Interview With Ira Wallace

[Ira Wallace]: Hi Amanda

[Amanda]: Hi

[Ira Wallace]:Hello so what do you? Tell me what you'd like to know about?

[Amanda]: I'd just like to start by saying thank you for talking with me. And my name is Amanda Siegel and I'm here on the phone with Ira Wallace writer, seed saver, and the driving force behind Southern Exposure seed exchange it's October 17, 2019 and I'd just like to start out by asking you how did you get into saving seed?

[Ira Wallace]:Well it's a long story I started out you know gardening with my 00:01:00grandmother in Florida and she saved a little seeds mostly flower seeds and then when I was in college, you know took some taxonomy classes and so forth and you know just really kind of as an aside we saved some seeds from various native and wild plants. Just to get a sense of how challenging that was and when I really started paying attention was when I moved to North Carolina and I was a volunteer at the North Carolina botanical gardens and at that time there was a lot of construction and building you know in the chapel hill Durham area so the 00:02:00botanical gardens had a plant rescue project and. Yeah so I got involved in that but you know all of this time I still had not foreshadowed that it would become such a thing in my life. You know it was a kind of hobby and when I moved to Canada for a while I started saving herb seeds maybe because of my experience at the botanical gardens and then the seed theaters exchange national organization started and I became a member of that and did a little more and go forward you 00:03:00know i'm 71 so it's a long story. Anyway the early 90s we bought ACORN community farm and through the community I was in and in the one year maybe in 97 we had this funny little ad put in by jess Mccormick who started Southern Exposure saying great opportunity to learn about heirloom seeds unfortunately not such great pay and we thought anybody who could be this honest we wanted to meet. So you know we had a CSA at that time on the farm we got involved and he had some health issues and and offered us the opportunity in 1999 to take on the 00:04:00stewardship of Exposure and we did and it was a great fit for our group with a combination of gardening and co-op networking and education and a lot of office work more of this work than we ever actually quite imagined even though jeff warned us about it but it's okay it's been great building the company and trying to build the organic heirloom seed movement in the southeast. Why give a short answer?

[Amanda]: No that was perfect thank you! What types or varieties of seed do you save?

[Ira Wallace]:Well exposure offers about 800 varieties of heirloom vegetable flour and herb seeds and you know some plants and bulbs and roots. I personally kind of like to concentrate on two things one is Stanley heirlooms which is varieties that have been maintained sort of outside of the trade because there are lots of families where you know someone has, they've had a seed teaching tradition but the person who's now the steward worries that nobody in the next generation wants to do that and they enter their seeds to us so that's something 00:06:00that I like to try to do and try to get those placed in other seed banks so that they don't necessarily disappear. And I like weird things and just that are different you know like and in particular varieties that kind of come from the African diaspora and are not necessarily so well-known in the US and so it's a lot of stuff they do they say you'd like to get started with something and then the meal says to maintain it I said but it's easier once you can find out how wonderful it is to enroll people in maintaining.

[Amanda]: Which leads me into my next question can you describe the pleasures that you get from saving seed?

[Ira Wallace]:Well yeah like I said l like each seed is this little mystery to have it plant it and see what it grows into and how it behaves and you know that's really fun it's particularly fun to get something where you know it has an intriguing description you're waiting to see all that unfold and you know it's kind of nice to have things that as you get older that you look forward but your experience with working with them allows you to imagine continuing to do that as long as you're walking around. You know plus just the beauty of plants and I love to eat and you know one of the great things about gardening those are the things you grow in your garden if you are like me any of these weight 00:08:00problems you can just eat as much of it as you want and you're not gonna gain a lot of weight unless you put a lot of sugar or fat with it so those are just a few of the many pleasures

[Amanda]: And I personally am invested in maintaining both the legacies of african seeds and also the stories of those that have been affected by the diaspora how do you think that seeds are important to retaining black cultural legacies and memories if so how and why?

[Ira Wallace]: WellI I think that a lot of you know the history of African people in the United States has not been maintained as a written legacy and as Michael Trudy says you know our stories are hidden in the foods these recipes 00:09:00these flavors that we have are sometimes all that connects us to the ancestors and so I think they're quite important in that way and this is sort of why i've gotten on this more recent project because you know I've been involved with heirloom seeds a lot and doing research and so much of the written research is just about European varieties and then meeting people like Michael or our Dr David Schields down in the Carolinas who you you have to read between the lines you look at this variety and you he was. What developed on a certain plantation but who in fact you know was a person who was maintaining and doing the work 00:10:00there and then when you start you know looking into records of employees people and things that they did you can find out you know like a certain overseer of the garden is really the one who did that development of those varieties and to find that out and raise up those people gives you know more connection to you know black people now and and makes them realize they weren't. You know black people weren't just brought here because they were labor but they were abroad because they had farming knowledge from Africa about you know the rice culture and like the charleston area you know at first is kind of a prime example and 00:11:00that whole food ways of the whole country is you know a mash of you know African, Native American, and European cooking styles put together. And so you have to you know go to secondary sources in some ways cookbooks and things to get back andIi hadn't been doing that and that's been interesting and that you know important for you know hopefully changing how young black people feel about having control of their food as a part of you know having control of your life.

[Amanda]: How much attention do you pay to keeping seed true or do you not worry about that and if you grow seed true to type what are your methods for 00:12:00preventing cross-pollination.

[Ira Wallace]: Well as a Seed company that's a high priority for us but when you're doing preservation work you also find out from the people who have been studying it along what level of selection and isolation they maintained because some varieties are not actually, they're really a mix you know like a violet's multi-color being is was maintained as a mixture and so you're looking to have some of each of the types and the seeds that you've got. Oh but most things you want to keep them more or less pure and do selection more or less to the description that you were given that variety as and so you know we maintain isolation by distance or timing and sometimes by physical barrier by it covering 00:13:00them or you know creating an isolation cage situation.

[Amanda]: Okay.

[Ira Wallace]: But mostly we work with a lot of farmers like for our catalog you know around 60 farmers in every year and their different farms provide the isolation for variety because you know knowing which things are going to cost with which and it's why many of our varieties we you know grow out on a three-year rotation so we're not trying to get all 800 of these things done every year.

[Amanda]: Do you have a special seed story of a particular seed that you save and can you describe it?

[Ira Wallace]:Well I could tell you about one that actually I like this is this 00:14:00heirloom collard project. These two cultural geographers went around in the 90s collecting heirloom collareds and they collected some 90th variations and you know I happened to run into one of the authors of the book they wrote about that and then later be in charleston when they were when the arator was growing out 60 of the 90th variations. I know we saw so many different colors we're talking about small ones purple ones curly ones you know beautiful dark green ones really light yellow green ones it was a trick and so from that I decided to do a project and work with this youtubers exchange in iowa to get back samples from the USDA gene bank of these and something that we've been doing is taking some 00:15:00of the ones that are historically connected with African-American farmers and getting them grown out and my poster child is the William Alexander Heading Collards that was rejuvenated and it's being maintained and spread down in once in film by a group of sorority- black- sorority sisters these ladies didn't even know how to garden but they took it on and I got a master gardener to work with them and they're successful and now that variety is you know becoming more available in their local community and I said if I can get some sorority ladies to do it anybody can and I have to say one of their members got all amused about 00:16:00it and really is the one who kept it going. Yeah so I think that is it not just that it's a great collard but it's a great reconnection of a whole group of people and a community with something that was just about to pass away.

[Amanda]: And speaking of sorority sisters that leads into my next question as a black woman it's hard for me to convince my family of the importance of working with the earth and also in the fields given the generational trauma of slavery and all of that that impacts us. What's your reasoning behind saving seed and working with the earth in this context?

[Ira Wallace]: Well you know I think the world's going to be in a challenging 00:17:00position and you know I mean I think that if we want to combat global warming and have a better future for our children and grandchildren, that trying to live a life that is more nourishing to the earth and better for the environment it's just a good thing. And black people have been kind of separated from traditional foods I mean it's kind of funny you can buy you know more greasy kind of soul food but you know when you read like edna lewis's book I mean the kind of diet 00:18:00that black people on farms were eating was quite varied and seasonal and not like that. I mean you know, yeah you get your fried chicken but that's not what you ate every day. You know people ate lots of leafy green vegetables you know? I know growing up we always had a patch of mixed greens and it was like we you know cooked some different ways pretty much every day and that was what we had every day and fried chicken was like a sunday meal sometimes kind of thing. So I think that you know having black people produce food and you know myself i'm 00:19:00very interested in figuring out how I can help young black farmers make money because it's not just growing food that you make money it's like adding value-added products and you know getting that money that middle people are getting and having it be more directly connected to the farmers and I mean I think black people need to get all about you know being able to be cooperative like you know my grandmother she was a part of a penny bank association where it was mostly they were interested in helping each other buy their own home but there, I, you know I live in a community that, it's primarily white people and one of the things that i've realized is maybe it's not that you know young black 00:20:00people are going to come here but sharing their co-op skill so they can feel, I don't know like good and okay about helping each other be able to oh man like, you know, I say you know, if I weren't involved in these group efforts I wouldn't you know have had our first farm at 24 and you know if it's all on my own or nothing not very many of us are going to get very far in this agricultural adventure but working together and you to whatever degree that you're willing to is building up the kind of community that maybe, I, you know being my age grew up with the tail end of you know people like my you know grandfather worked for the railroad and the pullman porters you know had a lot, 00:21:00used just a steady income to support the civil rights movement and so well anyway he got me going up.

[Amanda]: Let's see lastly what advice would you give young people to encourage them to save seed?

[Ira Wallace]:Well if you pick one seed that is important to you it takes little time to do it but it gives you a chance to pass on a living legacy you know to your children and to your grandchildren that you know perhaps is something grown by one of your elders or something eaten you know in the community that you grew 00:22:00up with, and you know we have one bean called a wedding bean that used to be given out and I planted two seeds and they covered five foot trellis and I got like 10 pounds of beans from these two seeds and this is one you know just one part of self-sufficiency that we lack in our communities and I want to encourage young people to grab that heritage and make it their own

[Amanda]: Well that is it for my questions thank you again so much for talking to me

[Ira Wallace]:Yeah well if you if you run into any great seed savers with great 00:23:00seeds that they might want to pass on especially African-American seed savers i'd love to hear from them!

[Amanda]: Okay great thank you!

[Ira Wallace]:Yeah keep in touch!

[Amanda]: Okay

[Ira Wallace]:Okay

[Amanda]: Bye now

[Ira Wallace]:Bye