figure it out. Either we can't figure out what the root system is, but it's something that works. And would you say you got all of this spark for the plant world from your grandfather? And you spent a lot of time there as a kid too, right? Yeah, I grew up there in the house. So I was underfoot. My grandmother was cooking, and so send me to the garden, and I was out there with my grandfather. all the time. He gave me little tools. I have my little willbarrow, you know, I have all my

miniature tools. So, um, and he would talk. He would tell me things. And I didn't realize how much I was absorbing, but it was at that age and stage in life where you really do. It's like I was learning French and didn't know it, you know, that kind of thing. Um, yeah, and he had bees and he had racing pigeons. He had fruit trees. He grafted. I swear he could graft a tree to the side of the house

and it would grow. I mean, he could just stick it in. He had the touch, but he was, yeah. What's his official name? His public name? What do you mean? He went by H. Ralph Weaver. His H. was Homer, and he hated it.

And my father was also H. William Weaver, it was this Homer thing. And my father swore when I was born that Homer was going to be a dead name, no more in the family. I had a great, great-grandmother, who was very much a classicist. So she named all of her children with these names from antiquity. it wasn't too popular with the men who got the names. But anyway, Homer, I had a, Homer Abraham was my grandfather's father. And then we also, we also had seeds coming in from the Weaver side of the family. Because my great-great-grandfather, Abraham Weaver, went to Paris in 1878 with his wife.

they were actually going to Switzerland to check out our roots because we're from Switzerland originally. Weaver used to be Weber in Swiss. Weirer. Weirer is talking about his explorations to his ancestral homeland of Switzerland because it leads us into our next conversation with Michael Twitty. Hello.

Hi, it's Owen. Hi, Owen. How are you? I'm good. How are you? Brother Michael talks about his own research into his heritage as someone mostly descended from West Africans and whose names and villages were mostly lost to the legacy of slavery on this continent. Michael W. Twitty is a recognized culinary historian and independent scholar focusing on historic African American food and folk culture and culinary traditions. of historic Africa and her diaspora. He is a living history interpreter and a historic chef, one of the few recognized international experts of his craft.

The reconstruction of early southern cuisine as prepared by enslaved African-American cooks for tables high and low from heirloom seeds and heritage breed animals to fish, game, and foraged plant foods, to historic cooking methods to the table. This interview was never intended to be listened to quite like this. The interviews from April 2019, a time before we had decided to make this podcast. I was interviewing him for an article I had been asked to write for a national gardening magazine on seeds and foodways of the African diaspora. I was recording from my computer while my phone call was on speaker,

and I was vigorously writing notes on scraps of paper. So the sound quality is not excellent, and you can hear me scribbling and making noises of agreement. That said, Michael is brilliant and he talks brilliantly about the fish pepper and African diasporic food in general, so we had to include it. Well, Michael starts out talking about his research into his ancestry. Yeah, I mean, I do this constantly. I work with all sorts of texts that talk about West African botanical heritage and usage of plants and crops and trees all the time. I'm always studying how plants are grown together in West Africa.

Because we know, this is very important, I want you to make sure you include this, please. Okay. Because we know more about the ethnic origins of our ancestors, because of research of the slave trade, but also because we have also done our own DNA. those studies are invaluable because what's actually going on and I'm surprised well I think it's because nobody nobody the sources are a little bit too to pedestrian for some scholars where our blood is showing us when I connect when I'm more on ancestry or I'm an African ancestry

or some other company and I'm dialoguing with or in direct contact with the evidence that I am from a specific group, not just West African, someone's Fuladi, or someone is Mandinka, or someone's Wolof, or someone's Congo, or someone's Yoraba, or Ivo, or Khan, blah, blah, blah, et cetera, or Mende. And particularly when I'm coming, you know, talking about ancestors from a certain state or area, they receive specific populations, it's amazing because now we are beyond just saying West Central African, we are actually saying, because these ethnic groups contributed to. And it really is all the usual suspects.

It's like, wow, yep, that's us. There's only so much, you know, weird variants in these genetic narratives. Sometimes you get a little East Africa, sometimes a little Madagascar. But for the most part, it's exactly where you'd expect. And it's repetitive, and it's like, and it's just, most people saying, you know, just saying, I took a DNA test, I'm West African, I'm Yodobah, and now have all these American cousins, who also took the DNA test?

And that, to me, is very powerful because, you know, we didn't have those direct links a hundred years ago, 50 years ago. and now an African-American can genuinely say I am from this part of the continent here in my other roots that are non-African they are from here and my roots in Africa are here and once you've spoken to my cousin and I know our name before slavery

and how does that kind of impact your relationship to this narrative around food ways it makes the plants my own I mean, I remember when I met the fish pepper. And famously, you know, the fish pepper that I bought, the first one I bought at a colonial market or whatever, was called the Thai fish pepper. I knew this bad boy wouldn't tie. I was like, you don't look tired of me. And I took it home and I grew it and I loved it and I fell in love with it.

And I said, I got to find more about this thing. And that's when I started talking to Dr. Weaver. And he said you're exactly right. There ain't nothing to talk about it. In fact, here's the story that I know. Here's how I came across the seed. Go ahead. Do some research, find something else out.

I was like, this is this Negro pepper, the African pepper. I mean, there's a reason why it's part of us. It's a reason why it's in our community. Morris Pippin doesn't have his hands in us for no reason. these A-Rabbers and have their hands them for no reason. So what are these

uniquely black stories? What makes them, what makes them a part of us? I mean, so often people figure all, you know, we have to be given stuff. That's what I'm so angry about.

Every time I would read those stupid beginnings of the books about black food, and the chapter, it opens with Columbus, as if we were starving before this asshole showed up

right like we were just waiting on an Italian to make a delivery right I mean are you kidding me it's like when a delivery goes show we're starving right we've only been here for 70,000 years

as West Africans with 2,000 indigenous food plants and thousands of fish and animals and birds to eat. But nah, we waitin on a pizza order from Genoa. It's like, how ridiculous is that?

Not to mention the fact that foods had already begun to diffuse from Southeast Asia from the Mediterranean and from Europe and the Middle East. Yep. And it already happened. And foods from Africa had already been unmoved. to Europe to

Asia to the Middle East so for me I guess personally it's just it's a it's deeply a matter of pride I mean I'm not going to front for anybody

this is about cultural pride ethnic pride it's about having a sense of identity in these plans these plans are part of my human story

and that's why I've gone out of my way to intertwine those narratives because I really want people to understand. You know, if you think that a grape is part of the Italian or Armenian-American

narrative. It was a part of the Asian-American narrative. What's my narrative? Don't I get to be human to? And, of course, we know that in Latin, the word human and the word humus, which means soil are related. You are not human without the soil.

I mean, in Jewish tradition, which I adhere to, Adam, the human being, comes from Adama, the earth. We are literally called the earth creature, in Hebrew, when we're trying to connect and correct.

connect to our roots and correct our story we want accuracy we want foundations we want culture we want culture even that word culture

referring to the human productions and narratives and artifacts and social means by which we go beyond our animal nature is related to the Latin word

for cultivation, cultus. We can't get away from this. Your ecological ecosystem makeup and how you interact with it is vital to how your humanity and how your civilization is defined.

What would you say, I guess this is my last question. You brought up, like, that moment you fell in love with the fish pepper, you know, you brought up, like, what are the uniquely black stories and this, like, sense that we all have of, like, needing to have this identity in these plants, but how it's, like, uniquely, also an African diasporic experience. Like, what would you say, what would you say to kind of all these young people now, or really at any age who are, like, longing for these feelings of love for these plants and this

reuniting with African diasporic plants and culture? Think about how it applies to your own family story. Start there. My grandmother loved that little jar homemade, you know, pepper sauce, pepper vinegar. And to be able to find that sort of narrative 200,000 years ago in the works of other people was very powerful. To be able to understand how these plants, and how their proverbs and how the stories of the food work in terms of West African culture was very powerful.

Because that automatically I knew that no matter what anybody said, I had a heritage. Right. But deep, deep past. So I think the best thing we can do is think about the plants and the foods, the ingredients that have really shaped our own family and personal. journeys and really work through that. And by working through that, I mean, do the research, do the homework, you know, look at how, look at the story on the other side of the Atlantic, in the Caribbean, Brazil, in the American South, beyond the American South. And just know that those stories are proxy for your own journey. I mean, that's what the cooking jeep was all about, right?

It was all about when life used me this monzaic missing these jewels, these precious jewels, then I can sort of imagine what they look like based on the stories around the lives of the people. I may be missing a name or this or that, but I know we were both eating sweet potato. Right.

And I got a, you know, I'm sharing a stomach with my ancestors. And my stomach is where, My fact, for some of my knowledge is located. My bacteria of memory are located. That's where, you know, when you look at West African Heart, power objects, it's always stored in the stomach. Totally. So it's like that belly knowledge, that, you know, that Kishka knowledge,

that intestinal wisdom, that intuition. Mm-hmm. We're tapping into that through this. work, and we're making it possible for people to connect with ancestors, and unfortunately, some of the traumas of the past have made remote, but they have that obliterated them. Mm-hmm. Yeah, man. Wow.

Beautiful. Thank you so much. No worries. No worries. I really appreciate it. And this is where I took it off speakerphone abruptly and stopped recording so we could say our goodbyes. And because I didn't plan on sharing the audio.

but aren't you glad we did anyways we are so grateful for brother Michael Tweety Dr. William Boyce Weaver and brother Xavier and Denzel for taking the time to share their love for the fish pepper and as many stories in this episode

and thank you for listening and sharing this episode of Seeds and their people with your loved ones. Please also subscribe and please leave a positive review Thank you also for supporting our seed keeping and storytelling work by ordering seeds, calendars, and more from our web catalog at tru-loveseats.com. Remember, keeping seeds is an act of true love for our ancestors and our collective future.

Thanks, everybody. Bye-bye. Thank you.