SEED KEEPING

the story is in the seed

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Sistah Seeds! Truelove Seeds took a trip to visit and help out at Amirah’s farm today (@sistahseeds). The kids wanted us to have grass in our mouths like real farmers 😂 Amirah is growing dozens and dozens of heirloom African American and other African Diasporic seed crops, many of which will end up in our catalog, inshallah. She takes the cake amongst our roughly 70 growers for having the longest list of seeds on her growers agreement for this year, or ever. She worked with us for four years before branching out to start her own operation. I’m so glad to remain so deeply connected in our work and community. Thank you Amirah for welcome us to your beautiful farm! We 💜 you! #seedkeeping (at The Seed Farm) https://www.instagram.com/p/CiWM-exur9Q/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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Thank you to @tiffanytavarez for ordering our cut flowers! If you are interested, check out our wholesale cut flowers page to get our stems at wholesale prices, and even delivered in certain areas in Philly and the western suburbs! Link in IG bio. (at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) https://www.instagram.com/p/Chn7it0us2m/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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It’s pretty surreal to see Truelove Seeds featured in a magazine I grew up seeing on my grandma Letty’s coffee tables. If only she was here to see this AND read her own grandma’s name (Leticia Truelove) in print. Our work is so much bigger than Chris and me: so many other people (including @cryptogam_ @ainbaz @sarastaylor @claykitchenstudio @honnih @sa__a__a @sistahseeds and countless apprentices, seed growers, and community partners/friends) spend their days and energies and inspirations making Truelove what it is through stewarding their beloved ancestral varieties and making them available to gardeners and farmers far and wide. That said, this is a lovely design and a good write-up, and it’s a real honor to grace the pages of this historic issue alongside some of our other favorite seed companies! #seedkeeping @betterhomesandgardens (at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) https://www.instagram.com/p/ChbC0UCOBJE/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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New episode of Seeds and Their People! EP. 12: MRS. PEARLIE MAE JACKSON TROTTER: A JEWEL OF THE MISSISSIPPI DELTA This interview overflows with deep wisdom, rough experience, and a heapin’ side of humor all in Ms. Pearl’s pecan smooth Mississippi cadence and style. It is uncharacteristically long for our conversations and we know you will be BLESSED by every minute! Ms. Pearl is a daughter of the delta and migrated north. She was born and raised in what would today be considered deep poverty in the then and now poorest state of the union in a time and place where slavery was dead in name only. White supremacy and deep oppression of the working class was and remains a very real and present danger to peace, health, economic and spiritual progress in our beloved Mississippi. There will be some parts of Ms. Pearl’s personal life story that might be hard for some listeners to hear. Also Ms. Pearl will be speaking from her deep life experiences, in her dialect and through her ways of knowing the world in which she matured. Please listen as always with a beginner's mind and an open heart to her intense sharing. Link in bio. Listen on any podcast apps. #seedsandtheirpeople (at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) https://www.instagram.com/p/ChalVWzunJa/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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WHOLESALE CUT FLOWERS FROM THE TRUELOVE SEEDS FARM! Our special focus is on dahlias, growing around 400 plants per year. We grow a couple hundred named varieties and a couple hundred seedling dahlias that are totally unique to our farm. We also grow zinnias, plume celosia, and a couple types of foliage. We may occasionally also have cockscomb celosia and sunflowers - please check with us for availability. ORDERING: See our pricing below or at trueloveseeds.com/pages/wholesale-cut-flowers. Please place a minimum order of $100, and add $15 for delivery if you cannot pick up. Our delivery zone includes the areas between our farm in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania and Philadelphia (excluding the Northeast). Email order requests to Miki Palchick at [email protected] and she will help you create the order, schedule the pickup or delivery (on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays), and send you an invoice. Thank you! DAHLIAS (DOUBLE/FANCY) Stem Price: $ 2.00 Bunch Price: $ 20.00 DAHLIAS (SINGLE/OPEN CENTERED) Stem Price: $ 1.00 Bunch Price: $ 10.00 ZINNIAS Stem Price: $ 0.90 Bunch Price: $ 9.00 CELOSIA, PLUME Stem Price: $ 0.90 Bunch Price: $ 9.00 HUACATAY (LONG SCENTED MARIGOLD LEAF FOR FOLIAGE) Stem Price: $ 0.50 Bunch Price: $ 5.00 AUTUMN OLIVE (SILVERY FOLIAGE) Stem Price: $ 0.50 Bunch Price: $ 5.00 (at Glen Mills, Pennsylvania) https://www.instagram.com/p/ChX6L5wu6N-/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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Odell’s White Watermelon, sizing up, with morning dew. Odell's Large White Watermelon fruits are gigantic with sweet, pink, juicy flesh, light green skin, and white seeds (though not very many). The rinds are tender, almost as sweet as the flesh, and great for pickling. While watermelons were first domesticated in Africa, this is one of few that are known to be a variety connected to a particular African American person, who in this case is an unnamed man who selected this variety during or before the 1840s on a plantation in Pomaria, SC. Our original seed came from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. Theirs came from Rodger Winn whose wife Karen Metzes's family has stewarded this melon since 1880. Our former coworker Amirah Mitchell advocated for us to include this variety at our farm this year. Amirah is also growing this variety for our catalog at her new farm project, Sistah Seeds, among dozens of other seed crops important to Africans and African Americans in the diaspora. #seedkeeping @sistahseeds (at Glen Mills, Pennsylvania) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cgxstxxuej-/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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Rodale interns came down to the Truelove Seeds farm today and it was lovely. After their visit last year, we began our relationship with then Rodale interns @sfstern, now of @seededfarm near DC, and Bianca and Ethan, now of @thegrowersgrange in Oregon. Both farms are growing their ancestral seed crops for our catalog this year, each with sweet layers of mentorship and deeper collaboration as well. Today we roamed the field telling lots of seed stories and exploring our farming systems for hours. It was so fun. And it seems many of them will be visiting us throughout the season to learn more along side of us. Thanks @rodaleinstitute and @rodaleinstitutefarm! (at Glen Mills, Pennsylvania) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cgh-p2Xu5hp/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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Last year, @nitalvadalia suggested we grow Guar Gum - also known as Cluster Beans, Guvar, Guwar, and Cyamopsis tetragonoloba - because it is such an important vegetable crop for so many people originally from India, and very hard to find here. We found some seed from Caribbean Garden Seed, and it’s actually growing pretty nicely in our little trial plot. I harvested the first two dried seed pods today! This year, Tika Jagad is apprenticing with us with a particular focus on her Indian and Jamaican ancestral plants (see the post about the Chana!). Turns out Guvar is another important food from her childhood, and she had a heartwarming conversation with her father about their food memories of this “Indian string bean” as she calls it, and her experience with it at our farm. She says you just can’t find good quality fresh pods here, even at the Indian groceries. So we hope to make the seeds more available some year soon! It is not known where this plant originated since it seems to be nowhere in the wild, but people suspect it was cultivated from another species in Africa, and further selected in South Asia. Yes, this nitrogen-fixing legume is the same Guar Gum used for its gel in many processed foods. It’s an important part of crop rotations, especially in northwestern India and Pakistan. #seedkeeping (at Glen Mills, Pennsylvania) https://www.instagram.com/p/CgZzEFAuAVu/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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@therealmaryjblige is the meanest part of this American Gothic 😂 Chiamaka and Rocky with their Lumper Potato harvest. It was their first time lifting potatoes! This was the potato of the Great Hunger in Ireland, one that I grow to remember my great grandmother Mary Lenihan and her potato farming family in Galway. Of course, potatoes originate in the Andes where they were first domesticated and where their diversity is still the greatest. They made their way to Ireland as a field crop in the seventeenth century and became a staple in the eighteenth. #seedkeeping #lumperpotato (at Glen Mills, Pennsylvania) https://www.instagram.com/p/CgYESJQuTUX/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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We are seed keepers. Keeping seeds is an act of Truelove for our past and our collective future. Together with over 70 farms and gardens in our region and across the country, we share the seeds and stories of our beloved foodways across our diasporas: for us, grown by us. Together we learn how to best love our plant relatives, how to midwife their next generations, and how to carry forward their rich origin stories. We mentor apprentices and new seed growers and they teach us too. We send seeds back home. We do all this through the support of your seed orders: seed packet by seed packet. Half of each packet sale goes directly to our growers, honoring their work, their culture, and their expertise. We thresh: pulling the new from the old. We winnow: blowing the chaff from the world that is to come. We are seed keepers and it is our great joy and honor to be part of your seed journey. 1. @ainbaz with Smooth Bitter Melon from @resilientrootsfarm 2. Aleho (Nigerian leaf amaranth) from @justeviateas 3. Transkutukú Peanuts from the Shuar and Achuar communities of the Morona Santiago jungle, Ecuador. 4. Guar Gum, grown at the request of @nitalvadalia 5. Ethiopian Blue Mustard from Menkir Tamrat, an Ethiopian tech-worker turned farmer who introduced these seeds and other Ethiopian varieties to @artisan.seeds. 6. Fantastic Mr. Fox dahlia, named by @snapdragonflowersphilly. Dahlias are known as Cocoxochitl in Nahuatl and are an Aztec food crop. 7. Waterleaf aka Efo Gbure, from @okofarms with flowers closed up before an afternoon rain storm. #seedkeeping (at Glen Mills, Pennsylvania) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cf9MY8JuGVO/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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Tobacco Road Farm is where I worked both 17 and 10 years ago, and where I first saved seeds on a larger scale, just outside this very high tunnel using my feet alongside a then 8-year-old hopping up and down with our bare feet. I visited a couple times this weekend while back home, and they were in the thick of Mizuna, Mache, Tokyo Bekana, Vertissimo Chervil, and Rutabaga seed harvest and processing. They grow lots of winter hardy and otherwise awesome varieties for our seed catalog and dry them down on tarps as seen here before threshing by foot and winnowing by box fans. Bryan O’Hara wrote No-Till Intensive Vegetable Culture, and he’s always super generous with time and information when I visit, updating me on their new methods and trials and efficiencies and joys. I love Tobacco Road so much! Also the jumping 8 year old is now an 18 year old flower farmer and I thoroughly enjoy trading dahlia tubers and info with her. 💜 PS. Tobacco Road Farm is in Lebanon, CT - ten minutes from my mom’s house. #seedkeeping #notillfarming https://www.instagram.com/p/Cf7lktEuM0V/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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Ethiopian Mustard seed pods drying on a table and pressed up against the glass of of the barn, with a high tunnel and its wind gage reflected under a stormy sky. It’s seed harvest season! https://www.instagram.com/p/Cf7ib0iumFz/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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A SEAT AT THE TABLE SYMPOSIUM Saturday, June 18, 2022 10 a.m. – 12 p.m. EDT | At New York Botanical Garden @nybg With Natalie Baszile, Jessica B. Harris, Gail Myers, Matthew Raiford, and Karen Washington ‘Two compelling sessions on African American farmers explore how Black farming informs our history and culture—across America and here in New York. A Seat at the Table reflects the long and ongoing struggle by Black farmers to acquire and keep their farms, and regain their rightful place in America’s farming history.’ And they’ve ordered selections from our African Diaspora Seed Collection to accompany the talks in their @nybg gift shop. Check it out! I wish I could be there - it sounds awesome. Register for free at @nybg (see their linktree) @nataliebaszile @drjessicabharris @gardengail @chefarmermatthew @karwasher @riseandrootfarm (at New York Botanical Garden) https://www.instagram.com/p/CeQ5e9nONTM/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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Miki and Harper are both taking the 2022 Organic Seed Production Online Course with @organic_seed_alliance, and I’m their on-farm mentor. Miki is an old friend and experienced farm educator who just started working with Truelove a couple months ago, and Harper is a second-year apprentice at @camphillkimberton. From OSA: “This course is intended to compliment applied learning opportunities for students in internship positions on seed growing farms. The role of the mentor seed grower is to provide support, feedback and advice to the student on their seed growing experience in 2022 and in planning for achieving their personal/professional goals as a seed grower.” Glad to add this other layer of mentorship to our farm! PS we basically finished planting today - maybe 95% finished (thanks @claykitchenstudio @realglitterb0y @caitlyn_sheila and Harper!) Even with 6 coworkers and apprentices calling out for various reasons including several COVID exposures. Stay safe out there! Next week we focus on trellising, protecting seed crops with bird netting, and weed and pest management. #seedkeeping (at Glen Mills, Pennsylvania) https://www.instagram.com/p/CeFDwEmOXQo/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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This weekend we had two days in the 90s and wow the solarization finally worked well. We use clear plastic drip cloth to “solarize” or basically bake off the weed and crop residue, which we had weed-whacked close to the ground first. It works best over 75-80 degrees, but in the 90s it is powerful. It still only cooks the top bit of soil, so the soil biology isn’t harmed under the surface. This made bed prep much easier on these beds. https://www.instagram.com/p/CeAMOBSOXM6/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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I really love nerding out about plants and seeds and sunshine and soil with people. Here we are towards the end of a field walk on Friday talking about peanuts. Thanks @claykitchenstudio for the photo! https://www.instagram.com/p/Cd_5Qc4uQ9q/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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Three West African leafy green headed to the farm this week: Efo Shoko (Celosia leaf), Aleho (Amaranth leaf), Efo Gbure (Waterleaf). https://www.instagram.com/p/CdvdEtVuRY6/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=