Saving Seeds, Preserving Taste: Heirloom Seed Savers in Appalachia

An Introduction to Heritage and Heirloom Seed Saving

1 I An Introduction to Heritage and Heirloom Seed Saving I grew up believing that the Goose Bean was discovered by my great-grandfather Sanford. My mother had told me that he had shot a wild goose and her grandmother had discovered some bean seeds in its craw as she was dressing it for a meal. The beans were planted, grew to maturity, had a good Xavor, and became one of many varieties of beans kept by our family. Years later I discovered that many children in the Southern Appalachians had been told the same story by their parents. Essentially the same tale was also told about the Turkey Craw Bean: a wild turkey had been shot for food, bean seeds were found in its craw, and the seeds had been planted and found to be among the best beans around. The Goose Bean is also known as the Goose Craw Bean and in some areas as the Goose Neck Bean. The Turkey Craw Bean is Margaret Sanford Best at age eighty. Photo by Paul Toti An Introduction to Heritage and Heirloom Seed Saving 3 sometimes just called the Turkey Bean. Both beans are among the favorites of thousands of families in the Southern Appalachians and in other parts of the country where many Appalachian families have migrated. As is true of many other families in our community, beans were very important to us. When we visited my grandmother Sanford most Sunday afternoons, as a very young child I followed her and my mother to Grandma’s garden. They talked gardening while I explored and sometimes listened to their conversations. I later realized that Grandma Sanford was continuing to pass on her gardening traditions to Mother, who was later to pass them on to me. And Grandma Sanford was passing on traditions she had learned from her family decades earlier. Perhaps the most important tradition being passed on was seed saving. What is important here is the fact that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of heirloom bean varieties maintained by gardeners in the Southern Appalachians. They are also preserved, often in their purest forms, by Appalachian migrants to other parts of the country. Many people migrated to places as far away as Washington State and took their beans with them. For example, there is a bean in Washington State that is called the Tarheel Bean, which, I have been told by several people, was taken from the Jackson/ Haywood County area of North Carolina. (My mother’s oldest, and only, sister migrated with her husband from Haywood County to Kelso, Washington, in 1918 to work in the timber industry.) Another bean variety now in Washington State was sent to me by a retired Forest Service employee who had taken it with him from West Virginia when he retired. And, of course, there is the famous Trail of Tears Bean, taken from western North Carolina and northern Georgia by the Cherokees when they were forced out of the Southern Appalachians into the Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) by the federal government in the 1830s. Until I was in my midtwenties and going to college and graduate school and then serving in the army, I helped my family with An Introduction to Heritage and Heirloom Seed Saving 4 its gardens and other crops when I was home during the summers. After starting college I was rarely there for bean plantings, but on those occasions I was conscious that we still planted beans that my mother had saved from previous years. By that time I knew that bean seeds could be bought from farm stores and from seed catalogues as well, but there was no point in doing so. There were so many varieties in the general area that it was pointless to pay good (and scarce) money for seeds. However, when I was in my late twenties and starting to garden on my own with my young family, I purchased some seeds from commercial sources. My wife and I had bought a farm in Kentucky that had land similar to that of my home in Haywood County, North Carolina, with basically the same growing season. Our land had a garden plot that had been used for generations, and the soil was exceptionally fertile. That Wrst summer we had a bumper crop of good tomatoes, sweet corn, okra, and potatoes, but I was in for a rude awakening because of...