REAL PEOPLE/ENDANGERED SPECIES
Saving Our Heritage, One Plant at a Time
How farmer Ira Wallace became the Godmother of Southern Seeds
Wallace, shown with farm dog Tuie, raises heirloom produce.
MY GRANDMOTHER raised me, and I learned to garden at her side in Tampa, Florida. So I’ve always been interested in how our food is grown. After college, I traveled the world and learned different organic gardening methods. But it wasn’t until the 1980s that I started thinking about the plants we were losing as agriculture became more corporate, more homogenized.
Family farmers had been saving and handing down seeds for generations, but big companies thrive on uniformity—not all these different fruit and vegetable varieties that might not pack or travel well, or that might thrive only in one area. So, as small farms got bought up by the big players in agriculture, it became harder to maintain the seeds for these varieties of plants. And once the seed is lost, it’s gone forever.
In response, I started growing heirloom fruits and vegetables, saving seeds and teaching others to do the same. In 1993, I became one of the founders of Acorn Community Farm in Central Virginia. It’s an egalitarian, income-sharing community, where about 20 of us live and work. We started producing seeds for a small company called Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, and in 1999, the company’s founder helped us assume cooperative ownership of the exchange. Since then, the business has grown and grown. Last year, we worked with almost 100 farmers to produce seeds. We also provide information about seed saving. I’m the one that people tend to come to for advice. One of the cooperatives we work with even gave me the nickname the Godmother of Southern Seeds.
Tomatoes are a gateway plant for seed saving, because a perfectly ripe tomato has perfectly ripe seeds. And once you start saving seeds, you tend to keep going. —As told to Beth Levine
Ira Wallace, 74, of Mineral, Virginia, is the author of several books, including The Timber Press Guide to Vegetable Gardening in the Southeast.