I met my friend Lan (@dinhteresting) the other night in the rain for a seed handoff, as we tend to do each year now. She handed me seeds for Lá Tiá Tô (Vietnamese Perilla), Vietnamese Jute, Luffa, and these gorgeous Smooth Bitter Melons, which her youth at Resilient Roots Community Farm in Camden were responsible for harvesting and cleaning. Here’s how they describe them: “Mướp đắng, or Bittermelon, is one of our most important medicinal foods packed full of nutrition and ancestral magic. It is a staple in Southeast/South Asian cuisine and has its roots in Africa. In our garden, we grow a long smooth variety and a smaller spiky kind. We do not isolate the different varieties far enough to prevent cross-pollination - we are OK with this as it creates our own Resilient Roots bittermelon. These were taken from our long, smooth ones.” Their farm (part of VietLead) is an intergenerational space for growing food, intercultural knowledge, and unity as well as a space for community organizing around social justice issues. As I finished cleaning their seeds today, I was so grateful to be in the presence of these bundles of cultural information, lovingly tended by their people, and lovingly shared far and wide - especially with people looking to reconnect with their ancestral crops. When people order seeds grown by this farm, half of the proceeds go directly back to them - this is true for all of our Truelove Seeds growers. Check out @vietlead and @resilientrootsfarm, and please support their important work. Find their seeds at www.trueloveseeds.com #seedkeeping #seedsaving #mướpđắng #smoothbittermelon #bittermelon https://www.instagram.com/p/B5rFqW0AZMF/?igshid=141yi56qbx2fh