Seeds!
Salam Hamegi!
It’s been a while since the last newsletter. I've missed you, I hope you've been doing well.
I am now offering seeds for presale on my website! There are six varieties of seeds available: Reyhan Sabz, Shevid, Shahi, Gishniz, Shambalileh, and Bademjan.
When you receive your seed packets from Reyhan Herb Farm, you'll see that there aren't any growing instructions printed on the packet. The reality is that I have only grown most of these plants for 1-3 years each, and I don't have enough knowledge to instruct you on how to best grow them. In fact, I know very little about traditional Iranian farming, and I subscribe to Western methods of propagation, cultivation, irrigation, etc. I thought it would be a disservice to print such instructions on the packet when they are so far-removed from the ways that these plants have been cultivated by our people for generations. If you are interested in straightforward instructions on growing these plants in the methods used by typical US home gardeners, I assure you they are widely available online.
By contrast, there are likely those among you who have intimate knowledge on traditional farming and gardening practices from back home. In lieu of the traditional instructions on each packet, the Seed Stories page on my website is there to collect stories from you all on how your growing experiences go, how you remember these plants being traditionally cultivated, and more. If you check out the page now, you'll find entries from me on my growing experience from last year. Hopefully with time, this page can become a collection of many of our stories and knowledges.
The seed-saving process
Harvesting seed, threshing and winnowing it, designing seed packets, and setting up the farm’s online shop have been a large part of my work for the last five months. Much like farming last summer, it’s my first time doing all of this seed work and I’m hoping it’s much easier next year. Though it was incredibly time intensive, whenever I was doing this work, I was ruminating on how incredibly lucky I am to be doing the single thing I want to be doing for a living: practicing growing these precious foods, learning the ways they want to be cared for, reconnecting people to them.
All of the sabzi were first threshed under foot: we laid down tarps and piled on the dry, crispy plants and stepped on them until their seeds burst forth. Each variety responded best to a certain kick or stomp or amount of force applied, and so we danced differently on each one. Then the seed was winnowed through screens and using a fan. Here are some pictures of the process:
A winter reflection
In these last five months while you have barely heard from me, we have been witnessing and experiencing incredible brutality, incredible savagery and violence and destruction. The people of Gaza are at the front of my mind every day. As are the people of Iran, and the many other lands where people are subjugated by occupation, state violence, capitalism, and otherwise oppressors.
It feels like a deeply empty time. We have again been confronting the emptiness of the lives we wish we could live in our homelands, if not for this or that war or violence. How is it that I’m seeing the worst things I have ever seen happen to humans, how is it that at the same time I am so tenderly taken care of by the Earth and her beings? We are torn and confused that there is so much pain and somehow our lives are so extravagantly beautiful at the same time.
I have been feeling that the natural and normal way of things is that we are all taken care of, and it’s the introduction of capitalism, white supremacy, the idea of scarcity that claims that life is hard, people must die early and painfully, blockades must be built and bolstered, walls must be erected and thorns and bullets must threaten those who would climb them. The entropy I believe in scatters the light of the sun carefully onto the entire daytime face of the earth. It feeds all the green things, and they feed us indiscriminately. It’s a supremacist delusion that makes it scarce, metered, uneven. I think of the long line of cargo trucks waiting to bring aid to the people of Gaza. The entropy of the human heart casts care indiscriminately, it’s a supremacist delusion that reserves it for few, declaring that one must die for the other to live. The truth is if I am to live, you are to live. May we find the ways to make that true.
Thank you for reading! My heart is heavy as I say goodbye, and I'm hoping that there will be levity, liberation, and a beautiful Spring for all of us.
به امید دیدار
رهایی
و روزهای نو و تازه
Love,
Farmer Sama :) 