Sowing the seeds for change begins with having the actual seeds. The Abundance Foundation would like to thank Margaret Jemison for her generous donation in 2007 that is creating the Piedmont Biofarm SEED program. Across the country other regions have already established projects for maintaining seeds and plants for their developing climates. South East Eco Diversity (SEED) will create seeds designed to germinate in the southeast. As we move through the transitions of climate change, our agricultural base is evolving. By cultivating seeds we are able to grow in our region, the diverse varieties adjust heartily to our new conditions.  Farmer Doug has created a “Sweet Jemison” in Margaret’s honour!  It is a large sweet yellow pepper that was the new favorite during the Pepper Tasting Extravaganza held in October, 2008.
The program embodies two more components important to maintaining a healthy agricultural base: Variety Trials and Plant Breeding. Variety Trials are experimental practices with various stocks to determine potential for our climate and soil. Plant breeding improves varieties to better adapt to conditions and specific needs of local growers. Check out Farmer Doug’s photo journal!
Piedmont Biofarm is housed at the Piedmont Biofuels Industrial Plant and operated by Doug Jones. Farmer Doug attended Harvard, lived at the Famous Farm and has practiced his art with food production for 35 years.  To read, Designing Sweet Peppers: My Work to Elevate Them to Center Stage of Local Foods by Doug Jones, Piedmont Biofarm, click here.

Now, we are creating the Abundance Pepper and you can be a part of the creation!  You can purchase your “share” of the Abundance Pepper Variety.  Your contribution helps create abundance on a grass (ok, pepper) roots level by supporting our community seed saving initiative.

This pepper is one of several varieties of resilient, delicious peppers being developed by farmer Doug Jones specifically for our region’s climate and soil. They are literally born to grow here.

You will receive a packet of seeds direct from Farmer Doug. Click here for more info & to order!

Highlights of the 2008 Seed Season:
by Farmer Doug:

This year my breeding work ranged from exciting to promising to encouraging to treading water to mysterious to disappointing.  The results of most projects are in the exciting and promising categories.  The major emphasis of my breeding efforts has continued to be sweet pepper development.  (See my separate article, “Designing Sweet Peppers: My Work to Elevate Them to Center Stage of Local Foods”)  But we did expand our variety trials and evaluations in many other crops as well.

SEED SAVING:  Supporting all these crop improvement efforts is our extensive seed saving work.  We succeeded in saving large quantities of seeds of many crops, allowing us to give away lots of seed at the “Seed Swap” at the annual conference of Carolina Farm Stewardship Assoc.  We also have enough seed to begin marketing of seedlings and packaged seeds this spring.

All of this seed work also gave us an opportunity to refine our seed processing techniques.  Several folks, as they experimented with methods and equipment, discovered improvements in our technique.  We did experience some losses of seed due to inadequate drying space and a labor shortage in early summer that impacted both our  vegetable production and our seed saving.

EDUCATION: All of these seed saving projects gave me and my intern Rob Jones plenty of material to present a series of four workshops on seeds and backyard breeding in April and May, totaling 16 hours of actual workshop time and countless hours of preparation and cleanup. (Seed Magic Workshop info, click here).  In July, I enjoyed teaching teens about seed saving at DIG (Durham Inner-city Gardeners), a project of SEEDS (South Eastern Efforts Developing Sustainable Spaces, Inc. – www.seedsnc.org/dig.htm.)  In the fall, another intern specializing in seed work, Sefira Bell-Masterson, presented her own workshop on seed saving at a local hands-on skills-sharing event.  We also invited folks to a couple informal seed threshing/cleaning workdays at our farm.

My intention is to use the website of the Abundance Foundation as the main vehicle to document and share the observations and results of our plant breeding and seed saving work at Piedmont Biofarm.

For
VARIETY TRIALS, click here.

For Plant Breeding, click here.

More information about Crop Improvement, click here.

Archived News of 2007, click here.