2025 Workshop Offerings

Ratinenhayénthos is happy to announce a series of workshops led by Cate Henderson; our seed collection and garden manager at KSSLC. Cate has 16 years of hands-on experience with this living seed collection and is mentoring our interns to specialize in the care of the seeds; and  their reproductive cycle from seed to seed for 300 varieties. Cate employs seed saving best practices and is an accredited organic land care practitioner.

 Ratinenhayénthos invites community members to register for a small fee. Each one self-contained, approx. 1 hour long, $25 each or PWYC or all 12 for $250. Drop-in attendance is also welcome!

Workshops will take place on Monday afternoons at 4:30 pm at the Seed Sanctuary gardens at 1462 York Rd, Tyendinaga

Proposed workshop list, following the Ohenton Karihwatehkwen :

April 28:  Planning the Seed Garden (human activity + moon phases) MOON: start of first quarter

Description: “Growing seeds for Seed Keeping in your garden is easy!  Understanding just a few simple tips will make seed keeping a breeze.  Join us to learn all about this beautiful relationship with plants that will keep us growing yummy food in our gardens for years to come!”

May 12: Preparing to plant + Seed Songs MOON: full

Description: “What do we need to ensure success in planting our gardens?  Join us to learn the necessary tools and techniques, including traditional Haudenosaunee methods and proper timing for planting.”

May 26: Transplanting/care of Mother Earth MOON: new

Description: “ Transplanting can be very disturbing to plants, but it is also a necessary process for some of our favourite food plants!  How can we minimize the disturbance and successfully settle our transplants into their new home in the garden?  We will explore all the steps required at this workshop!”

More to come, there are 12 planned in total throughout the season!

Sewakwekon!  Wishing everyone a peaceful and happy year ahead, and an abundant harvest in 2025! 

At this time we have finished our inventory and will be packaging up seeds, so we will soon be sharing notice of our annual Seed Share event, which typically happens in March -we can’t wait to share our home-grown, adapted seeds with our community!

 This year we look forward to connecting more through offering a seedling sale, workshops, volunteer work bees, our “Reconnecting, One Seed at a Time” EcoTours, and a “community garden”-type space just for food-growing (but we provide the seeds of our Indigenous and heirloom varieties).  We are planning a bigger grow-out of community maize on-site, so look for call-outs for seeds, help with planting, and a husking/braiding social in the fall.  We have a full slate of workshop offerings throughout the season, so stay tuned for more opportunities to learn on the land, from the seeds and plants themselves!

  Our Board member Tayohseron:tye Nikki Auten will be presenting at PEC Seedy Saturday on February 22, and we will have a table there with our great t-shirts for sale.  Please support us and this great event if you can.

Digging and aerating rows

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Tamping soil

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Sharing the knowledge with the children

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Tonight, January 13, we will enjoy a full moon, after which the moon will start “waning” again, towards the new moon on the 28th. In just one month (plus a day or two), we will start planting the onion crops from seed, that will be transplanted out into the gardens when the soil is warm enough in spring. Why just the onions? Because they are root crops for us humans -we want lots of energy to go into their roots, that feed us and add flavour to our cooking. Root crops are best planted just after the full moon, in what is called the “third quarter” waning moon. As Seed Keeper Rowen White advises: “Plant seeds and tubers that grow underground…this is also an ideal time to transplant to promote healthy root growth.” Onions require a long season, and they are also sensitive to the sun’s effects, because their bulbs enlarge in time for the Summer Solstice, the longest day/shortest night. So they need to be planted from seed well ahead of this event so that they have time to grow their leaves and photosynthesize, gathering sugars and other nutrients to feed that bulb, which in turn, feeds us. Planting intentionally with the moon phases helps us to organize and prioritize in alignment with what the plant wants, so we all get what we need from this growing season, plants and humans alike.

As the seeds dry down and we spend time lovingly cleaning away the chaff and sorting the seeds into 3 (1.good for keeping, 2.good for eating and 3.good for composting) we also spend time lovingly planning for the future of these good seeds and the good people who keep them. We will be taking time for some “strategic planning”, reflecting on what we have done well and what needs improvement. Feel free to reach out and give us feedback at this time, we would love to hear from you in both of those categories! Please email ratinenhayenthos@gmail.com

We look forward to upcoming events cleaning seeds with the seniors, a couple of conferences for learning and networking, and also the local event posted here: Kingston’s “Mini” Seedy Saturday. Autumn blessings do fall on us like the leaves: we just need to be open to receiving them, especially in darker times.

Due to the Thanksgiving weekend last weekend, we decided to change the volunteer workbee (which has been the second Sunday of each month) to October 20th instead!  We will combine it with the official closing of the gardens, so there will be a little extra celebration to enjoy.  We will be onsite from 9:30am to 11:30am (or thereabouts), so please feel free to drop by even if you aren’t up for volunteering. Looks like the weather should be perfect for gathering outdoors one more time (but dress in layers just in case, and be sure to check for ticks)!

What: volunteer workbee and Closing of the Gardens (2024)

When: Sunday, October 20, 9:30 am-11:30 am

Where: Kenhté:ke Seed Sanctuary and Learning Centre

Thankful for an abundant harvest!

2024

Happy belated Fall Equinox everyone!  Up till the Equinox it was a dry late-summer period, which is perfect for ripening seed crops.  Now the fall rains have begun, but the dry seeds are safely tucked inside under cover to slowly get cleaned and sorted over the coming weeks.  Most crops are doing very well!  The peppers and eggplants look amazing and will be harvested very soon, the carrots are huge and the beans are prolific.  Cucumbers have all been harvested, lettuces have bolted and are pumping out lots of seed right now!  However, we have to report that our squashes and our corn did not thrive this year -they germinated very late and are struggling to form full fruit.  We are praying for them and are prepared to cover them if necessary, but we believe this is symptomatic of a bigger problem:  we are growing relatively small amounts of crops that want to be in large populations to feed the whole community!  They want to be grown in big groups, with lots of pollinators and people interacting all together (the cow corn, for instance, grows great, acres and acres of it).  We are getting there, slowly building capacity and opening up more land for larger grow-outs.  That, along with growing more biennials now that we have a greenhouse and hoophouse, will be our focus for 2025, and we are looking forward to it!  Nyawen:kowa to all the folks who have supported us throughout the season, all the funders, donors (cash and in-kind), volunteers, interns, our amazing Board of Directors, and all the community members who visit us at events and speak kindly about us and keep us in their prayers.  We will have one more volunteer workbee on October 13 and will post more about that soon!

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!