
Wild Seed Project, 2024
For the farmer who yearns to focus on life beyond production, a new guide from Wild Seed Project, “Planting for Climate Resilience in Northeast Landscapes” offers companionship. By skillfully weaving ancestral knowledge and celebrating the power of cultural creation, this guide feels more like a reflection of the landscape we love than an authoritative decree. So many of us ache and dream of growing something beautiful that doesn’t demand rigid, expensive, back-breaking input. We defend our vegetable crops from threat after threat, scrabble across open, rocky fields and stress over the thousands of things that need to go right for our farms to see another day. This guide offers a path towards sanctuary for all of us farmers — and gardeners, too — who exist on even a spit of land and have a longing to connect to the more-than-human communities around us.
“The ongoing violence of settler colonialism and an extractive capitalist system both sit at the root of the climate crisis we all now live within.” By acknowledging these truths Wild Seed Project makes space for much needed repair work with Indigenous communities and lays a foundation for transformative endurance for us all. By engaging with these realities and resulting ongoing displacement of native plants, as well as humans and lifeways, we are invited to consider how our “actions impact other life” and reminded to support Wabanaki-led efforts to protect the life web that supports us.
In this guide, plant communities are described with lyrical understanding. Individual plant profiles are embedded with information about the multi-faceted relationships that these species enjoy. Both close-up and landscape photographs are saturated with color that could coax a butterfly. With this guide, the Wild Seed Project makes the case that “a more vibrant and habitable world is possible.” We will cherish this publication’s demonstration of the beauty that this awaiting world offers.
– Meg Mitchell
This review was originally published in the summer 2024 issue of The Maine Organic Farmer & Gardener. Browse the archives for free content on organic agriculture and sustainable living practices.