Guest Bloggers: Eric Kampe & Meredith Kahn

Eric Kampe
After graduating from the University of Michigan, Eric spent several years working in automotive and electrical engineering. In 2007, Eric left engineering to work for Abbondanza Organic Seeds & Produce, a local farm in Boulder, Colo. with strengths in both traditional CSA and market models as well as a pioneering seed cultivation business.

Meredith Kahn
A fellow Michigander and University of Michigan alum, Meredith is the daughter of dairy farmers and the granddaughter of general store owners. She has a hand in much of what happens outside of the greenhouse and field.

Meredith and Eric tried leaving Ann Arbor twice, spending four years in sunny and beautiful Boulder, CO. But they returned home to the Midwest in 2011, and launched Ann Arbor Seed Company in 2012 to pursue their love for growing local, organic food.


From Plow to Plate: Cultivating Local Seeds for Local Food


There are many reasons to eat local. Maybe you prefer choosing from a wider variety of apples than what's available in the grocery store. You wonder where those chicken thighs came from, and what "cage-free" really means for the eggs you just bought. Perhaps you know that a real tomato is grown for taste, not transport. Or maybe you want to make sure more of your money stays in the community. These are all non-trivial reasons to choose local food. They are also excellent reasons to think about the role of seeds and seed saving in supporting our local food economy.

Saving, processing, and growing from seeds is the foundation of agriculture. It allows us as humans to shape the plants we raise for our own consumption, affecting not just taste, but also appearance, vigor, growing conditions, and culinary uses. As eaters, we rarely see the hard work and specialized knowledge that goes into growing our food. Visiting the farmers' market we see the best of the field, the final results of many months of watering, weeding, and cultivating. But even growers themselves don't often see the full lifecycle of a plant, watching it transform from a short, sweet, lime green head of butter lettuce to an almost unrecognizable spiraling tower of bitter greens and delicately fuzzy seed pods.

Just as not everyone who enjoys pork chops wants to raise and slaughter their own hogs, and not all vegetable lovers have the space for a garden, not all farms can be seed farms. Growing for seed requires multi-year (and multi-space) plans to accommodate annuals and biennials, account for isolation distances, and ensure genetic diversity. Plants must be nurtured long enough to produce fruit, and in many cases long beyond that in order to produce mature seed. The work continues, as seeds and chaff must be separated, and poor-quality seed must be winnowed away to increase germination rates. Though challenging on a large scale, saving seeds can be deeply fulfilling, even for the home gardener. By starting with gardener-friendly annual varieties like lettuces and tomatoes, you can learn basic techniques for saving and cleaning seed, and experience a new phase of the growing process.

Here in Washtenaw County we are exceedingly lucky to have not just excellent farmers' markets, but also numerous local suppliers of high-quality fruits, vegetables, meat, and dairy. We have local distribution companies that expand the reach of our producers, as well as a strong network of retailers and restaurants committed to carrying local food products. It is this deep level of investment and expertise at every stage in the process from plow to plate that ensures our local food economy will succeed in the long term. Local food is not a fad.

Seed saving and seed companies are a natural extension of this sustained and far-reaching commitment to local food. By encouraging those who can to explore seed saving, and starting a business exclusively devoted to growing and selling open-pollinated seeds, we hope Ann Arbor Seed Company will contribute to the health, wealth, diversity, and longevity of our local food community. Small seed companies like ours provide an alternative to large-scale, commercial seed production, and offer consumers yet another opportunity to ensure that the food we eat tastes good, is ethically produced, and financially beneficial for our own community.

If you want to learn more about seed saving, take a look at the Resources section of Seed Savers Exchange, or find a copy of Suzanne Ashworth's Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners in your local library or bookstore.

Ann Arbor Seed Company will have numerous varieties of locally grown vegetable seeds available at the Saturday Ann Arbor Farmers' Market in Kerrytown and via local retailers starting in January 2014.