Seed Ambassadors Recent News

This Saturday, come learn about growing food through winter in the great refrigerator of the Pacific Northwest.

In this ever-evolving workshop we will discuss many topics from: when to plant, seed varieties for winter hardiness, and much more.

The 6th annual Winter Cropping Workshop, sponsored by the Eugene Permaculture Guild and Food For Lane County, is scheduled for 3.00 p.m. on Saturday June 20 at the Food For Lane County Youth Farm in Springfield.

The workshop and seed exchange will be facilitated by Ted Purdy, FFLC farmer; Andrew Still of the Seed Ambassadors Project, and Nick Routledge. If you have questions e-mail us at seedambassadors(at)gmail.com.

Bring your experiences and questions to share and any home saved seed to swap.

Directions:

From Springfield, go north on Pioneer Parkway. At the big roundabout, go west on Hayden Bridge Rd, turn right on Game Farm Rd. At the Baptist church, six blocks down, turn left on Flamingo and go two blocks to the end of the street. You’ll see the Youth Farm on your left.

From Eugene, take Coburg Rd north, then Harlow Rd east, cross I-5, pass Gateway, and turn left on Game Farm Rd (if you hit the big roundabout, you’ve gone one block too far). Six blocks down, at the Baptist church, turn left on Flamingo and go two blocks to the end of the street. You’ll see the Youth Farm on your left.

From I-5 going north: Take Beltline Rd east exit. Continue east on Beltline, cross Gateway. Follow Beltline east until you have passed the large hospital development on your left. Take the next right, which is Cardinal, then go immediately left on Game Farm. At the Baptist church a few blocks up, turn right on Flamingo (the road after Mallard) and go two blocks to the end of the street. You’ll see the Youth Farm on your left.

For everyone within driving distance of Eugene, Oregon, this year’s Spring Seed Swap morphs into a full on Propagation Fair with speakers.

Bring your home saved seed to trade and share in the bounty with the seedy community! Also remember to bring empty envelopes and baggies, there is never enough.

In addition to seeds and starts, this year there is a concerted effort to include fruit tree cuttings (scion). Root stock will be available for a small fee, and help with grafting will also be available.

see a full write-up of the event at the Eugene Permaculture Guild’s website

Please come to the Lane Community College Cafeteria
10.00 a.m. - 4.00 p.m. Saturday, March 14.

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Here’s a slide show to get people excited about the 2009 season.

This month we took a short trip to Thailand, where we combined family time with my dad (who lives there), with some Seed Ambassadorizing in a small village called Nong Ta Klong in Buriram Province, in the northeast.

View Sideshow in Full Screen
- We recommend changing it to 5 seconds per photo.

On a previous trip to Thailand we had made friends with Loong Yoot, a brilliant and inspirational man whose motto is to “teach by not teach.” Loong Yoot received a scholarship to study Permaculture in Australia many years ago, and has spent the past eight years riding his bicycle around his home country teaching people by example about sustainable living. In a country where most structures are made of resource consumptive wood or cement, he teaches people to build adobe structures for community learning centers and other uses. In a culture where consumerism and materialism are rapidly stripping both rich and poor of their sense of self, he shows that another, simpler way of life is possible and in many ways preferable. Loong Yoot’s workshops bridge the class divide by bringing the rural poor together with elite city folk searching for a new way of life, and enable travelers to develop meaningful connections with people and places in that elusive “off the beaten path.”

The last time we were in Thailand (early 2004), we spent five weeks working and learning with Yoot in a village close to the Cambodian border. This time, due to a limited time frame, we spent only three days.

Po Tongbai, the former village head man of Ban Nong Ta Klong, had already started a bit of a “Center for Sustainable” in this increasingly dry region when he dug three large ponds on his land a few years ago. Some questioned his sanity, but his family and friends now enjoy fresh fish year-round, and his family has a lush, irrigated garden in the dry season. But the invitation to build an adobe structure, to invite people from near and very far away to learn about living a less resource-consumptive life, was initiated by his daughter Noi. Over the course of three weeks, dozens of people will come to Po Tongbai’s land to have fun, make connections, and learn by doing.

In the short time we were there we made many bricks and built two walls of the structure; learned how to make rice noodles in the traditional way; did a teensy bit of gardening; ate lots of delicious food; and gave a seed saving workshop. We brought some international seeds with us to share with the villagers, and in return some of the women in the village walked us around and gave us seed for many beautiful food and flower plants, some of which might even mature seed for us here in Oregon. We are thrilled to grow their authentic Thai holy basil, an edible species of cleome (spider flower), and Loong Yoot’s edible ball-shaped loofa from the northern mountain regions, among others.

I wanted to thank Howard Sooley for the nice words he wrote on the Organic Allotment blog recently. Another thank you to Alan Jenkins and the other OG Allotment folks for keeping up the good work and making us want to be in Europe every time we read your posts.

We miss their enthusiasm and kindness. Their very active blog is one of my favorites for regular reading online.

Please read their recent Seed Saving post, it makes me warm inside. Which is convenient as it is snowing now in Oregon and it isn’t going to get above freezing for 3 days.

Here are some fall and winter photos. (I recommend opening the slide show full screen and setting the speed to 5 seconds.)

Stay warm and happy winter time from the Seed Ambassadors Project.

For immediate release to the public domain that is…

Hello everyone. There has been a mid season blog break for a bit, but we are very happy now to share this seed saving zine with you. Just in time for the late summer and fall seed saving workshops we (and some of you) will be giving. You will notice that it is the 2nd edition. We are very happy with the improvements over the first, so happy that we are sending it out as a PDF to all of our friends and posting it here on the web for download.

Zines for seed saving are great propaganda tools for the cause. We would love for everyone to make as many copies as they can and distribute them to anyone interested. Maybe we all can prevent a little seed knowledge from eroding. We are in the process of getting it translated into spanish, so keep your eyes out for that edition!

There are two versions of the PDF. the first is ready for reading as is and can also be printed in handout form. The second is formated for zine printing. It seems all mixed up on the PDF but this is intentionally designed. Simply print out the first 11 pages, then place those pages back into the blank paper tray with the blank backs facing up to be printed on. Line them up right side up so you don’t get flipped fronts and backs. Then print the last 11 pages (12-22). You will probably have to then collate them back into the correct order, because they may be reversed. Now all you have to do is fold the stack in half into a zine and staple or sow a binding.

Seed Saving Zine for reading

Seed Saving Zine for printing

(if it doesn’t download after clicking the appropriate link above, right click on the link and “save link as”) we can send printed copies of the zine through the mail for $3-6 each sliding scale. Please send a request and cash to our PO Box.

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We would Like to announce an upcoming Seed Ambassador Event in partnership with Aprovecho Sustainable Living Center.

THE APROVECHO SEED AND PLANT FAIR

Sunday, May 18 2008
at Aprovecho Sustainable Living Center

a full day of fun featuring:

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10:30 am Free Workshops
• Seed Saving with Andrew Still of the Seed Ambassadors Project and Taylor Zeigler of Unity Seeds
• Gardening for Year Round Harvest with Nick Routledge

1:00 pm Potluck

2:00 pm Seed and Plant Exchange
(feel free to come empty- handed)

3:00 pm Open meeting to plan a local seed bank initiative
Facilitated by the Seed Ambassadors Project and Aprovecho

Feel free to stay into the evening to converse, make connections, and play music.

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Please contact Tao or Abel at Aprovecho for further questions and directions to the event: (541) 942-8198 or abel(at)aprovecho(dot)net.

Aprovecho is a non-profit educational center focused on teaching and demonstrating the skills of a sustainable lifestyle. www.aprovecho.net

The Seed Ambassadors Project promotes ecologically resilient cultures through the stewardship and free sharing of open-pollinated seed. www.seedambassadors.org

For those of you who want to know where Aprovecho is… it is west of Cottage Grove, near the end of Hazelton Rd, which is off of CG Loraine Hwy.

Please forward this announcement to anyone who might be intereseted in attending.

Download the flier here Seed And Plant Fair flyer.pdf

Yesterday was the Eugene Permaculture Guild’s annual Spring Seed Swap. Every year, hundreds of gardeners and seed savers convene for a few hours on a Saturday to share seeds, plants, and a potluck meal. The event is more than the free gifting of seeds, though, and has become a pivotal community event for the local gardening scene.

This year was the Seed Ambassadors Project’s first appearance at the spring seed swap, and we brought two grocery bags filled with seed that we have saved in the past few seasons. By the end of the day these bags were whittled down to one tenth of their original quantity. It is so great to think of so many local gardeners growing locally saved seeds! Of course, we did not come away empty handed, as we gathered samples of some locally saved tomatoes, orach, mustard, a gourd, a salsify, a parsley, a root parsley, and a blue flat leafed kale that we are really excited about.

Joy Larkcom’s Bull’s Blood Chard, Ukrainian Beet, Kamuoliai 2 Beet (from Lithuania)

We believe that it is essential that home gardeners and farmers save seed to preserve genetic diversity. It is apparent that even small seed companies are unable and/or unwilling to do so, as they must respond to the forces of the market and whims of the large seed companies. Locally stewarded seed is of course optimal, though national seed saving networks, such as the Seed Saver’s Exchange, are also very excellent in this regard. One of the goals of the Seed Ambassadors Project is to encourage local seed saving. Each time a variety of vegetable is saved in a particular bioregion (or microclimate or garden), it adapts to the specific conditions of that place. Ultimately, food sovereignty begins with seed sovereignty.

As we have mentioned in previous posts, our seed quest last winter resulted in the collection of more than seven hundred varieties of seed, many not available in the United States. Added to this amount are the fifty or so varieties we collected this year in Romania, and a few dozen other varieties collected by other friends Seed Ambassadorizing in Mexico and Italy. While we are doing everything we can to grow out as many of these varieties as possible in our own large seed garden, isolation distances required by many biennial outbreeders (beets and chard, brassicas, onions and leeks, parsnips and carrots) severely limit the amounts of these species we can grow out to seed in any given season.

Sarah and John Herberg with some onions, Russian Hunger Gap Kale, Alison Kinney with Sutherlin Kale

Last year we grew several of each of these species, not quite knowing how we would isolate them this year for flowering and seed production. Several people have contacted us through our website and offered to help (thank you!), and we are trying to plug these people in as much as possible.

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This year, the Seed Ambassadors Project was invited to the Transylvania (Northwest) region of Romania by the Ratiu Family Foundation as part of the Ratiu Center for Democracy’s Agricultural program, Turda Fest. Turda Fest’s mission is to honor “the history of the greater Turda region and promote options for a sustainable future…. [and to] provide educational opportunities in agriculture for ecologically sound and financially viable development.” Turda Fest’s main component has been an agricultural festival in the fall, but is expanding to include educational and organizational activities throughout the year.

Our Turda Fest program, from February 1-9 was organized by Turda Fest’s brilliant Program Coordinator Marta Pozsonyi and Peace Corps Volunteer extraordinare Kate Lucas. The program included village workshops with farmers and meetings with other people involved in agriculture in the area, such as the local Agriculture Minister and ag-oriented NGOs. We also ate some incredible slow food meals, visited the local seed grow-out center, toured the local salt mines and went on a hike, and held a press event.

winter fields, corn stacks, horse and cart

At the village workshops, we spoke about organic farming in Oregon, diverse marketing tactics, and the importance of maintaining on-farm biodiversity through seed saving of traditional varieties. We shared what we knew about what people and organizations in other countries in Europe are doing to cope with the loss of heirloom and traditional varieties, with their various interpretations of seed saving organizations. We engaged the farmers in discussions about the problems they face and what they see as possible solutions.

Presentations at the Democracy Center, and Mihai Viteasul, the Turda market

First thing in Turda, we were interviewed for a local paper as well as a local TV station. The newspaper journalist spoke with us for two or three minutes and took a few photos. When we suggested the photos might turn out better if we were outside, we all moved outside and she took one photo. On our way outside she asked me if I actually thought we would accomplish anything while we were there. I told her it was possible. Andrew piped in and said, “Of course!” I then asked her if she thought we would accomplish anything. She told me, “Definitely not. It is not possible. What the people need here is money, not information.” Her newspaper article read like an editorial that expressed this point of view, and the photo she published with it was the one that was taken outside, in which my eyes were closed and Andrew wore a mid-sentence grimace. We had been prepared to face this attitude, but thankfully it wasn’t as prominent as it might have been.

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