On Frost, Forgiveness & Seeds to Save at September's End

plus an invitation to carve pumpkins with us!

I am so grateful as my heart breaks.

My bare toes delight in the cool morning grass.

Red-eyed vireos are still singing their inquisitive song (I am here, where are you? I am here, where are you?) as the tomatoes ripen more fruit than we ever remember in September, no frost in the air.

Nestled between the gratitude of these generous harvests and late-traveling migrant minstrels is a seed of curiosity cloaked in heartache, asking me to flip back my calendar: What was the date of our first frost all those season ago, when we first grew seeds here as Fruition?

Indeed, our first frost in 2012 was September 12th.

Here, now, at September’s end, I am so grateful even as my heart breaks.

Perhaps you, too?

If you’ve grown a garden or savored supper more than a few times in your life, you give thanks as you know:

Seasons change, climates change, our needs and gifts change and I breath deep:

Isn’t this why we save seeds?

Amanda Gorman reminds us:

“even as they grieved, they grew”

and in this spirit I’d love to invite you to save seeds this September, including an invitation to save seeds here on the farm with us and in Ithaca, too.

On Seeds, Frost & Forgiveness

Perhaps you’ll save seeds from your fall garden with pure, unrelenting joy and if this is you, don’t deny this, Dear Friends: You’re not wrong!

Perhaps though you’re like me and your joy and gratitude is braided with waves of sadness and longing, mourning species loss, culture loss, climate change and conflict among so many heartbreaks of our time.

Prentis Hemphill observes:

“Forgiveness and grace…are not the weak, pitiful emotions of people who don’t value themselves. They are the generous gift of people who know their worth cannot be diminished or compromised.”

And Friends, when I look out at our yet-to-be-frosted fields bursting with seeds, I feel their strength and tenacity, their hope and capacity. I sense the diverse, adaptive brilliance of these seeds that defy despair and deftly embody respect and resilience even as so much change has changed them.

Against all odds, many thousands of seeds have emerged from a single seed.

Look, now:

Here, in our hands.

Who are we not to fall on our knees?

I don’t claim to know what forgiveness is, but I do hear and feel the Old English root ‘to give’ burning bright with the invitation of each seed.

Friends, these seeds have so much to give.

Might we too emerge from this season that has both hurt and healed us with seeds of forgiveness?

As we make room for forgiveness, what might we, like leaves, let go?

What might need, like lettuce, to be protected in the cold?

What stories, like seeds, might inspire us to be curious rather than furious with our pain?

Gardens grow us more than we grow them.

Friends, if you’re inspired to save seeds this fall, we love you and like the seeds, we have many gifts to share.

From beans to tomatoes, peppers to squash, cilantro to cosmos, zinnias and beyond, you’ll find expansive seed saving insight with every seed we share on our website, including our one of our many online courses, always free:

Saving Our Seeds, Saving Ourselves

Each of our Growing Guides has detailed seed saving instructions and yes, we made them for you and every generation yet to come, too 💛

To witness and actively participate in the dance of adaptation, the gift of seeds and the joy of community, join us

Pumpkin Carving at Ithaca’s Youth Farm!

scooping seeds & sharing joy

Sunday, October 13th noon to 4 pm | free | all are welcome | 23 Nelson Road

As we scoop seeds from pumpkins to sow future generations with jack o’lanterns and joy, bring your own cutting board and knife to carve as many pumpkins as you’d love to bring home! If you’d love to say thank you, The Full Plate Collective will graciously receive contributions to their Subsidized CSA Shares.

If you’d love to save seeds with us on the farm, bring all your curiosity and join our

Community Garden & Orchard Gathering

saving seeds & sharing abundance

Saturday, October 19th 10 to 4 pm | free | all are welcome

Join us saving the seeds of beans, squash and beyond! Bring your garden questions and savor the late season apples in our orchard with us. We'll send you home with so much autumn abundance and thanks to the 100+ folx who have already joined our Community Garden & Orchard days this season, our farm is your farm is a farm for us all! Dress cozy and don’t be shy

Save the date and bring friend and together we’ll

Embody Your Medicine

Ginger U-Dig, Fire Cider Making & Pawpaw Tasting

Saturday, October 26th 2 to 4 pm | free | all are welcome

Come dig your own fragrant baby ginger, Friends! We’ll also dig horseradish and make our own Fire Cider together from ingredients on the farm and our wide community. And come for the pawpaws! We’ll have dozens upon dozens to share and together we’ll save the seeds to sow for future generations of pawpaws to surround us all with abundance. Bring a bag for your ginger, a jar for your Fire Cider and if you have any extra ingredients for Fire Cider (especially onions & hot peppers) bring them to share, as well. We are the medicine!

See You Soon, Friends!

As we scurry like squirrels to harvest seeds and so much more, we’re dreaming of the seasons to come and how we’ll share seeds wide with you, our Beloved Community.

If you'd love to collaborate or otherwise host our Merry Seed Gifting Practice this winter, hop into our All Flourishing is Mutual Questionnaire and thanks to the hundreds of folx who already have. You may not hear from us ‘til the New Year, but trust our long winter's nap will surround us all with such generosity and possibility:

we are the seeds!

Sow Seeds & Sing Songs,

and the Many Beings of Fruition

ps

If you’ve been forwarded this email and would love to subscribe, please do & hope to see you here on the farm one day, too!

pps

As we collect seeds to share with you for seasons to come, dreaming of all the generations we’ll never meet but may nonetheless be nourished, we are grateful for this poem:

Just Seeds

Inside the garden 

I remember patience

And in the forest,

courage 

and care.

Just as the seeds,

resting in Winter,

Remind

the hopeless 

that hope is there.

~ digger

If you'd love to receive periodic poems from digger, send a sweet ask of an email to dougdecandia@gmail.com

sending love from

Fruition Seeds

7921 Hickory Bottom Road in Naples, New York 14512

We humbly acknowledge we occupy the ancestral and treaty lands of the Haudenosaunee Onondawagah People. This land has shown us the gift of community, connection and reverence. May we continue to seek guidance from the elders and landkeepers, humxn and beyond, who have been nurturing the vivid resilience of this region for countless generations.