I’ll never forget that first campout. It was the early 1980s, and my mom, my four-year old daughter and I slept in bunks at a Boy Scout camp just a stone’s throw from the Decorah, Iowa farm owned by the Seed Savers Exchange.
It was July – hot and sticky. And there were dozens of us from all across the Midwest gathered to learn about how to save heirloom seeds. Those more practiced came with seeds to share: seeds they’d grown out in their home gardens or farms. Seeds that they’d been entrusted with by a grandmother or aunt, an older neighboring farmer or a good friend.
That campout shifted my thinking about seeds completely because I learned that saving 
seeds isn’t only about growing food, it’s about perpetuating a cuisine, a culture, tradition, and food independence. I also learned that seed saving is amazingly political. I heard from people who’d traveled halfway around the world to let us know that there are gardeners and farmers who risk prison by saving seeds that have adapted to their side of the mountain, their climate and their culture.
Today, SSE is used by over 13,000 members around the globe, and works to grow out and preserve 20,000 varieties. Lots more people know about and participate in seed saving the world over, but the threat to open-pollinated seeds is as great, if not greater because of the consolidation of seed companies.
Connecting the dots between what we eat and how it’s grown
Fortunately, there are alternative seed sources, several of them featured in a Seeds Savers Exchange online exhibit called The Rise of Heirloom Seeds. In this Deep Roots Radio podcast, co-host Dave Corbett and I chat with SSE seed historians Sara Straate and Kelly Loud about this web project.