What Tomatoes Teach Us About Gifts

Let us gift you tomato, eggplant and pepper plants, Friends🍅!

Rochester, see you Friday: we’re bringing transplants for you🍅!

And Friends, join us on the farm this weekend to receive the gift of seeds as well as gorgeous transplants and fabulous music Sunday night for you and (y)our wide community, too:

And yes: We’re officially planting tomatoes!

Here are the steps to plant them and #2 might surprise you 💛

And may I share something so enlivening?

There is a moment.

And it’s so delicious to witness.

There is a moment when we realize we are so loved, so invited and so trusted to receive a gift that we say

“yes!”

Then the embers of that gift and possibility burst into full, nourishing flame.

And you’ve felt it:

Before the deliciousness of yes, there gardens of reasons we struggle to receive gifts with so many flavors of no:

“It doesn’t feel right to receive without giving in return…”

“Surely someone needs this more than me...”

“If I take this, I feel like I owe you…”

are three reasons of three thousand, and can I tell you?

As we commit our lives to cultivating gift culture together,

tomatoes make it look so easy,

so let’s lean in:

When we plant a tomato seed, we don’t expect to be savoring a tomato sandwich that afternoon.

Weeks before the world is green, we often plant more than we ‘need,’ so we’re potting up tiny seedlings, sharing them with friends, making new friends along the way.

For months we weed, water, trellis and prune tomatoes as they grow taller and taller, still green, til one day their darling yellow flowers emerge…

…and do we despair that we aren’t making salsa yet? Or do we rejoice in growth, trusting abundance yet to come?

As we finally savor that ripe, sun-sweet fruit, we call our friends to come share and can’t help but wonder:

Do we really need more convenience?

Or do we really crave

relational connection & tending

that serves so much more

than ourselves?

Since well before the dawn of dollars, barter and market economies, tomatoes have trusted they will receive what they need and share what they can, all in service of the wider whole. And Friends:

Might we do the same?

After a dozen years of growing and selling regionally adapted seeds and their gorgeous transplants, there’s a splendid magic as we return to sharing seeds and transplants as gifts.

I remember the feeling from my childhood, sharing loved (often leggy) seedlings from my father’s garden:

That moment when

someone receives your gift with an unbridled ‘yes!’ and

suddenly ‘giver’ and ‘receiver’ are

impossible, irrelevant categories to distinguish.

Is giving not receiving?

When the giver receives such grace and the receiver gives such gratitude?

Every tomato can tell us more:

Let us gift you seeds & transplants, Friends!

With dozens of beloved community members, we’ve grown thousands of glorious tomatoes, peppers and eggplants to surround us all with abundance, so don’t be shy:

Gift of Seed (& Transplants, too!)

arrive ~10 minutes early to settle in with ease

(take a peek at our tomato, eggplant & pepper transplant varieties here!)

Saturday, May 17th at 10 am: The Gift of Seeds & Transplants (for adults & babes in arms) (plan to stay til noon for the full experience)

bring a plate and a dairy-free dish to share a potluck lunch if you’d love to stay for:

Saturday, May 17th at 2 pm: The Gift of Seeds & Transplants (for families, including kids of all ages) (plan to stay til 3:30 pm for the full experience)

Sunday, May 18th from 10 am to noon (arrive anytime): Work Party Social! Come dressed for spring chill as well as warmth as we plant perennial beds full of echinacea together.

bring a plate and a dairy-free dish to share a potluck lunch if you’d love to stay for:

Sunday, May 18th at 2 pm: The Gift of Seeds & Transplants (for families, including kids of all ages) (plan to stay til 3:30 pm for the full experience)

Bring:

⭐ yourself! and a friend who also cultivates fruitful futures 💛

⭐ boxes for transplants as well as potatoes (have extra? bring them for people who would love them!) as well as a bag for seeds

⭐ a closed container to bring home organic fertilizer (crab + lobster meal)

⭐ open hands & hearts to receive (especially if you’ve ‘nothing’ to share: needs are gifts)

⭐ hunger for the world we dream of (let’s sow these seeds together)

⭐ anything you’d love to share! Invitation without expectation: Have you seen our relational, material & financial needs? Take a peek🧡

And Friends, join us for a musical gift this Sunday evening:

We’re honored to welcome our friend’s warm, wise resonance with us all!

Rain or shine, join us for a potluck at 5 and music begins at 6. Bring your own chair, learn more and:

What can we sow now?

So(w) much!

You’ll always find growing and seed saving insight and inspiration for every seed we share on our website, in addition to videos, blogs, growing guides and even online courses including

And Friends, these gifts are ‘free’ not as in ‘valueless,’ but free as in Fannie Lou Hamer:

‘None of us are free

until all of us are free.’

We vision a world where we all are ‘sustained’ rather than ‘paid,’ as our beloved Friend Adam Wilson so bravely articulates…

…and if you’d love to sustain our lives more directly, we’re so honored:

Come for the seeds, transplants and community…

…and stay for the waterfalls!

Bring your boots and look, we made you a map to find tasty bites, beverages, hikes (this is Parrish Gully in High Tor above) & kayaks:

We are the Seeds!

Happy planting & see you soon 🧡

Sow Seeds & Sing Songs,

and the Many Possibilities of Fruition

ps

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

pps