Monthly Memo: Seed saving ourselves

Dear gardener,

Lately I’ve been seeing a certain conspiracy theory on my social media feeds that “they” are selling “us” more and more seedless produce so that we can’t save the seeds and grow our own food.

While I do believe there are nefarious for-profit and political strategies at work to intentionally destabilize the food system and manufacture hunger, promoting seedless produce seems like a lot of extra effort.

It’s not like a critical mass of Americans is growing a single edible plant, much less saving seeds from supermarket produce to feed their family.

It is much easier to manipulate the financial markets under the guise of herd diseases and shipping costs– creating the conditions that make parasites spread and gas prices skyrocket is just another day at the office for the US Empire. 

That being said, you absolutely should try growing something to eat. And you should certainly try saving seeds from the produce aisle (or the farmers market, or the zucchinis your coworker forced you to take home). And I firmly believe you have the ability to grow at least some of your own food, no matter how little space you have.

But I’ve also been noodling around the idea of seed saving as a metaphor– a philosophy (mindset? ew.) or better yet a praxis (theory plus action). 

Photo by Ehud Neuhaus via Unsplash

Seed saving: ancient tradition, strategic thinking, future thriving

It’s a completion of the growing cycle. It’s an investment in the next harvest. It’s part of a frugal and deeply appreciative approach of using every part of the plant, and reducing what we consider waste.

From a practical perspective, seed saving is a good thing to do.

But I think, more importantly, it links our here-and-now habits directly to our ancestors’ traditions, and to the places we now live and tend to. 

The Sagrada Familia cathedral, still a work in progress

Seed saving creates continuity

Saving seeds from one year to sow the next creates continuity and connection in time, place, and culture.

That sense of rootedness and living lineage is what we desperately need to cultivate in ourselves and our communities– not to justify possession and exclusion, but to combat the lie that everything (and everyone) is a commodity and is therefore “disposable.” 

We urgently need to develop a sense of what Marcia Bjornerud calls timefulness: understanding that our experience and our actions are not a singular moment but exist in a long run of history and future legacy. 

And that should invoke a dual feeling of pride and humility– if we can live up to it.

Even the modern farmer understands that what happened in the field last year will affect this year’s crop, and at least several more to come. This is a basic understanding shared by our European ancestors, and still a living concept understood by traditional cultures and indigenous peoples throughout the world. 

“People would treat each other, and the planet, better if we embraced our shared past and common destiny, seeing ourselves more as lucky inheritors and eventual bequeathers rather than as permanent residents of the Earth estate. In short, we need a new relationship with time.” - Bjornerud

The maintenance and tending we do now is both a direct result of the metaphoric (and literal) seed saving done on our behalf in the past, and is also an inheritance we leave to the future of all life on this planet.

• What are we gleaning and bringing into the future?

• What are we leaving behind, either as compost or as mere chaff?

• What habits and solutions came to us from our predecessors, and what are we gifting to generations yet to come?

  
  

With you in slowness, beauty, and the wisdom of the local,

Allie

P.S. If you found this helpful, please share it with your likeminded friends on social media or send the link in an email. Thank you!

P.P.S. For more ideas and inspiration for regenerative lawn care in the suburbs, I invite you to download my e-book on transforming your front lawn. You can find it here!