Something To Chew On - Seed and Scion Exchange

EXTREMELY SUCCESSFUL COUNTY-WIDE SEED AND SCION EXCHANGE



On Saturday, February 5th, a who’s who of Mendocino County horticulturalists descended on Anderson Valley High School for Mendocino Permaculture’s 28th annual Winter Abundance Workshop. Around 200 attendees, hailing from Hopland to Laytonville, Potter Valley to Fort Bragg, swapped plant material, knowledge, good cheer, and showed off the latest fashions springing forth in this great County.
Almost everything about the event is free to attendees, and as organizer Rob Goodell puts it, “that makes it pretty simple.” Event organizers call the Winter Workshop a “public service event” and declare “a feast of knowledge may be had by all who are ready to eat!” Organizer Barbara Goodell says it’s “an incredibly diverse group that comes to the event, both age- and interest-wise,” and the lady speaks the truth! There were mere babes to octogenarians, dread locks to crew cuts, horticultural novices to professional fruit farmers, and everyone in between!
Free offerings included: admission; an assortment of hundreds of fruit, vegetable, herb, and flower seeds, collected and brought to the event by local gardeners; hundreds of apple, pear, plum, apricot, fig, kiwi, grape, peach, olive and other fruit scions (vine and tree cuttings used for grafting); and workshops on grafting, seed saving, Mendocino County apple varieties, the Anderson Valley High School Garden, and local grain growing.
For sale was lunch prepared by AV group The Salsitas, fruit tree root stocks, and locally-grown fruit trees and vines.
Attendees (or, it might be more appropriate to say participants, since the sharing of knowledge and plant material is such a collaborative effort in this community event) spent their time wandering between the geodesic domes, shade structures, hallways, and sunny fields of Anderson Valley High School Agriculture, greeting old and new friends, perusing seeds and scions, and riding the wave of knowledge spilling forth. As Ukiah attendee Angie Lowe noted, the event “starts all kinds of ideas about what you can do” in your own garden.
The organizing body, Mendocino Permaculture, is a “vaguely amorphous group” based in Anderson Valley that puts on social and educational events pertaining to permaculture in Mendocino County. Permaculture is “permanent agriculture” – or an agriculture that exists in harmony with the land and with social structures and can go on indefinitely. It’s about “growing your food and fiber as locally as possible” and using “sustainable agricultural techniques to not deplete the land and its growing capacity,” says Barbara.
I asked organizer Rob Goodell why Mendocino Permaculture puts on the event: “Well, everybody seems to be really enjoying it or we wouldn’t be doing it,” he responded. The event saw about 200 participants, up from the normal 125 of past years. Rob also notes that many of the varieties of seeds and scions available at the Winter Workshop are not available in stores, and that offering the plant propagating materials at the workshop allows people to be less dependent on big stores. The combination of plant material and hands-on educational workshop offers people a greater “ability to do it themselves,” something Mendocino County residents relish.
Rob also cites that the event is partly a reaction to the increasing domination of the global seed market by corporations like Monsanto, and that the event serves to “short-circuit the goal of total control of the seed market” that these corporations work towards. It’s an “agricultural empowerment thing,” he says.
The day was glorious. There was nary a cloud in the sky, and the brilliance of it all was enough to give even the most pessimistic brown-thumb confidence in their spring garden.
Mark your calendars: Mendocino Permaculture’s next event will be the Chestnut Gathering in the fall, during which participants gather chestnuts together and roast them on an open fire, and the next Winter Abundance Workshop will be in 2012 around this same time of year. For more information on Mendocino Permaculture, or to join their mailing list, call Rob and Barbara at 895 – 3897.