As everything else in our lives, the process that brought us to farming is complicated and interwoven with lots of ‘other’ stories, several geographies, alternative work, and different partners. Twenty years later we are here, on a small farm in Maine, trying to create a sustainable way of life for our loved ones.
We grow heirloom plants because of the way they connect us to the past and also how they give us hope for our future.
Depending on who you ask an heirloom can be any plant that can date itself back fifty years or something grown before WWII. Either way, it is an old plant, eaten in the past, that has been grown for some time.
I like heirloom plants because they are easy. They are easy on our finances - we can collect their seeds. They are easy on our expectations – they produce the same plant from year to year. They are easy on our planning – heirlooms can adapt to the climates where they are grown, but there is no ‘forcing’ an heirloom to grow where is wasn’t meant. The idea that the plants we grow were eaten and tasted by people long ago appeals to us.
This year we have a bumper crop of kale. Russian Kale (in honor of our son born in Vladivostok) to be precise. Kale has been a perennial plant for us. Russian Kale was brought into Canada around the 1880’s by Russian traders. It was eaten by the Greeks as a remedy for drunkenness. In the Medieval period the Italians ate it. The Scots have a long history of eating kale. We know that the early Romans ate it. We now eat it too. We harvest young leaves for salads. We nibble on seasoned kale chips with burgers. We dry it and sprinkle it into unsuspecting winter soups. Our freezer has pesto cubes patiently waiting for pasta…By growing this simple heirloom, we are connected to the past.
But why does that matter? It matters to us because as life becomes more complicated, it is important to know where our food comes from, literally, and to have the ability to grow it - if we choose. Heirlooms give us the seeds to choose.
“In the rush to industrialize farming, we’ve lost the understanding, implicit since the beginning of agriculture, that food is a process, a web of relationships, not an individual ingredient or commodity.” - Dan Barber
Sourcing and Further Reading:
Dan Barber, The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food, New York: Penguin Press, 2014.
Bentley Seed Co., “Heirloom Seeds and Their Historical Significance.”
Tove Danovich, “Gardening is Important, but Seed Saving is Crucial,” Civil Eats, April 21, 2020.
Loren Freed, “Heirloom Vegetables Combine Nutrition, Flavor, History and Culture,” April 27, 2021.
www.goodseedfarm.com – “Garden Advice” with Steve Boehme
Dr. Sue Hamilton, “Heirloom Seed Preservation and Heritage Horticulture,” Sept. 1, 2005
Pagan Kennedy, “Who Made that Kale?” New York Times, Oct. 18, 2013. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/20/magazine/who-made-that-kale.html
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