The Seed Exchange

When I first arrived on the farm, I was extremely psyched to learn that I would be around to attend the Island's annual seed exchange. Each year, farmers throughout the island save seeds from some of their most successfully grown plants of the year to exchange with one another. This is an extremely important event for a would-be farmer to a new area since it's most ideal to plant seeds that have been acclimated to growing in a specific region for at least a season or more.

This year Terri had taken time aside throughout the season to save some of her best seeds, so we had quite a plethora of goods to offer at the exchange. The first, and easily the most time consuming task to prepare for the seed exchange was to fold up tiny little "seed saver" envelopes to place the seeds in. I hadn't done that much folding since my college origami class and I swear I will never forget how to fold one of these envelopes. Although she doesn't want to revert to plastic bags like a number of the other farmers do, Terri and I agreed that she needed to seek out some pre-fab biodegradable envelopes for next year's exchange.

The seed exchange fell on a bright, sunny Saturday and was held at a permaculture community known as La'akea. They had a solid turnout of folks, although definitely quite a few more folks looking for seeds rather than providing them. They had a Hawaiian priest come and give a really great blessing to kick off the opening circle. He blessed the exchange and stressed the importance of the exchange of strong, sustainable, non-GMO varieties and the fact that seeds produce the food to sustain each and every one of us. I've added a brief video clip of his blessing.




The exchanging commenced, and Kumu Aina's table was literally ravaged in under 30 minutes. One woman even exclaimed, "This is just like an early Christmas!" Terri had seeds from Kobucha Pumpkins, Christmas Lima Beans, Sun Hemp, Butterfly Milkweed, Long Beans and many many more great varieties that she felt were both easy to grow in this climate and provided a good use whether for food or nitrogen fixing properties. Terri's empty table easily made all of our hard folding work fell very worth while. Now folks had the seeds pre-packaged, labeled and ready to plant!

Don't think Terri walked out empty handed either- she got some Dill, Squash, Ginger and a few other seeds she was after from neighboring farmers. Overall the exchange was an awesome event to experience, and I hope that wherever I get my farm started there is a great community like the one here with fun and useful events like this one to make life easier on a new farmer.