http://ipraudio.interlochen.org/Seed_Saving.mp3
The local foods movement is becoming even more local. For many gardeners and farmers, while they may grow and sell their produce locally, often times the seeds used have come from hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away. A growing movement is hoping that changes.
Good Food Starts With...
Chef Myles Anton knows that to put the best food in front of his customers at Trattoria Stella in Traverse City. He needs to start with the best produce in the kitchen.
"His vegetables are the best vegetables I've ever had - across the board," Chef Myles says of Craig Schaaf from Manistee. He is from Golden Rule Farm in Manistee.
"If those squash are that perfect and that continues on and on and on, and it's local then I'm all about it," the chef continues.
This past summer, Chef Myles was asked to help make sure the quality of those squash continues, by saving their seeds.
Craig Schaaf, says as a farmer he's proud that this area has become a hotbed of the local food movement. But he wonders why so many farmers still wait for those seed catalogs that arrive about this time every winter.
How Local?
"How do you have a local food system that doesn't have the very, very lowest foundation block, which is seeds and that kind of thing in place?" he asks.
"So there's a lot of farmers and gardeners that are starting to scratch their heads and say, 'Wow, why have we been forsaking this and not been pursuing it?'"
Schaaf is part of an effort to educate people about the merits, or he might say the necessity, of seed saving.
"It's very important that a region has its own seed because we have different soil types, diseases, climate, everything," he says. "And when you depend on seed companies that are selling the same variety of seed to everybody in the United States, you're losing a lot of that diversity that's so important to a region."
What is seed saving?
Well, it's really quite simple. Instead of eating or throwing away seeds, set them aside and use them in the garden next year.
It's something that was common just a few generations ago, but became less common as large commercial seed operations began to emerge and buy-up the small mom-and-pop, regional seed companies.
And with those increasingly larger companies in charge of seed stock, the number of seed varieties decreased, and the seeds were now marketed nationally instead of being bred to do well in any one type of climate.
Encouraging Seed Diversity
Schaaf says these days much of the commercially available seed these days are so closely related that the entire food chain can become susceptible.
That point of view is catching on. Last year, the folks at the Michigan Land Use Institute's Get Farming Program started talking about seed saving. That talk turned into a workshop which attracted 16 people. The next workshop was closer to 50 people.
The third workshop, held last month, brought out more than 100 people. One of them was Jayne Leatherman Walker, who runs the Eco-Learning center in Leelanau County. She's worried that the major seed companies are more interested in what sells than they are in preserving genetic diversity.
"So many of the seed companies are the big corporations and they're dropping seeds that don't sell well," she says. "So you don't get the tremendous diversity, the wide numbers, the subtleties.
"You know, when we want different heirlooms, we want more than one."
She sees seed saving as an easy way to make sure seed that do well in Northern Michigan stay available in Northern Michigan.
And that's just fine with Chef Myles Anton. He says when Craig Schaaf asked him to save seeds from melons and squash that he was using in his menus, it was a no brainer.
"I figured there was some reason for it, he has a lot of great things going on and I knew he had a reason. But it was busy, it was the middle of summer and I really didn't ask why. I trust him and I said, 'Sure.'"
Now, thanks to that effort, the genetic offspring of the melons and squash Chef Myles and his customers have come to expect will continue to grow in Manistee County.
The Michigan Land Use Institute is currently building a website that will allow farmers, gardeners, anyone interested in seed saving, to buy, sell and trade their seeds online.