Seeds Sprout Community and Eco-Citizenship Across Harsh Conditions in Florida
Written by Ginger Wolfe-Suarez
Hopefully growing my seeds and watching them transform throughout their lifecycle in 94-degree heat won’t kill me. In complete honestly, I frequently overheat myself and stumble into the house completely covered in water, sand, sweat, and soaked partially from a garden hose. I keep at it every day because the process of growing food and cultivating a healthy ecosystem is so meaningful and rewarding to my family and I. The Seed Community has literally taken root within my writing practice. I decided a while ago that my first article on Substack was going to be about seeds. Seed-saving, seed harvesting, and caring for and cultivating seeds as a kind of larger metaphor for living and writing in Florida. Deep inside me, there’s a love for observation, for seeing seeds soften, change, and transform into seedlings. There is a polarizing view of Florida as a space of oppositional conflict about social, cultural, environmental, and political issues. It’s true, but it’s also wrong. Florida is a unique space for connection and cultural potential. This is a space where, despite polarization, people can come together through the food, the art, the writing, and the cooking.
The following text explores why seed saving and growing food in Central Florida is a vital creative space for cultural connection. In other articles I have described this space as a kind of artform. First some comments about the conditions and labor involved with growing food in the sand on a barrier island. It’s warm all year here. The scorching heat and humidity starts around May and sometimes lasts through September. Additional challenges are, contending with everything from ants to sun scald to fungal challenges and leaf miners. Even the sand itself can be challenging and my yard is almost completely sand.
All of these challenges, along with the physical labor involved, have taught me about problem-solving and experimentation that cultivation requires. It’s also a kind of working poetry as a cycle between the land, myself and the plants. Growing flowers, fruit, and vegetables on a barrier island has made me aware of the way the light shifts and the heaviness of humidity settles in the air. The way the air mixes with water and how the sun and moon move across the garden. Being part of this process creates a sense of awe and joy within me. The seasonal cycle of harvesting, gathering, soaking and planting seeds always comes with water - soaking them in various jars, bowls, and cups.
There are various places that I source seeds from including Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds and more locally from “Seed the Stars” which is collaboratively run between Kelli Varon and Ryan Diggle. One aspect of seed-saving culture is that people who steward plants often generously share seeds and knowledge. This past season, I received seeds from two neighbors and harvested seeds from my own plants. While interest in backyard farming and food sovereignty has grown in public awareness, there are still several areas where important work and cultural knowledge are still under-documented. Along this line of analysis, one resource available would be the rare fruit growers’ groups in places like Miami or Orlando. Citizens from many cultural backgrounds and all over the world come together through sharing what is grown in their yards and through exchanging recipes. Recipes, to me, represent a unique textual form as a series of actions, directions, and memories. Recipes are passed between families, neighbors, and between cultures. They are forms of writing that are saved and exchanged between generations, and in some instances serve as historical records.
An article I wrote recently for Undrbelly Magazine explored a movement that grows and cultivates food as a kind of artform. In this region, food like backyard fruit, is shared between people and within immigrant communities. This kind of sharing has heavily and positively influenced the culinary history in Florida. Vegetables, fruit trees, and herbs can be grown in Central Florida from regions ranging from the Caribbean to Africa, Asia, Israel, Central and South America. I have grown Okra seeds from a variety in Japan here in Merritt Island very successfully. The climate and growing zone here, though regarded by many as inhospitable or challenging, actually create opportunities utilized by chefs and culinary artists in Florida.
As a writer, I began my own research on this subject through conversations and interviews in the small-scale farming communities in Florida two years ago. In upcoming articles and interviews I will be publishing profiles with the Eco-Heroes who are on the front lines of small-scale agriculture, and all its challenges and beauty. To me, understanding the cycle of seeds and the labor required to tend to them throughout their life cycle has everything to do with being a writer. In a way it works as a kind of metaphor for being a writer. It’s a process full of observation, experimentation, discovery, and intention. Ideas grow and intermingle with myself, with the place I inhabit, and with the environment. They grow and live around me.
