Reflections from John Seed Savers Exchange is my second family and Heritage Farm is my second home. Many of my closest friends are active in SSE and I treasure these relationships. The Campout has been an annual high point of my life since 1985, and I have given some workshops on garlic, more recently with Joel Girardin, and in 2008 on plant domestication in the Americas called The Three Sisters and Their Spicy Brother. I am honored that my contributions of time, information and plant materials have led to my appointment this year as an Honorary Director of Seed Savers Exchange. When Amy Goldman told me of this action by the Board of Directors, I was overwhelmed, stunned and uncharacteristically speechless. Seed Savers Exchange entered my life about 1975 when I read a brief notice about it in Organic Gardening magazine. Sometime after that OG ran a nice article with an iconic picture of hundreds of beans. Some years later I got a copy of Carolyn Jabs’ book The Heirloom Gardener with its stories about SSE members and their fascination with heirloom crops. That lit the fire, and I joined in 1984. My first campout was 1985 and that year I first listed plants in the Yearbook---mostly garlics, which I had started collecting about 10 years earlier. I chose garlic and shallots because there would be no problems with cross-pollination of these vegetatively reproduced plants. I think I became a life member in 1986, and that was when I persuaded Keith Crotz to go to the Campout with me. In 1984 I began the serious study of Alliums in the world literature. Keith began obtaining copies of scientific studies for me, in various languages, mostly German and Russian. I also began corresponding with scientists in the USDA and in other countries who were experts on Alliums. Soon I was exchanging Alliums with gene banks around the world, principally with Dr. Peter Hanelt at Gatersleben, then in East Germany. Over about 10 years I acquired and passed on to others several hundred Alliums. Many of the fine artisan garlics in commerce have passed through my collection. I made it a practice of donating samples of my accessions to Seed Savers and the USDA gene banks. Of course I offered many accessions in the Yearbook, and got a lot of new plants from other members. This whole process of collecting, studying, growing and sharing Alliums was extremely gratifying. One of my major garlic colleagues was David Cavagnaro, who after more than 20 years is still reminding me of the snowy day he spent planting a lot of garlic I had donated to Heritage Farm. Like many Seed Savers I am often asked what is my “favorite” garlic, tomato, pepper, etc. My answer, which I suspect is the same for most fellow members, is that “favorite” is not a word in my vocabulary. There is such a blessed diversity out there that we must honor the manifold results of nature and of man’s intervention with all of our planet’s biota. We stand today at the end of an enormous rainbow, some 12,000 years of agriculture. We really don’t have a choice, because today’s “favorite” may become tomorrow’s problem, or worse, an extinct life form. Preservation of genetic diversity is mandatory. One of man’s greatest achievements in this regard is the astounding Svalbard Global Seed Vault of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, www.croptrust. I have a lifelong interest in the study of human nature and its vital spiritual component. The ancient Sanskrit greeting, Namaste, means “I salute the divinity that is within you.” About organized religion, I maintain a healthy critical skepticism of the authoritarian exclusivity of the self-appointed elites and their dogmas. I take as my guide the Dalai Lama, who has said that if science disagrees with any aspect of his beliefs, he will adopt the scientific view. Remember that if you think you know all the answers, you haven’t been asking the right questions. |