Heirloom Seed Project — Chad Brock–Red Bird Mission

 

This year Red Bird Mission’s Grow Appalachia Program is venturing into an heirloom seed project.  This project is designed to produce several types and varieties of heirloom seeds for distribution to all of our Grow Appalachia participants next year enabling them to become more self-sufficient gardeners . The plot for this gardening was generously donated for our use by Joann Corum , Who is a former member of Grow Appalachia.  Joann has agreed to let Grow Appalachia use nearly 6000 sq.ft. of  space on her farm in Manchester, Kentucky to be used to grow heirloom plants for seed production .

The Wolf family , who are also members of  Grow Appalachia , live nearby this garden plot and have agreed to help in the care taking of this garden and help with the harvesting and collection and preparing of the seeds.  Several other Participants have offered help with the upkeep of this garden and have shown great interest in learning the process of growing plants for seeds.

One of our more experienced and self-sufficient Grow Appalachia members “Elizabeth Fee” has shared tons of priceless information on this subject and has also donated Five different varieties of  heirloom bean seed, and two types of tomato seed, all that have been producing on her farm for many years. Some of these seeds have been saved by Elizabeth’s family for at least eighty  years. I find this truly amazing.  This family has definitely mastered the art of self-sufficient gardening.

 

We have begun this project and it has become   possible almost completely by the generous sharing, lending, volunteering and  dedication  from both our current and former Grow Appalachia members. I really feel we are starting to Grow a sense of community amongst our participants . To me ” that is success”

 

Red Bird Mission Grow Appalachia Coordinator
Chad Brock