I suggested to our small rural library that we begin a Seed Story Library. A wee bit different from a seed bank of local seeds, it includes the story of the seeds. I shared with them the story of old grandmother pecan trees that grow near the century old farmhouse.

To help the library share the Seed Story concept with other library locations in the county and gauge support from residents, I collected pecans and filled a couple jars of seeds to bring them along with a printed copy of the Pecan Seed Story .
 
Space is at a premium at small rural libraries and i distributing them to the community out of planting season could lead to the seeds ending up in a drawer somewhere and be forgotten when planting season rolls around. I suggested that it may work better if the seeds are only available during the best time to plant them. For pecans that time is fall, when the squirrels are planting them. This will limit the amount of space the library needs for to display the seeds if they're only sharing a few seed stories at one time. the stories are also more likely to be read. These are Seed Stories after all, not a seed saving program.
 
Once the seeds have all been taken into the community the story remains. I gave the library an old binder  to store old seed stories. Perhaps one day it will be a collection of Randolph County Seed Stories if they decide to do this in the long term.
 
You'll find the story, planting instructions and a recipe for Pecan Pesto below. Whether you have the Grandmother Seeds to plant or not, please carry this story with you to keep the Grandmother trees alive.

A friend of mine asked me on Saturday: “Have you ever noticed the pineywoods grazing on acorns ? Some folks I was talking to today at the market said acorns will mess up the cows gut. I was surprised to hear that !”
 
My friend Chris Dorsey at Red Wolf Farms has seen his Pineywoods herd eat acorns. They don’t eat many. A few years ago there was a flurry of panic from farmers saying some of their Angus had died from eating acorns. I’ve heard the same about Angus dying from eating wild cherry. Our Pineywoods only eat the green leaves of wild cherry, the cyanide is much higher in the wilted leaves.

We were awaiting payment for a USDA grant awarded to us in 2024 when the Administration froze all payments on January 27th. Initially we were hopeful that the judge’s ruling would lift the freeze, but the Administration has kept the freeze in place.
 
The grant would have allowed us to expand our regenerative farming approach. My wife Sue and I took money out of retirement savings to pay for work completed in October 2024 with the expectation that the USDA would uphold their end of the bargain. Other farmers have done similar.
 
Perhaps that was a bit naive on our part. Our grant was awarded out of USDA’s Climate Smart Commodities Partnership. It would help us conserve more forest, reduce fire risk without the use of herbicides while providing food and medicine for our cattle. With the word “climate” in it, it was bound to be a target for the Administration. I think of it as a Conservation grant. Most farms cut down forest to make room for cattle. This grant would have allowed us to conserve the forest by fencing it and allowing our Pineywoods Cattle herd to graze it, also know as silvopasture.