Bonus Episode 5:
Seed Chat July 2017.
A chat with experts on Seeds, Bill McDorman and Julia Coffey.
In This BONUS Podcast:
Bill McDorman brings a friend and fellow seed enthusiast Julia Coffey to the chat to help explain about running a seed business. Together they talk to Greg about being a seed grower, germination testing, maintaining seed projects, and much more in this the July 2017 episode of Seed School Chat.
Julia Coffey is the president of Seeds Trust: an incredible company dedicated to encouraging customers to save seeds and reverse the loss of biodiversity not only in our backyards but around the world.
She is from Denver, Colorado and when not measuring out seeds, printing packets, growing tomatoes, hunting down the most resilient and special seed varieties, she likes to take full advantage of the magnificent swath of Rocky Mountains by hiking, backpacking, climbing, and breathing fresh air. She likes to sing and is a member of the Colorado choir, an 80s a cappella group, a hip hop a cappella group, and a rock and roll/blues band.
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She graduated from the University of Colorado, Boulder with degrees in Linguistics and French and lived in France teaching English and learning about local food market economies vs. the global industrialized food model.
She met Bill while visiting a permaculture farm in Lyons, CO. He was giving a lecture on seeds and seed diversity and it genuinely changed her life. She immediately found him after the lecture and told him she wanted to be involved in whatever way she could. She ended up attending one of Bill and Belle’s first Seed School workshops and continued to apprentice with him in Cornville, Arizona. Julia helped Bill and Belle run Seeds Trust until she bought the business from him in 2011. She then returned to Denver to provide high altitude adapted seed to mountain growers.
Bill McDorman is Executive Director of Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance, Ketchum, Idaho. He got his start in the bio-regional seed movement while in college in 1979 when he helped start Garden City Seeds. In 1984, Bill started Seeds Trust/High Altitude Gardens, a mail order seed company he ran successfully until it sold in 2013.
SHOW NOTES:
Joining a Seed Company
Trying to fix a food model that she did not agree with
Day to day of running a seed business
How to be a seed grower for Seeds Trust
Phenotypic vs genotypic
Germination testing
Seed trials and the Support of the seeds
Sustainably maintaining seed projects
Profit vs non-profit organizations
Simple packaging ideas
The story of the seed
Saving vegetable vs fruit seeds
Johnny Appleseed
Producer’s notes:
Here is the link to the FREE webinar on Seed Saving Hacked at IWantToSaveSeeds.com.
Here is the link to the Seed School Online.
Here is the link to the Great American Seed-up held in Phoenix in the Fall.
Here are other websites mentioned in this episode:
Seedstrust.com
Cambridge Pacific (say hi to Sherri)
UrbanFarm.org/Bonus5
