Four years ago, Ashland farmer Chris Hardy held rare heritage seeds in his hand and he saw a future: The precious grains, harvested around the world before the industrial revolution, could grow without water or fertilizer, and regenerate soils.
Now, with the help of a dozen other local farmers who agreed to start small and scale up over the seasons, the few, almost extinct grains from Oaxaca to Ethiopia are thriving in Oregon fields.
“It’s really a miracle,” says Hardy, a fifth generation farmer who founded Hardy Seeds and the nonprofit Southern Oregon Seed Growers Association to encourage people to grow plants to make nutrient-rich food and save the seeds to start again.
To celebrate the success of the Rogue Valley Heritage Grains Project, Hardy and project volunteers held a harvest party March 18 at Fry Family Farm in Medford.
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Loaves of bread made from ancient wheat, maize and rye kernels were baked in a wood-fired oven under blue skies. People tasted the breads, also cookies made of amaranth and sorghum as well as Tibetan purple barley tea.
Next to each sampling was a cutting from the plant and the name of the farmer who grew it.
Tasters wrote their impressions on butcher paper covering the long serving tables. Rye cookies were “deep, rich and earthy.” Ukrainka whole bread “complex” and Georgia winter grains “sweet and nutty.”
Hardy pointed out that the heritage plants grew in a rainbow of colors. “You can taste the difference and farmers can see the performance benefits of heritage and [locally adapted] landrace varieties,” he says.
The rare seeds originated from ancient farming regions, some of which Hardy has visited, such as Armenia, Turkey and isolated Ladakh in the Kashmir region, as well as Iran, Iraq and Ukraine.
Seed saving and conservation programs, including the nonprofit Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance that supported Hardy’s project, are helping to build a diverse supply of heritage grain seeds to enhance food security.
Hardy’s original handful of heritage seeds has grown to be more than 100 varieties available to farmers across the United States. Growers are asked to return at least 15% of the seed they produce to the shared seed library.
Einkorn, emmer, spelt and other high-yielding grains protect soils over the winter and are harvested in the summer. Northern California and southern Oregon’s growing conditions also allow millet, quinoa and many of these grains to be dry-farmed without irrigating.
“Most of these crops have exceeded our highest expectations, receiving no supplemental irrigation water or fertilizers, even through a historic drought and record-breaking heat wave,” Hardy wrote in his project report.
He shares performance comparisons and other data with seed growers across the country to encourage heritage seed production.
Hardy says the benefits of heritage and landrace grains are they:
- grow more biomass than modern varieties, capturing more carbon and giving more organic matter back to the soil.
- grow over the winter, sending down deep roots in preparation to flower in the spring, requiring little, if any, irrigation.
- are naturally drought-tolerant and climate-resilient, adapt to low- or no-till agriculture, and need minimal fertility.
- are richer in flavor, higher in nutrition, antioxidants and protein, and are more digestible than modern grains.
Steve Fry of Fry Family Farm planted heritage seeds across two of his acres in 2021 and then used the seeds he grew to plant 25 acres last year.
In addition to local farmers offering their labor and land, Niedermeyer Farms of Jacksonville lent its grain combine to harvest the crops. Redwood Seeds-Organic Seed Alliance of Port Townsend, Washington, provided the threshing equipment to remove the seeds from the stalks and husks. And Fry Family Farm supplied the grain cleaner.
Feral Farm in the Applegate, Wandering Fields Farm in Ruch, Shanti Acres, Eagle Mill Farm and Dunn Ranch have also aided the Rogue Valley Heritage Grains Project effort.
Anyone who would like to grow heritage seeds can contact Hardy at cmhardy@gmail.com. For more information or to donate toward processing the harvest and data collection, go to account.venmo.com/u/chris-hardy-91.
From 10 a.m.-2 p.m. on Saturday, March 25, Hardy is hosting a free community seed swap at the Ashland Bellview Grange, 1050 Tolman Creek Road. People can trade, share and buy locally grown organic, heirloom and open pollinated seeds. They can also meet local growers and learn to grow a bountiful crop.
— Janet Eastman | 503-294-4072
