Saturday, March 17, 2012

The Heirloom Life Gardener - Weekend Cooking

While perusing the new books shelf at my local library, I came across, "The Heirloom Life Gardener" by Jere and Emilee Gettle. The Gettles are the founders of the Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company.


The book starts with Jere's life as a young boy. Amazingly, he knew what he wanted to do from a young age - and he started doing it! The book talks about his early gardening efforts. There are several sections (and I wish that they had been longer) about expeditions that he made to Mexico, Thailand, and Guatemala when he was in his early twenties in search of heirloom seeds.

This post was written as part of Weekend Cooking, a weekly meme hosted by Beth at Beth Fish Reads. Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to head over to Beth Fish Reads, grab the button, and link up anytime over the weekend.  (The button is on your right...)

The book then takes us through his marriage and the founding and growth of the Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company. And, then, the last half or so of the book is the 'A to Z Growing Guide,' which is a vegetable-by-vegetable compendium of tips for gardening.

The book also discusses the importance of heirloom seeds - the big seed companies are making our food supply less and less diverse...

And, at this point, I want to digress for a minute. I have another blog. Its called libbysotherblog.blogspot.com I post photos on that blog. Nature shots. And, through it I have "met" Michelle at her Rambling Woods blog. So, I was linking to her this past week and I read on her site where GMO seeds are harming the monarch butterfly!! So, here I am reading this book about how GMO seeds are bad for the food supply, and I stumble upon this information about these same seeds being bad for nature! It turns out that they kill milkweed, and milkweed is the food of the monarch!

So, GMO seeds are an issue that book bloggers, food bloggers, garden bloggers and nature bloggers have in common! In terms of the impact on the food bloggers...just look at some of the pics I borrowed from the Baker Creek site(!) I am using eggplant as an example -- but why would we want to restrict ourselves to 1 or 2 types of eggplant when there are SO MANY kinds out there waiting to be explored!

19 comments:

  1. This was just posted to Monarch Watch..
    <<<It is apparent that there have been a significant decline in the overwintering monarch population since 2003. This decline is related to the adoption of herbicide tolerant row crops which first began in 1996. As pointed out in previous communications, the milkweeds in these row crops were shown in 2000 to produce more monarchs per unit area than other monarch habitats. By 2004 the adoption of corn and soybeans genetically modified to resist glyphosate exceeded 51%. The adoption rate by 2010 was 81%. Milkweeds are now scarce in this formerly productive habitat. Overall, the amount of habitat lost due to the adoption of these crops may exceed 100 million acres

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  2. Michelle- Thanks SO much for getting the word out! A lot of us simply do not KNOW about this. The next step is figuring out what to do...

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  3. What a great book! And GMO ... don't get me started. We buy organic as much as possible and when were gardening in a big way, we always tried to buy heirloom seeds (not always easy to track down 25 years ago!). The consequences and ramifications are enormous.

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    1. I am going to explore Michelle's Rambling Woods site a bit more and see what can be done about this GMO take over. Maybe it is just as simple as people one by one making different choices, but maybe there is something else...don't know yet...

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  4. went to a very interesting talk at the Philadelphia Flower Show about seed saving and seed libaries from a guy up in NY state..very interesting and convincing.

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    1. I knew you had gone to the flower show from your older posts - and I didn't even think of flowers in terms of seed saving - but, you're right! The same things apply!

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  5. Great post! We will choose organic/heirloom produce whenever possible.

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  6. I am particularly sensitive to the GMO issue in that I buy alot of tofu and soybean related products.

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  7. I also choose organic when possible. Thanks for this great post on a interesting topic.

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  8. It is always a shame to have only a couple of varieties of fruit and vegetable available to us to use when there really are so many options that either used to be or still are available if you know where to look for them.

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    1. That's what I think. Remember the movie, Mame?" She said, "Life is a banquet and most poor slobs are starving." LOL!

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  9. Baker Creek is one of my favorite seed suppliers since they are here in Missouri. I want to get down there someday to see their operation. It was their eggplants that drew me in, too. Unfortunately, eggplants and my garden don't seem to be well-suited. But I'm not giving up yet! This year, I bought a bunch of lettuce seeds and some other greens.

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    1. That is great that you live somewhat close. they have built a small village there!

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  10. Fascinating subject, and love the way you've presented it. The book sounds great!

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  11. What an interesting post. I am going to check out this book.

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  12. Great post, Libby. I love organic and abhor GMO, including everything to do with Monsanto corporation. The way things are going now, they have the power to ruin the food supply on our planet. It's frightening.

    Thanks for sharing the link to Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company. I had fun getting inspired for gardening this year.

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  13. Sounds like a very interesting book, Libby. I'll see if our local library has it.

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