Interview With Pam Thullen

[Pam Thullen]: I'm Pam Thullen. I'm originally from Springfield Ohio. I've saved seed since, well actually I think I've been saving seed since I was about five not knowing. I grew up with a family, that they bought some land, they were very poor. Well actually there was a chicken coup on the land they bought. It was about seven acres and they turned the chicken coup into a house. And they lived in it and they grew all of their own food. Welfare wasn't a big thing back then and the people who didn't make a lot of money learned how to survive. The cool thing about it was when it was planting time everybody planted. I've been planting seeds since I was five, six years old. Then at the end of the harvest we would go over, I thought it was planned, and we would shuck beans and they would have pods dried, and corn dried, and we all sat around and saved seed. So 00:01:00I've really been saving seed since I was young. Not knowing that I was saving seed. Then over the years certain things that were important to me, from the family, different varieties of flowers that my family would grow. There was a particular variety of poppy handed down to me from my dad's side of the family. I don't know how far back these seeds have come but they're a plume poppy and an annual poppy. I still grow'em. My kids don't I have two sons. They're in their thirties and they're married and they have their own families, no they don't save seed. I remember one time when they were teenagers we sat down to dinner and I said everything that we're eating we grew and as teenagers they said "Ya 00:02:00ok mom whatever" now that they're adults they come over they sit down and they say "Ok mom what did you grow?" it got handed down but not really. My kids don't really save the seed like I do. And I still save the seed of a particular cucumber that I like to get pickles out of and it's getting harder and harder to find their seeds. Seed savers did have it. I was able to find it but then I just started saving those seeds because it was just too hard to find. A particular flower they have, I saved it, it's a petunia, because I thought it was an Heirloom. The seed company stopped carrying it. It took seven years for it to revert so it wasn't an heirloom. But now that I know that it isn't an heirloom and the seed companies have it again i've started saving seed. I'm saving some 00:03:00of the original seed now that I know it will revert. I'm getting my grandkids into it now. My husband has a particular patch that he tills up. And they plant sunflowers. The three year old is really starting to get into it. I have to weed it for them because they just throw them in. But then at the end of the season they take out the sunflowers but the three year old is kind of catching it because she picks them up and just starts throwing them in there because she knows "ok this is what I did in the spring" so she's figuring it out. I save my sunflower seeds, I save my Mexican sunflower seeds, I save my marigold seeds, I save my vegetable seeds, I save a couple different particular peppers I like. One thing I don't get into is saving the biannuals. Just the stuff I can do year 00:04:00after year. I've had a marigold seed. Very unusual, so it must be an heirloom, I save my poppys. They save themselves. So a lot of our vegetables and flower seeds. It really saves a lot of money. Some things work and some things don't. I know my children they weren't really into planting vegetables and stuff. However they have a daughter and now that they're married they both have a garden. However, it's funny to see ok it stuck with them. They both acted like they 00:05:00weren't interested but I planted the seed and its gonna stick. They come over now and they're like "Mom you got any kale? You got any extra kale? You got any tomatoes and peppers?" I think you'd be amazed at what one seed can do. There is this one condition called SADS it worsens as you get older seasonal affective disorder. So in january it inspired me. So lets plant a garden soon. It will be over soon. Its enjoyable too do it. Its almost like a an adrenaline rush like Ok 00:06:00here we go were going to do this! So it gets me through life. It definitely incorporates my my lifestyle. It's a different lifestyle. I'm eating whole foods right out of the garden. Grow your own food. I worked with cooking for the OSU extension office. I did that for about 5 years. We had about thirty gardens. And all of them were all over springfield. They were very small. Some of them were 00:07:00in churches. Some of them were in community gardens. Some of them were in the inner city. We had a meeting where we were teaching these people that wanted to try to garden but they had no idea what they were doing with anything seed wise.