permaculture

[Wesley Roe and Santa Barbara Permaculture Network <lakinroe@silcom.com>]

http://www.rodaleinc.com/products/books/seedtime-history-husbandry-politics-and-promise-seeds
Seedtime: On the History, Husbandry, Politics and Promise of Seeds

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by Scott Chaskey
Hardcover, 240 pages
January 2014
$23.99 / $27.50 Can
ISBN: 9781609615031
Buy the Book
e-book ISBN: 9781609615048
About the Book

Scott Chaskey—working farmer, poet, and spiritual father of the community 
farming movement—considers "the web of biodiversity and resilience at the 
heart of our cultural inheritance" by masterfully weaving history, politics, 
botany, literature, mythology, and memoir into a beautiful and instructive 
book.

It’s hard to think of a subject more fundamental to the sustenance of the 
human race than seeds. Having coevolved with the Earth’s plants, insects, and 
animals, seeds are





Scott Chaskey—working farmer, poet, and spiritual father of the community 
farming movement—considers "the web of biodiversity and resilience at the 
heart of our cultural inheritance" by masterfully weaving history, politics, 
botany, literature, mythology, and memoir into a beautiful and instructive 
book.
It’s hard to think of a subject more fundamental to the sustenance of the 
human race than seeds. Having coevolved with the Earth’s plants, insects, and 
animals, seeds are entwined with the core myths of ancient cultures and the 
development of human consciousness. Their story remains vitally important 
today, as the corporations that manufacture GMOs threaten our food security 
and the future of seed-cultivated agriculture.
The stakes, for those concerned with preserving biodiversity and ecological 
integrity, are high.
Balancing a wide view of politics and history, Chaskey alights from life on 
the farm he has cultivated for 25 years to conjure Gregor Mendel’s breeding 
experiments that yielded our modern understanding of genetics; he also 
introduces us to several "bioneers," such as the geobotanist Nikolay Vavilov 
and agriculturalist Cary Fowler, who are preserving global biodiversity 
through seeds. Integrating scholarship with accessible storytelling, Seedtime 
is a celebration as well as a call to action urging us to renew our role as 
citizens of nature, in ecologist Aldo Leopold’s phrase, not as conquerors of 
it.

Scott Chaskey is a poet, farmer, and educator who for a quarter century has 
worked the land for the Peconic Land Trust at Quail Hill Farm in Amagansett, 
NY. A pioneer of the community farming movement, he is past president of the 
Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York and author of This Common 
Ground, a memoir. He lives in Sag Harbor, NY.