All those roots you’re harvesting for fall storage aren’t just good for eating or selling at market. They are also the first stage of a biennial seed crop! If you’ve planted carrots, beets, turnips, onions, or winter radishes this season, you can choose the best roots now to grow a seed crop next year. This is another Seedy September minisode to realise that there is seed growing in your garden right now and all you have to do is go and harvest it. Actually - this might actually be an October minisode. In this episode, we’ll get into … • How to choose the best roots to overwinter for seed • How to store and handle biennial roots through winter • Tips for starting biennials and breaking dormancy in the spring • Keeping genetic diversity and avoiding accidental crosses • How many plants do you need and how much seed can you get Enjoy the episode! Support the Seed Farmer Podcast http://spreadsheet.farm/supportpodcast Seed News links Canadian Farmers! Sign the petition to protect your right to save certain protected seed varieties on your farm. https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-6778 Stay in Touch Follow the Seed Farmer on instagram Get my weekly seed newsletter Get my new book The Seed Farmer https://danbrisebois.com/seedfarmerbook/ ❤️ Thanks for listening!
Your bean plants might be winding down but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one last harvest in them. If you’ve been picking bush beans or pole beans all summer, chances are a few pods got missed. By now, those pods are starting to mature—and even if you didn’t plan to grow beans for seed - those missed pods mean that you still have a chance to harvest some bean seed! This is another Seedy September minisode to realise that there is seed growing in your garden right now and all you have to do is go and harvest it. In this episode, we’ll get into … • Whether to pick individual pods or whole plants • How green you can pick a pod and still get good seed • Easy threshing and cleaning methods • How likely beans are to cross pollinate • The joys of better germination Enjoy the episode! Support the Seed Farmer Podcast http://spreadsheet.farm/supportpodcast Seed News links Pre-Order Crop Stories from Utopian Seed Project Read the Organic Task Force report Follow the Seed Farmer on instagram Get my weekly seed newsletter Get my new book The Seed Farmer https://danbrisebois.com/seedfarmerbook/ ❤️ Thanks for listening!
Head to your squash patch and grab a fruit or two — because inside, you’ve got a pile of seed waiting for you! Another Seedy September Minisode about what seed you can harvest from your fields right now. Now, squash is a bit different from peppers or flowers. Most of the time, I wouldn’t tell you to start your seed journey with squash. But if you’ve only got one variety of a squash species in your garden — especially a butternut or another Cucurbita moschata — then squash seed might be the perfect seed crop. In this episode, we’ll get into … • The four main species of squash and how they cross (or don’t) • Why Cucurbita pepo squash (like zucchini, pie pumpkins, and delicata) are tricky seed crops • Why Cucurbita moschata squash (like butternut) is the easiest starting point • How to harvest and clean squash seed right in your kitchen • The challenge of mystery squash Enjoy the episode! Support the Seed Farmer Podcast http://spreadsheet.farm/supportpodcast Follow the Seed Farmer on instagram Get my weekly seed newsletter Get my new book The Seed Farmer https://danbrisebois.com/seedfarmerbook/ ❤️ Thanks for listening!
Head out to your flower beds and look for those blooms that have dried up and turned brown! This is another Seedy September minisode to realise that here is seed growing in your garden right now and all you have to do is go and harvest it. This episode is about all the opportunities in your cut flower garden. In this episode, we’ll get into … • How to spot when flower seeds are ready to harvest • Simple ways to collect and store dried blooms for later cleaning • Why cross-pollination in flowers is something to embrace, not fear • Which flowers are the easiest to get seed from • Tips for cleaning seed and how clean does you seed really need to be Enjoy the episode! Support the Seed Farmer Podcast http://spreadsheet.farm/supportpodcast Follow the Seed Farmer on instagram Get my weekly seed newsletter Get my new book The Seed Farmer https://danbrisebois.com/seedfarmerbook/ ❤️ Thanks for listening!
Head out to your fields and pick some peppers then cut them open and take out the seeds! That’s what I”m hoping you do as soon as this episode ends - or better yet, that is what I hope you do while you’re listening to this episode. My goal with this podcast is to get more farmers to grow their own seeds. And September is the perfect time to do that. So this month I’m talking all about the crops that are just waiting there in your garden waiting for you to harvest their seeds whether you planned to or not. And peppers are the first crop I want you to go pick. In this episode, we’ll get into … • How likely peppers are to cross pollinate • What to worry about when growing sweet and hot peppers side by side • How easy it is to harvest and extract pepper seeds • The difference between growing pepper seeds for yourself and for sale Enjoy the episode! Support the Seed Farmer Podcast http://spreadsheet.farm/supportpodcast Follow the Seed Farmer on instagram Get my weekly seed newsletter Get my new book The Seed Farmer https://danbrisebois.com/seedfarmerbook/ ❤️ Thanks for listening!
Adam Alexander is a film maker, writer, and gardener based in Wales. Adam is also the author of the upcoming book Accidental Seed Heroes: Growing A Delicious Food Future for All of Us. A chance meeting with a delicious pepper in a Ukrainian market in 1989 kicked off his career as a Seed Detective tracking down rare, endangered, culturally important and above all, delicious vegetables from around the world. In this episode, Adam and I talk about how accidental plant breeding has shaped agriculture for millennia and about the seed heroes who are doing that work these days. We talk about what this looks like for a number of crops including grains, eggplants and peas. And we wrap up talking about how Adam grows peas for seed in his own garden and why growing seed locally matters for genetic diversity and food security. I hope you enjoy this conversation Support the Seed Farmer Podcast http://spreadsheet.farm/supportpodcast Links for this episode Visit the Seed Detective website & follow on Instagram. You can also preorder The Accidental Seed Heroes Follow the Seed Farmer on instagram Get my weekly seed newsletter Get my new book The Seed Farmer https://danbrisebois.com/seedfarmerbook/ ❤️ Thanks for listening!
Sebastian Aguilar runs Summertime Seed with his wife Kelly Gelino in Dayton, Oregon. This year they’re growing 190 varieties on 16 acres. In this episode, Sebastian shares how they transitioned from vegetable farming to seed production, the challenges and benefits of mechanizing seed cleaning and harvesting, and how they recently launched their own retail seed company. In the deep dive, Sebastian and I talk about growing onions for seed. We get into growing the bulbs, trellising the bolting plants, and when exactly to cut the seed heads, In addition to all the nitty gritty in between steps. I hope you enjoy this conversation Support the Seed Farmer Podcast http://spreadsheet.farm/supportpodcast Links for this episode Visit the Summertime Seed Co.website & follow on Instagram. Follow the Seed Farmer on instagram Get my weekly seed newsletter Get my new book The Seed Farmer https://danbrisebois.com/seedfarmerbook/ ❤️ Thanks for listening!
Chris Smith is the founder of the Utopian Seed Project, a hands in the earth non-profit based in Asheville, North Carolina. Chris is also the author of the book the Whole Okra: A Seed To Stem Celebration Chris grew up in the UK and moved to the U.S. in 2012 with no formal background in farming, But that all changed when he received an okra pod and a gift card to a local seed company as wedding shower gifts In this episode, Chris shares his journey to become a seed grower and advocate. We talk about his time at Sow True Seed, where he began his deep dive into seed systems and community engagement. This led to launching the Utopian Seed Project to develop a seed system rooted in the Southeast U.S. And later the Appalachian Growers Seed Collective, a farmer-led network focused on growing, adapting, sharing, and selling seeds that know the South Chris and I talk about the importance of meaningful relationships with seed over time rather than simple rigid preservation, climate resilient crops like taro and chayote, and then we talk a lot about growing okra for seed. I hope you enjoy this conversation Support the Seed Farmer Podcast http://spreadsheet.farm/supportpodcast Links for this episode Visit the Utopian Seed Project website & follow on Instagram. Find Utopian Seed Project on Patreon. Follow the Seed Farmer on instagram Get my weekly seed newsletter Get my new book The Seed Farmer https://danbrisebois.com/seedfarmerbook/ ❤️ Thanks for listening!
Patrice is the owner of La Société des Plantes, a farm based seed company in Kamouraska, Quebec. On his website, Patrice describes La Société des plantes as “une agence de rencontres entre les plantes et les jardiniers” which roughly translates to ”a Dating Service for Plants and Gardeners.” In this episode Patrice shares his journey from city boy to seed farmer, and how being an artist inspired his approach to farming and growing seed. Patrice and I talk about how he’s rooted his business into a rural community with deep historical roots, his philosophy on growing with nature’s rhythms, and whether you can really trust the seed longevity charts you find in reference documents. We finish with growing biennials for seeds. Patrice talks about overwintering lettuce in the field in our Quebec winters, which really impresses me. And then he does a deep dive on growing carrots for seed. Please note that the episode was recorded in February - there are a few seasonal references where this matters in the conversation. I hope you enjoy this conversation Support the Seed Farmer Podcast http://spreadsheet.farm/supportpodcast Links for this episode • Visit La Société des Plantes website & follow on Instagram. • Watch the trailer for the Sower Follow the Seed Farmer on instagram Get my weekly seed newsletter Get my new book The Seed Farmer https://danbrisebois.com/seedfarmerbook/ ❤️ Thanks for listening!
Jared Zystro is a research and education director at the Organic Seed Alliance. Jared is based in Arcada, California. I invited Jared onto this episode so he can tell you about the Organic Seed Growers Conference in Corvallis, Oregon that is taking place from February 26th to March 1st, 2025. I first went to this conference in 2008 and it was the single most important learning experience to my seed career. I also made so many great friends and contacts that have followed me throughout all my CD endeavors. And I think that you would probably enjoy an experience like this also. So in this episode, Jared and I talk about what is happening at this year's conference and how you can participate not only in person, but also virtually if you can't make it to Corvallis. Jared and I talk about more than just the conference in this episode. We start with Jared's seed story and how it went from working summers on vegetable farms to ultimately getting a PhD in plant breeding and plant genetics from the University of Wisconsin Madison. And we finished with a deep dive into growing quinoa on both a larger commercial scale using a combine and a smaller scale with manual techniques. Free, Crop Planning for Seed Farmers minicourse: www.spreadsheet.farm/seedcropplan Follow Dan on Instagram, get his newsletter, & follow Tourne-Sol Cooperative Farm ORDER Dan's new book, The Seed Farmer, from notillgrowers.com to further support our work! Folks who support The Seed Farmer Podcast The goal of the Culinary Breeding Network is to improve communication between plant breeders, seed growers, farmers, chefs, produce buyers and others to improve quality in vegetables, fruits and grains. Learn more and check out upcoming events! Are you a farmer looking for educational resources in Canada? Check out Young Agrarians! They are a farmer-to-farmer educational resource network for new and young ecological, organic, and regenerative farmers. This February, join thousands of farmers like you from across the U.S. for three days of community building and farmer-led learning at the 36th annual Marbleseed Organic Farming Conference in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Truelove Seeds is a farm-based seed company offering culturally important and open pollinated vegetable, herb, and flower seeds. Check out their podcast, Seeds & Their People, wherever you're listening to The Seed Farmer Podcast!
Léa and Ferdinand are two of the twenty-two members of Buzuruna Juzuruna, a 2 ha seed farm and school farm in Lebanon. In this episode, Léa and Ferdinand define the terms “peasant seeds” and “balady seeds” and the challenges of finding local seeds in Lebanon. They also discuss the role of international seed banks in preserving seeds and the importance of reclaiming these seeds and bringing them back to where they originated. Ferdinand describes the seed house at Buzuruna Juzuruna and how they control temperature and humidity. Léa explains how the seeds and crops they grow are distributed. In the deep dive, we talk about growing cucumbers for seed and how you shouldn’t assume every cucumber is a cucumber. Léa and Ferdinand also discuss how they work with ancient wheat varieties. Free, Crop Planning for Seed Farmers minicourse: www.spreadsheet.farm/seedcropplan Follow Dan on Instagram, get his newsletter, & follow Tourne-Sol Cooperative Farm ORDER Dan's new book, The Seed Farmer, from notillgrowers.com to further support our work! Folks who support The Seed Farmer Podcast The goal of the Culinary Breeding Network is to improve communication between plant breeders, seed growers, farmers, chefs, produce buyers and others to improve quality in vegetables, fruits and grains. Learn more and check out upcoming events! Are you a farmer looking for educational resources in Canada? Check out Young Agrarians! They are a farmer-to-farmer educational resource network for new and young ecological, organic, and regenerative farmers. This February, join thousands of farmers like you from across the U.S. for three days of community building and farmer-led learning at the 36th annual Marbleseed Organic Farming Conference in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Truelove Seeds is a farm-based seed company offering culturally important and open pollinated vegetable, herb, and flower seeds. Check out their podcast, Seeds & Their People, wherever you're listening to The Seed Farmer Podcast!
Stephen Silverbear McComber is a seedkeeper and a recently elected chief on the Mohawk Council of Kahnawà:ke whose portfolio is sustainable development. Silverbear tells us about the seeds that different people shared with him while visiting different First Nations communities within the Confederacy. He tells us how he has taken care of these seeds and a generation later, he has been able to return some of these seeds to the families of the folks who shared them with him, and the joy and connection that this brings. Silverbear explains how he plants by the phases of the moon, and what crops he plants during different periods, how the spring has been starting later than it used to and the autumn is also ending later and the challenges that creates for growing food. Silverbear explains how it is important to select corn and other crops to adapt to this changing environment and to your bioregion. We then do a deep dive into growing squash for seed and hand pollination techniques. Mentioned in the show... Steve's Garden Tips Facebook Page Follow Dan on Instagram, get his newsletter, & follow Tourne-Sol Cooperative Farm PRE-ORDER Dan's new book, The Seed Farmer, from notillgrowers.com to further support our work! Folks who support The Seed Farmer Podcast The goal of the Culinary Breeding Network is to improve communication between plant breeders, seed growers, farmers, chefs, produce buyers and others to improve quality in vegetables, fruits and grains. Learn more and check out upcoming events! Are you a farmer looking for educational resources in Canada? Check out Young Agrarians! They are a farmer-to-farmer educational resource network for new and young ecological, organic, and regenerative farmers. This February, join thousands of farmers like you from across the U.S. for three days of community building and farmer-led learning at the 36th annual Marbleseed Organic Farming Conference in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Truelove Seeds is a farm-based seed company offering culturally important and open pollinated vegetable, herb, and flower seeds. Check out their podcast, Seeds & Their People, wherever you're listening to The Seed Farmer Podcast!
Heron Breen is this episode's guest. Heron grows seed on six acres at Fruits of Our Labors in St. Albans, Maine. In this episode, Heron and I discussed the nature of seed work as a plant-based meditation that encompasses sculpture, art, science, and quantum physics, and the generational connection that seed provides across time and space. And then we pivot into talking about how to space seed crops and the reasons and importance of broader spacing before delving into what words like heirloom and open pollinated seeds really mean. In the deep dive, we talk about growing onions and leeks for seed. Follow Dan on Instagram, get his newsletter, & follow Tourne-Sol Cooperative Farm PRE-ORDER Dan's new book, The Seed Farmer, from notillgrowers.com to further support our work! Folks who support The Seed Farmer Podcast The goal of the Culinary Breeding Network is to improve communication between plant breeders, seed growers, farmers, chefs, produce buyers and others to improve quality in vegetables, fruits and grains. Learn more and check out upcoming events! Are you a farmer looking for educational resources in Canada? Check out Young Agrarians! They are a farmer-to-farmer educational resource network for new and young ecological, organic, and regenerative farmers. This February, join thousands of farmers like you from across the U.S. for three days of community building and farmer-led learning at the 36th annual Marbleseed Organic Farming Conference in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Truelove Seeds is a farm-based seed company offering culturally important and open pollinated vegetable, herb, and flower seeds. Check out their podcast, Seeds & Their People, wherever you're listening to The Seed Farmer Podcast!
Katie Kulla is the author of Farm-Raised Kids. A brand new book from Storey Publishing. Katie is also an illustrator, one of the hosts of the Growing For Market Podcast and farms with her husband at Oakhill Organics on Grand Island in rural Dayton, Oregon. In this episode, we do discuss Katie’s brand new book but we also talk a lot about Katie’s experience growing seeds and how that experience has changed over the years. Katie’s early seed experience was mostly growing seed contracts on her market farm. Katie liked how seed crops occupied a different time and space than growing vegetables for CSA or farmers markets. And also how seed crops often generated more $ per square foot than vegetable crops. Then when Oakhill Organics moved to offering a full diet CSA, they moved out of seed contracts and shifted to growing seed for food such as grains, beans, and popcorn. And now that the farm plays a smaller role in Katie’s life and she is focusing on other interests such as writing books, Katie is still harvesting seed whenever it is easy to do so from the crops in her fields. This brings us to Farm-Raised Kids, Katie’s new Book. We talk about the dream and the actual reality of having kids on the farm. How there is an idyllic vision that children can just chill out and hang around the fields but having kids on your farm is actual work and farms can also be dangerous places for little ones. Katie talks about how it is still an amazing opportunity for kids to grow up on a farm. How they pick up so much knowledge about different crops and food bit by bit over the years. And how kids wind up learning real skills like how to handle knives and breaking down just about any vegetable. Katie also explains how satisfying it is for kids to put their hands in gooey fermenting seed tomatoes or getting to hit dry beans with a stick to thresh them or just getting to sink their arms in buckets of clean seed. In the deep dive, we talk about growing dry beans for seed because Katie’s family just loves eating dry beans and there is really no comparing the flavour with store bought beans. We talk about how bush beans are a lot easier than pole beans, how farming in the Willamette Valley with its dry summers means you can dry seed outdoors without cover in your backyard but how Katie might still bring seed indoors if she was still growing commercial seed contracts. And how she still wishes she’d invested in a good set of screens. Katie also has a reminder that you should make a point of not eating all your dry beans and make sure to keep some as seed for next year’s crop! Mentioned in the show... https://www.katiekulla.com/ https://www.instagram.com/katiekulla Follow Dan on Instagram, get his newsletter, & follow Tourne-Sol Cooperative Farm PRE-ORDER Dan's new book, The Seed Farmer, from notillgrowers.com to further support our work! Folks who support The Seed Farmer Podcast The goal of the Culinary Breeding Network is to improve communication between plant breeders, seed growers, farmers, chefs, produce buyers and others to improve quality in vegetables, fruits and grains. Learn more and check out upcoming events! Are you a farmer looking for educational resources in Canada? Check out Young Agrarians! They are a farmer-to-farmer educational resource network for new and young ecological, organic, and regenerative farmers. This February, join thousands of farmers like you from across the U.S. for three days of community building and farmer-led learning at the 36th annual Marbleseed Organic Farming Conference in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Truelove Seeds is a farm-based seed company offering culturally important and open pollinated vegetable, herb, and flower seeds. Check out their podcast, Seeds & Their People, wherever you're listening to The Seed Farmer Podcast!
Ellen Rignell has many years experience growing seed from her time at Trill Farms and as a program coordinator for the Gaia Foundation seed sovereignty program. But in this interview we catch Ellen at a new part of her seed journey as she’s finishing the first growing season of her Winnow Farm Seeds, her very own seed company based in Dorset in the UK. In this episode, we discuss what Ellen wants from this new business and we discuss all the things other than growing seed that you need to know when launching a seed business. Ellen talks about her collaboration with Lucy and Emma of Meadowsweet Flowers and Floristry. These are flower growers she shares the site with. How this helps share infrastructure, rent and labour in addition to amazing camaraderie and having tea breaks together. This collaboration also creates an opportunity to grow flower seeds especially adapted to the wet UK climate. In the deep dive Ellen and I talk about growing parsnips for seed. The importance of sloping shoulders to drive rain away, whether to stake flowering parsnips or not, and do parsnip seeds live up to their reputation as bad germinators with limited storage life? We also discuss working with biennials other than parsnip. At the end of the conversation Ellen goes into the opportunities to grow seed in a market growing context to take advantage of gaps in your crop plan and to better use farm labour. Mentioned in the show... Visit Winnow Farm Seeds website & follow on Instagram To make your Season Review a little more manageable, I’ve got a 5 video series that will walk you through all the steps you need to do. There is also a checklist to help you keep track of what you’ve done. If you want to watch the Season Review Challenges videos and get your annual farm review started you can find them at www.seasonreview.farm/ Follow Dan on Instagram, get his newsletter, & follow Tourne-Sol Cooperative Farm PRE-ORDER Dan's new book, The Seed Farmer, from notillgrowers.com to further support our work! Folks who support The Seed Farmer Podcast The goal of the Culinary Breeding Network is to improve communication between plant breeders, seed growers, farmers, chefs, produce buyers and others to improve quality in vegetables, fruits and grains. Learn more and check out upcoming events! Are you a farmer looking for educational resources in Canada? Check out Young Agrarians! They are a farmer-to-farmer educational resource network for new and young ecological, organic, and regenerative farmers. This February, join thousands of farmers like you from across the U.S. for three days of community building and farmer-led learning at the 36th annual Marbleseed Organic Farming Conference in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Truelove Seeds is a farm-based seed company offering culturally important and open pollinated vegetable, herb, and flower seeds. Check out their podcast, Seeds & Their People, wherever you're listening to The Seed Farmer Podcast!
Manish Kushwaha is a fourth generation seed farmer who had no intention of following the family tradition, but after a period working as a software engineer and thinking about what was meaningful to him, Manish decided to start working with seeds and ultimately start his own seed company, Gaia Organic Seeds in Ottawa, Ontario. In this episode, Manish talks about getting set up on land in Ottawa's NCC Greenbelt where it is possible to rent farmland for 25-year periods. This opportunity let him get set up with tile-drained fields, buildings, and a place to live. Manish explains how his approach to seed is more spiritual than scientific. He sees himself as a steward. Seeds are our allies and we walk in this journey together. Manish also uses seed growing isolation distances that are much smaller than usual recommendations. We talk about how he has established these distances without compromising his seed varieties. Throughout the interview, we keep coming back to Manish's watermelon breeding project, where he crossed 22 varieties to create a diverse gene pool and how he has been selecting out specific phenotypes from the mix, including the ever elusive mango watermelon.This leads into a discussion of how you should always keep some of your stock seed back to compensate for the vagaries of squirrels, plant disease, and rats. In the deep dive, we talk about growing watermelons from seeds, planting, spacing, harvest, and how to extract the seeds with the food processor and/or pressure. Check out the Gaia online catalogue and follow Gaia Organic Seeds on Instagram Follow Dan on Instagram, get his newsletter, & follow Tourne-Sol Cooperative Farm PRE-ORDER Dan's new book, The Seed Farmer, from notillgrowers.com to further support our work! Folks who support The Seed Farmer Podcast The goal of the Culinary Breeding Network is to improve communication between plant breeders, seed growers, farmers, chefs, produce buyers and others to improve quality in vegetables, fruits and grains. Learn more and check out upcoming events! Are you a farmer looking for educational resources in Canada? Check out Young Agrarians! They are a farmer-to-farmer educational resource network for new and young ecological, organic, and regenerative farmers. This February, join thousands of farmers like you from across the U.S. for three days of community building and farmer-led learning at the 36th annual Marbleseed Organic Farming Conference in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Truelove Seeds is a farm-based seed company offering culturally important and open pollinated vegetable, herb, and flower seeds. Check out their podcast, Seeds & Their People, wherever you're listening to The Seed Farmer Podcast!
Gabriel Bravo is one of the founders of the company Semillas Plantae and farms with Mima Picado at El Tablazo Farm in Costa Rica. In this episode, Gabriel talks about how Semillas Plantae is structured with 4 partners who operate the seed company and how they distribute their seeds. Gabriel explains how they source seeds from outside of Costa Rica and trial them to see what can grow in their bioregion and how he is always on the hunt for Costa Rican heirloom varieties and the stories that come with them. We also discuss what it is like growing seed in the tropics where there is a very humid season that is a nightmare for growing dry seeded crops and a dry season that is much better suited for seed production. We then have a more technical seed growing conversation about growing cilantro for seed and producing seed for biennials such as carrots in a climate with no cold winter to help with vernalisation. Follow Semillas Plantae on Instagram and check out their YouTube channel Follow Dan on Instagram, get his newsletter, & follow Tourne-Sol Cooperative Farm PRE-ORDER Dan's new book, The Seed Farmer, from notillgrowers.com to further support our work Folks who support The Seed Farmer Podcast The goal of the Culinary Breeding Network is to improve communication between plant breeders, seed growers, farmers, chefs, produce buyers and others to improve quality in vegetables, fruits and grains. Learn more and check out upcoming events! Are you a farmer looking for educational resources in Canada? Check out Young Agrarians! They are a farmer-to-farmer educational resource network for new and young ecological, organic, and regenerative farmers. This February, join thousands of farmers like you from across the U.S. for three days of community building and farmer-led learning at the 36th annual Marbleseed Organic Farming Conference in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Truelove Seeds is a farm-based seed company offering culturally important and open pollinated vegetable, herb, and flower seeds. Check out their podcast, Seeds & Their People, wherever you're listening to The Seed Farmer Podcast!
In almost every interview on The Seed Farmer, my guests and I wind up talking about tools. And one tool that podcast guests have mentioned more than any other tool is the Winnow Wizard. We use the Winnow Wizard at Torne-Sol Farm to clean seeds, so I understand the love that folks have for this machine. But I really wasn't expecting it for it to just keep coming back, interview after interview. And since it has kept coming back, I thought we should spend some time with the person who designed the seed cleaning machine, Mark Luterra. Mark currently works at Adaptive Seeds in Sweet Home, Oregon, but he started his seed journey at Wild Garden Seed, where he designed and built the first Winnow Wizard to make his seed cleaning days easier. He then went on to build another 104 machines that have been shipped all over the U.S. and Canada. He's now transferred production of the Winnow Wizard to Oppen Works in Wisconsin. In today's episode, Mark tells us what the Winnow Wizard does and how it works, and we do a deep dive into seed cleaning. And of course, the Winnow Wizard plays the key part in the seed cleaning stories, but Mark also explains how seed harvest and screening are equally important steps to get your seed clean. Mark also reveals some secrets of using a shop vac for seed cleaning. During the discussion, we go through four seed cleaning scenarios and how Mark would tackle each of them. Mark then wraps up the conversation by telling us about his next seed project aimed at small-scale seed farmers. Follow Mark on Instagram and check out his Substack Follow Dan on Instagram, get his newsletter, & follow Tourne-Sol Cooperative Farm PRE-ORDER Dan's new book, The Seed Farmer, from notillgrowers.com Folks who support The Seed Farmer Podcast The goal of the Culinary Breeding Network is to improve communication between plant breeders, seed growers, farmers, chefs, produce buyers and others to improve quality in vegetables, fruits and grains. Learn more and check out upcoming events! Are you a farmer looking for educational resources in Canada? Check out Young Agrarians! They are a farmer-to-farmer educational resource network for new and young ecological, organic, and regenerative farmers. This February, join thousands of farmers like you from across the U.S. for three days of community building and farmer-led learning at the 36th annual Marbleseed Organic Farming Conference in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Truelove Seeds is a farm-based seed company offering culturally important and open pollinated vegetable, herb, and flower seeds. Check out their podcast, Seeds & Their People, wherever you're listening to The Seed Farmer Podcast!
Kim Delaney farms with Aaron Lyons and Stephen Surgenessie at Hawthorn Farm Organic Seeds in Mount Forest, Ontario. They grow certified organic seeds on two farm sites for their online store and to distribute through Seedy Saturdays and through their wholesale seed rack program. In this episode, Kim discusses how she began her seed journey working in tall grass prairie restoration and how that blossomed into growing and selling vegetable, flower, and herb seeds. Kim also talks about how she has established and manages wild collection areas on her farm to harvest seed for wild bergamot, black-eyed Susan, milkweed, prairie grasses, and other plants. Kim explains how Hawthorn has worked with local farmers to grow seed on their farms as part of a transition town project where market growers grow the seed crop and Hawthorne would harvest and clean the seed. We discuss Kim's vision of what that could look like as a cross-country project. Kim also describes some of the seed infrastructure they've set up at Hawthorn including a seed dryer in a shipping container and a DIY air column. For this episode's technical section, Kim talks about growing and harvesting seeds from two native prairie grasses, Indian grass and blue stem grass. Follow Hawthorn Farm Organic Seeds on Instagram & check out their website Follow Dan on Instagram, get his newsletter, & follow Tourne-Sol Cooperative Farm PRE-ORDER Dan's new book, The Seed Farmer, from notillgrowers.com Mentioned in the show… The Organic Seed Grower by John Navazio The Organic Seed Alliance Real Seeds (UK) DIY seed cleaner The Winnow Wizard Folks who support The Seed Farmer Podcast The goal of the Culinary Breeding Network is to improve communication between plant breeders, seed growers, farmers, chefs, produce buyers and others to improve quality in vegetables, fruits and grains. Learn more and check out upcoming events! Are you a farmer looking for educational resources in Canada? Check out Young Agrarians! They are a farmer-to-farmer educational resource network for new and young ecological, organic, and regenerative farmers. This February, join thousands of farmers like you from across the U.S. for three days of community building and farmer-led learning at the 36th annual Marbleseed Organic Farming Conference in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Truelove Seeds is a farm-based seed company offering culturally important and open pollinated vegetable, herb, and flower seeds. Check out their podcast, Seeds & Their People, wherever you're listening to The Seed Farmer Podcast!
Dan Brisebois here, seed grower at Tourne-Sol Co-operative Farm, spreadsheet crop-planning enthusiast, and also host of The Seed Farmer Podcast. Wait... The Seed Farmer Podcast? Isn’t this The Seed Growers Podcast feed? Well, you are right - but let me tell you why there is going to be a name change... Mentioned in the show... The Farmer Spreadsheet Academy Order The Seed Farmer: A Complete Guide to Growing, Using, and Selling Your Own Seeds from notillgrowers.com to support the podcast Canadian growers, get it directly from the author at... https://boutique.fermetournesol.qc.ca/en/products/the-seed-farmer Stay tuned for the first episode of season two, coming August 21st, wherever you get your seedy podcasts.