#trueloveseeds

A big shout out to Julia Aguilar!! Every week in addition to spending a day working on the farm, they date, label, and fill almost 700 seed packets at their house so I can attempt to keep up with your orders from my house! This week we are aiming for twice as many packets since supplies are getting so low. Since mid-March, Julia has hand-filled nearly every single one of our packets! Measuring spoon in hand, emoji jokes at the ready, with the determined spirit and heart of a seed sovereignty believer and doer, they are truly amazing and wonderful. Thanks @cryptogam_ !!!! (In this photo they are filling Palestinian Molokhia packets). Photo by @milesziskind #seedkeeping #trueloveseeds https://www.instagram.com/p/CBwYpJfAFLM/?igshid=1vtxhlm7sgqbb

Thank you so much to all of you who have been visiting www.trueloveseeds.com, reading our seed stories, and picking out varieties that sound perfect for your gardens and farms and kitchens and forkfuls. It is amazing to us that we are able to spend our days shipping our beloved seeds to excited growers! And what’s more, that the growers who saved these seeds get to benefit by telling their own seed stories, preserving their own ancestral and regional seeds, and receiving 50% of the income from your seed orders. Your support keeps this whole thing going, and we encourage you to join us by saving your own seeds as well! Let’s keep our foodways alive and well. Thank you so much! Shown here: Buena Mulata Pepper; White Velvet Okra; Ají Amarillo; Huacatay; Callaloo; Landis Winter Lettuce; Francois Syrian Molokhia; White Garden Egg; Paul Robeson Tomato; Frijol Rojo de Seda. #trueloveseeds #seedkeeping #seedsaving https://www.instagram.com/p/B8pEns5A5wV/?igshid=1x82lk6pvt8xu

Happy Valentine’s Day to my ancestors! These photos are of Letitia Truelove and her granddaughter - my grandma Letty - in the 1920s. Grandma Letty, who I adored and continue to adore, was an an amazing cook and baker and lover of plants and rocks and oceans. She was named after her grandma and so is Truelove Seeds. That's why Truelove is one word. I wanted to pick a family name because so much of our focus is on continuing to keep our ancestral seeds, stories, and traditions. I considered these other family names: Vigilante, Lauriello, Grindrod, Lenihan, Walsh, but Truelove was too good to pass up! Besides, keeping seeds is an act of TRUE LOVE for our ancestors and our collective future. Letitia Cecilia Truelove was the youngest in a large family and was sent away to be raised by nuns. In turn, she raised a powerful woman, who raised a powerful woman, who raised a powerful woman, who raised me and my sister. Grateful for the care that our ancestors and living relatives take to help us survive and thrive in this beautiful and tumultuous world. I hope to take the same care in caring for my loved ones, my seeds, my community, and this seed company! #trueloveseeds #letitiatruelove https://www.instagram.com/p/B8kTKd7getN/?igshid=15shqdcrtxv9x

New variety alert! Now available at www.trueloveseeds.com! Quillquiña is a lesser known variety of Papalo that is more widely grown in the Andes - particularly in Bolivia and Peru. Unlike the larger and greener Mexican Papalo, they have thinner, purpler leaves, and they flower much earlier. It is interesting how the two herbs I’ve met from this region - Huacatay and Quillquiña - are both intensely fragrant, providing strength and character to the garden and the salsa. Satchels of our Quillquiña seeds were given to me (and Katherine Chiu!) by a nice guy named Joe Hiscott at a seed swap this winter in upstate NY after he heard us talk about our community seed stewardship (see last photo). We grew it by the Andean Lupine (Chochos) and Ecuadorian Peanuts lovingly tended by our apprentice Julia Aguilar. Also known as Bolivian coriander, this cilantro-like herb from South America traveled to Mexico thousands of years before the unrelated cilantro/coriander came from the Middle East and the Mediterranean. People have also said it tastes like arugula, rue, and citrus. The flavor bursts in your mouth, and even brushing past the plant can fill the air with essential oils. See the neatly arranged holes on the underside of the leaf in the last plant photo? Those aromatic oil glands keep away chewing insects, and give the leaf a powerful punch for us humans. Known as: Bolivian coriander, quillquiña (also spelled quirquiña or quilquiña), yerba porosa, killi, pápalo, tepegua, mampuritu, and pápaloquelite. #quillquiña #quillquina #quilquiña #quirquiña #yerbaporosa #killi #papalo #tepegua #mampuritu #papaloquelite #porophyllumruderale #seedkeeping #seedsaving #trueloveseeds https://www.instagram.com/p/B9CZfeiApTD/?igshid=6cpzhlaijix5

Listen now! Seeds & Their People is a radio show where people we admire tell stories about the seeds they truly love. Our first episode is up on our website! Chris and I tell our own seed stories so you can get to know us a little before we launch into our interviews and conversations with others, such as Kristyn Leach from @namu_farm and Ira Wallace of @southernexposureseed. So excited for this medium that allows us to hear seed stories woven in the voices of their keepers. Look for the bar at the top of www.trueloveseeds.com to listen! Soon, you can listen on all your favorite podcast apps. Thanks!#seedsandtheirpeople #seedkeeping #seedstories #seedsaving @trueloveseeds @sankofacommunityfarm #trueloveseeds https://www.instagram.com/p/B6-nZXIAj6V/?igshid=llzxdfhyq93b

Our 2020 Seed Keeping calendar is ready for you! Full of bright pictures of culturally important plants and their seed stories and printed on thick paper by local printers @fireballprints. Consider supporting our seed keeping work at Truelove Seeds by purchasing gifts for yourselves and the ones you love. This is our fifth annual calendar, and we are so excited to share it with the world. www.trueloveseeds.com #seedkeeping #seedsovereignty #foodsovereignty #seedsaving #trueloveseeds (at Everywhere) https://www.instagram.com/p/B5DV8X6g_5c/?igshid=45gzq0mrbpmy

It’s hot, but it’s cooler in the Sehsapsing Lenape Flint Corn (and in the creek and the seed room - other places Althea, Hannah, Amirah, Julia, Chris, and I took refuge in today after working in the extreme heat). Sehsapsing or Oklahoma Delaware Blue Flint Corn are breathtaking 7-inch cobs containing 8 rows of blue-black kernels that can be ground for flour, grits, and a traditional cornmeal mush called sapan. This corn is also known as Sèhsapsink, Lenape Blue Corn, and Oklahoma Delaware Black Flint and is an important variety to the Lenape people, whose original homeland covers what is now New Jersey, Eastern Pennsylvania, Southern New York, and Northern Delaware. William Woys Weaver received seeds of this variety in the 1970s from both Gladys Tantaquidgeon (Mohegan medicine woman and ethnographer) and Walton Galinat (a Connecticut Yankee who specialized in native corn). The USDA received seeds of this variety in 1985 from Charles Dean, the husband of Nora Thompson Dean, an Unami Delaware/Lenape herbalist who dedicated her life to preserving the culture and traditions of her tribe. This variety was brought west to Oklahoma by her mother, Sarah Wilson Thompson. Many Lenape people moved west over hundreds of years, continually pushed onward by white settlers. If you are Lenape, please reach out so we can rematriate these seeds to you free of charge. #sehsapsing #sehsapsingcorn #seedkeeping #trueloveseeds https://www.instagram.com/p/BzOwo-BgU4H/?igshid=73rk5tde36la

Amanda Chin stands in a tunnel of vining Winter Melon and Fuzzy Melon, the seeds of which came from her Uncle Fung in Massachusetts, who gets them each year for his garden from his father-in-law Mr. Stzo. Her Taishanese grandfather would make a simple winter melon soup in broth, sometimes with bean sprouts. Amanda runs the Videon Educational Garden at Garrett Williamson, where kids from their programs have saved seeds of Pink Eye Butter Bean and Banana Legs Tomato for Truelove Seeds for a few years now. Inspired by our work with ancestral seeds, Amanda has brought these family melons into the mix too, and we are very excited to see how they fill in this trellis! Last photo by @mandaroni at @campgarrettpa, earlier today, just after my visit. #seedsaving #seedkeeping #ancestralseeds #trueloveseeds (at Garrett Williamson) https://www.instagram.com/p/B0rgXUrAHUE/?igshid=68k52w7oc4t