Seeds Are True Wealth, with Elizabeth Buckingham

A seed holds everything it needs to know within its tiny being. They are a symbol of Life's potential, and we need to sit and learn from them right now. In this lively and eye-opening conversation with regenerative farmer Elizabeth Buckingham, we learn about seed keeping traditions, what seeds want, and how we can align with their interests.

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About Elizabeth:

Elizabeth Buckingham is a small-scale regenerative farmer in the high-plains desert of western Colorado. She focuses on seed saving and heirloom dry beans. She's very conscious of capitalism and its effects on agriculture and is also very thoughtful in how she connects with the land, particularly as someone who is not Indigenous to the place she farms. You can learn more about her and her work at https://findingquietfarm.com/.

Other resources mentioned: 

Megan Leatherman:
Welcome to A Wild New Work, a podcast about how to divest from capitalism and the norms of modern work and step into the soulful calling of these times we live in, which includes the call to rekindle our relationship with the earth. I'm Megan Leatherman, a mother to two small kids, writer, amateur ecologist, and vocational guide. I live in the Pacific Northwest and I'm your host today.

Well, hi friend and welcome. Thank you for being here today. I'm really glad that we can share this space. It is starting to really feel like spring here. Yesterday was the first day where I saw multiple different kinds of flowers blooming, Daphne and Crocus and even some daffodils. And so it's happening. The change is happening. It's upon us. It's a beautiful thing. We're in this transitional time between winter and spring. And the seeds really are our teachers right now in so many ways and they always are, but especially in this very seedling type time. We have a lot that we can learn from them about how to wait under the soil until the conditions are right, what to do when the conditions are conducive to our growth, how to grow and sprout downward, deeper, also upward and reaching toward the sun. There's just so much wisdom in seeds and how they are, just who they are.

So if you feel lost at any point in this transitional time between the seasons or at any time in your life, if you're feeling like nothing's really happening or you're not sure what to do next or the energies stuck in some way, encourage you to look to the seeds. Hold them, study them, sit with them, ask them for help because they really do know what to do and how to do it and how to be here sometimes for years and years under the soil until it's just the right time to grow.

And my guest today, Elizabeth Buckingham, is a lover of seeds. She's a caretaker of them and I was so delighted to get to talk to her today about the magic of seeds. Elizabeth is a small scale regenerative farmer in the high plains desert of Western Colorado. She focuses on seed saving and heirloom dry beans. She is very conscious of capitalism and the systems that we're living in and its effects on agriculture. And she's also very thoughtful about how she connects with the land, particularly as someone who is not indigenous to the place that she farms. So I hope you love this conversation as much as I did and that you get a lot out of it.

I just have one announcement today, which is that the Spring Journal is here. The Living the Seasons Spring Journal is here. It's all about gifts and how to grow.

And if you're new to the show or new to my work, then this is the third version. I did an autumn one and a winter journal, and this is the spring. And it's laid out weekly so that every week there is some of my writing about where we are in the seasonal cycle. know, early spring has its own medicine and teachings, and middle spring does and late spring does too. So when we say spring, it's not like just one blanket experience its all different ways of moving and all different modalities and wisdom. So the journal takes you through all of that with my reflections, questions to ask yourself about how you can more effectively or naturally sync up with the season of spring as it's manifesting in the landscape around you and then some space for you to write in and also some learning from the land exercises three times throughout the journal so that you have a kind of guide for how to go out and connect with the land in a meaningful and deep way and get the medicine that you need and give of your gifts to the land directly. So I hope you love it.

It's available for order on my website now at awildnewwork.com slash shop and orders placed by March 11th will include the audio version of the journal so that you can listen to the writings if you'd like and take the reflection prompts with you on the go and just have it in a different way if you learn differently, if you like to have an audio option. There are two primary ways that you can get a journal. One is by going to the shop and just purchasing one or purchasing a couple and getting a discount. And the second is by becoming a member, a sustainer. And sustainer members pay $45 a month and they receive a journal every season. They also get free admission to the seasonal classes that go along with the journal. They get a monthly behind the scenes email from me about what I'm working on and how it's going. And they also just really support the show.

Every month their contributions help make this more sustainable. So you can get a journal that way as well if you're someone who wants to get a copy and also wants to support the show and the work that we're doing here. And you can learn more about that at buymeacoffee.com slash Megan Leatherman. And I'll put both of those links in the show notes. I want to say a big thank you to everyone supporting the show already by pitching in either once or monthly by becoming a member, especially new members and supporters, Miana and Sasha, thank you so much for your support. And, you know, I only mentioned the most recent supporters in each episode, but of course, my gratitude is just as strong to those of you who are pitching in every month and who have been here for a while, you're really making this sustainable. So whether you're new or a long time supporter, thank you, thank you, thank you.

If you can't pitch in financially right now, that's okay. Your sharing of the show and your presence here and making meaning from what you take in these episodes is also just really lovely and I feel the reciprocity of that. So thank you. Let's move into our opening invocation now. So wherever you are, you might just notice your body and how you're feeling today.

You might look outside and see if you can find any signs of spring or see something around you in your environment that is alive. Even if it's just you and yourself and that's beautiful.

May each of us be blessed and emboldened to do the work we're meant to do on this planet. May our work honor our ancestors known and unknown, and may it be in harmony with all creatures that we share this earth with. I express gratitude for all of the technologies and gifts that have made this possible, and I'm grateful to the Multnomah, Cowlitz, Bands of Chinook, and Clackamas tribes, among many others, who are the original stewards of the land that I'm

Well, Elizabeth, thank you so much for being with us today.

Elizabeth:

Thank you so much for inviting me on. I am honored to be on this podcast.

Megan:
Well, I have been really curious since meeting you to hear a little bit more about the origin story of your farm and how you came to work with the land and work with seeds. Could you tell us a little bit about kind of what has led you here?

Elizabeth:
I would love to. I began my career as a chef and I always talk about that as being a fancy chef because I worked on private yachts for a long time and I did what I called tall food and the food was never about nourishment or about honoring where the food came from. The food was just about how to impress people with how much money you had and I realized that that was very much not my calling. And when I left the boats, I moved more into teaching cooking classes and nutritionist work and realized that what I wanted to do was to teach people how to cook, not to cook for them. And a natural sort of progression from that was then starting to question where the food itself comes from and getting curious about.

If I know what this food can do for bodies and minds and spirits, can I actually grow that food myself and be even more involved in that process? So when I lived in sort of a small suburban neighborhood, I had a garden and that expanded as it always does. And then we got backyard chickens and then we got beehives. And as these things always do, it sort of kept going and going. And there was a point in about 2017 or 2018 when my husband looked at me and he said, I just want a quiet farm. And that kind of started our journey to look for this land that we're currently on. We are in Western Colorado on the Western slope of Colorado. We farm in a high plains desert at 6,200 feet elevation, extremely challenging growing climate here. And this was a piece of property that we had looked for, for a good period of time and we ended up living in an RV for a summer as we traveled around the country looking at different places, which is its own adventure. And we purchased this piece of property in 2018.

And so since then have been working on regenerating this land. It had been abandoned for an extensive period of time. So all of our work here is on rebuilding the soil, rebuilding the land and doing everything we can to honor what this land has and how we can do best by it, how we can best steward it.

Megan:
What is, can you give us a little sense of like how the land is doing now? What is that regeneration project like today?

Elizabeth:
It's so interesting because when we did all of our sort of farming courses and things like that, so rarely does anyone talk about farming in a high plains desert. And I think it is, it's such a unique space and I don't want to malign any kind of farming because of course everyone's land is unique. Everyone's microclimate is unique.

But this particular piece of property, obviously the biggest challenge that we have is, as I said, being in a high plains desert, we are in a thousand year drought in the American Southwest. And all of the water that we have on this land comes from the snow that we get in the winter. And this particular winter, we haven't had snow for two months. And that is...

It's unprecedented during the period of time that we've been here and it's creating a lot of concern and nervousness about the upcoming water season. We sit in a fruit producing area. That's what our area is known for and has been known for for over a hundred years, primarily apples, but also peaches, cherries, and small amounts of pears, plums, and other stone fruits. But apple orchards are the primary agricultural crop surrounding where we live.

And obviously, as with any ag, we need that water. So to answer your question about the evolution of our land, what we have tried to do best is to pay attention to the land and obviously use the mentorship and guidance of other folks in the ag industry who have been doing this for a long time. But we are trying as hard as possible to listen to what...the land wants and to respond to that. And what I mean by that is letting our pasture go not wild exactly. I'm very interested in the concept of rewilding. That's not exactly what we're doing here, but seeing what happens when the land is for the most part left to its own devices. So we do cultivate certain areas and we have, how do I say plowed up parts of the land in order to grow, but for the most significant portion of our land, we've left it mostly wild to see what happens. I'm not sure that was probably a roundabout way of answering your question.

Megan:
No, I love that. Yeah, that's wonderful. Maybe how big is the land, like just so we get a good picture in our minds?

Elizabeth:
So absolutely tiny in terms of modern farming parameters. Our parcel that we actually farm is eight acres and that's just eight, not 800 or 8,000, just eight. And in the context of modern farming in the United States, since the 1970s, the idea has been “get big or get out.” That's a famous phrase from a secretary of agriculture we had in the 1970s. Most farms in this country are a minimum of 1000 acres and many of them are substantially larger than that. So we are a micro farm. If there's something smaller than micro, we might be a nano farm. I'm not sure if we can be a nano farm. So we are tiny.

But because of the geography of where we live, we sit at the base of the Grand Mesa, which is the largest flat top mountain in the world. The top of it is about 11,000 feet in altitude. So not quite our famous 14ers, but close. And so we sit on the slope of that. So our land is not flat and even. The way you might think of if you visualize a farm like in Iowa or the Dakotas, you might think of just a huge expanse of flat land. And that's absolutely true in the Midwestern part of the country and it's so much not true of us. We're basically on the side of a mountain.

Megan:
Wow, you picked a challenge. I love it.

Elizabeth:
There's no question about that. And one of the biggest challenges is because all of this land was cleared to grow orchards, as I said, about 100, 120 years ago, because of all of the rocks that have come off the mesa, we have huge rocks around here. And when I say rocks, mean rocks the size of a Volkswagen bug that have been cleared off of this land. And when you think about the poor draft horses, because this all would have been done prior to modern machinery, you think about these poor horses and they, how many of them they would have sacrificed in order to clear this land. So our land is bordered by these massive rock walls, something that you might think that you would see in England or Scotland, but they're huge. And so when you're farming out here, you assume that rocks are a huge part of what you're gonna do. And you have to be careful with your machinery because you can ruin things just hitting a rock. That's a common...piece of knowledge that I think many folks who farm again in the Midwest in the chocolate cake soil of Iowa or the Dakotas, that's not a concern for them. And it absolutely is for us. So we have no water, we have no moisture, we have 6,200 feet of elevation and we're covered in rocks. So to be honest, this is just human arrogance that says, hey, I can grow some food out here. Classic human, yeah, I can do this.

Megan:
Well, you are. I've seen and held myself the beautiful beans and seeds that you have cultivated out there. maybe before we get into talking about the seeds, you mentioned that you and your husband went on this RV journey and you were probably being very intentional and mindful about how you would come to a land. And I know in our conversations, we've talked about your desire to not be another settler or just colonize the land and take it for your own use. But I know you're thinking a lot about ways that you can be a good steward of that place and honor the Indigenous history there. Maybe you could talk to us a little bit about how you chose this place and what it's been like for you to kind of unpack or learn more about colonization and what it means to be a white farmer and yeah, anything you want to say about that.

Elizabeth:
That's such a great question and it's something that I have given a lot of time and effort to as I've realized that my particular calling is in seed saving seed stewardship and sharing that knowledge that education that expertise with my community in any way I can. And one thing that has become.

So key to me personally, and to be clear, obviously I am of European descent and that's obviously, it's such a difficult thing to talk about, but we all have seed saving and seed keeping in our history and in our DNA. And because up until about 100, 120 years ago, the only way that you would have had seeds for next year is to save them yourself.

So when we talk about what we all have kind of stitched into the fabric of our knowledge in into who we are as humans, seed savings, seed keeping, seed stewardship, absolutely did the indigenous tribes here make that into an art form without question? And I have the utmost respect. It's just really important for me to also say that it would be something that we would all know and do as humans because it was the only way that we would have had food. I hope that makes sense. hope what I'm trying to say makes sense in that humans know certain things. We know how to do certain things. And even if we've lost those skills or maybe set them aside or maybe outsource them to others, growing food and saving seeds and cultivating the land is something that we all know inherently how to do. We might just need to tap into that a little bit more. So the best thing I can do is to learn from any elders or mentors that I can find and to respect the history of the land that I'm on. And a key part of that as well is knowing this land and knowing what grows here. And in terms of that, that's always looking at the Indigenous folks who have been here for thousands upon thousands of years.

Where I am, we're not going to grow oranges. We're not going to grow some of the things that they grow kind of in the upper Midwest with better soils. We're gonna look at what is endemic or what has been grown here for thousands of years. And for us, that's going to be beans, corn and squash, which are the three sisters and are a classic growing technique of many indigenous tribes. And you sort of...work with what you have. If that makes sense, you work with the land and you let the land tell you what it can support and what it can do. And that's what I think the best form of respect that I can show is ask the land what it wants and what it wants it to grow. And don't try to grow things here that are incredibly water intensive because that won't work. But just to remember that all of us know how to care for the seeds. We might just need to tap into that knowledge.

Megan:
I love that. Thank you. I'm just thinking about how my assumption until I had this conversation with you has been every year we would go just like buy new seeds at the garden store. And I remember in our last conversation, just private conversation, you talked about how in the early days of COVID, these stores just ran out of seeds. And it's like, well, where do the seeds come from?

And I was so steeped in consumer capitalist culture that I had never really thought to save my own seeds. And maybe we could talk about this later, but it seems like some of the plants that I buy as starts or the seeds I get don't even make new seeds. They've been, I guess, so genetically modified. They're not even making seeds that I can save.

I'm really grateful that you're reminding us that this is something very natural and sustainable. And I'd love to hear what you, just like what you love about seeds, what makes them really special and magical to you.

Elizabeth:
My gosh, that question honestly, and three hours later when I finally stopped speaking about that, seeds hold everything. They hold in that tiny, tiny package, they hold everything they need to reproduce. And of course, that's just standard biology. And folks might think, well, yes, lady, that's what seeds do. That's the whole idea. And of course you could make the same argument for a baby anything, a puppy or a human or a tulip or anything, any biological organism, obviously its nature is to reproduce. That's just how it works. When it comes to seeds, they seem so humble. And I think that humility is so attractive to me because it's easy to get overconfident, especially as humans. Many times we might behave in an arrogant fashion and we might kind of storm into any situation and say, I know how to do this. I know the right way to do this. I know all of the answers to this. But the seeds have all of the answers, but they're not screaming at you. And I'm not sure if I'm exactly explaining what I want to say. Seeds have been found still viable in Egyptian tombs. They have found Egyptian tombs.

They have found seeds in those tombs and they have sprouted and grown those out. And the seeds are just waiting for us to realize how we can make amends and make repairs. And the seeds are there waiting for us when we're ready. And that's how I feel about the seeds magic. And it's not only that, just this morning I was scooping out a butternut squash. We grow a ton of different winter squash and keep them obviously throughout the winter, kind of coming to the end of that. So I was scooping out a butternut squash and I was saving those seeds. And out of this one tiny butternut squash, I have maybe a hundred or 150 seeds. That's how many new butternut squash plants I can grow out of that. And I can share those. have, what I love about them is the abundance. And this goes so much, to your newsletter that you wrote, which I absolutely loved about Eagle, the idea of hoarding and hoarding is such, some might say it's a natural human response, some might say that it's a capitalistic human response. We can debate that at another time. When it comes to the seeds, they make me feel wealthy in terms of I have enough for myself and I have plenty to share. I hope that makes sense what I want to say because I'm taking out this one butternut squash and I know that I'll have plenty of seed to keep for my own farm.

But I'm organizing a community seed swap here in a couple of weeks. And I know that I have plenty of seeds to give away to my community. They make me feel wealthy and the seed knows, it knows everything and it will just lie dormant there until you're ready to hear what it has to say and to accept its gifts.

Megan:
I feel the passion in your words. feel the wealth of that and just how those are things. Seeds are like actually literally valuable, you know, versus a piece of paper or a zero or one in your bank account, which has no actual value, you know. So, oh, I just love hearing you talk about them. I'd love to hear a little bit more about what seeds need. I'm not a scientist or a farmer, but I really love the idea of imbibition, how the seeds absorb water. And it seems like water is a primary initial key that unlocks the seeds. Could you talk about when you say they're waiting for us, what are they waiting for in the environment?

Elizabeth:
The seeds want the ideal conditions to grow just as any organism does. And this varies from seed to seed. And I mentioned obviously that seeds have been found from thousands of years ago and they've still been viable. Sort of the rule of thumb when we talk about seed keeping or seed stewarding is cool, dark and dry. And that's something really important to emphasize if any of the folks listening might want to start on their own seed keeping or seed collecting journey, the very best conditions that you can create to store your seeds safely for as long as possible is cool, dark and dry. So based on those conditions, you know that the opposite of that is what the seed wants to thrive, if that makes sense. So the seed wants warmth, light and moisture. So if you are looking as a seed steward to keep your seeds safe for a long time, which is great, cool, dark and dry. If you want your seeds to wake up and grow, you want light warmth and moisture. And of course that varies based on individual seeds, individual cultivation practices. And I want to be very careful about not making broad generalizations about how every single seed is handled, but that's kind of a general rule.

And I really want to emphasize that plants want to reproduce and one of the most impactful things that I think folks can do, especially at this time of year, this is the perfect time of year to do this. Go out into your own landscape, whatever that might be, your backyard, a local park, whatever your environment is, and look at what the plants are doing right now, because in many cases, and I'm speaking obviously here in North America in kind of early spring, we've obviously just passed in bulk and we're kind of moving towards the spring equinox.

Look at what the plants are doing because they're both waking up, but those seeds might be starting to grow and depending, as I said, we've had no snow this year. So we're starting to see a lot of growth. That's a little bit early, but that's just the seed taking a cue from the environment, which as we know is a little bit more than off kilter right now. That seed is taking some cues from its environment to say, it's time for me to wake up, even if that's not necessarily true.

So to learn more about plants and seeds, one of the best things that people can do is to just simply go on your own nature walk and see if you can find on a particular plant, where are its seeds? Because every single plant with few exceptions, again, will reproduce through seed production. Yes, there are a few that are gonna reproduce in a different fashion, but for the sake of our discussion. So you look at them and you say, well this plant, I have a Northern Catalpa tree and right now, that tree is hung with seed pods and it's so beautiful and I need to get out there and I need to collect all of those so that I can propagate that catalpa tree. All of the plants want to reproduce and our job as stewards or caretakers is to look at the plant and say, how is this plant behaving and what can I do as a caregiver to help that plant along?

Megan:
So is it true that there are some plants being sold that cannot make seeds or am I just reading it wrong? like what's happening in the world of genetic modification?

Elizabeth:
This is such a great question and I do a lot of seed education courses and your question is one that comes up frequently. So on a super basic level, and we're going to speak just about kind of standard home vegetables here because this is what's most relevant to the average home gardener. We have heirloom or open pollinated seeds and we have hybrids. And for the sake of this right now, we're not speaking of genetic modification. For about 10,000 years since folks have remained more or less stable in one place, less nomadic, more staying in one area. People have crossed plants naturally to produce the result that they want. So for example, they had the most delicious tomato or they had the plumpest kernels of corn or they had the biggest butternut squash. Whatever result they wanted to do, they would save seeds from that particular plant and they would naturally cross this. And again, this is not genetic modification that takes place in a lab. This is natural human ingenuity. This is natural plant breeding that will create in many cases, a hybrid. If you're crossing two parents, we're going back to Mendelian science here. When you're crossing two parents, your offspring is going to be unique. And if you plant again, that offspring, you might not get the same results again.

When we have plants that are heirlooms or open pollinated and an heirloom is anything basically pre-World War II, heirloom or open pollinated is a plant that you can always collect the seeds from and it will always breed true. So I'll give you an example, a tomato, a black crim tomato, which is a tomato that would have originated in what is now Russia, is an heirloom tomato. And if you grow a black crim tomato and you save the seeds from that tomato, you're always going to get an identical black crimp tomato. But if you grow, example, there's a tomato, hybrid called a lemon boy, it's a great tomato, but it is a hybrid. And that means that it's been bred for those particular conditions. So you can plant, you can save and plant the seeds from the lemon boy tomato, but you're not guaranteed the same results. You might get what you want, but you might get something completely different because it's considered an unstable cross.

When we start talking about genetic modification, and I want to be super, super clear on this, genetic modification has to take place in a lab environment and involves, and I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on this, actually splicing or altering genes. So you're not able to do this on a home level. And at this particular point, with the exception of the purple tomato of last spring, which created a huge amount of controversy, there are no, GM seeds that are available to home gardeners. Everything that we grow that's GMO is sold to farmers at the commercial level. So in the United States, you've got canola, also known as rapeseed in countries that are not obviously America. You've got canola, cotton, sugar beet, and I'm going to come up with two more. These are the primary crops, soy. These are the...primary crops that are genetically modified and those are not available for the standard home gardener to grow them. Those will not grow true. You have to purchase new seeds every single year. So there is no genetic modification at kind of the home gardener level with very few exceptions, but there are hybrids which are not going to grow true to type. Did I make that so muddy?

Megan:
No, I'm with you. That makes sense. Okay.

Elizabeth:
So it's basically what plants can cross and what can't. And when you're growing in your home garden, for example, the squash family is a great example. If you grow two varieties of winter squash next to each other, say for example, a butternut and a honey baby, it is possible that those plants will cross naturally. And that's because bees obviously...don't acknowledge your tiny plant sign that says bees, need you to only stay on these flowers over here. The bees obviously have their own worldview and are doing what they need to do. So within the home garden, while I always want to encourage folks to save seeds, I also want you to know that sometimes you might get some exciting experiments out of that and create something that's completely unique to you, which can be its own form of learning and education. So I'm definitely not downplaying that. But to answer your question, there are seeds that you can purchase if you're looking at seed packets at your garden center or wherever. If it says hybrid on it, you do not want to save the seeds from that because that plant is not going to grow true to type. You want save seeds from heirloom or open pollinated, also OP varieties. Those will grow true to type.

Megan:
I feel like there's a question brewing around industrial farming and not being able to save seeds from that, but it's not fully formed, but that's kind of mind boggling. I think it just speaks to the fact that, again, humans are trying to overcome natural constraints. It's like industrial farming is so unsustainable. You literally can't even start with where you were last seed. Like you can't even start with the seeds you had. I don't know, that's kind of wild. Anything you want to add to that?

Elizabeth:
I think it's exactly what you say and it goes back to our ongoing conversations about capitalism. We've created a market that didn't need to have a market and now it's pretty big and it's pretty dominant. And again, as I've said, 100 or 120 years ago, seed companies didn't even exist. What little seed distribution there was, was done through the brand new USDA. U.S. Department of Agriculture was originally created as a way to distribute seeds to farmers. And it was done freely and it was done without any restrictions. There's a pretty strong movement that I'm a big supporter of and it's the idea that seeds themselves cannot be owned or patented in any way. Now there are plenty of seeds out there that are patented right now. Many folks, again, I agree with this, do not think that anything regarding our food supply as a human community on this earth - you cannot have that as intellectual property or IP. That is something that is equally owned and shared by all of us. And you'll see this reflected in a number of sort of proverbs and sayings from different communities. The Mohawk indigenous group has a saying that says, do not own the seeds, we borrow them from our children. And I don't believe for myself that I own any seeds. I believe that I am their current caretaker or their current steward. And it's very important to me to share those within my community or in any way that I can disperse the seeds because hoarding seeds to me is exactly the opposite of what the seeds want to do. The seeds want to be out there and they want to be growing in the correct environment. So exactly to your point, when it comes to large scale industrial farming that we're doing right now, we've created a market where a farmer in Iowa who grows GMO soy, which is used for animal feed, cannot save his own seeds every single year because they will not grow true. He is obligated to buy from Archie Daniels Midland, Monsanto, ConAgra, whatever the situation is. They've created their own infinite market. From a business standpoint, it's genius. You have to respect it from that. But from a human on this earth, we all should share in our food supply. It's horrific.

And so the idea that we can't...save any seeds. And that's one thing I want to emphasize about seed saving, why it's so important. Not only will you save a ton of money and you're growing seeds that are unique to your area, but this is about food sovereignty. And 60 % of the world seed market is now controlled by four companies, 60%. So what we can do, and I know many folks might be feeling quite helpless or panicked right now, and I can completely acknowledge that feeling. What we can do, is we can take responsibility, we can care for the seeds because genuinely the seeds are what are going to save us when we need food.

Megan:
I believe you. What are you doing with your seeds right now? Like what are the growing cycles like in your extreme environment? how do you know when it's time to plant? What are the, yeah, just what are the cycles like for you where you are?

Elizabeth:
So the most important thing that anyone who wants to start growing anything, start seed keeping or anything is to know your first and last frost date. That's basically the starter piece of information. This is available a number of places online. You can punch your zip code into some various maps and it's going to tell you your approximate first or last start date. So right now I'm working backwards for that. Obviously this has changed a lot over the past you know, say 10 to 15 years, we know we're seeing huge shifts in that. So previously our last frost date might've been around May 15th, but because of the instability in the climate, we're looking at that might be, we could get a severe spring storm as late as May 30th. We've had snow on Memorial Day here, which is definitely unique for us. And I certainly, you know, this, each, each individual's growing climate is going to be different.

So for me, I'm looking at May 30th and then for something like, my warm weather crops like tomatoes and peppers, I'm counting backwards eight to 12 weeks from May 30th because this is, and this is very rough again. You want to start those seeds for those warm weather crops about eight to 12 weeks because they're before they're going to go out. For us, we cannot plant before those temperatures start to warm up because your warmer weather crops, all of what we think of as kind of your summer crops, your tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, summer squash, all of those, they are very, very sensitive to cold temperatures. So here where I live at 6,200 feet, if those temperatures are dropping below 40 degrees at night, you're gonna completely stunt those plants. And in some cases, you might kill them entirely. And of course, the garden centers in my area, there's always a running joke that they love late frost because everyone who put out all of their tomatoes early lost them and then has to come back and buy all of the new tomatoes.

Again, from a business perspective, you really can't fault that logic. So what I always want to recommend to folks, depending on your individual climate is it matters a lot where you are specifically. And then even within that, it matters your individual. Maybe you sit in an area where you get some really heavy winds or maybe you're quite protected because you're in a neighborhood that has lots of houses around and that creates its own warmth, its own heat sink. So there are some, as much as I try to tell folks, you should look at this USDA zone and frost map and you should figure that out, you also are going to have to learn by doing as well, which is what you asked, how do I know when to do things? Sometimes you just guess. Sometimes you honestly just close your eyes, take a shot in the dark and you might get it right and you might get it horribly wrong. But gardening and growing food is about optimism, which is to say, Okay, well, I tried that and it maybe wasn't the best. And if you take good notes, you might be able to improve upon that in the future.

So at this point right now, within about the next, say two to three weeks, I'm going to be getting all of my warm weather crops started and they're going to be on heat mats in a sunroom because they need that warmth and that heat. So the best thing I can recommend to folks, if you've got a south facing window or if you've got a really warm, good light space in your house, get a little tray of something going just to see what happens. Lettuce seeds are really, really easy to start. Any of the tomatoes and peppers, like I said, and you'll be amazed at how much that seed wants to grow. You give it that warmth, that light, and a little bit of moisture, and that seed wants to reproduce. It's its whole job in life. So that's what it's trying to do. So yes, that's my focus right now. Basically making our crop plan, trying to figure out where we're going to grow.

Because this is probably going to be a really low water year, we need to account for that. And so we'll probably cut down our production maybe by about a third because we're not sure we'll have enough water to get through the season. So that's something that we need to consider here. But if folks are doing backyard gardens and have access to that, start small. But you'd be amazed at how much food you can grow in a tiny space.

Megan:
I want to ask a question that might feel a little personal and so you don't have to answer, but I could imagine some listeners, you know, there's kind of this like fantasy of opening a farm and farming and it's so, it must just be so lovely. And I'm wondering like how you just support and sustain yourself in that because I know you're not doing it to get rich, but how are you making it work? What's it like to be a steward of the land and be able to meet your material needs? Is it as easy as we might fantasize or just, yeah, what's that like?

Elizabeth:
It's such a good question. And the truth about farming in this country specifically is it is absolutely designed to support and enhance the larger commodity style farms. is not designed, the whole system is not designed to keep small, diverse vegetable operations in business. And from what we're doing here, I obviously grow, last year we grew 32 different varieties of heirloom dry beans. And I have decided that that's our niche and that's what we're going to focus on. So in terms of getting rich, no. But I did speak at the beginning that I, and this is a hard thing to admit, I will be completely upfront about that.

I was very complicit in a capitalist system and I mentioned the private yachts. It's very well paid. It's very well paid. And I want to be completely honest and upfront about that and say that farms in general, small farms are barely making ends meet as a rule if they are making ends meet at all. But we have a certain buffer in place that means that we can be a little bit more casual about that. I hope that's an honest response because I think it's important to acknowledge privilege when one has that. And I won't lie about how hard I did work on the yachts, but I'm also not gonna lie about the fact that I was very complicit in a system that I'm not proud of that. It is also how I was able to purchase a piece of property and start a farm.

It feels like I'm trying to make amends and I'm not sure if that's enough, but it's an honest answer.

Megan:
I really appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah. I think people just wonder like, how do people do it? What is it really like day to day? And so I really appreciate your openness about how you're making it work. And it's really interesting that you've gone from this place of extreme cash wealth to now this place of like extreme natural wealth. And I wonder, that's just a really interesting life path.

Elizabeth:
It is an interesting life path. And when I think back upon that period, it feels like a time that belonged to another person, as though that wasn't me. I'm watching a film about someone who did those things, except it was me. And I've realized in terms of living according to your values, I'm realizing how much I was not doing that then and how much I am doing it now. And we are not going to get rich selling dry beans. Let me be perfectly clear about that. We are, however, going to survive. And what I'm looking for in my own personal work right now is to concentrate, as we spoke of with the seeds and the abundance, I have enough. And what I mean by that is I have a modest house and I have a piece of property that I can grow food on and I have time to share with my community and be involved in my community and hopefully talk about seeds and share whatever expertise or knowledge that I have. A private jet, probably not in my future, but I also, I don't want that and I don't want to be part of a system where acquisition of more, more, more is the key focus. That doesn't work for me. It hasn't worked for me for a long time. I have enough. I have food. I can grow food, I can share with my community. That's it. I have what I need. And I don't want to be constantly chasing and constantly dissatisfied and unhappy because I don't have the next thing. And I would just like to say for the record that I drive a 1998 Honda Accord with 285,000 miles on it. And I love that car more than it's possible to express.

Megan:
It sounds like you've got your priorities straight, for sure.

Elizabeth:
And I think that's a journey everyone is on for themselves, but especially right now making choices that are values aligned. I try to make all decisions through that lens and say, if I'm asked to do something or participate, or can I do this, or can I donate time or resources here to say, does this align with my values? That's the question. It's my guiding light right now.

Megan:
I know one of the things that really aligns and that you do a lot of work around is seed banks and seed saving. And I want to make sure we have time to hear from you about how people can save seeds, share seeds, start a seed bank, tell us about how to grow wealth in this way.

Elizabeth:
Love this question. My number one recommendation is check with your local public library system. I can't say enough good things about public libraries in general. Specifically in my very low resource rural county, our public library system does so much with so little that they are one of my key places to invest my time and resources because I want to help them do their amazing work. Within our five library system here in this rural county, we have a seed library and that's exactly what it sounds like. Each fall, we do kind of a community-wide encouragement. I teach a number of courses, offer different free workshops, all of that to say, hey folks, please…

Save your seeds, whether it's from your garden or as I said, your Northern Catalpa tree has seed pods off of it. We want to save seeds from things that grow in our extremely challenging climate because all of the seed companies in the country, your big ones like Johnny's and Fedco, they're great companies, don't get me wrong. They're in Maine and look, Maine is an intense climate as well, but it's not the same as what we have here. So the very best thing that folks can do is to try to get seeds that are local and keep building on that local seed bank. So we collect those for the library. And then in the spring, you check those seeds out just as you check out a book. And the whole idea is grow this out. And then when you have lots more seeds, then you bring them back. So it becomes this kind of self-fulfilling entity. And so we're really trying to make that because, again, I'm in a very low resource community.

You can't always be going out and asking folks for money because I'm not in a community that has those resources available to them. What can we do though? you grew the best tomato this year. You know, it was the Valencia tomato and you've never had a better tomato in your life. Let's get those Valencia tomato seeds into our seed bank because we know those will grow well here. So if folks are wondering about how they can get involved, check with your local public library system.

Maybe you already have a seed library and you can become more involved with that in your community. The next best resource, Seedsavers.org, they're an organization out of Iowa and they are really committed to making sure that seeds are kept. Seed banks are a really important thing. We've got obviously a big one up in Svalbard in the Arctic Circle. This is an apocalypse seed bank and that's what it actually is for.

Fort Collins, CSU in Colorado has one of the world's largest seed banks as well. And these are places where nations, this is so amazing, I love talking about seed banks, nations have decided that the validity and the viability of those seeds supersedes any argument that we might have between countries because we've all agreed that when something goes horribly wrong, food is gonna be a pretty key priority. having access to those seeds. So you might be amazed at how many seed banks there could be in your community that maybe you are not even aware of. And out of Altadena, which obviously was devastated by the Eaton fire, I read an amazing article in the New York Times about folks there are already trying to rebuild their seed banks to get those native plants replanted. And this to me is exactly what the seeds do in the face of total devastation, the scale of which is difficult to comprehend.

We're looking ahead and saying, what can we regrow and how can we call upon each other to do this? And that's why seed banks matter is because if I have to evacuate in the event of a wildfire or something else, my little plastic tub, my little seed bank, which represents 25 years of work is genuinely one of the first things that I'm going to grab. That represents everything to me. And it means that I can, I can grow food wherever I end up. So check your public library.

Get involved with Seed Savers out of Iowa. And honestly, if you have any kind of gardening community where you are, whether there might be a community garden of sorts, even many food banks do this, kind of talk to the people, the leaders, the teachers, the elders in your area and say, right, who is saving seeds? What are we doing? And how can I get involved in it? Because it doesn't take much money. You don't need to rent a warehouse. You don't need to invest in complex equipment.

This is something that even communities with maybe not a lot of resources, they can do this. And that's what I want to encourage. You don't need much to start a seed bank. You need some envelopes and a Sharpie and like a plastic tub. That's it. The plants do 99 % of the work for you.

Megan:

So inspiring. Thank you. Yes, I love the simplicity of it and the humility, like you said at the beginning, just the humility of us and our role and the humility of these tiny little seeds. Is there anything that we haven't talked about today that you feel like is really important to share about seeds or stewarding the land or anything related?

Elizabeth:
Because of where I live, I definitely want to specifically mention a couple of indigenous organizations that are doing amazing work. The Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance, one of their offshoots is the Indigenous Seed Keeping Network. And these groups, and I'm certain there are others, are really making an effort to get native seeds back into native hands. And there's another organization out of Arizona, a seed company and nonprofit called Native Seeds slash Search, NSS. And they are doing the same thing. So it's the idea of rematriation. And I love that word because people think, didn't you mean to say repatriation? And you say, no, I didn't mean to say that actually. I meant to say rematriation because historically speaking, seed keeping was traditionally passed down through the matriarchal line. And I'm not in any way saying that that's true for all groups, but that's something that I have found in my research. And of course, when you've got folks immigrating to this country, you always remember the stories of how you would have seeds stitched into hems or things like that, because those seeds were so valuable that they wanted to be treated with care.

Another indigenous leader, named Rowen White. has a company called Sierra Seeds and I want to make sure to really comment on the remarkable work that she is doing and I think any of the various Indigenous leaders who are concentrating on food sovereignty and seed sovereignty and just making sure that the seeds are cared for and respected and helped. So just want to make sure to do that. But also if you're looking to purchase seeds, like we say about everything, look local, wherever you might be, there might be a small seed company close to where you are who is growing and producing seeds that are unique to your area. And again, there are big nationwide seed companies, like as I said, Johnny's, Fedco, that kind of thing, but there are a huge number of hyper local tiny seed companies. So I would ask folks to maybe do a little bit of extra work to find that, look for seed companies who have signed the Safe Seed Pledge or are members of the OSSI, that's the Open Seed Source Initiative. And these are companies who have sworn not, they've pledged not to sell basically patented or private ownership seeds. They've agreed that seeds should be in the hand of all people and that you should be able to save your own seed, share those with the community, reproduce those as you see fit. So those are the kind of seed companies that we want to support.

Always talk to your local library. As I said, if they don't have a seed bank, they might be open to starting it because it is something that public libraries are really getting involved in. My goodness, we're asking our public libraries to do a lot these days, but we do what we can. Yeah.

Megan:

Yeah. Thank you so much for those ideas and resources. Yeah. Here where I am in Portland, people love the libraries, so I'm sure there's something going on already. So that's a great idea. thank you so much, Elizabeth. This has been so rich and inspiring. And I feel like it's I don't know, there's this feeling of like, remembering what is actually valuable, like we're gonna sow the seeds in our clothes, we're not gonna sew cash or checks. What's actually valuable here. So I really appreciate you sharing this with us. Where can people find you and just follow along?

Elizabeth:
Well, my website is findingquietfarm.com and I should be completely upfront and say that I write about a lot of other things, including farming. There are really quite a lot of book reviews on there and I should be honest because maybe folks will look at that and say, yeah, that's not really about farming at all. No, there is some farming. It's just that it's the winter season right now. And I am sort of defiantly not on any social media. there's no social media to find me there. But I would just, I would like to encourage folks to let the plants tell you how to do this and just remember, we know how to do this. This is so stitched into who we are as humans and our work here on this planet. And you will learn so much about plant biology and life cycle and you can share plants with other growers and you can take responsibility for your own food supply and you can save a ton of money if that's a key incentive. And you can have a local plant and seed swap. But this feels in a time of kind of absolute chaos and terror. Working with seeds is something that we can do. We know how to do and it's a tangible act of hope and rebellion.

But mostly this is how we do this is by saving ourselves and saving each other. And seeds are the way to do that. So I just want folks to know that you can do this. It doesn't have to be complex or tricky or anything. You and the plants together, you know how to do this. So don't forget it. You just have to tap into the knowledge and go find some seeds and grow something this year. You'll be amazed.

Megan:
Mm-hmm, beautifully said. Thank you so much, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth:
Thank you for having me. It has been an absolute, absolute pleasure. Thank you.

Megan:
Okay, well, I hope you loved that conversation and I hope that you will consider or start saving seeds in your own seed library and your own seed bank. And I encourage you to check out Elizabeth's website. The photos of the beans that they grow there are incredible and Elizabeth actually gifted me some and they are even more amazing in person. So wish me luck as we try to grow some of these incredible beans this season. I am not a farmer, but I'm gonna do my best because I wanna honor the seeds that Elizabeth has tended to and sent and they're just so beautiful and incredible.

If you enjoyed this episode and are in a position to support the show and support the work that I'm doing, I would be so grateful. You can do that at buymeacoffee.com slash Megan Leatherman. You can pitch in once or monthly. I will see you again in two weeks when we'll be crossing into the spring season officially. The spring equinox is on March 20th this year, and I'll be sharing some ideas about how you can close your journey through the winter season and really step into and embrace the medicine of the early spring. Between now and then, I hope you take such good care and I'll see you on the other side.

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