Dan,
One of my most favorite experiences is to find one of your stories
nestled within the incoming mail.
Marsha
At 11:21 PM 6/22/2009, you wrote:
It's good to sit in the garden. Seeds planted last month rise like
slowly engorging erections out of the ground, straining to meet the
sinful sun, full of unrequited desire. Summer has arrived.
When I turned 25 an attorney contacted me regarding news of an
inheritance from my great-grandfather, who'd passed away when I was
11. I remember him best for his gardens. I hadn't thought about him in years.
I made an appointment with the attorney a week hence. In the
meantime I couldn't help but wonder what the old man left me. If it
were money he'd of left everyone money and the news would have
reached me. My family can't keep secrets. If not money then maybe a
house or an old car... I was excited.
When I met with the attorney she handed me a shoe-box sized box and
what looked like a coffee can with no markings on it, just plain
silver in color. It didn't feel like there was anything in the can
but the box felt heavy with paper. It was taped securely shut. I
said: is this it? She said: that's it! I could tell our meeting was over.
Once back in the car, I excitedly took out my pocket knife and cut
the tape holding the box shut. It had to be old antique money worth
a fortune, or maybe stocks and bonds. But when I took off the cover
and looked inside, all I found were a half dozen old hand-written
notepads. I thought, what the fuck is this shit? I took off work and
drove all the way up here for this?
Opening the notebook on top I could see it was a type of journal.
The last date entered was in 1962, about three years before my
great-grandfather passed away. I picked up the notepad on the bottom
and looked inside. It was very old and some of the pages had been
inserted into protective plastic sleeves to keep them from
deteriorating further. The dates were from the middle 1800s.
I put the notepads back in the box and opened the can. The lid was
very tight and it hurt my fingernails to open it. Inside were
packets of seeds, each packet labeled as to what kind of seeds it
contained and the date. I figured the seeds were no good, what after
over fifteen years, and I nearly threw out the can. On second
thought, I kept it.
I remember as a boy I always got motion sickness when we traveled to
great-grandfather's farm. He lived in the hilly part of central
Illinois. It was the hills that did it to me. Looking back though,
it really was a magical place for a young kid. Trails ran
everywhere, probably made by deer or other critters, but tended to
by great-grandfather so that the paths didn't become overgrown by
the surrounding forest.
They had 40 acres. Great-grandmother stayed in the main house just
off the county highway and great-grandfather stayed in a shanty at
the back of the farm. It seemed perfectly natural at the time but
looking back it does seem strange that they lived apart like that.
Maybe it was just that they couldn't live with or without each other.
Along the trail to the shanty were various gardens, terraced
lovingly out of scrub soil, the leavings of prairie weeds. We'd
always find great-grandfather in one of the gardens, taking careful
notes after measuring each plant in a cordoned off plot. In his
shanty, the walls were lined with jars of dried herbs, and in the
root cellar smelling of sweet sand and cedar were cans of preserves.
There was only one table in the shanty and it was covered in books
and piles of papers. During the autumn the walls would be festooned
with drying plants tied in bunches. He heated the room with a wood
stove and there were chairs by the stove to keep warm in the winter
and to sit and chat during the summer. The updraft from the chimney
would pull cool air in from outdoors.
I started documenting my own experiments that first year. I made my
first journal entry, just below my great-grandfather's last. I'd
read all the journals through many times by then. I had come to
deeply appreciate the gift my great-grandfather had left to me and I
had begun my own seed program. I've since expanded my outlook, but
at that time I worked year to year.
I simply picked out the best, most vigorous plants and
cross-pollinated them. Later, I learned to select for certain traits
that I valued more highly than others and how to develop
true-breeding seeds... seeds that would result in plants all sharing
the parent plants' traits. I learned to select for local. Since I
started 30 years ago I've had to adjust springtime ahead by over two
weeks. It is all carefully documented in my notebooks, no, in our
notebooks. Everything is documented there, date and time of
planting, phase of the moon, growth rate, days of sun and rain, everything.
The first year, I planted every seed in the canister. Only about 1
in 10 came up, but I learned how to save the seeds for next year by
storing them carefully away in vacuum-sealed bags. Those were
heritage seeds, very valuable in retrospect, though at the time I
didn't know that. They're valuable to back-cross with future
generations to keep the heritage healthily static and yet allow for
Dynamic diversity too.
These days with the Internet there are a great many seed banks where
a person can trade, buy, or sell seeds of all kinds. In my
great-grandfather's day though, it must have been much more
difficult to develop great strains. And he had some great seeds in
that canister.
I plant many, many seeds these days. Once in a while, some
completely unlooked for trait will Dynamically emerge. The more
seeds I plant, and the greater I manage the environment, the greater
the chance is of a jump in evolution. To an uneducated observer, it
might look like "oops." But it's not. It is the end result of
hundreds and indeed thousands of years of careful selection.
I often wonder why great-grandfather left me the seeds and journals.
I don't remember being particularly close to him. I paid attention
when he spoke to me while the other kids ran and played. But that
was more of a case of not wanting to be rude than it was of any
great interest in what he was telling me. I remember his eyes used
to shine when he thought he was imparting some special knowledge,
some little secret known only to aficionados.
I also wonder to whom I will leave the journals. I guess someone
will come along who seems a likely candidate. The kids are all busy
with their jobs and families and the grandkids are all gamers.
The first of the journal entries were from my great-grandfather's
grandfather, way back in 1844. The old man owned a farm; there's a
road named after him now that runs just past where his farm sat. He
grew enough to eat and enough to sell to pay his bills and he was
generally happy, from the looks of his entries. It doesn't seem to
have been a bad life to lead. I am very proud to continue his heritage.
_________________________________________________________________
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http://www.microsoft.com/windows/choosepc/?ocid=ftp_val_wl_290
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