Illustration by Ally Hodges
It began with a bean — an heirloom legume that Jeff McCormack found in the 1970s in the vegetable garden at Old Sturbridge Village, a living history museum in Massachusetts. Ruddy brown with white patches, it was called Jacob’s Cattle. That bean would plant the germ of an idea that eventually grew into Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.
A cooperatively owned seed company, Southern Exposure has been producing and selling seeds in both Mineral and Louisa County in Virginia, since 1982. Today, the seed exchange offers 800 varieties of vegetable, flower, herb, grain and cover crop seeds: 520 are certified organic, 795 are open-pollinated and 384 are heirloom. None of them is genetically modified, and all of them thrive in the mid-Atlantic and the Southeast.
A recent James Beard Foundation Leadership Award recipient, Ira Wallace is one of 15 worker/owners who lives on the Southern Exposure farm. “We bought the property together,” she says. “We’re a family — part of a movement to encourage home seed savers to grow varieties which are more diverse.” The co-op also works to promote regional food production, organic gardening and sustainable agriculture.
Over half of the seeds the co-op sells are cultivated on its 50-acre, certified organic farm. “We decided not to certify the swampland,” Wallace jokes. They also sell seeds grown on nearby farms, supplemented by their nationwide network of more than 70 independent growers.
There is ecological value in saving and sharing seeds: An heirloom seed has a history that can be traced back to the 1940s, before hybridization and chemical sprays became widely adopted. Their genealogy has been passed down through generations of family and friends. Produce grown from heirloom seeds is prized for exceptional flavor and high nutritional value, often growing larger and more vigorously than hybrid varieties. And because heirloom plants are “less uniform,” their produce often does not ripen all at once. Home gardeners who plant heirloom seeds not only save the expense of buying seeds each year, they also help to save rare and endangered varieties.
“Open-pollinated” seeds have been bred naturally, via butterflies, bees, birds, bats or the wind. Because there is no restriction on the flow of pollen between parent plants of the same variety, their offspring slowly develop genetic diversity. “Genetic diversity makes them more adaptable to changes in growing conditions and more resistant to pests and disease,” Wallace explains. To be considered an heirloom, the seeds must be open-pollinated, but not all open-pollinated seeds are heirlooms.
Organic seeds have been cultivated for three years or more without the use of synthetic chemicals or genetic engineering. They thrive because they have been favored by natural selection to defend themselves against pests and disease and survive in changing climate conditions. Choosing organic seeds means choosing to reduce the risk of chemical residues that may persist into the final product and the environment.
Southern Exposure seeds are available through mail order catalog, southernexposure.com, and on retail racks in stores including Ace Hardware, Ashland Feed Store and Colesville Nursery.
