The Seed Underground: A Growing Revolution to Save Food (23 page)

I HAD HEARD
that a man near Rabun Gap, Georgia, was growing an old corn. The man’s name was Bill Keener and his address said Betty’s Creek Road, with no number. One fall day I found myself up in Rabun Gap, in the foothills of the Appalachians, with an unscheduled morning, so I went looking for Betty’s Creek Road and headed up it. I came upon a garage where a receptionist was working who knew Bill Keener and told me where he could be found.

The high diversity of heirlooms in the Appalachian region was established by Jim Veteto in his doctoral research at the University of Georgia. He credits the Eastern Band of Cherokee as the originators of much of the diversity in the Mountain South.

When I pulled into his yard, Mr. Keener was washing a small truck.

“Need some help with that?” I, a stranger, called as I got out.

“I’m about to get it,” he said.

“I’m looking for a man named Bill Keener,” I said.

“You’ve found him.”

Mr. Keener seemed happy to stop work and talk to me about old-time crops.

“Just a moment,” I said. “Let me get paper to write on.”

He turned off the spigot. “I don’t want to be in the news.”

“What about a book?”

“Maybe that’s okay,” he said, so I went easy, lobbing him soft questions, the weather first and if he made the birdhouses nailed on trees all around.

“Yes.”

“Is that tree a pear?”

“It is.”

Mr. Keener and I settled into a pair of lawn chairs in the yard. “I was sent by Woody Malot and Cary Albright,” I said. “I’m looking for old varieties of vegetables. They said you have an old corn and I’m interested in hearing more about it.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Is that it growing yonder?”

“That’s it.”

“That’s a tall corn. Ten or twelve feet tall.”

“And only one ear per stalk.”

Even before I drove up Betty’s Creek Road that day, I had entertained ideas of collecting this corn, since I knew Mr. Keener was aging and somebody needs to keep his family heirloom alive. When I heard that the corn only produces one ear per twelve-foot stalk, however, I immediately lost interest. If it was left up to me, this variety would go extinct, I guessed. Part of me wants to save everything. Another part of me wondered what good a corn can be that only bears one ear per stalk.

“One ear?” I exclaimed.

“It used to have more,” he said.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know.”

“Has it always been that tall?”

“It has gotten taller.”

“Where did you get it?”

“Aw, my daddy grew it. His daddy before him. Maybe his daddy. I’ve grown it all my life.”

“Does it have a name?”

“We knew it as Keener corn.”

“Do you mind showing it to me?”

“Not at all.”

A tall man, Mr. Keener plucked himself from his lawn chair and sauntered across the mown grass to his quarter-acre garden that had been plowed under except for a few rows of corn and some of beans. The corn had matured and dried on the stalks.

“Why haven’t you harvested it?”

“I never pick it until November. I want it to be good and dry.”

In the corn patch, we walked among giants, high above us the tassels like tan fingers of tall skeletons.

“I’ll give you a couple ears,” Mr. Keener said.

“You don’t have to,” I said, dubious. “Keep your corn for grinding. You don’t have that much.”

“Oh, I have plenty. I have another garden full.”

“Well, I’ll take an ear. But just one.”

“Oh, you’ll want it,” he said. “No corn makes better meal than this.” Mr. Keener approached a stalk. I saw no ears on it until I looked up and saw one above my head. This corn didn’t need scarecrows. It was so foreboding that
it
would scare the crows away. Mr. Keener reached up and tried to break off the biggest ear of corn I’d ever seen. From dry silks to the stem where it attached to the stalk, it was nineteen or twenty inches long. It was like a club. And it wasn’t detaching easily. Mr. Keener bore down and wrenched on it. He handed the ear to me like he was handing me a baby and reached for another ear.

“One’s enough,” I said to him. I felt guilty taking corn that grew one ear per stalk. Secretly I hoped he’d give me three or four ears, enough for diversity, because I’d changed my mind, that quick.

“If you’re going to grow it, you need at least two ears,” he said, as if reading my mind.

“You are very kind.” That day four corn plants sacrificed their entire year’s labor to me and I was thrilled.

“Every time I hear that the neighbors are going to plant corn, I get nervous,” Mr. Keener said.

I was intrigued that Mr. Keener brought this up. “Why?” I asked.

“Because it will contaminate my corn,” he said. “I’m afraid of the GM corn getting in here. And most people don’t plant anything but that.”

This man was almost eighty years old and he understood genetic engineering.

“Once I planted one of the modern corns right alongside Keener corn,” he said.

“What happened?”

“It took me almost ten years to back it out.”

“How’d you get it out?”

“Selection,” he said. “The Pioneer corn had a different look.”

We stashed my vintage maize in the car and I knew that I had to do something quickly or my visit with this interesting and outspoken man would be squealing to a halt.

“I’d love to see your setup for grinding,” I said.

“Let’s go take a look.”

In a small and dusty barn, Mr. Keener showed me two corn shellers, one a hand rig and the other electric. The floor of the barn was littered with long cobs. Some of the cobs were red and some were white.

“What’s this about?”

“Years ago I introduced a Tennessee Red into the corn,” he said.

“Was it GM?”

“No. It was open-pollinated too.”

“Why did you do that?”

“I thought it needed it.” That’s all he would say. Really, what difference would it make? The Keeners have been keeping this corn for generations. He can breed his corn however he likes and it’s still Keener corn.

“You don’t see much evidence of the Tennessee Red except for a few red cobs,” he said. “This corn makes fine cornbread. I’ve got people coming back for it year after year.”

“Because they like the taste?”

“You will too. And because I nub it.”

“Nub it?”

“I take off those hard little kernels on the pointy end of the cob before I grind it. My daddy showed me how to do that. But I invented a better way.”

“May I see how you do it?”

He bent and picked up a metal cylinder a bit smaller than a full ear of dry corn. “That shouldn’t be on the floor,” he said. Inside the cylinder were welded metal wedges with little teeth cut in them. The wedges followed the conical shape of the tip of a corn ear. Their teeth take off the tip kernels, which should have a name if they don’t already. “I call it a nubber,” he said.

“You made this?” I asked.

“I did.”

“That’s genius.”

I’ll admit here and now that I coveted everything the man showed me: the corn patch, the barn, the corn sheller, the crib he had lidded with mouse-proof hardware cloth, the nubber. I coveted even the cobs strewn on the floor.

Before I left, Mr. Keener picked a mess of Greasy Back beans, an old-fashioned Appalachian cultigen so named because their pods have a greasy appearance, good for snaps or shellies, which were drying on the vines. As well, Mr. Keener gave me a few half-rotten tomatoes of a heirloom variety he called Box Car Willie, an orange-red beefsteak with average yields.

I left with three new pets, yes.

WHEN I RETURNED HOME
from the Seed Savers Exchange convention I called Jeremiah Gettle at Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, one of the people who might still have Running Conch cowpea. Gettle was busy, so I spoke with the seed curator. “I’m looking for Running Conch cowpea,” I said. “I don’t see it in the catalog.”

“Definitely we used to grow that,” the curator said. “Let me look for some seeds and see what I can find.” A few days later he called with bad news.

“I don’t know what happened,” he said. “We have none of these. This is unusual for us. I’ve made a note to find them and start growing them again.”

My heart sank. I had two more chances at redemption.

I found the phone number of Charlotte Hagood in Albertsville, Alabama. “I know you haven’t listed Running Conch for a few years,” I said. Nobody has. “I’m eager to get my hands on some seeds. I’m calling to see if you have some stored.”

“I’m sure I do,” she said. “The seeds are in the freezer. Next time I go in, I’ll pull out the Running Conch.”

“I’ll go ahead and send you a formal request,” I said. The Seed Savers Exchange requires that a few dollars accompany each seed order, along with a self-addressed stamped envelope. “Then everything will be ready when you find the seeds.”

“That’s fine,” she said. “It may take me a month or two. But you won’t need them for awhile.” She referred to spring still being months away.

“I very much appreciate it.”

By January the seeds had not arrived and I redialed Charlotte. She was busy—a characteristic, you’ll notice, of revolutionaries—but said she hadn’t forgotten the seeds and would be sending them before much more time passed.

What she didn’t know about was my desperation. She didn’t know that I had grown the seeds and lost them. She didn’t know that I was afraid she would check her supply and find out that she’d been mistaken, that she had lost them too. I was afraid that they were gone for good, a big X-mark on my karma.

To cover myself, I phoned William Woys Weaver. Definitely he had them, he said. Send an order and he’d fill it. I did and he did, and about the same time that Weaver’s cowpeas arrived, a packet from Charlotte also materialized. I was pretty excited to get the cowpeas. Right away I untaped a package to see again, after so long, the seed that had fueled my concern. The peas were as tiny as I remembered, opalescent, like the moons of Jupiter. They were like long-lost cousins. They were like hundred-dollar bills and I felt as rich as I’ve ever felt.

“Twice the genetic diversity,” I thought. Using the same variety from different sources, at least initially, could only strengthen the strain.

I wasn’t saved yet. I had to grow Running Conch and save it. I had to do it consistently, year after year. I had to make a commitment and be faithful.

I do.

DUSK HAS COME AND GONE
by the time I get to the pumpkins, and I would ignore them and go inside, clean up, and eat—the time is after nine—except that I must seize an opportunity. A bloom will open in the morning and I cannot let the bees get to her before I do.

I take a flashlight and masking tape to the garden and search the wildly sprawling vines for the flower. The vine has many inflorescences in all stages of ripeness, and I am looking for a particular one. It is a female, set to open in about ten hours. Between the flower and the stem is an immature fruit, a miniature pumpkin-to-be. Up and down the vine, beneath the large, rough, white-spotted leaves, male flowers prepare to open in the morning. Then I spot the female.

I kneel down beside her, angling the light. Mosquitoes zero in on me quickly and circle, snarling and whining; one after another they dive-bomb. They are legion because of the rains, and relentless, and I wonder what the wild animals do after dark to endure them. I slap at mosquitoes as I tear masking tape and fold it over the blossom, shutting it tightly. I mark the blossom with a ripped length of blue cloth. To tie a bag over the blossom would be easier, but I have no pollination bags. I move among the vines and leaves and find a male blossom and repeat the procedure. Then another.

This pumpkin has a cool story. I was introduced to it at a small festival
in the tiny village of Wardsboro, Vermont. The Gilfeather Turnip Festival celebrates the Gilfeather turnip—developed, most likely through hybridization, by John Gilfeather on his hillside farm in Wardsboro in the early 1900s. The festival is sponsored by the Wardsboro Friends of the Library, who sell packets of Gilfeather seed, locally designed T-shirts, and handmade Gilfeather cookbooks. Craftspeople vend their wares while local musicians wander around strumming. During the tasting hour the year I was there, I sampled caramelized turnips, turnip cake, turnip bread pudding, turnip soup, turnips with cheddar cheese.