Seed Saving…

AziMuth

The work of sustainability begins not with planting seeds, but with collecting them. I’ve been fortunate over the last three years to learn of this activity through Seed Savers Exchange in Iowa.  By watching their seasonal programing from afar, and benefiting from the quality products and resources they offer I’ve started to pick up a knowledge that has been dropped from our collective awareness.

It’s been interesting to learn how many immigrants to our country over the last few hundred years left all sorts of precious valuables behind but managed to bring their seed’s with them.  Many of them did not have any land or job or place to rest their heads when they arrived…but in the seams of their cloths they hid seeds.  Across the oceans they carried potential.

Seed Saving is a simple activity.  It takes an investment of time, some envelopes and jars, and a dry place.  It’s an investment that does not pay back till a year later.  But it connects us to the amazing power of nature to provide bounty.  From one, not only many, but a multitude, a bounty, a harvest.  And in the sifting and sorting we take notice and become stewards of the mystery of life that surrounds us.