seasons, seeds, past, soon…
Two small vases filled with Trader Joe’s “filler” flowers are all that stand between me, sitting at the kitchen table, and a dreary January landscape drained of all color. As anyone who has spent time in Chicago during the winter knows, the sky goes a flat gray and that’s that for days on end.
Which makes the catalog from The Seed Savers Exchange (SSE) that much more of a treasure: 155 pages, plus cover, filled with vibrant color photos of “open-pollinated, untreated, non-hybrid, non-GMO” summer bounty, along with the occasional gardening essay, recipe and a selection of hand tools. Here is proof of summer. And, since SSE specializes in heirloom seeds, also proof of bounties past.
A few years ago, I wrote “Seeds,” a history wrapped in an essay, inspired by a series of summertime conversations with a friend.
“Seeds are the beginning and the end of the story: We plant seeds to get more seeds. Everything we eat either has come from a seed (fruits and vegetables), is itself a seed (grains), or is one degree removed from a seed (meat, poultry, dairy). From seeds come materials that clothe us and shelter us; compounds that heal us; flowers that cheer us; and spices that literally add spice to our lives.”
At one point, the land in front of the US Capitol was a demonstration garden and the USDA’s mission included distributing free seeds to farmers. Botanists traveled the world looking for crops that would feed a young nation.
Corn was already well-established by the time Columbus arrived having spread across the Americas from the Oaxaca Valley in southern Mexico over thousands of years. But the soybean, the other commodity crop that has played such an outsize role shaping the modern, global food system, was first imported from Japan in 1851.
“Seeds” includes a wide-ranging, link-filled bibliography, complete with a history of “150 Years of Research at the United States Department of Agriculture.”
Many of the varieties in the Seed Savers catalog — squashes, melons, tomatoes, beets, rutabagas, beans, greens, peppers, eggplants, zucchinis — have histories that go back to those early days. Farmers saved seeds from the fall harvest to plant in the spring. The legacy of family farm wasn’t only about the land, but the seeds, too.
Today, it is generally illegal to save seeds from “Big Ag” commodity crops. The companies that develop what are mostly genetically modified seeds consider their genes to be like software: proprietary intellectual property.
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I like to support farmers’ markets, so skip the vegetables to focus on flowers. Johny Jump-Ups. Radar Blue Delphinium. Black Hollyhocks. Marigolds. And zinnias. Every which kind of zinnia. My eyes are always bigger than my flower beds. But at less than $4 per packet, it’s ok if I end up giving some away. Seeing seed packets fill up a basket by my gardening tools is act of joyful defiance.
No matter that gray stretches to the winter horizon, summer is on its way.
