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.

You can plan for growing seed in as little or as much detail as you can plan for growing any other crop. Up until now, I’ve been encouraging you to slow down and take it easy. Start your seed growing small and learn from it. Don’t worry about the details too much. But eventually, when you start feeling more comfortable growing seed, you’re going to want to plan your seed crops more precisely.

This is the 5th and final weekly episode of a mini-series all about the basics you need to know so you can plan your first seed crop for the coming growing season.

I would love to know how you like these mini-episodes. Send me a DM or an email to tell me what you think - is this a format you’d like me to repeat in the future?

Mentioned in the show...

Seed Q&A Workshop on April 20

Crop Plan Template

Ask a question for future Seed Growers episodes

Dan's list of Seed Grower Resources

Follow Dan Brisebois on Instagram

The Seed Growers Podcast is produced, in part, by No-Till Growers

No-Till Growers is powered by the folks who support it every month over at patreon.com/notillgrowers, you can also pick up a copy of The Living Soil Handbook if you don't have one already, as well as a No-Till Growers hat, and you can ask you questions or share your insights into ecological market gardening on the brand new growers forum at notillgrowers.community.chat

What seed will you harvest this summer from your market garden?

In episodes 1-3 of this miniseries, we’ve talked about some key considerations for growing seed. We’ve discussed open pollinated and hybrid varieties. Selfer and crosser crops. Annual and biennial plant life cycles. Now, let’s look at what crops you’re actually growing for market or CSA or wholesale and let’s see which of those crops would be great first seed crops.

This is the 4th of 5 weekly mini-episodes all about the basics you need to know so you can plan your first seed crop for the coming growing season.

I would love to know how you like these mini-episodes. Send me a DM or an email to tell me what you think - is this a format you’d like me to repeat in the future?

Mentioned in the show...

GUIDE SUR LA PRODUCTION DE SEMENCES À LA FERME

Ask a question for future Seed Growers episodes

Dan's list of Seed Grower Resources

Follow Dan Brisebois on Instagram

The Seed Growers Podcast is produced, in part, by No-Till Growers

No-Till Growers is powered by the folks who support it every month over at patreon.com/notillgrowers, you can also pick up a copy of The Living Soil Handbook if you don't have one already, as well as a No-Till Growers hat, and you can ask you questions or share your insights into ecological market gardening on the brand new growers forum at notillgrowers.community.chat