THE VIRGINIA HERITAGE GRAIN PROJECT
AN ORIGIN STORY
W RIT T E N BY SHELLEY SACKIER
N
ot too long ago, I was on the ground beneath the backside of a tractor helping a farmer named Pete hook up a piece of equipment. I said to him, “So, I read that the soil is just like the gut microbiome, you want to put good things into it, it shouldn’t be the same thing every time, and you don’t want it leaking. Did I get that right?” “Exactly,” he said, “but who the hell cares about regenerative agriculture?” He plowed on and pointed to the ground. “You see this here patch of earth? This is what Virginia tastes like. This here patch of earth is what we need to be protecting. And that’s what your project should be preaching.” Except, that wasn’t going to go down well with the Virginia Spirits Board — the people who awarded me money to put together the Virginia Heritage Grain Project. I was using funds from their Research and Education Grant Program not to proselytize farming but to study some of our naI started pitching my plan out loud to tion’s oldest grains used within the spirits the most important people I knew — the industry. ones who were going to poke holes in all of I had pitched this project to the board it. One of those people, my favorite menbecause for years I’d been hearing distilltor, said to me, “Oof…You’re going to have er voices saying, “We can’t keep up with to break this project down into chunks. the big guys. We’re losing shelf space. We First you have to find those grains. Then don’t have the same economies of scale to you have to plant them. Then harvest. compete.” Then distill. And you know you can’t do all I thought maybe I could push back on those things at once.” all the competitive comparisons by creatCan’t, I thought, is such an evil word. ing a project that said, But also, a challenge. Therefore, I got to “Hey, whiskey drinkwork cold-calling people, which is exacters! Look over here. ly what I do when I’m on a crusade and We’ve got somethin’ slightly panicky. different. And different is good, right?”
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I knew that finding old seeds would be tricky, but I also knew they were out there because I am a saver by nature. Call me a hoarder, call me thrifty, but I knew of another hoarding, thrifty organization out there: the USDA Germplasm. These agronomists, along with heritage organizations like Monticello and seed savers across many states, finally agreed to give me seeds. Granted, I now possessed an amount approximately the size of a box of Tic Tacs. But at least I had seeds. Next, I had to convince farmers. Easy peasy, I thought, because I speak farmer. I grew up in Wisconsin. I was raised on a steady diet of Prairie Home Companion episodes and John Deere catalogs. Telling them my plan to resurrect the flavors of history by “bringing back heritage grains” made most of them fall back into their cornfields laughing.
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