In this post, Harry, our latest member, reminisces about his time growing organic veg in East Yorkshire, and how the story of the seeds we share can start this weekend at Seedy Sunday
A long time ago, before I moved to Derbyshire and started digging holes for Earthed Up! (amongst other things), I worked for my dad. We had a family business growing and selling organic veg through a box scheme around East Yorkshire (the website of the long-gone business still exists, but I’m not going to share it here. You’ve got all the info you need to find it if you want to look at pictures of me from 20 years ago for some weird reason).
I worked there for more than a decade, and one of my abiding memories, other than frozen hands from picking winter sprouts and a beautiful Case International tractor that wouldn’t turn right, is the time we spent sowing seeds.
Come winter, on those cold wet days when there was no way to work outside, we’d move into our single polytunnel, stack up some crates to sit on, hunch over the makeshift tables and start to sow next year’s crops. Our tools were simple – a folded piece of cardboard to hold the seeds, the blade of a broken knife to nudge them down into the holes we’d poked into the module tray compost with a homemade multi-dibber.
I learned the shape and feel of the nascent version of each plant we grew. The smooth, round shell of the brassica, how you had to carefully angle the folded cardboard to make sure that they didn’t all roll into the waiting hole. The angular husk of chard and beetroot, like little lost meteors. The flakes of lettuce, tiny uncontrollable slivers that meant you couldn’t breathe too hard while you were handling them.
And the onions. So many onions. Trays and trays of onions. Each module on the tray taking one in each corner, then flattened back out with a stub of wood that didn’t quite fit perfectly. The feels of the seeds at they scratched down the cardboard, that black angular sheen, the excitement when the first green shoots started to poke up through the dirt.
Those seeds are long gone, grown into veg sold and eaten years ago. But I can still recognise those shapes; the smell of the paper of seed packets, the glue used to stick down the flaps, all of it’s still there – a part of me I didn’t leave in that polytunnel but brought with me all the way to this little corner of Derbyshire.
And that’s why I’m so excited for Seedy Sunday. Because it’s a chance to start some new stories, or add the next chapter to the one I’ve told above. The stories of the seeds we share and the plants we grow can start anywhere – the seeds we swap on Sunday can become part of a brand new narrative that stretches out into unknown regions of the future.
I’ve got a box of swaps ready to go, and they’re already onto their second or third owner, as well as some other seeds that a friend sent me when I moved here that I don’t have the space for. Maybe they’re going to become a mainstay of your garden? Maybe they’ll spread out into the county and loads of plants that have passed through my hands will make it into new spaces. I don’t know, and that’s really cool.
Seedy Sunday mixes my favourite things – sharing, connections and growing things. And I’m really looking forward to seeing you all there. If you haven’t got your tickets yet, you can click right here to buy them.
Earthed Up! 