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!

The Heirloom Life Gardener - Book Beginnings & Friday 56

I am reading - among other things(!) - "The Heirloom Life Gardener" by Jere and Emilee Gettle.

I am participating in a meme called Book Beginnings at A Few More Pages. We share the first line or two of a book with one another and discuss it! (You should try it!)

So, here is the first sentence of this book -- go ahead and laugh, because it sounds a trifle over-enthusiastic. "There is a grow-your-own-food revolution happening in America right now, and vegetables have never been more exciting."

See what I mean? But, the authors are passionate about what they do, and I admire that. They are the co-founders of the Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company.

I am also participating in the Friday 56 meme at Freda's Voice. Here is what page 56 has to say, "Every so often I dream that its summer and that its either freezing or snowing on my garden, on top of my tomato plants. For me, this is akin to a nightmare, actually."

So, I am going to report on the whole book this weekend for Weekend Cooking! This is bigger than gardening...we have to use and protect these heirloom seeds or the food supply will not be diverse enough. It will be in danger because of the lack of diversity. It is like the Irish Potato Famine - the crops were wiped out by one blight because they were all the same variety of potato.