SEED KEEPER
Did someone tell you when you were little that if you swallowed a watermelon seed it would grow in your stomach? I believed it like truth. Too worried to risk swallowing one, I spit the smooth black seeds from watermelon into the soil and imagined I would return to a bounty of juicy melons one day. I always saw tossing out the sticky stone of a peach, the hard pits of cherries, or an apple core into the bushes as a form of planting. If every seed I tossed sprouted and survived, then over my lifetime I’ve left a trail, like a spread out orchard, in my fruit eating wake.
Now instead of spitting them into the earth, I am saving them. Cleaning them off, drying them, and sealing them in jars to store in my refrigerator. Open pollinators like beans, tomatoes, and peppers are best to save but I am saving all the seeds including the avocados and apricots that will take years to fruit and that, in my Brooklyn apartment, I have no space to grow. From jars in my home to the seed vaults of Svalbard and Uttarakhand, saving seeds ensures our potential for an agricultural future. And saving a range of seeds, especially heirloom varieties, ensures that future is biodiverse. Each seed comes from a lineage of plants linking us to the past and represents a legacy to come. If well maintained, the squash I plant today could be related to a squash I grow 50 years from now. Little packets of life, seeds can travel for miles and years until they encounter the right condition to emerge. And when kept safe they can stay locked up for years before they venture to sprout.
This year for the first time in my lifetime there were seed shortages in the U.S. Seeds signify autonomy in a moment of food precarity. And through investing in caring for them we create an anchor of hope into the future. Something we desperately need in times of uncertainty. If you have ever eaten something you planted, reaped what you sowed, it feels like an epiphany, that somehow with just a little sun, water and dirt, something fragrant fleshy and nutritious emerges. If you save seeds year to year, they begin to change and adapt to your soil. They become an archive of conditions and your shared relationship.
From weather patterns to social structures, seeds are a reflection of our circumstances and our values. If we were to look right now at the huge swaths of earth filled with soy or corn, often using genetically modified seeds- there is a shortsighted interest in convenience. We only eat 150 of 30, 000 known plant varieties and 75% of our food comes from only 12 different plants and 5 animals. We have rapidly lost our biodiversity. Since 1900, 90% of the crops native to the US have gone extinct.* These disturbing facts predict dystopic conditions and easily mimic sci-fi plots. I keep returning to Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower set in 2024 where in the midst of violent unrest, the main character Lauren Olamina’s survival was predicated on storing seeds and understanding the plants she could forage. It is increasingly easy to comprehend the value of seeds.
Saving seeds is preventing erasure of the ecology and cultures that surround certain plant species. Storing seeds becomes a work of architecture, heritage, and survival but above all, an act of hope. These images show the myriad seed saving “technologies” of the past and present and give an insight into what our future may look like.