Garden Mama Growing

While I have participated in half a dozen Seedy Weekend events over the years as both an attendee and an organizer, it was only in preparing to write this blog that I asked myself “When and where did this delightful, community-led, seed exchanging tradition start anyway?”

Originating in Vancouver, BC back in 1990, founder Sharon Rempel has retired from an extensive career in food security advocacy but you can get a sense of it from her now inactive website Grassroots Solutions. While you might not have heard or known her name before this post, she no doubt has made an impact on Canadian history that seed enthusiasts have carried on in her footsteps by hosting events in communities all across Canada. I was inspired to find this post she wrote in 2010 about her original vision, her concerns for the future of seed security remaining in the hands of the people and the opportunity to have conversations about the politics of seeds in community spaces.

Now Seedy Saturday and Sunday events come in all shapes and sizes. My first experience was in Maple Ridge in 2016 at the CEED Centre Society in a small meeting room with just a few tables out for for folks to leave what they were offering and take what was available. In the hour or so I stopped in to mill around maybe 20-30 people came and went, getting giddy about finding something they hadn’t tried to grow before or telling stories about where they sourced the homegrown seeds they had saved and brought to offer. I went home with several new to me varieties of bush and pole beans that became favourites in my collection in later years when I had more space to grow them, especially Annie Jackson, Tigers Eye and Black Turtle Beans.

Several years later on Mayne Island I was invited to organize a more substantial event which had been regularly hosted by the Mayne Island Agricultural Society in the community for a number of years before I took on the task. Community organizations and local businesses filled the historic Mayne Island Agricultural Hall for activities and guest speakers throughout the day, just a month before 2020 lockdowns which would change what Seedy Saturday looked like. The following two years transitioned to an outdoor and distanced method of seed swapping in the covered bandshell on the Ag Hall grounds but by 2023 things were relatively back to normal and back inside the hall. Again I worked with a great team of seed enthusiasts for another spectacularly attended event that brought out close to 100 people in a community with a population of only 1000.

This year I’m eagerly awaiting the Nanaimo Seedy Saturday hosted by Nanaimo Foodshare on March 2nd for the first time which will be the largest I’ve been to yet. While I’ve been making connections to the food growing community here over the past year it will be an excellent chance to dig deeper roots.

If you haven’t heard of Seedy Saturday or Sunday before, check around if your community hosts one. You might find it listed on the Canada wide Seeds of Diversity event listings or if you are in BC you can look up your community on the Farm Folk City Folk calendar.

If you can’t find one in your local area, it isn’t too late to try to organize one as they usually happen any time between now and the end of March. You can find some helpful guidance in the Seeds of Diversity Seedy Saturday/Sunday Handbook for Event Organizers. Public libraries are becoming popular places that seed libraries find their homes, and many have meeting spaces for community events at low or no cost for the right cause. Perhaps another community organization would be interested in sponsoring and supporting the effort. If you have any questions to take a leap that I could help answer, be sure to leave a comment and I’ll do my best to offer some helpful suggestions.

For those who live in my own Vancouver Island region I’ve compiled an easy to read list of ones around the area that I hope I can attend someday, if not this year then maybe in years to come.

Seedy Saturday and Sunday Events on Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands

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