Here you see Farmer Emma preparing a jar of tomato seeds in readiness for our seed saving demo this Saturday, August 24 at 10 am till around noon. Come and join us for a tour of the gardens to harvest ingredients, then learn to save your own tomato seeds while still eating the delicious fruit -nothing wasted! Fresh salsa will then be shared, so you can taste the true garden-fresh difference yourself. From seed to salsa, and back to seed again! It’s food security in a yummy snack. This is a free event, but donations are always appreciated. T-shirts will be available for purchase as well.
Many thanks to Indigenous Youth Roots for partially funding Farmer Emma’s internship this year -she is a treasure! #IndigenousYouthRoots-IYR
Please join us for our Annual General Meeting! Meet our Board, get updates on our recent activities, and enjoy some social time to celebrate seeds and seedkeepers! On zoom from 5-7 pm on Monday, July 8. Email ratinenhayenthos at gmail.com for the link.
We will also host our monthly volunteer work bee/open house on Sunday, July 14, from 9-11 am (note, this is a bit earlier than we usually start, but if the day turns out to be hot, we will be glad of an earlier start and end time). Please bring your water bottle and wear sturdy footwear and sun protection!
One of the tasks you may enjoy as a volunteer is preparing name stakes for the varieties being stewarded here, so I include a photo of our interns doing just that. Name stakes are just what they sound like: wooden stakes that have the name of each variety in the collection painted on them. They help us stay organized and keep each variety true to type. Look for them when you visit the gardens! We have also been painting the other side of each stake with the Mohawk word for the plant type: tomato, bean, etc. We are encouraging the interns in learning the language, as we are fortunate to have a couple of strong speakers on hand this year!
We plan to host our AGM on Monday July 8 at 5 pm. Please email ratinenhayenthos at gmail.com for more details and to RSVP! We are excited to share with our community.
First of all, we are beyond excited to have three new Seed Keepers-in-training for this season, in addition to our two “originals”! See a photo of most of us below at a recent visit with long-time Seed Keepers Janice and Ken.
This Sunday, June 9 is the second Sunday of the month, and as such is our regular volunteer work bee from 10 am-noon! Youth especially are encouraged to come out, and we can sign for high school volunteer hours if that helps. Youth who join us for 3 work bees throughout the season will receive a free t-shirt! Just sign in when you arrive each time. The timing will be 10-noon for this one, although as the temperature rises we may plan to meet earlier in the day.
We are also excited to announce our latest fundraising initiative: an EcoTour Experience to immerse you in our ways of growing and keeping seeds! “Reconnecting One Seed at a Time” will be a meaningful, but also entertaining way to support the organization while learning about Rotinonhsyon:ni Seed Keeping. Our first offering will be the morning of Indigenous People’s Day, June 21, but we plan to offer more in the fall in honour of TRC/Orange Shirt day!
Here is the link for the Eco-tourism eventbrite page
Happy for new developments for the Seeds! We have a brand new greenhouse, thanks to some hard work and funding. We hosted our first volunteer work bee, and some young folks came out who haven’t visited us before (see the photo of all the leeks they transplanted for us)! We have had some community members reach out to us in new ways, and we received notice of some much-needed funding for this year!
We will be at the Earth Day event in the community this weekend, Saturday April 20 from 12-4 at the MBQ Firehall. If you ordered seed packets and haven’t picked them up yet, we will have them with us at this event, so please come by and chat. We will also have t-shirts for sale, and hopefully some extra seed packets for sharing. We plan to celebrate the 5th anniversary of the Seed Rematriation to this community, which happened in Kingston in ceremony on Earth Day in 2019- Yoyanare!
At this time of year, many groups reach out to us looking for workshops, advice, etc. Please be aware that this is our busiest time of year, and our staff are increasingly spending their time out on the land planting and growing the seeds -which is the reason we do this work! At this time of year we are less able to spend time at the computer, and we don’t likely have the capacity to offer spontaneous workshops. Please be patient with us, and if you think you would be interested in a workshop or presentation for next year, please contact us early to book -preferably in the wintertime, when we are indoors and it is storytelling time. We are happy to hear from you at any time, but our response time is likely to be slower in spring when our hands are too dirty to touch the phone 🙂 Nyawen!
At this time of year, people start to get antsy! Many people start to reach out to us looking for seeds to plant, and wondering if they should start those seeds indoors, like, right now!
The answer to the second part is mostly NO, not yet! And in many cases, the answer is NO, don’t start them indoors at all. Most of the crops we know as “the 3 Sisters” don’t need (or want) to be started indoors. These crops are adapted to growing here during the growing season, because they have been grown here for thousands of years. For most of that time there were no greenhouses here, no grow-lights, no windowsills. The seeds were kept safe until the soil was ready to receive them, outside. Beans don’t like to be transplanted at all-some of them would die if transplanted. Squashes can be transplanted, but they don’t like it and will sulk for quite a while once outside. In my experience, there is no advantage to starting squash plants indoors, because the ones started from seed-in-the-ground (direct-seeded) will quickly reach the same stage of maturity as the transplants, and may even overtake them, just because their roots were not disturbed by transplanting.
We have already started our peppers (see photo), because they like to be transplanted, and are native to climes further south which get a longer season. We will start tomatoes in the waxing moon phase after Easter, for the same reason (although tomatoes are adapting rapidly now, and I suspect there may be no need to start tomatoes indoors in the near future). Around the same time we will likely start some brassicas and flowers.
The answer to the first part of the question -do we have seeds to share? If you are a Tyendinaga community member, look for the form to fill out on our website, and come pick up your seeds on the Spring Equinox, March 19. Otherwise, please be patient and consider making a donation: we are gradually building capacity and hope to be able to share more widely as we grow. We will have a small quantity at Kingston Seedy Saturday. Nyawen!
Today we plant the pepper seeds! Our very first planting of 2024! Right now the moon is waxing towards full, which is a wonderful time to plant seeds for which the fruit (the part we commonly use) will be above ground. A few days ago in the first quarter might have been better, but that was not to be! It’s great to get them going before the full moon anyway.
You see the peat flats here on top of the wood stove and may be wondering if it isn’t too hot there? The answer is apparently not! I have had the best germination from peppers ever since we got the wood stove: they love getting heat from below. Maybe they are used to growing on the sides of volcanos? Once they germinate they will need light, of course, but as long as they are germinating, they will stay on the wood stove. Trying the eggplant there too this year.
We give thanks for the peppers, and we will welcome and greet their little sprouts very soon!
We are very fortunate that love is so embedded in what we do at the Kenhte:ke Seed Sanctuary and Learning Centre! Love for the seeds as we watch them grow from tiny sprouts to mature plants and back to seeds again, love for the volunteers who help out, love for the land and all its beings past present and future, and love for this community who persist in keeping seeds and feeding each other good food. We are gearing up for a full year of sharing this love with you at many events!
First up of our events will be our annual Seed Share event, when community members will be able to choose seeds from our posted list for pick-up in mid-late March. Watch for the list to be posted in early March, and grow locally-adapted heirloom and Indigenous plants in your garden this year! We will also be participating in Kingston Seedy Saturday with our sister organization KASSI, on Saturday March 9 at Cooke’s Portsmouth United Church in Kingston.
We are hoping to be involved in a celebration of the full Solar Eclipse on April 8, stay tuned for announcements! Definitely Look for us at the Earth Day event and join us in celebrating the fourth anniversary of the making of a modern Wampum belt and our commitment to the seeds in our care. The seeds were Rematriated in ceremony on April 22, 2019.
We will be bringing on more youth (age 29 or under) interns this year, so if you, or a youth you know, are interested in learning to save and grow seeds please reach out to us. Our mission is to cultivate a sacred space to grow, preserve, and protect heirloom and Indigenous seeds in accordance with Rotinonhsyon:ni cosmology, to ensure the availability of healthy, viable seeds for our collective future generations.
Volunteer workbees will continue this year on the second Sunday of each month beginning in April. On Sunday, April 14 at 10 am, we hope you can join us by the fire to work together to clear brush and other tasks. As usual, please dress for the weather and bring a water bottle. Youth under 30 are particularly encouraged to come out, and we are happy to sign off on High School volunteer hours for helpers who need those!
It hasn’t been a cold winter, and I fear for this year’s tick season, and for the Maple nation. But it has been a dark winter, there’s no doubt about it! The lengthening days that we tend to perceive at this time are welcome, because there’s a better chance that we might see some sun over the course of a longer day. Our seeds are still at rest now, but soon the onions and the peppers will be brought out and we will ask them to kindly start growing in anticipation of real soil and rain. We give greetings and thanks for Midwinter, Imbolc, Groundhog Day and any other seasonal celebration we can manage to lift our spirits at this time.
Also, t-shirts are back in stock! Email if you’re interested 😊 Here is a photo of an old one of mine, so you can see how well they hold up to abuse!
People often ask “how should I store my seeds?”, which is an excellent question. The question itself recognizes that we need to take care of the seeds when we aren’t using them, and that seeds are not lifeless items that can be stored any old way we want, but rather are living things that require specific conditions to prolong their life, without which they will die. Seeds are baby plants, and when we know the time is right to grow them, we will plant them in warm soil, water them, and make sure they have adequate light when they germinate. Knowing this effectively tells us what conditions we need to provide them in storage: the opposite conditions! So cool-cold temperatures, no soil or organic matter, very dry/no water, and preferably low light or even darkness. Of these, the most important factor is DRY. As you clean and thresh your seeds, you should be able to ensure that no insects are hiding out amongst them: that’s clean enough! Then make sure they are dry and keep them consistently cool and out of direct sunlight.
So, how should I store my seeds? In order of importance, dry and clean are tops! Then cool and dark as you are able. For instance, if you have to choose between storing your clean seeds in a damp dark cool basement OR a dry, but light and room temperature shelf: go for the shelf.
Glass jars are great for keeping seeds safe, as long as you open the lid to give them air occasionally. Putting the seeds in a paper envelope inside the jar allows you to label the envelope with their name and the year you grew those seeds. Always label your seeds somehow! In general, paper envelopes work very well, but they can be chewed open by mice, so if you have mice in your house (or other chewing pests who might eat seeds), use a glass jar. Plastic may work for short-term storage, but remember that plastic breaks down over time, which could contaminate your seeds. And it is also chewable.
If this all sounds complicated, don’t worry. Seeds are very resilient, and the most important thing is to stay in touch with them, to make a connection with them. Once you are connected with a variety, you will find that you intuitively care for those seeds in the way they need (although you may make some mistakes along the way: so always keep a back-up)!
