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Seed Saver Extraordinaire

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Guest Blog by Jim in Clarks Grove

The Seed Saver’s Exchange was started by Kent and Diane Whealy with some seeds that
came from Diane’s grandfather. Kent and Diane realized these seeds would be lost if they didn’t save them and pass them on to other people. The first meeting was held in the Whealy’s home. SSE now has more than 13,000 members with a core group of about 800 who collect, produce and distribute rare seeds to other SSE members. I have been part of SSE for many years and I think makes gardeners more aware of issues related to the breeding and conservation of cultivated plants.

Several years ago I volunteered to write an article about Mary Shultz for an SSE newsletter. Mary was an SSE member with an unusually high dedication to seed saving. I was aware of her efforts from seeing her listings in the SSE Year Book, which is an annual summary of the all the seeds that members are willing to send to other members. Lettuce was her specialty. I have the seed of a few very nice kinds of lettuce that Mary sent to me at my request.

I wanted to interview Mary, but her health had been failing for several years and she wasn’t able to speak on the phone. Fortunately I was able to contact her husband, Arthur, and her daughter, Laurie. They sent me some articles written by and about Mary. The SSE office also shared some of her correspondence. I learned that Mary did all the garden planning. Arthur provided most of the labor. One year they grew 153 kinds of lettuce. They also sold to restaurants where the chefs altered their menus to include these high quality vegetables from Mary and Arthur. One of my favorite kinds of lettuce is a variety called Becker, which I grow using seed sent to me by Mary. A note was included with this seed indicating that Mary thought I should have it because it came from a Minnesota family. I told Laurie that this lettuce seed was an unexpected gift from her mother, and she said Mary was known for doing things like that.

Mary also wrote newspaper articles about gardening, and in one of them she stated that it was her hope that she had been able to encourage others to grow more of their own vegetables and become less dependent on getting them from large scale, highly industrialized farms. In a letter Mary said that she found comfort in her contacts with members of SSE because her great dedication to gardening and seed saving was not understood by most of the people she knew. When I talked to Arthur he said that Mary was still making gardening plans and she had given him a list of things she wanted him to plant.

Mary was in hospice care toward the end of her life and passed away a short time after my article was published. She had a very large and generous personality that matched the large size of her seed collection. I think we can learn a lot from people like Mary who make big efforts to conserve valuable resources and to pass on important information and ideas. Although I don’t expect that I will be able to follow directly in Mary’s footsteps, the example she set has inspired me to continue to add to my seed saving efforts and to expand other work that I value.

How will you pass along what you know?

49 thoughts on “Seed Saver Extraordinaire”

  1. Morning Booners.

    Very very nice tribute, Jim. Thank you. I’ve been thinking this one for about a half hour now and I suffer from what many of us probably suffer from – not thinking that we have any great store of knowledge to pass along. I think what I’d LIKE to pass on is my strong belief that it’s just as easy to be nice as it is to be mean.

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    1. one of my favorite comes form my favorite movie “harvey” the quote is:

      Elwood P. Dowd: Years ago my mother used to say to me, she’d say, “In this world, Elwood, you must be” – she always called me Elwood – “In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant.” Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me.

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      2. Continuing the theme, and getting us all ready for a few days of wntry weather:
        Elwood P. Dowd: Well, I’ve wrestled with reality for 35 years, Doctor, and I’m happy to state I finally won out over it.
        Elwood P. Dowd: I always have a wonderful time, wherever I am, whomever I’m with.
        (Mother to daughter) Veta Louise Simmons: Myrtle Mae, you have a lot to learn, and I hope you never learn it.
        (Mother to daughter again) Veta Louise Simmons: Oh, Myrtle, don’t be didactic. It’s not becoming in a young girl. Besides, men loathe it.
        Veta Louise Simmons: I took a course in art last winter. I learnt the difference between a fine oil painting, and a mechanical thing, like a photograph. The photograph shows only the reality. The painting shows not only the reality, but the dream behind it. It’s our dreams, doctor, that carry us on. They separate us from the beasts. I wouldn’t want to go on living if I thought it was all just eating, and sleeping, and taking my clothes off, I mean putting them on…

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      3. And maybe this one describes us Babooners:
        Elwood P. Dowd: Harvey and I sit in the bars… have a drink or two… play the juke box. And soon the faces of all the other people they turn toward mine and they smile. And they’re saying, “We don’t know your name, mister, but you’re a very nice fella.” Harvey and I warm ourselves in all these golden moments. We’ve entered as strangers – soon we have friends. And they come over… and they sit with us… and they drink with us… and they talk to us. They tell about the big terrible things they’ve done and the big wonderful things they’ll do. Their hopes, and their regrets, and their loves, and their hates. All very large, because nobody ever brings anything small into a bar.

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  2. wow, Jim – thanks for the interesting, challenging and nicely written story about Mary and how she inspired you. this work requires patience and dedication that i don’t have, i think. i am so glad there are folks attending to saving those special seeds year after year.

    passing along what i know would take a very short time, but i’ve always believed that helping someone who is “new” in whatever we’re doing is so important. i’ve only had my goats for 3.5 years and have learned so much from kind mentors and also thru experience. when i feel like i don’t know enough to help someone else my friend says (i think this is a Buddhist saying) “a (man) who has walked a mile can teach another to walk a half mile.” i like that. we are all learning together. some are just a bit further along the path.
    still trying to get that dang Sugar bred and outta our barn! i think she’s doing the estrus version of crossing her legs.
    a good and gracious morning to You All.

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      1. yup. i sent her home thursday night (hoping for a weekend of blissfully peaceful milking) and was going to get her again sunday night but her owner brought her back yesterday, because she was sure she was ready. put her in with Mr. T. just as always, she lured us into complacency. i was holding her collar and T was doing his prancing and snorting, etc. she stood still. i was thinking “success!!!!!!” he got closer. she stood still. he got ready to do the deed and she jumped 18 feet into the air, with me holding on to her collar. she landed on her feet, of course. i landed on my can. she’s here for the duration. fei da. 🙂

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      2. When I was a kid we had a dachshund my mother wanted to have bred. She cornered the sire in the garage and would not let him get near her. We called her the Ice Queen. Maybe this is the goat equivalent?

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      3. Barb in Blackhoof — I was going to post recommending that you try something new. Like maybe a little wine, candlelight and some Johnny Mathis records. Then, just for giggles, I Googled “goat porn.” Holy Toledo, that produced many, many hits! One dubious looking site said goats don’t respond to watching goat porn, but if they view a film of sheep doing it, they get hot.

        It has to be true. It’s on the internet!

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  3. What a sweet, positive blog, Jim. For me, “passing along what I know” is the holiest activity available to me. My preferred word for this is “sharing.” It is what my life is about. Usually, I share by telling stories. Often I back that up with written versions of the stories. Increasingly, I’ve come to see that this process moves best when I also listen intently to the stories of others. And I take special delight in discovering the central story in the lives of people I get to know.

    People are fascinating. Everyone has a story to tell, and that is the most precious validation of their life.

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  4. What a lovely essay, Jim. I particularly like: “Mary … had a very large and generous personality that matched the large size of her seed collection.”

    And an interesting question. This is something I’ve thought about, since with the passing of our son, that usual avenue is no longer open to me – passing things down to an heir. I still have Step-son and Nephew-son and a nephew to pass things down to, but neigher of them will necessarily want all my (God forbid) journals. My sister is only 4 years younger, and she would probably enjoy having our childhood photos… I’ve never written memoirs like some on this blog have, but wait, there’s what I’ve written on this blog! This is where I actually write about my life! So if I post a story here that’s rich biographically, I copy it into a Microsoft Word file (several folders) to keep for … myself , my sister, Husband — some I’ll print out for my mom to read, since they’re childhood memories she’d enjoy. Etc.

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  5. Jumping in before my sale–but it’s 18 degrees. Will anyone come?
    I love people like that, Jim. My heroes are all like that. And you explained so well why they are heroes.
    I guess I think I have passed it on, as teacher and preacher.
    Bye.

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    2. It went well. Have a few of the bigger items left, but those I can sell on the Web lor advertise locally.
      Interesting culture I tripped into doing this and I think some of you know the world of garage sales. Almost everyone was fun to talk to.
      First 6 people, who all came 45 -30 minutes early all know each other well from going to sales early. They all told me my prices were just right. One couple told me how beautiful the toy wagon was I was selling and it was such a shame I was selling it. I told them the materials cost more than the asking price. They then offered me 25% of my asking price. One man who came in a $4o,000 pickup tried to get the price way down on everything, asked if he could have some things free. He would buy a few cheap items and take them to the huge pickup and come back and get a few more things. After about four trips he wanted to pay $1 for a pack of wire I had marked for $3. I had had enough of him and told him no. He did not get mad or anything but left. A woman who was there told me that he would be back and try again, like he always did. He came back twice trying it, but then a woman bought the wire. The last man came right at closing time; he was a Norwegian bachelor farmer, but German of course, as you would expect around here. He stayed 80 minutes pase my clsoing time trying to decide to buy a chop saw, decision-making a very slow process for him, but obvioulsy to have someone to talk to.

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  6. Jim, thanks for the blog entry today! How interesting. We have visited the farm. It is a fascinating enterprise.

    I will have to think about this one. I’ve tried to research our family antiques and connect them to family stories to pass on; I also collected family recipes and my Grandma’s heirloom recipes for my aunts, sibs, and cousins, and the next generation. With those I wrote stories of my memories of food preparation and farm methods because when I was a child my grandparents grew our food. I finally scanned the entire thing and put it on disc for the computer generation.

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    1. This may inspire me to do the same with our family recipes, Jacque.
      Ooh, and I just remembered, I’ve been trying to get my cousins to update our family tree.

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      2. I should add, my Grandma taught me a lot about cooking and the pioneer recipes and this is my way of passing on both the tradition and the recipes. My sister and I have also done giant pie bakes for graduations and had our progeny assist so they have the experience too. I forgot about that.

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    2. Our daughter is doing a very clever thing: she has made a cookbook for our son’s wife’s first Christmas in the family and is having it printed the way you can so easily on the Internet. It has our son’s favorites plus all our other family favorites with old and new pictures of the family and pix of the finshed dishes, or most of them. She is having copies made for heself, us, and for our son and wife. Many of her other gifts are like this. Remember the tea my daughter and I gave my wife in August? Her gift to her mother is a book from that.

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  7. Good morning and thanks for the comments,

    Dale gave me a lot of help with my entry. It is my writing and he was very careful to do the editing in a way that left it in my style and just changed enough make it more readable and shorter. I think Dale is a very good editor. Dale also helped me pick the question which I think goes well with the story and is kind of a challenging question to answer. I very much like the comments that are coming in.

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  8. Thanks for the lovely entry today, Jim.

    Just got back from the last early morning trip to the Farmer’s Market for the year. My egg man was telling us about the new flowers he plans to carry next spring! That is one way to keep mentally warm.

    I am not sure what I have to pass on, so will be considering that one this morning. I think I might be one of those people who just tries to preserve some of the old ways and things against the day someone finds them useful again. I am always struck that with all our technology and knowledge, very few of us are able to feed, clothe and house our own families. My grandparents did all of that with a sixth grade education.

    We love Seed Savers and try to stop in whenever we go through or to Decorah. Maybe what I am trying to pass on is simply the idea that there are other ways to do things, that don’t always involve a trip to the store and the exchange of money.

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    1. Yes, some of those older techniques for farming are being rediscovered and modified for use in sustainable farming by farmers who have moved away from the “bigger is always better” approach that seems to be dominating agriculture currently.

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      1. Jim, my nephew is an organic farmer. He now is field manager for Gardens of Eagen, using some sustainable, older techniques. He is also training to be a ferrier this winter. In several years he plans to buy his own place. Just know that what you pass on goes somewhere!

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      2. Jacque, I have met a few of the people associated with the Gardens of Eagan. I’m not sure if I have met your nephew.

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  9. I see I was answering more “How will you pass along what you have?” rather than “How will you pass along what you know?” Hmmm – as Clyde said, teaching is a way of passing on what you know… I’d like to do more teaching of some kind. (Folk dancing is getting more difficult to teach, with some hip arthritis I seem to have developed.)

    Steve pointed out the value of storytelling — one of the most healing things is telling stories about son Joel, or my dad. One of my fantasies is of leading a storytelling group for people dealing with a loss — of a loved one who’s died, or a marriage that’s ended… any kind of loss. Or I should say co-leading … can’t imagine doing it by myself.

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    1. I think the question is just a starting point and could be what you have as well as what you know. I like the idea of passing on our stories and the stories of other people. I would like to write a series of stories about seed savers, sort of like the collections of stories about people that Studs Turkel wrote. I think telling the story of someone you have lost might be a very good thing to do.

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  10. I second all the kudos for a great post, Jim. I try to pass on my love of music and the things I know about cooking and gardening to my children by doing those things for and with them. My grandparents and aunts did the same for me, and I think I owe it to them to keep the knowledge alive. I also think story telling is the best way to pass onknowledge and traditions. My son has become a wonderful cook, and is now talking about planting a garden in some free garden spaces operated by the city of Fargo. His interest in cooking doesn’t surprise me, but I would not have expected him, at his age, to want to grow vegetables. My daughter prefers to be the recipient of good cooking rather than cook with me, but she loves to cook with her best friend. I can’t say how many times, when they were younger, that I found those two sitting in the garden between rows of peas, feasting in the sun. She is particularly concerned that we put in some tomato plants in our new garden bed, and I bet that I can snag her this Spring to help pick out the plants at the green house. Passing on what you know sometimes takes a while to produce results and sometimes it feels like know one is listening, but I think it’s vital to try.

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    1. Good reminder, Renee – my dad taught me to make my grandma’s Lefse and Kumla, and I must do that soon so I don’t forget how.

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  11. Its fun and fascinating reading what everyone would like to pass on of what they know. And telling, in its own way, of what we find important. Love it!

    I am doing my best to pass on my enthusiasm for learning. Last year and this I have volunteered in Daughter’s classroom doing an art appreciation thing and a music education supplemental curriculum (for those who have done these, it’s the MIA’s Art Adventures and BRAVO Music through Schmitt). I get a set of curricula to work with (pieces from the MIA collection, musical works, etc. and background information for them) to work with, but it’s up to me to bring that to life for the kids. While I have some background in both, I find that this is less important than having enthusiasm for the subject. Sometimes that means that I show that a “serious subject” doesn’t have to be serious (got the kids to dance like trolls to music from “Peer Gynt” and wore a tutu and a cowboy hat when I talked about Copland’s “Rodeo”). I knew I had success last year when the kids would see me in the hall and ask things like, “are we dancing this time? are we making art?” And then at the open house at the beginning of the year, about half of Daughter’s class saw and remembered me and asked if I would be teaching again (or wearing a tutu). They don’t have to go on to study music or art, but if I can pass along that the learning and discovering is fun, no matter the subject, I will be content and feel successful.

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    2. Great post, Anna. I know many teachers will resist believing it, but I think our media-saturated world has altered expectations so that a teacher who adopts even a small amount of the props of entertainment (like wearing the tutu) will be far more effective in connecting with kids.

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      1. They remember the troll dancing and naughty Peer as much as the tutu and the cowboys (maybe more – they could connect to being naughty). Right now, since I’m working with younger kids, I mostly allow myself to be my inner-six-year-old and try to think about what I’d like or want to talk about (not just what a grown-up might find interesting…though clearly I missed the boat on the obvious when we did art this last week and the first thing out of a girl’s mouth in the front row when looking at an Indian sculpture was “she has big boobies!” Well, yes, yes she does).

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    4. Thanks for the great reminder that it doesn’t always have to be knowledge, just the desire to quest for it is often enough.

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  12. Greetings! Very nice piece, Jim. I love Seed Savers and buy my seeds and transplants from them each spring to put in my Earth Boxes. What you, Mary, SSE and all the other seed savers are doing is so important. Keep up the good work.

    I’m not sure what I’m passing on to my kids — I’m not a very sentimental person, nor do I have objects with a lot of sentimental value. However, in karate as an Advanced Brown Belt, we are required to do individual tutors and lead classes for the lower belts. It’s a sort of built in way to pass on the love of martial arts, keep the purity of the technique and forms, and give back to the martial arts community. We also model and instill respect, discipline and other positive aspects that being in martial arts has given us. Sort of like the movie “Pass It Forward.”

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  13. I try to do this carefully, and in small doses. I’d like to be sure that the person on whom I’m bestowing knowledge wants to hear it, and I’m often not very good at detecting the subtle signs that indicate whether a person is interested or just listening politely.

    Not too long ago I was buying an artichoke, and the young woman at the checkout counter said, “What is this – an artichoke? I’ve never bought one, I don’t know how you cook them.” And I started explaining the easiest way to cook an artichoke, for how long, and how to take one apart and what to use for a dipping sauce, and then suddenly realized that her expression plainly said “Who do you think you are – Julia Child or something? You’re holding up the line!” So I hastily mumbled that she really should try it sometime and got out of there.

    If I had any knowledge that was rare or valuable, I think I would write a book about it. As the poet Howard Nemerov said, “Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time.”

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  14. jim i love the topic and the story. what a tough act to follow but an ideal one to emulate. go man

    the stuff i pass is as much from the bad examples as the good. do as i say and earn form what i do and don’t do/ i try to get a full day in every day and i try to cover the bases before anything slips throug the cracks. i habve goials but the phrase the urgent things are the things that pop up when i am trying to ge the important things done pretty much sums it up. music art literature sport philosphy greater appreciation for other peoples specaility are the things i try to pass on to my munchkins and they will take it form there for me. there are so many items and ares of interest it is impossible to cover them and the beauty is that in a month you can become an expert of one degree or another on the one hand and on the other hand you can study any topic on the planet every day and never get enough if you have a passion for it. if all i do is get that across to my kids to go attack the fruits of the world i will be ok

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