by Ray, Janisse
Burning the weeds would be easier than digging them out, I thought. I found a pack of matches and touched a small flame to one corner of the patch. The fire leapt across dry broomsage, out of my plot, underneath a defunct moving truck in our backyard, and into the junkyard. I had no water to fight it, only a rake. My yells roused my family, and my mother and brothers came running. The only damage was that for a few weeks I suffered repeated lectures on fire safety, complete with narratives of explosions, burn victims, and homeless families. I had to clear the little garden by hand.
No one in my nuclear family gardened, so I sought and received guidance from my grandparents. The Jack beans grew terrifically skyward, producing large, floppy leaves and foot-long pods that dried and rattled and, when I shelled them out, amazed everybody. Okra poked its pods into my hands. The yellow squash bore fruit. I came to feel almost drunk with gardening.
I got crazy about seeds because I was crazy about plants because long ago I realized that the safest place I could be was in the plant kingdom—where things made sense, where the malice we have to contend with in the animal world was absent, where nothing was going to eat you, really.
I remember the relationship I as a child had with plants. They were the things that came closest to my body, so that I was intimate with them—with trees, with wax myrtle, with daylilies—in a way that I was not intimate with anything else. The transplanting of Johnny-jump-ups or the picking of roses was extremely personal. In place of boyfriends, I had honeysuckle from the vine, radishes from the ground, asters from the ditch. To touch something is to develop a relationship that is sensory, one that is personal and thus private. This is not the language of botany, but of friendship. I made friends with the flora.
One spring, in science class, I had to construct a poster of seeds, and so I went willy-nilly about the house and junkyard—a little Bartram, full of ingenuity and enthusiasm, collecting. Wasn’t even a grain of rice a seed? I glued corn kernels and red fleshy magnolia seeds and orange pits and watermelon spits to my poster board. My display was heavy with acorns, airy with white wisps of dog fennel. It earned an A.
An entrepreneurial child, I wrote to the American Seed Company in Lancaster, Pennsylvania: “Please send me your BIG Prize Book and one order of 45 packets of American Seeds. I will sell them at 40¢ a pack, send you the money, and choose my prize, or I may keep one-third of the money instead of a prize.”
Every year, through the mesmerizing and tumultuous narrative of my childhood, I planted, I watched, I learned, and sometimes I harvested. I was still sowing that garden the year I was a senior in high school, newly eighteen, when my friends were dating and drinking and going to movies, and I was most definitely not, because my parents strictly did not allow such carrying-on.
The nature of my life was apparent in a journal entry dated May 14, 1980, a Wednesday only a few weeks before I graduated from high school. I was eighteen years old. The boys to whom I refer were my two brothers, one and two years younger, both of whom could drive long before I. I had a job after school shelving books and filing articles at the public library.
The boys picked me up from work this afternoon, and we went out to Thompson Farm Supply. I love the atmosphere of feed and seed stores. I got a pound of peanuts for planting ($1), a scoop of squash (20¢), and a big packet of turnip seed ($1). At the grocery store the other day I had bought some of those colorful packets of seed: okra, radish, marigold, and dwarf zinnia, 49¢ each. I sowed the grainy turnip seed in a three-foot bed with a rake. I made rows and planted squash and okra. Then I hoed out a few weeds. The wind came up, it got cooler, but the clouds didn’t collect. Finally around nine (Mama and I were jogging) it began to sprinkle. Rain has fallen lightly since. Grow, grow, grow!
Eighteen years old! What was I thinking? I sound like a ten-year-old. Why wasn’t I sneaking out my window at night to join friends driving back and forth between the Dairy Queen and the Methodist Church? Soon enough I was out in the world, seeing it for myself, as much of it as I could see. In a world where there was so much to love, I came to love plants and, accordingly, seeds.
— 4 —
sycamore
I BEGAN GARDENING SERIOUSLY when I was twenty-one. In the early 1980s, I used scholarship money from college to buy land, and as a college senior I moved to this twelve-acre homestead in rural north Florida, west of Tallahassee. Already a hippie community was in full swing there in a place called Sycamore, not far from Greensboro, the next biggest town being Quincy. My place, Hoedown Organic Farm, was at the dead end of an unnamed dirt road.
In this little community of back-to-the-landers dwelled a number of gardeners who taught me what they could and inspired me to carry plant-love to new heights. All of their gardens were organic and magnificent. Sara introduced me to comfrey and chayote and luffa. Lesa grew foxglove and brought me starts of bee balm and lavender. The Fishers, macrobiotic neighbors who had owned a nursery in south Florida, had planted an incredible orchard and grew daikon radishes and Japanese greens. Once or twice a year somebody hosted a plant exchange.
In 1984, twenty-two years old and high on gardening, I ordered a strange variety of squash from the Market Bulletin, a weekly publication of the Georgia Department of Agriculture, which was full of free ads. Candy Roaster, the farmer had called the squash, and described it in his ad as nothing you’ve ever seen in a feed store or a seed catalog. The squash grew two to three feet long and over six inches in diameter, like a stout, curving club. It was dark pinkish orange when ripe and scrumptiously sweet.
When I ordered it, Candy Roaster was simply a novelty to me. About that time, however, as a young granola in Sycamore, I read about the Seed Savers Exchange. It was an emerging group trying to preserve heirloom seed, mostly through the exchange of seeds by members. The Seed Savers Exchange had begun a decade earlier, in 1975, thanks to Diane Ott Whealy and her then-husband Kent Whealy. The couple was taking care of Diane’s ill grandfather, Baptist John Ott, who had been growing seeds brought by his parents from Bavaria when they immigrated to St. Lucas, Iowa, in the 1870s. One was a blue morning glory with a magenta center and purple rays, which the Whealys called Grandpa Ott’s morning glory. The other was a German Pink tomato. When Grandpa Ott died, the Whealys realized that only they were left to keep their family heirlooms alive, a fact that introduced them to the knowledge that everywhere, old varieties were dying out. Many traditional varieties of vegetables and flowers, planted and saved year after year by family farmers and gardeners, were being lost or only grown by very few people—and sometimes only one person. They determined to keep seeds alive. Their exchange began a movement of gardeners who stalked rural America, questing for heirlooms.
I decided to join.
I had a new interest now in the Candy Roaster. I sent a letter to the Market Bulletin, inquiring if this was a new species, an odd squash invention, or an antique? Might there be other old varieties like this that people had been keeping alive?
I found in the paper where you wanted to know about those candy roasters. I have plenty of those seeds. I raised 13 good ones this year. They sure make a nice pie. I thought I would let you know they are still around.
Bertha Woody
Ellijay, Georgia
P.S. I have a son living in Orlando, Fla.
I’m so glad your Canney Roaster Sweet Potato pumpkins have done so well. And indeed I think they are delicious also. Some people pick very young and fry like yellow squash but I let mine get big and dry and cook like pumpkin. I’ve only had them a few years maybe 6 or 7, but Granny Dills is 86 yrs old and she is who told me they are Canney Roasters and she said she ate them in her younger days so I do not know how old they are. I have never seen it in a catalog but I’ve never looked much either. I got seed from my husband’s first cousin and he called them tater pumpkins. An older relative down the road has relatives in N.C. and he said they raise them up there but they also call them Ca
nney Roasters.
Sincerely,
E. Wise
Dahlonega, Georgia
I saw your letter in the Market Bulletin. I was born in Luthersville. My daddy still lives at Grantville, Ga. It’s down below Newnan. I love all kinds of odd flowers and vegetables. I don’t have a lot of the old-timey vegetables that you wanted. Would send them if I did. I have the peter pepper (hot) and cow horn pepper. I wondered if I sent you the money would you send me a banana tree? Or tell me of a place down there where I could order things like that. I’ve got a pineapple that I started from a pineapple. Also an avacado. Thanks so much.
Love,
Frances Campbell
Paducah, Kentucky
P.S. I was born July 21, 1933.
A friend, Irwin, and I nailed together a one-room, off-the-grid, tarpaper shack in Sycamore. I’ll be generous and call the structure, which was constructed of heart pine planks and two-by-fours recycled from defunct tobacco barns, a cabin. Irwin and I weren’t engineers, much less carpenters. We were youth scoffing at a capitalist society.
Even before the cabin was finished I had a garden started. I planted only open-pollinated varieties, since I wanted to save my own seeds and keep food’s gene pool strong. I was ordering seed from small companies like Johnny’s Selected Seeds and Pinetree Garden Seeds, which marketed inexpensive, family-size packets for the home gardener. (In 1985, sixteen packets cost me $6.85, including shipping.)
I was also ordering from seed savers. The packets poured in: Granny’s Scarlet Runner bean, Haitian green, New Mexico Cave bean, Genuine Georgia Rattlesnake watermelon, Calico Crowder cowpea, Millhouse Butter bean, Chocolate Sweet pepper, Old Sugar gourd, Self-seeding lettuce, Byrd mustard, Cinnamon vine, Ada soybean, Old Timey melon.
Bulgarian Triumph tomato, Red Sausage tomato, Czar tomato, Truck Gardeners Delight tomato, Geisha tomato, Peron Sprayless tomato, Red Currant tomato, Mule Team tomato, Florida Pink tomato, Climbing tomato, Manasota Volunteer tomato, Super Italian Paste tomato, Dinner Plate tomato, German Pink tomato, Old Handed-down Pink tomato, Arkansas Traveler tomato, Mr. Charlie tomato, Old Brooks tomato, Czech’s Excellent tomato, Florida Basket tomato, Believe It Or Not tomato, Moneymaker tomato, Deweese Streaked tomato, Stone tomato, Firesteel tomato, Yellow Cherry tomato.
Red White and Blue Indian corn, Bachelor Button, Squaw bean, Black Becky bean, Hornet’s Nest gourd, Rice pea, Hopper’s Flower Garden okra, Blacklee watermelon, Aconcagua Sweet pepper, Blue flax, Wahirio tobacco, Listada de Gandia eggplant, Garden huckleberry, Cowhorn turnip.
The garden journal I used that year was a red, hardback appointment book from 1980, a date I scratched through and changed to 1985. On March 9—a Saturday, not a Sunday—I transplanted Bibb and Tom Thumb lettuce. On March 24, I planted Golden Midget sweet corn near the clothesline and two varieties of watermelon, Crimson Sweet and Congo, in mounds filled with fish heads hauled in barrels from a fish house. On May 9, home all day, I planted Blue Lake pole beans and Tahitian squash, as well as nicotiana, eggplant, zucchini, cleome, chamomile, and jalapeño pepper.
We lived in Sycamore without running water and caught rainwater in buckets and barrels off the eaves of the tin roof—call it walking water—which we used to water the garden. We bathed in the stream that ran along the northern edge of the property and hauled in potable water.
That spring came a drought. On May 20, I wrote, “The sun is harsh, sending waves of fire, sucking water from the earth, giving snakes power to strike.” The rain buckets and barrels caught a few pathetic drops of dawn dew that evaporated before midmorning. Obviously, by June 4, 1985, I knew something about seed saving: “I hope I develop drought-resistant, heat-tolerant strains of vegetables.”
When rains finally came, the gardens at Sycamore grew divine. They were living art, a verdant jumble. I had a sun garden near the cabin, a circular mound with six beds radiating. I had a pomegranate garden with a bench, made with two rocks and a plank. Pumpkins and melons, including a hand-sized Japanese melon whose skin was edible and which I have not been able to find since, sprawled among wild persimmon trees. There was lettuce leaf basil and holy basil and sweet basil. Kale and chard grew lush in long raised beds.
Anything strange and unusual, I tried. Unicorn plant and castor mole bean. Scarlet runner bean. Green cotton. Myrrh, jicama, and alyssum never germinated, but the rest bounded for the sky. Sometimes I entertained myself with a thought experiment: If I were given an acre of bare soil on a far island and I could bring one plant for comfort and joy, not to sustain me calorically but to enjoy, what would I take with me? I might choose belladonna, for each bloom would be a trip not taken; or moonflower, glorious evening delight. I might choose marijuana, for the filigree of its odd-green leaves; or passion vine, its flower the complicated and intricate formula for so many stories—the twelve disciples, the twelve wise women, the dozen eggs. Oh, how could I choose? I have never seen a plant I did not love.
In May, I reported having found sprouted date pits in the compost bin. Later that summer, on August 23, I gathered seed from mullein, four o’clocks, and nicotiana.
A few negative metaphors are associated with seed saving. For a vegetable to flower has been considered by gardeners as a mistake—oops, it went to seed, yank it out! Going to seed has meant that a person has gone wayward, and seedy places are unsavory. A seed, however, finds its nativity in a flower, a thing of beauty, color, fragrance, form, and variety. Flowers are food for the soul. And the seeds they fashion are life, sustenance, the future. We are utterly dependent on them. Seeds are the bridge between us and the sun, emissaries of the solar system, bundles of cosmic energy.
— 5 —
what is broken
BEFORE WE GO FURTHER, I want to make sure you understand what is broken.
When the United States invaded Iraq in the spring of 2003, the plan of attack was strategic. Our government showed no concern for Iraq’s cultural resources, including its seeds.
Iraq’s history is one of seven thousand years of civilization. Located in the Fertile Crescent, an arable oasis considered by scholars to be the cradle of civilization, Iraq’s roots date to Mesopotamia, which flourished on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The region is credited with producing the world’s first writing, first calendar, first library, first city, and first democracy. “The US government could not have chosen a more inappropriate land,” said novelist and activist Arundhati Roy in her acceptance speech for the 2002 Lannan Prize for Cultural Freedom, “in which to stage its illegal war and display its grotesque disregard for justice of any kind.”
By 2004, the United States put in place a new foundation of governance for the conquered Iraq: one hundred orders enacted by Paul Bremer, chief of the Coalition Provisional Authority. One of them was particularly strange. Under the heading “Amendment to Patents, Industrial Design, Undisclosed Information, Integrated Circuits and Plant Variety Law,” Order 81 authorized the introduction of GM crops and instituted intellectual property rights for seed developers. The order made seed saving of GM varieties illegal and forced farmers who used GM varieties to purchase seed each year.
Order 81 was not a law adopted by a sovereign country. This law was not enacted out of distress over the nourishment of Iraq’s people. The law’s lone purpose was to open a new potentially lucrative seed market for the multinationals that already controlled seed trade in other parts of the world. The corporate giants had a new market for their wares.
At the time of the invasion, five million acres of wheat were under cultivation in Iraq. About 97 percent of Iraqi farmers either saved seeds or purchased locally grown seed from nearby vendors. Untold varieties were being grown, including Saberbeq, a wheat landrace grown in northern Iraq that was known for the quality of its bread and its drought tolerance.
“Farmers shall be prohibited from reusing seeds of protected varieties.” At first blush, the language of Ord
er 81 seems benign enough. Restricting seed saving of protected varieties did not interfere with traditional practices, did it?
It did, for two reasons. First, behind the backs of the farmers, the sneaky multinationals were quietly patenting seeds that indigenous farmers had manually and painstakingly developed through selection and over time. Suddenly, then, a farmer might not own a seed he had been growing and saving. All a corporation needed to do was hold a few farmers accountable for thievery through threats or outright lawsuits and the rest would cave.
Second, US Army soldiers, in a program dubbed Operation Amber Waves, were handing out free wheat and barley seed, free fertilizer, and free T-shirts emblazoned UNITED FARMERS OF IRAQ in several districts of the country. The seeds were GM. They ensured the genetic contamination of Iraq’s heritage crops and foretold the liability that would come to bear on Iraq’s growers. Call them seeds of empire.
“Introducing transgenic wheat means replacing this diversity and leaving it to extinction,” said Nagrib Nassar, professor of genetics at Universidade de Brasilia. “It will be replaced by a monoculture with a very narrow genetic base. This is a problem. This will be a catastrophe.”
In a separate advance in this war on farmers, consider this—Abu Ghraib, a town outside Baghdad, was conquered and controlled by invading troops. The country’s gene bank was located at Abu Ghraib, where Iraq’s germplasm securities were looted and lost. Sanaa Abdul Wahab Al-Sheikh worked at the national gene bank at Abu Ghraib. During the invasion she hid about a thousand accessions, items in the collection, both underground in her backyard and in her home refrigerator, and was able to save them. She now works at the rebuilt facility and is traveling the country adding seeds to the gene bank. But ancient landraces of grains are disappearing as Iraqi farmers grow new GM varieties. The foundation of Iraq’s food sovereignty eroded in a flash flood.