Bringing Biodiversity Back

Tag: Heirloom Seeds (Page 2 of 2)

Russia Part 1: Background

In 1939 Winston Churchill said “Russia is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma” and coincidently a short time before we entered the country there was a magazine title story that was called something like, “Russia — Understanding the Enigma” sitting in the window of a German book store. More than 65 years later Churchill’s description is still applicable.

Most of us have some sort of preconceived notions about Russia, and we must admit that we had ours. Our stay in Saint Petersburg was really only enough to add to those a priori assumptions, and as with most countries (and most things in general), we left feeling like we had learned just enough to realize that we haven’t a clue about the country, let alone the city that we called home for eight days.

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Photos from right to left: Frozen crust on the River Moyka, The Hermitage, The first tourist pose in a long time, The “Church on Spilled Blood” used as a root cellar but the Soviets.

Our interest in visiting Russia was inspired by the renowned Vavilov Institute (VIR), which is known for housing one of the world’s largest and oldest gene banks. In planning our trip to Europe, the VIR was at the top of the list of places we wanted to go, and after more than a little effort, Nick was able to secure an invitation for us.

We had the unique circumstance of arranging a visit to Russia that bridged the first two weeks of the New Year, with an arrival of January 4 and a departure of January 12. In arranging our trip, Sergey Alexanian, a Vice Director and the Foreign Relations specialist at the Vavilov Institute, had mentioned “the holidays,” but I assumed he was referring only to the couple of days on either side of the weekend of January 6-7, the Eastern Orthodox Christmas. Like with many assumptions, I was very wrong.

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Portrait of N.I Vavilov

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Denmark: East to West in 12 hours

When we got off the bus in Copenhagen it was very cold and seemed as though nothing was open. We decided to walk towards the center of town, past Tivoli Gardens and the wax museum to the main square. When we got to the town square it was full of life. We were surprised to see so many people awake so early — until we realized it wasn’t early for them, it was late. The bars were still open and they were still out from the night before. Once we had this realization it became obvious that every person that passed us was quite drunk, and so we had an amusing time sitting on a bench in the square watching the show.

Eventually it was late enough to call Søren Holt, a member of the Danish Seed Savers Association (Frøsamlerne) who would be our ride to Ødense for the Seed Cleaning Workshop later that day. We had a bit of difficulty with the pay phone, until a kind and compassionate (and very drunk) young man offered to make the call for us. After our pick-up was arranged, our new friend asked us what we were doing in Denmark. When we told him, he laughed and said, “You guys are very big nerds. I thought I was a big nerd when I play online video games, but you are even more nerds. You are like bionic nerds, made up of many pieces of smaller nerds stuck together!” I thanked him for the complement and the phone call, and we parted ways.

It was early enough that we were able to go back to Søren’s house before driving the 2.5 hours to Ødense. He served us toast and coffee and finally, Ikea made sense to me! We took a quick tour of his garden and were off.

The seed cleaning workshop in Ødense was attended by about 18 people, all members of the Frøsamlerne. The presenter, Jeppe Dalsgaard, has worked for seed companies in Scandinavia long enough that he had a great amount of knowledge to share: He knows the magic of cleaning seeds by hand (without fans!). Jeppe gave thorough demonstrations on cleaning spinach, kale, and carrot seeds using only three different sized screens, a shallow metal drum that looked something like a large cheese cake pan with a very fine wire mesh at the bottom, two trays and a muslin sack. He also gave the mathematical equations for how dry a seed can get at a certain temperature with a certain atmospheric humidity. He explained the finer details of “priming” parsley seed so it germinates quicker, and taught about the difference between seed vigor (speed with which seeds sprout) and germination rate (total percentage of sprouted seeds after a given period of time).

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