Seeds are natural beginnings for stories: From a small start, they grow into a larger world and eventually end. They’re also good subjects of stories: Where did they come from? Who loved them enough to keep them around? How’d they reach the person who planted them in the ground? What happened when they went viral on the internet? (Wait, does that not happen to most seeds?)
The Seed Broadcast Station, a converted bread truck manned by the Fodder Project Collaborative Research Farm, is traveling the country, gathering those stories:
Come and share your personal seed stories. We would like to interview you and hear more about your seed saving, gardening, and farming passions, the local food you cherish, and information about your local seed library. Also, stop by, copy, and add to the Broadcast bulletin board – a cork board wall presenting seed saving and organizing how to’s. You can also help create a mural on the Broadcasting Station with collaged images of the seeds you love.
Treehugger stopped by and learned that the cork board wall is meant to spread information to communities that might not have great internet access. Like a Google search with wheels, the truck brings them everything they might want to know about seed-saving, seed networks, gardening, and agriculture.
After the Seed Broadcast Station completes its ramble around the country, the truck will return to its home in New Mexico and bring seeds and stories to communities there. And after that, it HAS to be collecting these stories into a This American Life episode. I mean, right? Homegrown stories about heirloom crops — it’s like artisanal radio.