“Again I embrace the magic in these unassuming seeds…the canvas, the paint, the painter all together in a gel-covered shell, sprouting forth such wonderful fruits, each in turn the house for hundreds more miracles! They could cover government buildings and parking garages if we gave them the chance!…”

As many of you know, we’ve taken the exciting step of expanding our farm’s seed project into the Snake River Seed Cooperative! Snake River Seeds operates a seed producer’s coop, where we work over 40 other regional farmers to produce an ever increasing diversity of locally-adapted seeds for sale to local peeps! We also operate a Seed Savers Club, offer oodles of seedy classes to adults and to kids of varying ages, and host fun, seedy events throughout the year! Be whisked away to the Snake River Seed Cooperative’s website to buy our seeds or to get involved in other ways! 

Lexy and Kyle planting onions for seeds!

10 reasons to be a seed freak:

1. Boise lacks locally-adapted retail seed, meaning that all our work in developing local food security is for naught if we don’t have good-quality, locally-adapted seed to start with. We must CLOSE THE LOOP!
2. Seeds make a farm come alive with sex! The seed is the love child of a plant, so allowing more plants to go to seed means more sex on your farm!
3. Saving seed from your farm or garden means you’re selecting seed that will do well RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE, rather than taking a chance on seed purchased in a store that came from a different climate with different soils, temperatures, seasons, etc.
4. Keeping our seed supply LOCAL and IN THE HANDS OF DIVERSE SMALL FARMERS AND GARDENERS means seed sovereignty for all of us! Small seed companies are continually being bought up by bigger ones, restricting the number of varieties available and consolidating the control over this crucial component of life into fewer and fewer hands. This is SCARY and UNSAFE!
5. Further, these companies increasingly apply for AND RECEIVE PATENTS for varieties they breed and of course for genetic modifications they make to seeds. This leads to a whole horrific, sticky mess regarding hunting and suing farmers for patent infringement when their modified or patented seed ACCIDENTALLY finds its way into a farmers own crop (because that’s what plants do–they cross pollinate by wind, insects, etc–it’s basic biology). Then, the farmer has contaminated seed AND they’re being sued for patent infringement. I can think of no greater evil in this world…WE MUST TAKE BACK CONTROL OF OUR OWN SEED SUPPLY BY GROWING NON-PATENTED, OPEN-POLLINATED VARIETIES.
6. Since seeds come after flowers, more seed production on your farm means more FLOWERS, and thus, more BEAUTY!
7. More FLOWERS on your farm means more POLLINATORS! Including more native pollinators! A wide variety of flowers blooming throughout the seasons is crucial for the preservation of hundreds of native pollinator species, in addition to our beloved Apis mellifera, the honeybee. Bees need to be able to gather nectar and pollen through a long season, so allowing more plants to flower and set seed means more food for them!
8. Idaho has some quarantines regarding big ag crops like beans, meaning we can’t buy bean seed from just anywhere. Locally-produced and certified disease-free bean seed can close that loop, get us the seed we need, AND keep our big and small bean producers safe.
9. By learning how to grow and save good-quality seed, we EMPOWER ourselves! We’re more useful to those around us, and more self-sufficient to boot!
10. And perhaps best of all, IT’S FREE! Each seed has the potential to produce dozens to hundreds more seeds! And all this abundance is ours for free when we start with a single seed! I get chills just thinking about how rich I am…