While there are a few tasks where it is workable to be barefoot, more often than not the task at hand involves navigating sharp tools, traversing muddy soil with hidden sticks, or working with moving equipment. A high-quality pair of waterproof boots is essential. Many farmers swear by the Muck brand, which is breathable and waterproof. Additionally, farmers should have a waterproof rain jacket and rain pants, work gloves, insulated waterproof gloves for cold, wet days, and a sun hat for hot, sunny days. I like to don a fanny pack to carry my phone, to-do list, water bottle, and small items like seeds or fasteners. Don’t hate—fanny packs are the new slay!
Most of these young farmers are appropriately dressed for a workday in the rain, with impermeable jackets and rubber boots. Photo by Neshima Vitale-Penniman.
Farm Tools and Equipment Checklist
Bed Preparation
□ Shovel
□ Garden hoe
□ Hard rake
□ Tractor with bed former, plastic mulch layer, disc harrow, power harrow, Perfecta, and/or spader (tractor and implements optional for smaller operations)
□ Silage tarps for no-till
□ Measuring tape—100 or 300 feet (30 or 90 m)
Propagation
□ Waterproof seed container
□ Seedling table
□ 1020 flats and plugs
□ Plastic labels
□ Permanent marker
□ Hose and watering spray wand
□ Watering can
□ Ventilation
□ Heat source
□ Watering trough
Transplanting and Direct Seeding
□ Hose and spray nozzle
□ Trowel and/or Hori Hori
□ Pitchfork
□ Garden hoe
□ Seeding rake
Weeding and Crop Maintenance
□ Colinear hoe, J-hoe, stirrup hoe, garden hoe
□ Hand cultivator
□ Row cover
□ Trellising, such as white oak stakes
□ Galvanized steel hoops
□ Weedwacker
□ Lawn mower and/or tractor-drawn mower
Irrigation
□ Sprinkler and/or
□ Drip irrigation system—drip tape, header line, shutoff valves, valve hole tool, drip tape repair couplers, pressure reducer, inline filter, irrigation staples
□ Hose, manifold, splitter, spray nozzle
□ Siphon for transplant drench
Harvest
□ Harvest knife and scissors
□ Soil fork
□ Harvest crates
□ Plastic bags
□ Scale
□ Washing bin
□ Cold storage
□ Hand clippers
□ Garden cart, wheelbarrow
□ Boxes
Gear
□ Notebook
□ Waterproof rain jacket and rain pants
□ Tall waterproof boots
□ Insulated waterproof gloves
□ Work gloves
□ Sun hat
□ Hip pack/water bottle holder
□ Basic first-aid kit
□ Hammock, for after-lunch siesta ☺
Tool Care and Maintenance
□ Metal files
□ Tool oil (such as food-safe mineral oil)
□ Dry storage location
□ Hard-bristle brush
CHAPTER EIGHT
Seed Keeping
My grandmothers were strong.
They followed plows and bent to toil.
They moved through fields sowing seed.
They touched earth and grain grew.
They were full of sturdiness and singing.
My grandmothers were strong.
My grandmothers are full of memories
Smelling of soap and onions and wet clay
With veins rolling roughly over quick hands
They have many clean words to say.
My grandmothers were strong.
Why am I not as they?
—MARGARET WALKER, “Lineage”
As the family story goes, my grandmother’s grandmother’s grandmother, whose true name was forgotten and whose enslaved name was Susie Boyd, was kidnapped from the shores of West Africa around the year 1800. She and other mothers of the community had been witnessing the kidnapping and disappearance of their community members and experienced a rising unease about their own safety. As insurance for an uncertain future, they began the practice of braiding rice, okra, and millet seeds into their hair. While there were no report-backs from the other side of the transatlantic slave trade, and rumors abounded that white people were capturing Africans to eat us, they still had the audacity of hope to imagine a future on soil. Once sequestered in the bowels of the slave ships, they continued the practice of seed smuggling, picking up grains from the threshing floor and hiding the precious kernels in their braids.
Though we do not need anthropologists and historians to confirm that water is wet, it is notable that these experts have verified our family legends of seed keeping. The Djuka Maroon communities of Cayenne possessed varieties of rice specific to the Baga people of Guinea, brought by enslaved women who smuggled them in their hair. A separate Maroon group, the Saramaka of Suriname, independently corroborated this seed transport story in a conversation with anthropologist Richard Price. In South Carolina the earliest rice varieties were the African Oryza glaberrima, grown mainly by women in their provision gardens. Enslaved Africans relied on informal networks of seed exchanges within and between plantations to maintain their cultural crops.1
At Soul Fire Farm, when we grow and save the seed of ají dulce, Eritrean basil, callaloo, sorrel, Moyamensing tomatoes, fish peppers, bee balm, Ashwagandha, Hopi blue maize, Tuxpan and Tatume squash, and watermelon, we do so with the intention of honoring the grandmothers who braided seeds in their hair as an act of resistance. In this chapter we uplift the work of the Haitian Peasant Movement, Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa, and the seed keepers of the US to conserve our genetic and cultural heritage through seed keeping. We explore practical methods for planning a seed garden, harvesting seeds, and exchanging seeds within the community.
Why Save Seed?
“You’ve got a few companies that want to control all the seed stock of the world, and they’ve just about got a handle on marketing three of the main commodities: corn, soybean, and cotton. [For us], it’s hard to find seeds that aren’t treated with the Monsanto-manufactured [herbicide] Roundup Ready. I’ve tried to find cotton that wasn’t treated, but I couldn’t. Now they’re working on controlling wheat and rice,” explained Black farmer Ben Burkett, in an interview with the blog Black Left Unity.2 His experience underscores the importance of the work to save heritage seed in our own communities. Just 60 years ago, seeds were largely stewarded by small farmers and public-sector plant breeders. Today the proprietary seed market accounts for 82 percent of the seed supply globally, with Monsanto and DuPont owning the largest shares.3 In our work with sibling farms in Haiti, we learned about Monsanto’s insidious practice of making “donations” of seed for a few seasons, until the native seed stock was depleted, and then charging farmers unreasonable prices for the company’s proprietary seed in subsequent seasons. In this way, Monsanto could ensure dependency of the farmer on their corporation indefinitely.
Saving the seed of Sea Island red pea and other heritage varieties preserves genetic diversity and cultural memory. Photo by Owen Taylor.
UPLIFT
Haitian Peasant Movement, and Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa
The Haitian Peasant Movement, also known as the Group of Four (G4) or “4 Eyes Meet,” is a coalition of the four largest social moveme
nts in Haiti: National Congress of Papaye Peasant Movement; Peasant Movement of Papaye (formed in 1973); Heads Together Small Producers of Haiti (Tet Kole); and Regional Coordination of the Southeast. G4 brings together over 25 million rural farmers on a united platform of food sovereignty and conducts survival work, such as pig repopulation, tree planting, and native seed exchanges.4 G4 contributes significantly to La Via Campesina, the global peasant movement that has more than 200 million rural and peasant members in 79 countries. As part of their international work, they formed the Dessalines Brigade, named after the Haitian independence leader Jean Jacques Dessalines. In 2007 the Dessalines Brigade cooperated with South American farmers, agroecologists, and activists to share ways of protecting native seeds and local farming practices. In 2013 the G4 won the Global Food Sovereignty Prize for their rejection of a substantial donation of hybrid seeds by US megaproducer Monsanto following the 2010 earthquake, choosing instead to protect their native seed heritage.5
Farmers are also organizing for their food sovereignty on the continent of Africa. Thirty African farmer collectives, grassroots organizations, and consumer movements came together to form the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa. They work to protect seed diversity in situ, from the native grasses of the savanna to fruit tree crops.6 One of the member organizations, the National Coordination of Peasant Organizations of Mali, with around 2.5 million members, convinced its country to amend the constitution to name food sovereignty as a basic right.
Beyond simply preserving the genetic heritage of the seed, it is also crucial to our survival that we preserve the stories of our seeds. Owen Taylor and Chris Bolden-Newsome, of Truelove Seeds, encourage us to think about the work of preserving seeds as “seed keeping” rather than “seed saving,” in that our obligation is to keep the stories of the farmers who curated the seeds alive along with the plant itself. It matters to know that roselle is from Senegal and that the Geechee red pea is an essential ingredient in the Gullah dish known as Hoppin’ John. In keeping the stories of our seeds alive, we keep the craft of our ancestors alive in our hearts.
A meeting of the peanut-seed-saving cooperative of Bigonet, Haiti. Photo by Jean Moliere.
In addition to the ethical reasons for seed keeping, there are economic and ecological considerations. Small farmers spend hundreds to thousands of dollars per year on seeds, and seed keeping can help cut those costs. Additionally, allowing plants to go to flower and then seed increases pollinator habitat. The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that we have lost 75 percent of the world’s crop varieties in the past 100 years, and 22 percent of the wild relatives of certain staple crops. This puts us at great risk in a climate-unstable future. By saving heritage seeds, we can contribute to biodiversity preservation and global food security.7
The Seed Garden
Even after a decade of farming, I was intimidated by the idea of saving seed. I imagined that the people who packed seeds into those tiny paper envelopes and mailed them to me each year had some secret inaccessible magic to make those seeds viable. I did not trust myself not to ruin the life force potential of these tiny beings of possibility. I did not trust the plants growing on my farm to make progeny as healthy and vibrant as those I could purchase in the store. Of course, I realize that I had internalized the corporate messaging of agricultural megacorporations, which try to get us to believe that we are not good enough to steward our genetic heritage. I was wrong. As Chris Bolden-Newsome affirmed, “Our ancestral grandmothers did not have a seed catalog, a life raft, a backup plan. They didn’t know nothing about isolation distance and all that stuff. They had to do and they did, and we are here.”8
We started saving seed bit by bit, first garlic and potatoes, then calendula and lettuce, then tomatoes and beans. The key is to choose healthy, vigorous plants with the ideal characteristics of that variety. Rather than eat the very best, we save the very best for the future. While we are by no means expert seed savers and owe much of the wisdom in this chapter to our sibling farmers, we have discovered the accessibility and ease of keeping our own seed. In planning your first seed garden, there are a few things to keep in mind.
Open-Pollinated Versus Hybrid Seeds
Open-pollinated varieties retain their distinct characteristics when they mate with others of the same variety. They share pollen via insects, birds, wind, or other natural mechanisms. Open-pollinated heirlooms are in danger of becoming inbred if we don’t take measures to increase their genetic diversity by maintaining large populations and trading seeds with other seed keepers. Hybridization is a method of human-controlled pollination in which the pollen of two different varieties is intentionally crossed to yield a desired trait. Due to a phenomenon known as hybrid vigor, the first generation of hybridized seed, called F1, tends to produce higher yields than the parent varieties and have higher genetic diversity. However, any seed saved from a hybrid plant will not breed “true to type” and will be less vigorous. Seed keepers are best advised to choose open-pollinated seeds to start. Once you are an advanced seed keeper, you may try stabilizing a hybrid variety after about seven years of breeding.
Species and Isolation Distances
Broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, and cauliflower are all members of the same species, Brassica oleracea, which means that they are able to reproduce together. On the other hand, peas (Pisum sativum) and beans (Phaseolus vulgaris) are members of different species and cannot reproduce together even if planted in the same row. Certain species, like legumes, lettuce, and tomatoes, are able to self-pollinate, which means they can transfer pollen from the anther to the stigma of their flowers without the aid of insects or wind. Other species, like corn, collards, okra, and squash, cross-pollinate, meaning they rely on the transfer of pollen from the anther of a flower on one plant to the stigma of a flower on a different plant of the same species. Understanding the genetic relationships between crops allows us to prevent unwanted cross-pollination between different varieties of the same species. This can be accomplished by maintaining prescribed isolation distances between varieties or by spacing out their cultivation temporarily. Some growers also use hand pollination or pollination barriers to achieve isolation.
Plants that cross-pollinate, like maize, need to be isolated from other varieties in order to breed true to type.
Annuals, Biennials, and Perennials
Some crops grow, flower, set seed, and die all within a single growing season. These crops are known as annuals and are the easiest plants to grow for seed saving. Annuals include legumes, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, okra, and maize. Other crops require a cold period in order to flower, a process called vernalization. These biennials include carrots, onions, leeks, beets, and some brassicas. Other plants, such as asparagus, raspberries, and apple trees, are perennials, surviving and flowering for many years. It is easiest to start with annual, self-pollinating crops that require little to no isolation and a small population size to produce seeds. The easiest crops for beginning seed keepers are peas, lettuce, beans, and tomatoes.
Hand Pollination
In order to ensure that open-pollinated varieties are not contaminated with genetic material from other varieties, advanced seed keepers can use hand pollination. With plants that produce unisex flowers, the pollen from the male flowers is manually transported to the unpollinated stigma of the female flower. Then the female flower is covered to prevent additional pollen from entering. In the case of corn, seed keepers place a bag over the male tassels at the top of the plant to collect the pollen. They also cover the young female ears before the silks emerge as these can be wind-pollinated by varieties on neighboring farms. The pollen from the tassels is collected in the bag and manually placed on the silks once they emerge. The ears are then rebagged until maturity. In the case of squash, the female flowers are distinguishable by the presence of a large ovary below the flower that resembles an immature fruit, something lacking in the male flowers. When both the male and female flowers show a yellow blush of color, they are
mature and will likely open the next day. At this point, seal the flowers closed with flagging tape. The next day, remove the male flowers and use them to brush pollen onto the female flowers at the rate of three male flowers per one female flower. Then gently reseal the female flower and allow it to mature.
Table 8.1. Seed Garden Planning Chart
A farmer in Kenya hand-pollinates maize. Photo by F. Sipalla/CIMMYT.
Population Size
Certain plants require several individuals in close proximity in order to reproduce. Others can reproduce with just a single individual. However, for long-term preservation of genetic diversity and its associated vigor, it is best to keep seed from a large population of individual plants.9
The Seed Harvest
I could hear the sound of the maize shelling before I could see it, cresting the hill to visit Mr. Kwabla’s farm in Oborpah-Djerkiti, Ghana. The whole family was engaged on the threshing floor. They had spread tarps and feed bags over the ground of their home and outdoor kitchen. The cobs of maize waited in a thick layer on top of the tarps. Elders, adults, and children arranged themselves amid the maize with thick sticks in their hands, beating the cobs to release the grains. It was a rhythmic, joyful cacophony. When the maize was finished, we moved onto the beans. In this case, we didn’t beat the crop with sticks, but rather danced on it with bare feet. This practice of dancing and stomping on dried pods made its way to the Diaspora, where farmers in Trinidad’s Palo Seco hamlet put rice plants into large cloth sacks laid out in the sun. Once dried, they separate the rice seed by dancing and stomping on them barefoot and later remove the hulls in a mortar and pestle.10
The process of harvesting and processing seeds for storage can be as straightforward and joyful as the methods of the farmers of Ghana and Trinidad. Seed harvesting and processing are best accomplished in community accompanied by a great soundtrack.
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