Seed saving group starts

DEXTER — About 15 area gardeners and farmers met recently at the Abbott Memorial Library to listen to Heron Breen describe the challenges and opportunities of saving vegetable and flower seeds, and then discuss options about forming a “seed library” for preservation and development of favorite, locally-adapted varieties.

Breen, who lives in St Albans and works for the cooperative seed and plant company FEDCO as a plant breeder and seed inspector, attempted to distill his years of experience to the eager audience of mostly novice savers.  Keeping a few seeds from a favorite plant is not too difficult to do, he said, but to do it right, checking for true traits and standards, gardeners need to be on their A game all year long —  “You basically can’t not pay attention.”

The history of humans saving seeds is thousands of years old, and has only really changed in the last half century or so as agriculture has followed the industrial economic model of constant growth at the expense of sustainability.  In historic rural America, many people saved seeds of many varieties of many crops, so that if some failed there would be a local reservoir to fall back on.  But now corporate concentration of seed production and ownership of varieties has reduced the number of sources for food and flower seeds to a small number, changing the whole pattern of local observation, experimentation, and selection that used to ensure food resilience in a community.  

“I plant seed to get more seed” used to be the farmer’s dictum before centralized storage and distribution.  Now, most farmers grow crops from bought seed and can be legally punished for saving “copyrighted” and patented seeds. Worldwide, this situation is causing significant distress in most traditional agricultural areas.

In response, to decrease dependence on large suppliers, supporters of Dexter Dover Area Towns in Transition (DDATT) are organizing a group of local seed savers, to educate themselves on the actual methods of collecting and storing seeds of desirable local plants from year to year, and make them available to other interested growers for perpetuation and improvement. Members of such a library will commit to saving seed back to the collection, in addition to growing a useful food or flower crop.  

DDATT requests help from any experienced seed savers in the area who might help this fledgling group, and also invites other novices to come learn about this elemental rural skill together. A tentative next-step meeting is planned for early October.

DDATT’s mission is to help rethink and reshape the community as all struggle to move (consciously or not) away from being consumers to being contributors. For more information on DDATT and future events, email info@ddatt.org to get on email list, or call 277-4221 or 924-3836.