Please join us for the third annual Seed Sovereignty Day!
When and Where:
Saturday, January 25, 2020
9am - 5pm
(dinner 5pm - 7pm)
Round the Bend Farm
92 Allen's Neck Rd
South Dartmouth, MA 02748
Sessions:
BEETS!: Solveig Hanson, celebrated plant breeder and researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will share her work with breeding beets for flavor and quality. Presenters: Solveig Hanson, Hannah Traggis
SEEDS ON THE FARM: Two sessions of stories and lessons, from farmers young and not-as-young who have integrated seed work into their farm organisms. Presenters: Tevis Robertson-Goldberg, Bill Braun, Heron Breen, Sylvia Davatz
FSF BREEDING ROUNDTABLE: Hannah Traggis and Heron Breen facilitate a discussion with participating farmers on beet and butternut projects with FSF.
THE CULTURAL IMPORTANCE OF SEED: A multicultural panel discussion of the deeper underpinnings of seed keeping. Presenters: Sharon Maynard, Elizabeth Hoover, Lia Babitch, Choua and Kia Xiong
*PLEASE NOTE: Lunch is potluck style. Bring a dish to share! Round the Bend Farm is striving to be a waste-free site, and disposable or one use plastics go against our belief system: let's work together to make this a waste-free event. Please bring your own plates and utensils.
The seed swap is official this year, and will occur both during lunch time and post-session at the end of the day. Bring seeds to share, and if you have none, worry not - a credit with karma goes a long way. For booth requests, please email freedseedfederation@gmail.com
This year we're excited to include a locally-sourced dinner for an additional $10, thanks to our friends at Round The Bend Farm. An excellent opportunity to mingle with a fantastic Northeast seed community, and ask those burning questions that slipped through the day.
PRESENTER BIOS:
Solveig Hanson is a UW-Madison Ph.D. candidate in Horticulture-Plant Breeding with a Ph.D. minor in Life Science Communication. She leads a participatory beet breeding project in which farmer, chef, and consumer input is used to develop novel, flavor-identified beet cultivars for Wisconsin organic production. She was a student organizer of the Student Organic Seed Symposium (SOSS) in 2019 and 2015, and she is a founding Board member of the Society of Organic Seed Professionals, the professional society that has emerged from the SOSS network. Before coming to UW-Madison in the summer of 2014, Solveig was a direct market vegetable farmer for 8 years in northeast Iowa and then Organic Product Manager at Harris Seeds in Rochester, NY for several years.
Tevis Robertson-Goldberg is a farmer and plant breeder at Crabapple Farm in Chesterfield, MA.
Bill Braun is a farmer and seed keeper at Ivory Silo Farm in Westport, MA, and executive director of Freed Seed Federation - a 501c3 nonprofit dedicated to place-based, climate-resilient seed for the public domain.
Sylvia Davatz is a farmer in Vermont, and founder of Solstice Seeds. About 25 of Sylvia's 45 years of gardening have been devoted to seed saving, fueled by the shear wonder of seeds, a fierce passion for self-sufficiency, and dismay at the loss of biodiversity within our food crops. A strong belief in the importance and potential of the home garden drives her work in preserving rare and endangered varieties, experimenting with borderline crops, and trialing staples such as grains. Permaculture features round out plantings in a regionally-adapted collection that provides a year-round food supply. And sharing seeds keeps her connected to the rich world of fellow seed savers.
Choua and Kia Xiong are farmers at Greenleaf Farm in Cranston, RI. They save seeds from many of the rare varieties they grow for market.
Elizabeth Hoover is a gardener, beadworker, fancyshawl dancer, an Assistant Professor of American Studies and Ethnic Studies at Brown University, and a member of the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance (NAFSA), and the Slow Food Turtle Island association. She is also a board member for Freed Seed Federation.
Heron Breen of Saint Albans, Maine is child of "Back to the Landers", a long time gardener-turned-farmer and seed saver. His "day job" for 20+ years has been with Fedco Seeds (fedcoseeds.com, a worker/consumer cooperative) where he runs the Research & Trial program, helps writes catalog copy, as well as innumerable other daily operations tasks. Combining a passion for plants and his day job skillset culminates in plant breeding & variety preservation work on his personal farm. Heron serves on the board of the Organic Seed Alliance (seedalliance.org) & also helps implement community seed education & outreach programs for the Freed Seed Federation (freedseedfederation.org). Organizing regional plant / seed events and strengthening our regional seed community are personal goals.
Sharon Maynard lives in New London, Ct. and has been working to revitalize her Tribe's food ways and traditional garden practices for about 20 years. She is active in her tribes Food Group, Community Garden and diabetes prevention programs. Her main interests are the propagation and preservation of indigenous varieties of corn, beans and squash along with other indigenous crops. She also promotes food sovereignty and the decolonization of tribal diets in order to help people return to the physical and spiritual well being enjoyed by their ancestors.
Lia Babitch is the co-general manager and seed garden manager at Turtle Tree Seed at Camphill Village in Copake, NY, which empowers individuals with developmental diabilities by engaging them in various aspects of seed growing and cleaning.
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LocationRound the Bend Farm (View)
92 Allens Neck Road
South Dartmouth, MA 02748
United States
Categories
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: Yes! |
| Wheelchair Accessible: Yes! |
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