#trueloveseeds

[auntcookieposts]

Grateful for 1 bean survivor of flooding rains, Borlotto Lingua do Fuoco - Tongue of Fire bean! #roofgardens #growsomething #plantsofinstagram Ty #trueloveseeds (at Tribeca) https://www.instagram.com/p/CQ9AcD3rePse3vlHiejU_XQxcnNqJNvnd1xFjM0/?utm_medium=tumblr

[seedkeeping]

A big shout out to Julia Aguilar!! Every week in addition to spending a day working on the farm, they date, label, and fill almost 700 seed packets at their house so I can attempt to keep up with your orders from my house! This week we are aiming for twice as many packets since supplies are getting so low. Since mid-March, Julia has hand-filled nearly every single one of our packets! Measuring spoon in hand, emoji jokes at the ready, with the determined spirit and heart of a seed sovereignty believer and doer, they are truly amazing and wonderful. Thanks @cryptogam_ !!!! (In this photo they are filling Palestinian Molokhia packets). Photo by @milesziskind #seedkeeping #trueloveseeds https://www.instagram.com/p/CBwYpJfAFLM/?igshid=1vtxhlm7sgqbb

[seedkeeping]

Thank you so much to all of you who have been visiting www.trueloveseeds.com, reading our seed stories, and picking out varieties that sound perfect for your gardens and farms and kitchens and forkfuls. It is amazing to us that we are able to spend our days shipping our beloved seeds to excited growers! And what’s more, that the growers who saved these seeds get to benefit by telling their own seed stories, preserving their own ancestral and regional seeds, and receiving 50% of the income from your seed orders. Your support keeps this whole thing going, and we encourage you to join us by saving your own seeds as well! Let’s keep our foodways alive and well. Thank you so much! Shown here: Buena Mulata Pepper; White Velvet Okra; Ají Amarillo; Huacatay; Callaloo; Landis Winter Lettuce; Francois Syrian Molokhia; White Garden Egg; Paul Robeson Tomato; Frijol Rojo de Seda. #trueloveseeds #seedkeeping #seedsaving https://www.instagram.com/p/B8pEns5A5wV/?igshid=1x82lk6pvt8xu

[seedkeeping]

Happy Valentine’s Day to my ancestors! These photos are of Letitia Truelove and her granddaughter - my grandma Letty - in the 1920s. Grandma Letty, who I adored and continue to adore, was an an amazing cook and baker and lover of plants and rocks and oceans. She was named after her grandma and so is Truelove Seeds. That's why Truelove is one word. I wanted to pick a family name because so much of our focus is on continuing to keep our ancestral seeds, stories, and traditions. I considered these other family names: Vigilante, Lauriello, Grindrod, Lenihan, Walsh, but Truelove was too good to pass up! Besides, keeping seeds is an act of TRUE LOVE for our ancestors and our collective future. Letitia Cecilia Truelove was the youngest in a large family and was sent away to be raised by nuns. In turn, she raised a powerful woman, who raised a powerful woman, who raised a powerful woman, who raised me and my sister. Grateful for the care that our ancestors and living relatives take to help us survive and thrive in this beautiful and tumultuous world. I hope to take the same care in caring for my loved ones, my seeds, my community, and this seed company! #trueloveseeds #letitiatruelove https://www.instagram.com/p/B8kTKd7getN/?igshid=15shqdcrtxv9x

[seedkeeping]

New variety alert! Now available at www.trueloveseeds.com! Quillqui��a is a lesser known variety of Papalo that is more widely grown in the Andes - particularly in Bolivia and Peru. Unlike the larger and greener Mexican Papalo, they have thinner, purpler leaves, and they flower much earlier. It is interesting how the two herbs I’ve met from this region - Huacatay and Quillquiña - are both intensely fragrant, providing strength and character to the garden and the salsa. Satchels of our Quillquiña seeds were given to me (and Katherine Chiu!) by a nice guy named Joe Hiscott at a seed swap this winter in upstate NY after he heard us talk about our community seed stewardship (see last photo). We grew it by the Andean Lupine (Chochos) and Ecuadorian Peanuts lovingly tended by our apprentice Julia Aguilar. Also known as Bolivian coriander, this cilantro-like herb from South America traveled to Mexico thousands of years before the unrelated cilantro/coriander came from the Middle East and the Mediterranean. People have also said it tastes like arugula, rue, and citrus. The flavor bursts in your mouth, and even brushing past the plant can fill the air with essential oils. See the neatly arranged holes on the underside of the leaf in the last plant photo? Those aromatic oil glands keep away chewing insects, and give the leaf a powerful punch for us humans. Known as: Bolivian coriander, quillquiña (also spelled quirquiña or quilquiña), yerba porosa, killi, pápalo, tepegua, mampuritu, and pápaloquelite. #quillquiña #quillquina #quilquiña #quirquiña #yerbaporosa #killi #papalo #tepegua #mampuritu #papaloquelite #porophyllumruderale #seedkeeping #seedsaving #trueloveseeds https://www.instagram.com/p/B9CZfeiApTD/?igshid=6cpzhlaijix5

[seedkeeping]

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Listen now! Seeds & Their People is a radio show where people we admire tell stories about the seeds they truly love. Our first episode is up on our website! Chris and I tell our own seed stories so you can get to know us a little before we launch into our interviews and conversations with others, such as Kristyn Leach from @namu_farm and Ira Wallace of @southernexposureseed. So excited for this medium that allows us to hear seed stories woven in the voices of their keepers. Look for the bar at the top of www.trueloveseeds.com to listen! Soon, you can listen on all your favorite podcast apps. Thanks!#seedsandtheirpeople #seedkeeping #seedstories #seedsaving @trueloveseeds @sankofacommunityfarm #trueloveseeds https://www.instagram.com/p/B6-nZXIAj6V/?igshid=llzxdfhyq93b

[seedkeeping]

Our 2020 Seed Keeping calendar is ready for you! Full of bright pictures of culturally important plants and their seed stories and printed on thick paper by local printers @fireballprints. Consider supporting our seed keeping work at Truelove Seeds by purchasing gifts for yourselves and the ones you love. This is our fifth annual calendar, and we are so excited to share it with the world. www.trueloveseeds.com #seedkeeping #seedsovereignty #foodsovereignty #seedsaving #trueloveseeds (at Everywhere) https://www.instagram.com/p/B5DV8X6g_5c/?igshid=45gzq0mrbpmy

[seedkeeping]

It’s hot, but it’s cooler in the Sehsapsing Lenape Flint Corn (and in the creek and the seed room - other places Althea, Hannah, Amirah, Julia, Chris, and I took refuge in today after working in the extreme heat). Sehsapsing or Oklahoma Delaware Blue Flint Corn are breathtaking 7-inch cobs containing 8 rows of blue-black kernels that can be ground for flour, grits, and a traditional cornmeal mush called sapan. This corn is also known as Sèhsapsink, Lenape Blue Corn, and Oklahoma Delaware Black Flint and is an important variety to the Lenape people, whose original homeland covers what is now New Jersey, Eastern Pennsylvania, Southern New York, and Northern Delaware. William Woys Weaver received seeds of this variety in the 1970s from both Gladys Tantaquidgeon (Mohegan medicine woman and ethnographer) and Walton Galinat (a Connecticut Yankee who specialized in native corn). The USDA received seeds of this variety in 1985 from Charles Dean, the husband of Nora Thompson Dean, an Unami Delaware/Lenape herbalist who dedicated her life to preserving the culture and traditions of her tribe. This variety was brought west to Oklahoma by her mother, Sarah Wilson Thompson. Many Lenape people moved west over hundreds of years, continually pushed onward by white settlers. If you are Lenape, please reach out so we can rematriate these seeds to you free of charge. #sehsapsing #sehsapsingcorn #seedkeeping #trueloveseeds https://www.instagram.com/p/BzOwo-BgU4H/?igshid=73rk5tde36la

[seedkeeping]

Amanda Chin stands in a tunnel of vining Winter Melon and Fuzzy Melon, the seeds of which came from her Uncle Fung in Massachusetts, who gets them each year for his garden from his father-in-law Mr. Stzo. Her Taishanese grandfather would make a simple winter melon soup in broth, sometimes with bean sprouts. Amanda runs the Videon Educational Garden at Garrett Williamson, where kids from their programs have saved seeds of Pink Eye Butter Bean and Banana Legs Tomato for Truelove Seeds for a few years now. Inspired by our work with ancestral seeds, Amanda has brought these family melons into the mix too, and we are very excited to see how they fill in this trellis! Last photo by @mandaroni at @campgarrettpa, earlier today, just after my visit. #seedsaving #seedkeeping #ancestralseeds #trueloveseeds (at Garrett Williamson) https://www.instagram.com/p/B0rgXUrAHUE/?igshid=68k52w7oc4t

[seedkeeping]

My attempt at an advertisement! Seeds for fall, winter, and spring eating!! Here’s your challenge: if you aren’t already growing all four seasons, this is the time to start. These are some great selections that I’m sending off to a customer today who can be eating home-grown greens etc. all months of the year, even in cooler climates. For me, especially for the leafy greens, I’ll plant fall crops now, and then a winter/spring crop in October/November that I’ll cover with hoops and clear plastic - aiming to get good germination and a couple/few inches of growth before the winter solstice so that they will stay alive and slowly photosynthesize until they start growing rapidly again in February for late winter, early spring salads and stir-fries. Check these out at www.trueloveseeds.com #wintercrops #fallcrops #coolweathercrops #fourseasonfarming #fourseasongardening #trueloveseeds https://www.instagram.com/p/B2M6GNwg_lT/?igshid=4owu4rj31e6r

[seedkeeping]

All Power to the People! Seed sovereignty starts by deepening our intimate relationships with the plants that feed and heal us. It starts when we begin to understand their lives from seed to shining seed. Our workshop yesterday at East New York Farms in Brooklyn was very hands on, with lots of people just beginning their journey with seed keeping, and many who are already deep in it. I love this farm, their community, and the larger food justice and community garden world of New York City in general - so networked and supportive, so passionate about the soil and the people. While I’m here in NYC I’m able to see the culturally important seed crops this farm grows for our catalog, and visit two Bronx farms that plan to begin selling seeds through Truelove this coming year as well. Thanks @enyfarms!! Last four 📸 by @ethnobotanyprojectnyc #seedkeeping #seedsaving #seedsovereignty #trueloveseeds #eastnewyorkfarms (at East New York Farms!) https://www.instagram.com/p/B2Jow4qAeUi/?igshid=1uigriwoz5kng

[seedkeeping]

Today’s dahlia/cocoxochitl blooms! The top six are in our seedling trials patch - these are among the 40 that we are testing out as cut flowers and edible tubers this year. The bottom three are Deuil du Roi Albert, Bodacious, and one we renamed Ruby Fruit Jungle because it’s name was lost in a labeling mix up and Zoe (former apprentice) thought we should have more gayly named dahlias. By the way, there is a clearance sale on our remaining tubers - each bag (containing two tubers) is now only $1! Please order them all and give them homes! At www.trueloveseeds.com click on Dahlia Tubers and sort by price from lowest to highest. Please plant them and give them glorious life - they’ll do the same for you! #cocoxochitl #acocotli #dahlia #dahliaoftheday #dahliasofinstagram #trueloveseeds #dahliaseedling https://www.instagram.com/p/BzHS4oKA6iE/?igshid=uy4p9vm1rtbj

[seedkeeping]

Its peak seed harvest time at our farm! We’ve got our work cut out for us today! #seedsaving #seedharvest #seedkeeping #trueloveseeds #ajiamarillo #peruvianpeppers https://www.instagram.com/p/B1Ywc5fAaMP/?igshid=qowkm3t7pm4w

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Julia and Chris! Our two 2019 first-year apprentices on Chris’s first day of the year. He’s helped out on and off for years, but will be with us this whole summer intensively immersing himself in seed keeping as part of his research. He is now a grad student in Geography at UW-Madison, studying the political ecologies of seeds and specifically the role of seeds in black environmental and agrarian movements. Since they both wore their Truelove Seeds t-shirts, it seemed like a good time for a posed shot with the passion vine Julia was harvesting for medicine, the sweet potato slips Chris was harvesting for farmer friends to plant. They are standing in front of the rows of Aji Amarillo (Peruvian Peppers) that Julia planted and Egusi Melon and Water Spinach that Chris planted. I’m excited about all the amazing seed heroes at our farm and seed company this year! #trueloveseeds #seedkeeping @cryptogam_ @c.keeve https://www.instagram.com/p/ByjDeZ8ATnU/?igshid=1nbzozwkpwjq2

[seedkeeping]

We had a wonderful day at the farm! I’m thankful for the old friends and new that brought contagious excitement and gratitude for the land, the learning, and the work, and also thankful for the help getting things planted, mulched, and weeded. Thanks to Brother Barry Crumley, as always, for driving all the way down from New York and for bringing out some amazing folks. Our fields are getting planted and our new picnic table cloth and china dishes are getting broken in nicely! (Thanks to Ryann McChesney for a couple of these photos!) #trueloveseeds https://www.instagram.com/seedkeeping/p/BxDvphZFDmu/?igshid=1lfjen3gqzt4u

[seedkeeping]

Most of our crew this year, cradling beet babies inspired by @mcufphilly’s recent glamor shots (their photos are even more amazing). Althea (second year apprentice), Chris (long time volunteer, first year apprentice), me, Amirah (second year apprentice), and Hannah (super regular volunteer). I reseeded these beets probably too many days past the winter solstice and they refuse to flower, so hopefully monster beets taste good! #trueloveseeds https://www.instagram.com/p/By8ofqBA35o/?igshid=1dg0vyusd8o2u