Gimme the Dirt…On Seeds

There are a vast number of inputs on a farm. Some are intangible, such as time, heart, work ethic, problem-solving abilities, and passion. Others are tangible: money, equipment, money, physical health, money, healthy soil, money, buildings …oh, and also money. One thing impacting us in a big way also happens to be the tiniest. No, not money: I’m talking about seeds. Every single bite of the food we produce begins and ends with seeds. Once, a billionaire business tycoon with political ambitions brought seeds into the headlines when he said, “I could teach anybody, even people in this room, no offense intended, to be a farmer. You dig a hole, you put a seed in, you put dirt on top, you add water, and up comes the corn.” Well, it was nice he didn’t intend any offense, but good intentions pave the road to a place none of us wanted to go. He put the icing on his cake of ignorance by further insulting farmers with this gem, describing a new, technology-driven economy: “…the skill sets that you have to learn are how to think and analyze, and that is a whole degree level different.” He said what many already believe, and which we’ve felt acutely on this farm, especially recently: farmers are a level or two beneath those who work in other, more “important” jobs. We just shake our heads and pull harder in the harness.

Seeds are likely the most important piece of what we do on this farm. Without them, we’ve got nothing: no food for our cows, our chickens, or us. The quality of the seeds – those tiny, genetically-coded miracles – dictates so much of what happens here. A few years ago, we reseeded a fallow hay field with a mix of Timothy hay and alfalfa. The seeds were expensive, and they were sown with great care. We paid attention to all the things that would make the field green and, lush and productive soil analysis to test for pH, the early spring weather, and the amount of manure we’d spread the autumn before, to name just a few. We used a wealth of scientific knowledge, a long-term understanding of the ground we were planting, and preparation of the soil to bring forth the literal fruits of our labors. In our case, the “fruits” were supposed to look like a heavy, blue-green swath of hay to be cut throughout the spring, summer and fall to feed our cows during the cold winter. We watched as some of the seeds sprouted, but the majority of them did not. The seed bags had been filled with duds. Our careful attention to all the things that would make the planting successful should have resulted in a velvety green carpet, but the sight of that field was pitiful indeed, in spite of our careful analysis and critical thinking skills. Michael Bloomberg, do you have any answers? No, we thought not.

It’s impossible for me to talk about seeds without mentioning the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard, Norway. It’s a place I’d love to see in person someday, except they don’t permit visitors. I satisfy myself by occasionally taking the virtual tour online, which is packed with information about the facility, including the organizations depositing seeds there and even the seeds themselves. Inside what is simply a tunnel dug into a mountainside on an island between mainland Norway and the North Pole, seeds from almost every country on Earth are secured in suspended animation using permafrost (along with some high-tech temperature controls) as a natural way to prevent germination. It seems to me that this would be a wondrous sight to behold: a frozen garden of Eden. The vault represents more than 6,120 species of plant life and holds nearly 1.3 million seed samples. Bear in mind that each sample comprises 500 individual seeds. The biodiversity stored there boggles the mind. There are more than 150,000 samples of wheat and rice alone. Why would that many varieties be important to the human race? In this time, when everyone seems to be discussing diversity, there is nothing more critical to human survival than the diversity of plant life around the globe. Each one of the naturally occurring varieties of wheat has special qualities unique to the place it’s from. One variety, einkorn wheat, is the most ancient of grains, evolving in tandem with the climate and soils surrounding it. It’s a variety still grown in the Fertile Crescent today. The infancy of agriculture happened in this cradle, with einkorn wheat as its pablum. Out of the Fertile Crescent came the invention of irrigation, the domestication of livestock, and a host of cultivated plants, including wheat. Our early ancestors domesticated wheat, and in the process, it domesticated us. Einkorn wheat grain heads are diminutive, and the yield from an acre of these varieties is small compared to the yields of modern-day genetically modified “super-wheat.” It’s awe-inspiring to think that this exact variety of wheat may have been ground into flour to make the bread served at The Last Supper. It was tamed from wild seeds in 7,500 BC, and alongside its cousin, emmer wheat, it is responsible for the human race’s agricultural start.

How did ancient farmers obtain seeds? Not from seed catalogs, or cardboard displays in farm supply stores like modern humans do. Those early farmers were seed savers. They planned for a certain amount of the previous year’s harvest to be allocated to their seed stores for the next planting season. I’m a seed saver but on a tiny scale compared to those grain farmers of the olden days. We have a seed vault of sorts at our house. It’s simply plastic bags filled with seeds I keep in the freezer. The seeds have traveled with me in all of the moving I’ve done in my adulthood; I’ve moved a lot, so my seeds are well-traveled. I am not like Johnny Appleseed, dropping seeds as I’ve gone from place to place. I’ve hoarded the seeds with the intention of planting them when I get where I’m going. I’ve finally arrived. I have sweet little multi-colored poppy seeds I collected by shaking the dried seed pods like pepper shakers. My night-scented nicotiana, or woodland tobacco, smells like jasmine when its white, star-shaped flowers open to the summer breeze; I plan to plant these somewhere prominent for both their beauty and their scent. I was given three gigantic tomatoes a few years ago. They weighed well over a pound each, were misshapen, and deep purplish-red, with a dark green tinge on their cheeks. When I cut into them, there were few seeds but an enormous amount of flesh and a flavor that made me swoon. I saved the seeds from these heirloom Italian sauce tomatoes with great excitement. They grew in our garden this year; the sauce they made fills jars in our pantry, and we will savor pizza and Bolognese made from it this winter. I’ve saved more seeds from the biggest of this crop, following the practice of those ancient wheat farmers: hopefully, the genetics in these large fruits will propagate in the garden well into the future, making that gift of three tomatoes one that keeps giving for a long time to come. I’ve carefully labeled each baggy of my seeds with the location and date I collected them, plus the variety of specimens it contains. Inside one bag are morning glory seeds from the first house I ever owned. I planted them on a trellis that hid the unsightly gas tank, and they bloomed classic bright blue, a cheerful greeting for the gas delivery man. I can’t plant those here on the farm. Once they’re done blooming, a bird might grab some of the seeds they produce and drop them in the fields. In a hay field, morning glories become something called “bindweed” – a nasty business for a farmer because the vines are so prolific they choke everything around them, including the hay we need to feed our cows and the equipment we use to harvest it.

There are song lyrics that have been going through my mind lately. The words have taken on a new meaning now that I live and work on this farm. The writers Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz give voice to the historical figure Pocahontas, and her words strike a deep and knowing chord in my husband and me: “I know every rock and tree and creature, has a life, has a spirit, has a name.” The space this farm holds – where we live, plant, grow, and harvest – is deeply known, cherished, and understood; like the words of the song, each rock, tree and creature is an intimate part of our world, every single day. The outside world, away from the farm, even from the end of our farm lane, sometimes feels like it’s unknown territory. This place has changed drastically in a very short span of time. And those changes are due in large part to a swath of newcomers who’ve come here for exactly why we love it: natural beauty. But there’s a gap in understanding from some that, in turn, amuses and frustrates us. There are those who think farmers are simple-minded rednecks who don’t know much, but on the contrary, it’s actually necessary for us to remain current on a wide variety of topics since literally everything – politically, environmentally, economically, and socially – directly impacts what we do here, from the seeds we plant to the prices we set for our products. Those lyrics continue: “You think I’m an ignorant savage, And you’ve been so many places, I guess it must be so, But still, I cannot see, If the savage one is me, How can there be so much that you don’t know?”

To lose sight of the world would be myopic indeed. We only hope we can send what we know out into the world and that the information we impart bears fruit. Just like sowing seeds.

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Rebecca Collins Brooks is a writer and farmstead cheesemaker on Hilltop Farm in Accord, NY. She is the creator and founder of The Meeting of the Milkmaids, a gathering of women working in the cheese and dairy industry. In addition to a small herd of dairy cows, she and her husband Barton raise Wagyu beef, selling meat to customers directly off the farm. Her best friends are two terriers, Winston and Molly; and Sylvie, a truly brilliant barn cat. You can visit the farm by appointment to see where truly good food is grown.

Connect with Rebecca via Instagram @catskillwagyu, on Facebook CatskillWagyu

And check out > INSIDE+OUT Spotlight on Catskill Wagyu at Hilltop Farm