Guardians of the Heirloom Seeds

From their com­pany Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, Jere Gettle, along with his wife Emilee, pro­vides some 1,400 dif­fer­ent vari­eties of heir­loom seeds to cus­tomers all over the world. In addi­tion, they pub­lish a quar­terly mag­a­zine called Heirloom Gardener and were instru­men­tal in cre­at­ing the National Heirloom Exhibition, which last year attracted about 15,000 attendees.

A Lifelong Passion

The roots of Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds go well back, to a time long before the rais­ing of heir­looms became fash­ion­able. While much of the pop­u­la­tion was shop­ping in super­mar­ket pro­duce aisles, bliss­fully unaware of the qui­etly van­ish­ing diver­sity, Gettle—though just a young child—was already farm­ing. “I started plant­ing when I was three,” Gettle told Organic Connections. “Some of the first mem­o­ries I have as a child are plant­ing the gar­den with my par­ents and grandparents.”

His inter­est in pro­vid­ing seeds fol­lowed right along. “When I was four and five, I used to look through seed cat­a­logs,” Gettle con­tin­ued. “I would dream of what it must be like to work at a seed com­pany, work with seeds and gar­den­ing, and grow veg­eta­bles and so forth. I loved grow­ing veg­eta­bles; that’s what I always dreamed of doing full time.”

Deep History and Diversity

Also early on, Gettle’s inter­est took him in the direc­tion of the diver­sity and won­der of heir­loom vari­eties. “When I was a child, the term heir­loom wasn’t even being used,” he recalled. “But I was always inter­ested in the unusual, the old, the col­or­ful. And the heir­loom vari­eties were the things that were unique—the giant radishes and the white cucum­bers and so forth. They are the vari­eties that tend to have diversity.”

It wasn’t only the unique col­ors and shapes that attracted Gettle, how­ever. It was equally the rich his­to­ries behind each of these vari­eties. “In my pre­teens, the term heir­loom started to come around, and I was begin­ning to read the his­to­ries of the dif­fer­ent vari­eties,” he said. “It’s very fas­ci­nat­ing to be able to plant some­thing that Thomas Jefferson grew; or maybe some­thing an ancient Roman emperor grew, or the ancient Chinese. Or, it might be some­thing that was in someone’s fam­ily for hun­dreds of years, or part of someone’s cul­ture or tra­di­tion. There are all these old vari­eties in a cul­ture that mean a lot in mak­ing eth­nic foods cor­rect; it would be far prefer­able to use the actual tomato that was always used, for exam­ple, in dif­fer­ent recipes than just a store-bought tomato.”

The Heirloom Path

It didn’t take long for Gettle to estab­lish his life’s career path. “When I was a teenager I kept think­ing about the idea of start­ing a seed com­pany,” he related. “So when I was 17, after a num­ber of years of grow­ing dif­fer­ent things, I started print­ing a lit­tle price list. It was sim­ply a 12-page black-and-white run-off at the local copy shop. We sent out approx­i­mately 550 of those, with around 75 dif­fer­ent vari­eties on the list. It’s just kind of grown from there.”

Gettle gave a cou­ple of exam­ples of the amaz­ing crops avail­able. “There are some really great vari­eties in toma­toes,” he said. “One of my per­sonal favorites is the Jersey Devil. It came from New Jersey, and they actu­ally used it in their can­ning indus­try back before mod­ern hybrids became com­mon­place in pro­duc­tion. It’s a long, pointed tomato, roughly six inches in length, shaped like a devil’s horn. The neat thing about these toma­toes is that they’re bright red and have an incred­i­bly good, sweet fla­vor and very few seeds, unlike most com­mer­cial Roman-type toma­toes you buy in a gro­cery store.

“Our over­all num­ber one best-selling water­melon is the Ali Baba. It’s a vari­ety that was sent to us from a seed col­lec­tor in Iraq just after we started in 1998, and we’ve been grow­ing it since. It has a bright red flesh and a very hard rind, so it keeps very well. It’s one of the sweet­est water­mel­ons we’ve grown. It also seems to grow bet­ter in drought con­di­tions or dry con­di­tions than a lot of the other water­mel­ons. It’s done well for grow­ers from south­ern Maine to Florida to California and all but the most north­ern areas, even where a lot of the other big tra­di­tional water­mel­ons won’t produce.”

Genetic Diversity

Beyond the col­ors, shapes and his­to­ries of these vari­eties, Gettle sees cru­cial impor­tance in the genetic diver­sity of them. “We must also pre­serve the genet­ics of these varieties—genetics that are in dan­ger of dis­ap­pear­ing,” said Gettle. “Genetic engi­neer­ing, hybridiza­tion and the com­mer­cial­iza­tion of agri­cul­ture are basi­cally lim­it­ing what peo­ple can grow both legally and technically.”

Click any image to enlarge.

The encroach­ment of big agri­cul­ture has also meant another lim­it­ing fac­tor on the grower. “It’s mak­ing it very dif­fi­cult for any­body that wants to save seeds,” Gettle explained. “For a com­mer­cial farmer who’s grow­ing com­mer­cial crops, even if the crop isn’t genet­i­cally engi­neered, in many instances it’s patented or hybridized. In most cases the farmer can’t just go back to his farm and save seeds like he always has done. Since the begin­ning of farm­ing, farm­ers have always taken home that seed, dried it and saved it.

“That’s another rea­son why heir­looms are important—they bring back the inde­pen­dence to gar­den­ers and farm­ers to actu­ally know who is pro­vid­ing their food from the seed up, ver­sus just get­ting it from the seed sup­plier. You are in charge of your own seed; you can save it and replant it. With a hybrid off the rack at a gro­cery store, you’re not going to get the same type of veg­etable in gen­eral as what you planted, and if you plant a patented seed it’s actu­ally ille­gal to save and replant the seeds. Most mod­ern vari­eties are patented, so in fact it’s a crim­i­nal offense to save your own seed if it’s from a patented type.”

The Never-Ending Search

Gettle and his wife are always on the look­out for new varieties—and are con­stantly find­ing them. “We just got back from a trip to Thailand, Europe and the Middle East,” Gettle said. “In Thailand, we trav­eled through the hill-tribe areas, deal­ing with the Hmong and Lisu tribes and oth­ers, where a lot of the dif­fer­ent heir­looms are still being main­tained. One of the vari­eties we col­lected was a really big round cucum­ber, the shape of a hon­ey­dew melon. It has bright yel­low skin and deli­cious slightly sweet, very mild cucum­ber flesh. We also brought back a vari­ety of really good squashes, as well as some cool egg­plants in shapes and col­ors that we didn’t have in the collection.

“When we don’t travel, peo­ple send us things. A lady from Syria has been cor­re­spond­ing with us over the last year, send­ing us seeds and sto­ries of var­i­ous egg­plants, squashes, mel­ons, cucum­bers and other veg­eta­bles with his­to­ries. A lady from Greece is doing the same. A gen­tle­man from Portugal has been send­ing us things for sev­eral years. People are always send­ing us things—from the Philippines to South America to Japan and every­where in between, and of course from America as well.”

It’s clear that for many years to come, Gettle will be ful­fill­ing his life’s mission—finding and keep­ing alive the won­drous tra­di­tion, his­tory, color, fla­vor and shapes of heir­loom varieties.

Thanks to peo­ple like Gettle keep­ing watch over our true agri­cul­tural legacy for so many years, we are free today to enjoy this amaz­ing diversity.

For more infor­ma­tion, please visit www.rareseeds.com.