#seedkeeping

xwaskwiim held in community

Sistah Seeds! Truelove Seeds took a trip to visit and help out at Amirah’s farm today (@sistahseeds). The kids wanted us to have grass in our mouths like real farmers 😂 Amirah is growing dozens and dozens of heirloom African American and other African Diasporic seed crops, many of which will end up in our catalog, inshallah. She takes the cake amongst our roughly 70 growers for having the longest list of seeds on her growers agreement for this year, or ever. She worked with us for four years before branching out to start her own operation. I’m so glad to remain so deeply connected in our work and community. Thank you Amirah for welcome us to your beautiful farm! We 💜 you! #seedkeeping (at The Seed Farm) https://www.instagram.com/p/CiWM-exur9Q/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

It’s pretty surreal to see Truelove Seeds featured in a magazine I grew up seeing on my grandma Letty’s coffee tables. If only she was here to see this AND read her own grandma’s name (Leticia Truelove) in print. Our work is so much bigger than Chris and me: so many other people (including @cryptogam_ @ainbaz @sarastaylor @claykitchenstudio @honnih @sa__a__a @sistahseeds and countless apprentices, seed growers, and community partners/friends) spend their days and energies and inspirations making Truelove what it is through stewarding their beloved ancestral varieties and making them available to gardeners and farmers far and wide. That said, this is a lovely design and a good write-up, and it’s a real honor to grace the pages of this historic issue alongside some of our other favorite seed companies! #seedkeeping @betterhomesandgardens (at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) https://www.instagram.com/p/ChbC0UCOBJE/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Odell’s White Watermelon, sizing up, with morning dew. Odell's Large White Watermelon fruits are gigantic with sweet, pink, juicy flesh, light green skin, and white seeds (though not very many). The rinds are tender, almost as sweet as the flesh, and great for pickling. While watermelons were first domesticated in Africa, this is one of few that are known to be a variety connected to a particular African American person, who in this case is an unnamed man who selected this variety during or before the 1840s on a plantation in Pomaria, SC. Our original seed came from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. Theirs came from Rodger Winn whose wife Karen Metzes's family has stewarded this melon since 1880. Our former coworker Amirah Mitchell advocated for us to include this variety at our farm this year. Amirah is also growing this variety for our catalog at her new farm project, Sistah Seeds, among dozens of other seed crops important to Africans and African Americans in the diaspora. #seedkeeping @sistahseeds (at Glen Mills, Pennsylvania) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cgxstxxuej-/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Last year, @nitalvadalia suggested we grow Guar Gum - also known as Cluster Beans, Guvar, Guwar, and Cyamopsis tetragonoloba - because it is such an important vegetable crop for so many people originally from India, and very hard to find here. We found some seed from Caribbean Garden Seed, and it’s actually growing pretty nicely in our little trial plot. I harvested the first two dried seed pods today! This year, Tika Jagad is apprenticing with us with a particular focus on her Indian and Jamaican ancestral plants (see the post about the Chana!). Turns out Guvar is another important food from her childhood, and she had a heartwarming conversation with her father about their food memories of this “Indian string bean” as she calls it, and her experience with it at our farm. She says you just can’t find good quality fresh pods here, even at the Indian groceries. So we hope to make the seeds more available some year soon! It is not known where this plant originated since it seems to be nowhere in the wild, but people suspect it was cultivated from another species in Africa, and further selected in South Asia. Yes, this nitrogen-fixing legume is the same Guar Gum used for its gel in many processed foods. It’s an important part of crop rotations, especially in northwestern India and Pakistan. #seedkeeping (at Glen Mills, Pennsylvania) https://www.instagram.com/p/CgZzEFAuAVu/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

@therealmaryjblige is the meanest part of this American Gothic 😂 Chiamaka and Rocky with their Lumper Potato harvest. It was their first time lifting potatoes! This was the potato of the Great Hunger in Ireland, one that I grow to remember my great grandmother Mary Lenihan and her potato farming family in Galway. Of course, potatoes originate in the Andes where they were first domesticated and where their diversity is still the greatest. They made their way to Ireland as a field crop in the seventeenth century and became a staple in the eighteenth. #seedkeeping #lumperpotato (at Glen Mills, Pennsylvania) https://www.instagram.com/p/CgYESJQuTUX/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

We are seed keepers. Keeping seeds is an act of Truelove for our past and our collective future. Together with over 70 farms and gardens in our region and across the country, we share the seeds and stories of our beloved foodways across our diasporas: for us, grown by us. Together we learn how to best love our plant relatives, how to midwife their next generations, and how to carry forward their rich origin stories. We mentor apprentices and new seed growers and they teach us too. We send seeds back home. We do all this through the support of your seed orders: seed packet by seed packet. Half of each packet sale goes directly to our growers, honoring their work, their culture, and their expertise. We thresh: pulling the new from the old. We winnow: blowing the chaff from the world that is to come. We are seed keepers and it is our great joy and honor to be part of your seed journey. 1. @ainbaz with Smooth Bitter Melon from @resilientrootsfarm 2. Aleho (Nigerian leaf amaranth) from @justeviateas 3. Transkutukú Peanuts from the Shuar and Achuar communities of the Morona Santiago jungle, Ecuador. 4. Guar Gum, grown at the request of @nitalvadalia 5. Ethiopian Blue Mustard from Menkir Tamrat, an Ethiopian tech-worker turned farmer who introduced these seeds and other Ethiopian varieties to @artisan.seeds. 6. Fantastic Mr. Fox dahlia, named by @snapdragonflowersphilly. Dahlias are known as Cocoxochitl in Nahuatl and are an Aztec food crop. 7. Waterleaf aka Efo Gbure, from @okofarms with flowers closed up before an afternoon rain storm. #seedkeeping (at Glen Mills, Pennsylvania) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cf9MY8JuGVO/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=