 | Kentucky Heirloom Seeds: Growing, Eating, Saving Saving seeds to plant for the next year's crop has been key to human survival for millennia. However, the twentieth century witnessed a grand takeover of seed production by multinational companies aiming to select varieties ideal for mechanical harvest, long-distance transportation, and long shelf life. With the rise of the Slow Food and farm-to-table movements in recent years, the farmers and home gardeners who have quietly persisted in the age-old habit of conserving heirloom plants are finally receiving credit for their vital role in preserving both good taste and the world's rich food heritage. Kentucky Heirloom Seeds: Growing, Eating, Saving is an evocative exploration of the seed saver's art and the practice of sustainable agriculture. Bill Best and Dobree Adams begin by tracing the roots of the tradition in the state to a seven-hundred-year-old Native American farming village in north-central Kentucky. Best shares tips for planting and saving seeds for heirloom beans and tomatoes and describes his family's favorite varieties for the table. His incredible interviews with seed savers--predominately eastern Kentuckians, who for generations have worked tirelessly to preserve and share heirloom varieties to feed their families--vividly document the social relevance and historical significance of the rituals of sowing, cultivating, eating, saving, and sharing. Bill Best , professor emeritus at Berea College, is a Madison County, Kentucky, farmer and one of the charter members of the Lexington Farmers' Market. Widely known as a saver, collector, and grower of heirloom beans and tomatoes, he is the author of Saving Seeds, Preserving Taste: Heirloom Seed Savers in Appalachia. He is the recipient of the East Kentucky Leadership Foundation Private Individual Award, as well as the Inaugural Bill Best Award for Kentucky Food System Steward, created in his honor. Dobree Adams is primarily known in the region as a fiber artist and photographer. She gardens and farms on a river bottom of the Kentucky north of Frankfort. |
