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Owen Taylor

@seedkeeping

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The Story is in the Seed
Food sovereignty & culturally important seeds
Seeds & Their People podcast
info@trueloveseeds.com
Philly, PA @trueloveseeds

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Film by @wrenrene

Today we are launching our TRUELOVE SEEDS FUNDRAISER! We are reaching out to you, our community, to help us raise enough money to obtain permanent land for our farm, expand our crop production, and sustainably grow our business. Many of you have reached out over the last few years asking how you can further support our farming and seed keeping efforts. Well, here’s your chance!

(See donation links in bio!)

As we have grown as a small farm business and seed company, we’ve aimed to pour back into our communities and partner farmers, and uphold our mission through strategies like profit-sharing, open-source knowledge sharing, and fair and equal pay for our staff. You can read more about these efforts on our website’s Community Work page. Truelove Seeds made the deliberate choice to become a farm business, funding our work through small seed purchases (from you all!), rather than a not-for-profit orienting towards foundations and wealthy donors. This allows us to focus on meeting the seed and cultural needs of growers rather than trying to fit and shape ourselves into something we are not in order to receive grants. This also means, although we’ve grown a lot since our inception, we’d love your support in reaching our goal!

Please feel free to share this fundraiser, video, and/or infographics as far and wide as possible, to help us reach our goal! Thank you so much for your continued support of our work, we wouldn’t be here without you.

Director / DP / Edit: @wrenrene
1st AC: @tyler_b_nelson
Location Sound: @jdkennedy.sound
Gaffer: @ivoryjarel
Grip: @kgphilly
Colorist: @shmowells
Score + SD: @leeclarkeonline
PAs: @jasminefcassell @kingsleyibeneche

Special thanks to @sevenknotsfilms + @ianmduffy for the camera <3
Equipment: @expresswaycine by @seedkeeping

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4 years ago

A friend saw our video that we posted yesterday to launch our fundraiser and said something like: “that is so gorgeous and poetic, but I’d love to see the numbers”. So here we go!

Here is the first of three posts featuring beautiful, informative graphics created by our business manager Sara Taylor to help illustrate the ways Truelove Seeds works in support of and in relationship to our communities over the last 5 years. We hope you find them as edifying and awe-inspiring as we do! Please feel free to share our fundraiser, video, and/or infographics as far and wide as possible, to help us reach our goal! Thank you so much for your continued support of our work, we wouldn’t be here without you!

Donate links in bio :) by @seedkeeping

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4 years ago

Here is another look at the Truelove Seeds growers network. At this point we work with 55 seed growers who provide their ancestral seeds for our catalog.

This is the second of three posts featuring beautiful, informative graphics created by our business manager Sara Taylor to help illustrate the ways Truelove Seeds works in support of and in relationship to our communities over the last 5 years. We hope you find them as edifying and awe-inspiring as we do! Please feel free to share our fundraiser, video, and/or infographics as far and wide as possible, to help us reach our goal! Thank you so much for your continued support of our work, we wouldn’t be here without you!

Donate links in bio!

If you’d like to download these infographics to share, we’ve made them available through our linktree. by @seedkeeping

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4 years ago

Tomorrow, the 214 year old Academy of Natural Sciences, which opened its doors to the public in 1828, will close its doors to the public. The William Penn Foundation just offered to help keep it open while they make a long-term plan, and @savetheacademy is working hard to mobilize people and the interim director to keep it open too. The museum has been flooded with people ever since the announcement.

Over the years, my family and the Truelove Seeds community has really enjoyed this Philly institution! We’ve worked with our local cultural seed keeper friends @myneighborhoodproject @sankofacommunityfarm @kcaphiladelphia @bahay215 and @vietlead to collect, press, and record the stories of our most beloved plants for the Academy herbarium. We’ve curated an exhibition on our heirloom plants including moving images, our voices, kitchen and garden tools and ingredients and recipes. We’ve given workshops, panels, tastes of our dishes, and seeds swapped. At our farm and others, I’ve hosted several Drexel courses that were funded by the Academy, which are now no longer funded and no longer offered. It’s been an honor and pleasure to work with the supportive and talented Academy staff who work hard to lift up the voices of our community to give life to the historic and modern specimens in their collections.

Our son (and his friends!) loves the Academy too. He’s of course enjoyed the exhibitions and programs. He is sad it’s closing. I wish we could join tomorrow, but here’s hoping and praying we will have more chances to engage with this important Philly science resource. If you know ways we can help, please post in comments!

Ps this first photo is of me in the Academy’s herbarium holding a seed of the Coco de Mer (Lodoicea maldivica), a rare palm tree native only to the islands of Praslin and Curieuse in the Seychelles that produces the largest and heaviest seed in the plant kingdom.

@acadnatsci by @seedkeeping

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7 days ago

Here is some of the diversity in our day-length neutral pigeon pea trials. We are in our second year of trials for varieties that are best suited for northeast/mid Atlantic gardens and farms, and our first year into SARE funding that supports this work! We’ve been growing some of these for nearly a decade, and some for our first time. We are recording data on their attributes and production, and working with several local partners who are trialing them as their beloved cultural crops as well: @kcaphiladelphia @myneighborhoodproject and unofficially and gratefully @scentedpetalflowerfarm as well. @northeastctbotany is our university partner extraordinaire and I’m half posting this so he can see the flowers :)

Seven varieties are officially in our trials, and we are also observing hybrids from last year’s trials. This first one has the most beautiful flowers! This year we also included several other varieties that have been shared with us including ‘Nigerian’ perhaps from @vivianokojie in 2019 💜 and ‘Dwarf Gandules’ from North Philly in 2017 (I don’t remember who gave them to me!).

Finally, here are two pigeon pea pollinator videos from my photo shoot. taken in Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education by @seedkeeping

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7 days ago

#Phillykarenyouth 10th Anniversary Garden Gather...🪴

These are some great pictures taken by our youth. I hope we can continue working together, learning photography, practicing our skills, and supporting one another.
A special thank you to @seedkeeping for inviting us. This was our 10th annual gathering with members of the Karen Community Association of Philadelphia Garden.

Thank you to all the farmers, volunteers, members, and everyone who participated and supported the garden throughout the years. Your time, hard work, and support mean so much to our community.

Here’s to many more years of growing, learning, and working together!

#karencommunity #garden #farmer #protectnature 🌱 by @seedkeeping

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8 days ago

We met Truelove Seeds today and did a little volunteer work. We had a blast meeting everyone and plan on doing it again in future🌶🍅🌼

#Seedkeeping #SeedSaving #Heirloomseeds taken in Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education by @seedkeeping

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9 days ago

Newly restocked for Fall: Garlic Bulbs!!✨🧄🧄

Truelove Seeds is thrilled to offer two gorgeous garlic varieties grown by our friend, Farmer Sasha Moghadam, for the second year in a row.

Sasha shares, “The origins of these garlic varieties are largely unknown. What we do know is that it was stewarded in the backyard of Iranian American gardener Jamshid Moghadam, in the Roaring Fork River Valley of Colorado, from the early 1990’s. In 2017, before his passing, Jamshid passed this variety on to his farmer son Sasha, who has been expanding on the collection for the better part of the last decade. Thus, we have these Moghadam’s selections: Moghadam Rocambole and Moghadam Marbled Purple Stripe. Grown on Joon Farm, in the White Salmon River Valley, WA.”

Get yours today for fall planting at the link in our bio! ✨✨✨🧄🧄🧄

Final Photo: Jamshid Moghadam in his garden, dated 9/26/1998.
All photos courtesy of Sasha Moghadam. by @seedkeeping

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10 days ago

Thanks to all who joined us yesterday afternoon for our Seed Keeping workshop at the farm! People came with great questions, great advice, and so much energy and good spirit. Looking forward to hosting more workshops like this in the future. Thanks to the @schuylkillcenter for advertising and handling registration and communications! taken in Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education by @seedkeeping

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13 days ago

This was our tenth year gathering with the members of Karen Community Association of Philadelphia to clean seeds and feast together, and it was wonderful as ever. As I've said before, we've learned so much about threshing and winnowing and generally handling seeds, about farming, cultural preservation, and so many delicious crops and dishes from this beautiful community. This coming year, @kcaphiladelphia will have their own farm in West Philadelphia, and we are so excited for our next 10 years together :) by @seedkeeping

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13 days ago

EVENT POSTPONED TO SATURDAY, OCTOBER 3RD 12-2PM!!!! Check new post please!!!

Join us for an afternoon rooted in food, memory, tradition, and community as we gather at True Love Seeds for a Molokhiyah Harvesting & Cooking Demo.

Led by Ms. Fatimah, we’ll harvest fresh molokhiyah, learn how she prepares it the Palestinian way, taste the finished dish, and take home some of what we harvest to continue the tradition in our own kitchens. 💚

Proceeds will support Healing Hands Fund, Truelove Seeds, and Ms. Fatimah.

Come share in a beautiful afternoon of preserving culture, carrying traditions forward, and finding pieces of home through food.

#PhiladelphiaEvents #PhillyEvents #Roxborough #PhiladelphiaCommunity #Molokhiyah by @seedkeeping

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14 days ago

Save the date! We are hosting our first ever Pick Your Own flowers day at our new farm in Roxborough on Saturday, September 26th from 10am-1pm. Bring Your Own Bucket - we will have snips for harvesting your bouquets and flower food to keep them fresh all week long. This is a chance to get our wholesale rate (10 dahlias for $20) without our standard minimum purchase.

Please RSVP to Miki at flowers@trueloveseeds.com and we will send you further details including the address and how to find us. Can’t make it on the 26th? Stay tuned! If there is a good turn out we will host a second day in October. by @seedkeeping

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17 days ago