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Heirloom Seeds and Their Keepers
Marginality and Memory in the Conservation of Biological Diversity
Virginia D. Nazarea
190 pp. / 6.0 x 9.0 / 2005
Cloth (0816524351)
"Offers a much-needed, researched perspective on the contribution of seed saving…"—Outdoors and Nature
Farmers and gardeners have long appreciated a wide variety of plants and have nurtured them for meals, healing, and exchange. But diversity too often has been surrendered to monocultures of fields and spirits, predisposing much of modern agriculture to uniformity and, consequently, vulnerability. Today it is primarily at the individual level—such as growing and saving a strange old bean variety or a curious-looking gourd—that any lasting conservation actually takes place.
As scientists grapple with the erosion of genetic diversity of crops and their wild relatives, old-timey farmers and gardeners continue to save, propagate, and pass on folk varieties and heirloom seeds. Virginia Nazarea focuses on the role of these seedsavers in the perpetuation of diversity. She thoughtfully examines the framework of scientific conservation and argues for the merits of everyday conservation—one that is beyond programmatic design. Whether considering small-scale rice and sweet potato farmers in the Philippines or participants in the Southern Seed Legacy and Introduced Germplasm from Vietnam in the American South, she explores roads not necessarily less traveled but certainly less recognized in the conservation of biodiversity.
Through characters and stories that offer a wealth of insights about human nature and society, Heirloom Seeds and Their Keepers helps readers more fully understand why biodiversity persists when there are so many pressures for it not to. The key, Nazarea explains, is in the sovereign spaces seedsavers inhabit and create, where memories counter a culture of forgetting and abandonment engendered by modernity. A book about theory as much as practice, it profiles these individuals, who march to their own beat in a world where diversity is increasingly devalued as the predictability of mass production becomes the norm.
Heirloom Seeds and Their Keepers offers a much-needed, scientifically researched perspective on the contribution of seedsaving that illustrates its critical significance to the preservation of both cultural knowledge and crop diversity around the world. It opens new conversations between anthropology and biology, and between researchers and practitioners, as it honors conservation as a way of life.
Newsletters
The following issues of "Seedlink," the official newsletter of Southern Seed Legacy, are available in PDF format.
Seedlink 2002
Seed swap maintains diversity, knowledge of Southern plants
Published in the Athens Banner-Herald on 042908
Permanent link: http://onlineathens.com/stories/042908/news_2008042900133.shtmlBy Lee Shearer | Staff Writer | Story updated at 11:26 PM on Monday, April 28, 2008
Seed banks have been sprouting up like, well, seeds around the globe in recent years as scientists and farmers set aside plant genetic material in an effort to preserve the diversity of food crops and other plants.
But the University of Georgia has a seed bank with a difference, the Southern Seed Legacy. With those seeds, you also get recipes.
The Southern Seed Legacy aims to do more than just store genetic material, explained UGA anthropology professor Virginia Nazarea, who directs the legacy project with husband Robert Rhoades, also a UGA anthropologist.
Seed banks like the Global Seed Vault recently established in Norway are concrete and steel, meant to shield genetic material against anything up to and including bomb blasts.
Photo by Tricia Spaulding
Photo by Tricia Spaulding /Staff
Photo by Tricia Spaulding /Staff
Photo by Tricia Spaulding /Staff
But the seed legacy's bank is more flesh and blood and brains. It's a growing network of people committed to growing, eating and sharing hundreds of "heirloom" varieties of beans, greens and other vegetable and fruit varieties once common in the gardens of Georgia and other Southern states.
Not only are many of those hundreds of varieties in danger of disappearing, but so is the cultural knowledge of them - recipes and wisdom handed down through the generations, such as the best time to plant.
The seeds in places like the Norway vault are in "exile," Nazarea said. "I think the gene banks serve a purpose, but can't serve the entire purpose."
Nazarea, Rhodes and anthropology students keep a sampling of many heirloom varieties on hand at the UGA anthropology department and on their own Agrarian Connections Farm in Oglethorpe County. But, more than that, they rely on a network of seed-savers and seed-exchangers to keep the varieties growing.
They grow and exchange a list of more than 500 old crops - plants with names like the turkey craw bean, the Nancy West bean, Whippoorwill peas, the Red Ripper pea, Cherokee pole bean, Cushaw squash, Salt's red sorghum and plum grannies.
For 11 years, Rhodes and Nazarea also have hosted an annual Old Timey Seed Swap to promote the exchange of seeds and plants for the crops, and to honor those who perpetuate heirloom crops. Saturday's 11th annual swap brought more than 100 people to the farm.
Many brought seeds to exchange, including Rodger Winn, a South Carolina man honored by the Seed Legacy as "seed saver of the year" for work he's done to perpetuate hundreds of old varieties like his Tennessee Britches tomatoes.
Winn passed out advice with his seeds Saturday.
"Butter beans will go until the frost. They're actually perennials," Winn told one woman, part of a crowd that milled around Winn's table of seeds.
This year, the anthropologists started a similar group to preserve heirloom varieties of animals. The new group will establish a network as well as an annual honor for people who raise old livestock breeds now close to extinction, like Pineywoods cattle.
Pineywoods cattle survived on their own in the forests and ranges of the Deep South for hundreds of years after they were released in North America by Spaniards in the 1500s, said Bill Fritz, an associate provost at Georgia State University and one of about five breeders of Pineywoods cattle in Georgia. Fritz uses the cattle mainly to keep underbrush down on his Franklin County timberland - they even like privet, he said.
Fritz came to the seed swap partly to meet a Mississippi man named Justin Pitts, recognized with an award Saturday for his work in preserving Pineywoods cattle and other heirloom barnyard varieties such as Gulf Coast sheep and Spanish goats.
Recognizing farmers like Pitts is one more way to help keep genetic diversity alive, along with the cultural knowledge associated with the animals or plants, Nazarea said.
"It's kind of lonely to be marginal sometimes. And for those who don't have the courage of Justin, it's encouraging to see that it can be done," she said.
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Swapping Seeds - Southern Living (Georgia Living section) June 2002
Find out more on the press coverage of SSL and other related projects... >>
Relevant Articles
The World's Food Supply at Risk
By ROBERT E. RHOADES Photographs by LYNN JOHNSONFields of Memories as Everyday Resistance
by Virginia NazareaHeirloom seeds are not merely artifacts of the past. To many, these seeds constitute a symbol and a mechanism of resistance to the homogeneity, anonymity, and forced forgetting imposed by the present. If you are interested in the whys and the whereofs as well as the how-tos of this issue, there are some thought-and-action-provoking materials.
Anton, Danilo, Diversity, Globalization, and The Ways of Nature, Ottowa: International Development Research Center, 1995.
Ashworth, Suzanne, Seed to Seed: Seed Saving Techniques for the Vegetable Gardener. Decorah, Iowa: Seed Saver Publications, 1991.
Ausubel, Kenny, Seeds of Change: the Living Treasure, Harper San Francisco: A Division of Harper Collins Publishers, 1994.
Bubel, Nancy. The New Seed Starters Handbook. Rodale Press, Emmaus, Pennsylvania.1988.
Calhoun, Creighton Lee, Jr. Old Southern Apples, McDonald & Woodward Pub. Co. 1995.
Coleman, Eliot. The New Organic Grower: A Master's Manual of Tools and Techniques for
the Home and Market Gardener. Chelsea Green Books, White River Juction, Vermont. 1995.Cutler, Karen Davis. Starting from Seed: The Natural Gardener's Guide to Propagating Plants.
Brooklyn Botanic Garden. 1998Creasy, Rosalind. The Edible Heirloom Garden Periplus Editions, 1999.
DeMuth, Suzanne, Vegetables and Fruits: A Guide to Heirloom Varieties and Community-Based Stewardship, Volume 1-2, Annotated Bibliography, U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1998.
Deppe, Carol, Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1993.
Fowler, Cary and Mooney, Pat, Shattering: Food, Politics, and The Loss of Genetic Diversity, Tucson: the University of Arizona Press, 1990.
Gardener, Jo Ann, The Heirloom Garden; Selecting and Growing over 300 Old-fashioned Ornamentals, Pownal, Vermont: Garden Way Publishing, 1992.
--------- The Old Fashioned Fruit Garden, Halifax, NS: Nimbus Publishing, 1989.
Hensley, Tim, Rediscovering the Heirloom Southern Apple, in Mother Earth News 158: 34-40, 42, 103 (Oct./Nov. 1996).
Jabs, Carolyn. The Heirloom Gardener, San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1984.
Lorenz, O. A. and D. N. Maynard, Knott's Handbook for Vegetable Growers, 3rd edition, Wiley?Interscience Publications: New York, 1988.
Leubbermann, Mimi. Heirloom Gardens : Simple Secrets for Old-Fashioned Flowers and Vegetables Chronicle Books, 1997.
Mueller, W. and Brad Edmonson, From Farmer to Table, American Demographics 10(6): 41?44, 1988.
Nabhan, Gary, Enduring Seeds: Native American Agriculture and Wild Plant Conservation, San Francisco: North Point Press, 1989.
Nazarea, Virginia, Eleanor Tison, Maricel Piniero, and Robert Rhoades, Yesterday's Ways, Tomorrow's Treasures: A Guide to Memory Banking. Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, Dubuque, Iowa, 1997.
Nazareas Virginia, Cultural Memory and Biodiversity, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1998.
Newcomb, Peggy C. Popular Annuals of Eastern North America 1865-1914, Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oakes, 1985.
Peet, Mary. Sustainable Practices for Vegetable Production in the South. Focus Publishing 1996.
Raeburn, Paul. The Last Harvest: The Genetic Gamble that Threatens to Destroy American Agriculture. Simon & Schuster, NY 1995
Rhoades, Robert, The World's Food Supply at Risk, National Geographic, 179(4): 74-107, 1991.
Rogers, Marc. Growing and Saving Vegetable Seeds. Charlotte, Vermont: Garden Way Publishing, 1978.
--------- Saving Seeds: The Gardeners Guide to Growing and Storing Vegetable and Fruit Seeds.
Storey Publications, Pownal, Vermont, 1991.Stritikus, George R. List of Recommended Period Plant Materials for Alabama Gardeners, Montgomery, AL: 1986.
Turner, Carole B. Seed Sowing and Saving. Storey Publications, Pownal, Vermont.1998.
Watson, Benjamin. Taylor's Guide to Heirloom Vegetables. Houghton-Mifflin, New York, New York. 1996.
Welch, William. The Southern Heirloom Garden. Taylor Publishing, 1995.
Weaver, William Woys. Heirloom Vegetable Gardening. Henry Hort & Co. 1997
The state agricultural newspapers or bulletins comprise an invaluable resource when looking for farmers and gardeners in your region who preserve, offer for sale, or exchange local seed varieties. Often the people who offer old-timey varieties have other heirlooms in their garden which they have also preserved for many years. When looking for local seeds, take note of the history of the seeds, planting methods, and any anecdotes concerning their passage through time.
Most market bulletins are distributed for free to state residents. You can receive the bulletins from other states for a small fee, prices quoted are current as of this publication date. Often you cannot advertise in other state bulletins, but when you can advertisers looking for specific varieties often receive a greater response. Remember that state boundaries do not describe environmental boundaries. When looking for locally adapted heirloom varieties look to similar environments in other states and you can often find some wonderful varieties that will perform well in your own backyard.Alabama Market Bulletin --$5
1445 Federal Drive
P.O. Box 3336
Montgomery, AL 36193-0001Arkansas State Plant Board News
P.O. Box 1069
Little Rock, AR 72203Florida Market Bulletin
Department of Agriculture and Consume Services
Bureau of information Services
545 East Tennessee Street
Tallahassee, FL 32308Georgia Farmers and Consumers
Market Bulletin
Department of Agriculture
19 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive
Atlanta, GA 30334-4250Louisiana Market Bulletin
Box 94002
Baton Rouge, LA 70804-9002Mississippi Market Bulletin
P.O. Box 1118
Jackson, MS 39205North Carolina Department of Agriculture
P.O. Box 27647
Raleigh, NC 27611
919-733-7125South Carolina Market Bulletin
P.O. Box 11280
Columbia, SC 29211Southern Sustainable Farming
P.O. Box 324
Elkins, AR 72727
(501) 292-3714Texas Market Bulletin
P.O. Box 12847
Austin, TX 78711
Southern Cooking and Old Timey Varieties
One of the distinguishing features of the Southern Seed Legacy is the insistence on connecting seed saving with cultural aspects of living and social identity. In the South, the connection between garden, kitchen, ritual and shared meals is perhaps stronger than in any other region of North America. While the rest of the country is presently rediscovering the pleasure of “slow food,” southern folks can argue that they never really gave it up. Cooking is approached with the same passion as music and literature and often with the same techniques of improvisation, diversity, and hybridity. Today, a revival and preservation of Southern foods is taking place with its age-old emphasis on originality, purity, and plain good taste. Southern chefs, both amateur and professional, are discovering that the old timey varieties of fruits and vegetables provide the best hope for staying true to the region's culinary successes taste preferences. In this section, we point you to some good reading if you want to master Southern cooking, which must include the fresh heirloom herbs, fruits and vegetables out of a kitchen garden or local farm.
Recommended Reading (with excerpts):
Dupree, Nathalie. Nathalie Dupree's Southern Memories : Recipes and Reminiscences. Clarkson Potter, 1993.
Conner, Phyllis. Old Timey Recipes. 20th Edition. Winston-Salem, N.C. Old Timey Publishing Co., 1995.
Conner, Phyllis. (3rd Edition). A Taste of the Past (More Old Timey Recipes). Winston-Salem, N.C. Old Timey Publishing Co. 1996.
Food Editors of Farm Journal. Farm Journal's Great Home Cooking in America. Heirloom Recipes Treasured for Generations. New York: Galahad Books, 1995.
Geraty, Virginia Mixson. Bittle En' T'Ing' : Gullah Cooking With Maum Chrish'
Sandlapper Publishing, 1992.Landon, Luann. Dinner at Miss Lady's : Memories and Recipes from a Southern Childhood. Algonquin Press, 1999.
Mitchell, Patricia. Plantation Row Slave Cabin Cooking: The Roots of Soul Food. Sims-Mitchell House Bed and Breakfast, Chatham, Va., 1998.
Email: answers@FoodHistory.com or visit http://www.foodhistory.com/inklings/books/plantation.htmMitchell, Patricia. Real South Cooking. Sims-Mitchell House Bed and Breakfast, Chatham, Va., 1997. Email: answers@FoodHistory.com or visit http://www.foodhistory.com/inklings/books/realsouth.htm
For a list of Patricia Mitchell's Inkling series, please visit http://www.foodhistory.com/inklings/books/index.htm
Moore, John Hammond (ed.) The Confederate Housewife: Receipts & Remedies, Together with Sundry Suggestions for Garden, Farm, & Plantation. Summerhouse Press, 1997.
Page, Linda Garland and Eliot Wigginton. The Foxfire Book of Appalachian Cookery. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1992.
Smalls, Alexander. Grace the Table: Stories and Recipes from My Southern Revival. New York: Harper Collins, 1997.
Stewart, Jillian. Southern Cooking. Philadelphia: Courage Books, 1994.
Strickland-Hays, Laurie. Old-Time Southern Cooking. Pelican Publishing, 1994.
Tillery, Carolyn Q. The African-American Heritage Cookbook : Traditional Recipes and Fond Remembrances from Alabama's Renowned Tuskegee Institute. Birch lane Press, 1997.
Walker, Nancy Patty. Southern Legacies. Memphis/Dallas: Wimmer, 1982
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