The Journal Of The Seed Ambassadors Project
Posted in Biodynamics, Germany, Seed Saving, TRAVEL LOG on Jan 27th, 2007
“One of the central hubs of German biodynamic plant breeding community”. We were told this by many people through our travels and we decided that we had to visit Dottenfelder-hof (translated version). After a nice hike in the morning from the train station we arrived invigorated to meet with our host [...]
Posted in Germany, Seed Saving, TRAVEL LOG on Jan 26th, 2007
From Switzerland we traveled back north up to Germany for a visit with Ulla Grall of Bio-Saatgut. The name of her company says it all: “Organic Seeds”. Ulla offers through her catalog seeds that she produces herself and those grown by several small contract growers, as well as seeds from Sativa Rheinau and a [...]
Posted in Germany, Seed Saving, TRAVEL LOG on Jan 19th, 2007
After another pre-dawn start, we left the company of the kind folks at Bingenheimer and headed south towards Nuremberg and beyond. Our next stop: Gerhard Bohl’s home and gardens in the hamlet of Rednitzenbach. Gerhard and his wife Susanne are the brains, braun, and brilliance behind Das Sortenbuch (= the variety handbook), a mail-order [...]
Posted in Biodynamics, Germany, Seed Saving, TRAVEL LOG on Jan 17th, 2007
Bingenheimer’s resident plant breeder, Ute Kirchgaesser, is on to something. Really, she’s probably on to many things, but to describe them all would take a book and I only have one blog posting.
Ute has what equates to a master’s degree in horticulture, but her German title sounds much better; Meistergartnerin. She got her start in [...]
Posted in Biodynamics, Germany, Seed Saving, TRAVEL LOG on Jan 16th, 2007
We left Greifswald for Bingenheimer Saatgut AG, the largest biodynamic seed company in Germany, Leaving super extra early on Tuesday morning, we traveled via “Mitfahrgelegenheit” through Berlin and on down to a small town northeast of Frankfurt. “Mitfahrgelegenheit” is the musical word for ‘organized rideshare’, and there are several websites that one can use to [...]
Posted in Germany, TRAVEL LOG on Jan 12th, 2007
We left St. Petersburg by bus on Friday, January 12, and 36 hours later found ourselves in Berlin. Two hours after that we were in the town of Greifswald, on the Baltic Sea but identified as Eastern Germany more than Northern. Nevertheless, as we proceeded north on the train we noticed more and more “grunkohl” [...]
Posted in Biodynamics, Germany, Seed Saving, TRAVEL LOG on Dec 18th, 2006
Our plans for Poland on the 9th of December fell through, and so we found ourselves in Hamburg with lots of options but no plans. We did what we could to pursue new seed-related contacts, even recruiting the help of Christina and Juan, but we found last-minute arrangements around the holidays to be somewhat difficult [...]
Posted in Biodynamics, Germany, Seed Saving, TRAVEL LOG on Dec 8th, 2006
Early morning on Monday, December 4, we arrived at the doorstep of Christina Henatch, a pivotal player in the German Biodynamic seed breeding scene, Working at the Gut Wolfsdorf Farm outside of hamburg Germany. Christina was gracious enough to host us for several days during a very busy time of year for her. We talked [...]