Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["D'Coda" <dcoda@volcommunity.org>]

Greetings,

 

I'm coming out of lurking mode to express my deep appreciation for this discussion list and to introduce myself. A while back, Paul mentioned that in order to assure that gmo-free seed stayed that way, it would be necessary to have growers located deep in the wilderness, far from pollen drift, etc.Those were precisely my thoughts when I decided to move in to the middle of the Hurricane Wilderness Preserve in Arkansas 7 years ago. I agree with Paul's concerns over long term safety of our seed and that it is essential to save seed far far away from gmo crops. So here I am. I am not on line and have no access to internet. I use a solar powered laptop and pick up a disk of downloaded emails sent through the post office to an address miles away. Have to hike out to get email, when conditions permit. I only get it twice a month. That's why I lurk. By the time I get your emails, they are old (to you) and I know its frustrating to write to me , only to have to wait for weeks for a reply. But if you can understand and have patience for my unusual emailing method and its quirky timing, I'd like to post from time to time. I'll include a reminder message with my signature that I'm not hooked up to internet.

 

Thank you for posting entire articles. That has allowed me to keep up with things in gardening land. Its frustrating to just see website addresses for a wonderful article I can't view. I save a lot of your material for reference. I'm on some other lists like OWL and Gloria's excellent gardening forum and plan to write a near duplicate of this message to all of them so I can start posting there , too.

 

A few years ago, in order to put my non-gmo seed into circulation and trade with careful growers, I started the Ozark Seed Exchange www.ozarkseedexchange.com and you can find out more about my efforts there. What initially was to be a small local effort has become international now. For example, we are helping a farmer in Brazil combat agribusiness monoculture take over of his area where only gmo corn and soybeans are being grown. We are sending him safe seed and he's educating farmers down there , starting a seed bank & exchange. We helped a seed saver in India start her own project along similar lines. This is a voluntary effort and no money is involved.

 

 

D'Coda