Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Forgotten seeds beget fruit of the heirloom
Lindsey Nair
Front Burner blog
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Recipes
The average person would be less than thrilled to find an 8-year-old jar of dried beans in the back corner of the freezer.
But Sue Osborne McBride is not the average person, and these were not your average beans. They were Fronie beans, a variety that had been passed down through her family in Grayson County for generations.
McBride, 62, told me that until the freezer excavation, she thought the little brown beans named for her Great Aunt Sophronia had been lost forever. She thawed them, planted them and was delighted to see them climb up out of the soil -- and the past.
A family heirloom had been revived.
"They are no doubt over 100 years old," McBride said. "Something like that is important to me."
When I talked to Kevin Orlin Johnson, I realized that McBride is in good company. Johnson, of Texas, started a company called SeedTime, which fosters heirloom seed preservation. He hopes to start an educational gardening show about heirloom varieties.
Johnson said McBride's story is a perfect illustration of his cause. Seeds like that, he said, represent history, quality and human survival.
"Italian immigrants invariably brought their favorite tomato varieties as seeds," Johnson said. "They carried them in their shoes. A lot are still perpetuated by those same Italian families."
Johnson would later refer me to the Seed Savers Exchange, a nonprofit organization that collects, catalogs and sells heritage seed varieties. Diana Ott Whealy, who co-founded the group in 1975, said many plant varieties are in danger of becoming extinct if people such as McBride don't propagate them.
Indeed, according to a 1998 study by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, about 75 percent of the plants grown in the world for food in 1900 have been eliminated.
Replacing them are about 30 varieties that the U.N. says dominate food production around the world.
Those varieties are probably hybrids, or crossbreeds of two different plants. Although they are bred to be more prolific, hybrids -- unlike McBride's beans -- cannot reproduce themselves from their own seed.
Sustainability advocates such as Johnson and Whealy agree that those figures all add up to a pretty scary possibility. Because identical plants fall victim to the same pests, diseases and extreme weather, they fear that we are headed for something like the Irish potato famine of the 1840s or the U.S. corn blight of the 1970s.
"We are dependent on hybrid crops, but they rest on a very narrow genetic base," Johnson said, "and the seed has to be regenerated fresh each year."
The only way to really save heirloom plants, I learned, is actually the fun part.
As Barbara Kingsolver wrote in "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle": "You can't save the whales by eating whales, but paradoxically, you can help save rare, domesticated foods by eating them."
Whealy said she has maintained a German pink tomato that her grandfather brought with him in seed form when he emigrated from Bavaria. That, along with the Grandpa Ott morning glory, was her inspiration for Seed Savers.
McBride doesn't just grow and save her Fronie beans or the white frost bean passed down from her father's side of the family, of course. She eats them.
She describes the strange, purplish color of the Fronie's pod and how the white bean looks like a wax bean in the jar.
"It has a taste of its own," she mused about the white bean. "It doesn't taste like a half-runner green bean. I can't really describe the flavor, really."
McBride could become a member of Seed Savers Exchange and trade her family's heirloom seeds with others. It's also one of the places you can go if you want to jump in and grow some heirloom varieties of your own.
Every packet of seeds sold by the exchange includes instructions for drying and saving some seeds for next year's garden.
Of course, if you don't want to get your hands dirty, look for heirloom tomatoes, beans, potatoes and more down at your local farmer's market. And because heirloom vegetables often have a remarkable flavor, chefs have been putting them on their menus for some time.
Now, when I look down at my plate, I'll know that heirloom tomato slice means much more than just a light summer lunch.
Heck, it might even be named after someone's aunt.
On the Net:
Twist of fate cancels classes
Two weeks ago, I wrote about cooking classes at Twist & Turns on Campbell Avenue in downtown Roanoke.
According to owner Cynthia Gardner, representatives from the Roanoke fire marshal's office became concerned after reading the story and made a visit to her store.
Gardner says despite her efforts to build the perfect kitchen for such classes, officials have told her she is not in compliance with the rules, which mandate a special hood and a sprinkler system.
To make those updates would likely cost $40,000 to $50,000, Gardner said.
"That's a little bit more than I have in my back pocket," she said.
Gardner, who has been holding cooking classes at the store off and on for more than eight years, said she is disappointed by the decision.
"When you have a kitchen that's drop-dead gorgeous like this, it's nice to utilize it," she said.
All classes that had been scheduled at the store have been canceled. Cooking instructor Doreen Sidor is looking for a new place to host her classes.
As soon as I hear back from her, I'll let my readers know.
Do you have a favorite heirloom vegetable? Tell me about it on my blog. Go to roanoke.com
