Coast Mountain News Thursday, April 12, 2012
$1.00 + HST Vol. 28 | No. 8 Thursday, April 12, 2012
Serving the Bella Coola Valley eyy and the Chilcotin
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Gary Coons comments on JRP hearings in Bella Bella
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Kevin O’Neill photo
Holy tomato! It's that time of year again, when gardeners start to plan out their crops. Join the local agricultural community at the Plant Swap in front of Hagensborg Shop Easy on April 22 to share seeds and stories.
The “seeds” of humanity KEVIN O’NEILL When I mustered up enough courage to venture downstairs and survey the incredible havoc wreaked by the 2010 flood, I think I actually looked first at the garden. Several small red dots poking through the silt blanket indicated that at least some of my late tomato crop remained. It was not until minutes had passed that I realized that the large greenhouse that served as their deluxe accommodation was completely gone, broken into pieces and deposited in the woods west of the garden. My long mesh fence, abso-
lutely loaded with runner and pole beans, was also gone, draped around pieces of the greenhouse. That fence carried future seed stock for several varieties I’d been saving for more than thirty years. Happily, after hosing off inches of oily silt, the pods beneath actually matured enough seed for my needs. While this in itself says a lot about the tenacity of things so small and humble that we often take them for granted, I wondered why seed saving had become so very important to me. Part of me wishes I could tell you that I was raised on a rural farm and learned about
such things from my parents and relatives. But I grew up in the bowels of New York City, where the only dirt I ever saw was on a baseball diamond in Central Park. Had I even wanted to explore further the park's nether regions of greenery, it simply would’ve been too dangerous in the 60s; police regularly interrupted our ball games to send us home well before dark for our own safety! A lot has been written lately about the inestimable value of bio-diversity in all things, plant varieties included. I won’t repeat any of this here, except to illustrate the point by noting that seed catalogues from
one hundred years ago commonly contained roughly nine times the varieties of garden vegetables as similar catalogues today; for example, an unbelievable 520 varieties of the lowly cabbage have been reduced today to a miniscule 28! Who knew? Sadly, virtually all of these old varieties are now extinct. I say “sadly” because each and every variety possesses within its tiny seed unique genetic characteristics specific to its area of origin. No less a magazine than National Geographic recently opined that “the best hope for securing food’s future may depend on our ability to preserve the
locally cultivated foods of the past.” As an Irishman who undoubtedly lost many ancestors to that great famine caused by a total dependence on one particular variety of potato to the exclusion of many others, I see our current agricultural practices condemning us all to a repeat performance. Alternatively, saving seeds from peas and beans, lettuce and heirloom tomatoes, keeps local varieties alive and gene pools expanding. And it directly connects you to that observant individual who first noticed SEE PLANT ON PAGE 3