Category: News

Salish Seed Distribution Locations

Posted on by Brian Kerkvliet

We are getting seeds out to the community shortly! Seeds into your hands so you can get started and grow some of your own food!

The Salish Seed Guild community has worked hard to use money raised from the last in person seed swap for this distribution effort. Along with some additional generous donations we bought seeds in bulk. Combined with local seed savers contributions they have been packaged ready to be distributed at a number of locations around the county.

In the future we are planning to grow our most of own seeds so that we have an ample supply of locally adapted seed varieties to get out to our community to increase food security. Look for a nice selection a seeds at the locations listed below.

If you feel inclined we are looking for donations to further our work to bring seeds to the community from the future seed garden project.

If you are looking for some Free Seeds here is where you can find them.

From the plant
To the pack
Back to the ground
  • Birchwood Food Dessert Fighters Share Spot, Every Saturday from 12-2pm 3233 Northwest Ave (Industrial Credit Union Parking Lot) Bellingham, WA 98225
  • Foothills Foodbank 8255 Kendall Road Maple Falls, WA Tuesdays 9-11:30am
  • Bellingham Farmers Market 1100 Railroad AVE Bellingham, WA 98225 Saturday 10-3; March 20 & April 10
  • Living Earth Herbs 1411 Cornwall AVE Bellingham, WA 98225 M-Sat 10-6; Sun 12-6
  • Rome Store 2908 Mt. Baker HWY Bellingham, WA 98226 M-Sat 7am-9pm; 8am-9pm
  • Inspiration Farm’s self serve Farm Stand 619 E Laurel RD Bellingham, WA 98226

Tool Call

Posted on by Brian Kerkvliet

Hello friends of the Community Salish Seed Garden! We seek your cast-aside functional and broken tools and seeding flats!!

We are in need of a good amount of tools to serve up to the volunteer army that will be participating in co-stewarding the new seed garden this Spring! Clicking on the link will bring you to the full list of tools, supplies, and services we are looking for from the community.

Don’t have anything to donate? Fear not! We will be repairing old broken tools and wheelbarrows too, in order to best stretch the generous donation dollars we have gotten from the community. Got a broken shovel, rake, garden fork, weeding tools, or whatsit laying around being useless in your garage? Let us know what you’ve got and we will try to breathe life back into it!

If you want to help us fix some tools and know how get in touch. If you don’t know how, but want to learn, that is fine too. We will be hosting a Tool Fixit event in the near future so stay tuned!

If you want to donate items you can drop them off at Inspiration Farm or contact us to make other arrangements.

Thank you all so much for your support and consideration!

First Seed Garden Gathering

Posted on by Brian Kerkvliet

It was a beautiful sunny crisp day for our first Salish Seed Garden gathering. A group of core organizers and friends came together for the first initial planting of few seed beds.

A group of about 9 gathered a give a blessing to the first event of the season for the new Salish Seed Garden project.

We planted three beds of crops. The first two were biannual plants that Krista had grown out last year and over wintered in storage. This year they are planted out and allowed to continue their cycle of growing on to flowering to produce seed this season.

Onions and beets are biannual. This means that they do not go to flower until the second year of growth. Sometimes you can leave the roots in the ground and let them over winter and continue growing the following year. While this is the easiest thing to do it is not always the most reliable. There is always the risks of them being eaten by critters of freeze so hard they rot in the field. It is safer to harvest them in the fall and store in a root cellar type situation to be planted back out the following Spring. So this is what we did to ensure we get a good seed crop this year of these two items.

We also direct seeded a bed of Fava beans. This is one of the few bean seeds that can germinate in the cold wet Spring soil we have this time of year.

While one group was working on planting these beds another group mixed up a wheel barrow of potting mix using on site compost, horse manure sand and some amendments of lime, rock dust and inoculated biodynamic biochar.

We sifted this mix into flats and planted tomatoes, basil, fennel, onions and leeks. These flats are now germinating in the house on a rack in the warm laundry room.

It was a good day with fun folks who love to play with soil and seeds.

We got a lot accomplished, had fun, and dreamed and schemed of how to proceed with the the Salish Seed Guild Garden Growing.

BFDF Seed Swap

Posted on by Brian Kerkvliet

This growing season, the need for food-especially fresh produce- is going to be especially high, so now more than ever we want people to have the capacity to grow what they can for themselves and others.

If you have extra seeds you’d like to share, please bring those. We are reaching out to our community partners to have many seeds on hand too. We’ll also have people and brochures on hand to answer questions about growing food.

A representative of Salish Seed Guild will be at this event with seeds to share. They can also answer any questions you may have about all the exciting projects we have going on this year.

Seeds will be freely and safely exchanged in the parking lot with social distancing in place. We will have latex-free gloves for people to wear as they browse. Masks are required.

Let’s work together to make sure we all have the food we need to survive and thrive in the coming year!

Facebook event link for those who want to share and keep track of updates: 

Salish Seed Solstice Update

Posted on by Brian Kerkvliet

We are excited to be moving forward with a vision that started a number of years ago with a small group of dedicated people. To plant a garden with the specific intent of growing seeds for the community. This will be a way to ensure that everyone who wants to grow out some of the best locally adapted open pollenated non GMO crops, can have the opportunity to do so! This effort will help ensure that we are seed secure, self sufficient and resilient. The whole vision also includes a seed bank, seed libraries and a seed processing equipment co-op.

We envision this being a community endeavor with the opportunity to volunteer, make suggestions, tell stories, contribute your favorite seeds for this area so that they can be grown out for the wider community.

At his point we have located some mid county ground to begin this work in earnest the Spring of 2021. Over the next few months we will be preparing the ground, gathering supplies, raising money and awareness for this project. If you are interested in being involved check out our “Volunteer” and “Donate” page and let us know how you would like to be involved.

First steps will be woking over the wet winter months to raise awareness, funds, gathering tools and invisible infrastructure (website, database, volunteers, strategies) before we hit the ground running in the Spring. First steps will be putting up a hoop house and preparing the soil. At the samt time we will be taking an inventory of the seeds we have available and select what to grow out for this year. Timing and isolation are key considerations to what we can grow out and accurately to save seed from.

We are inviting you to join us on this journey!

Salish Seed’s Vision

Posted on by Brian Kerkvliet

To be a seed processing equipment Co-Op, education/ research group, Seed Bank and seed lending library
Salish Seed Co-op’s mission is to honor the biodiversity of seeds grown in our local food shed and to encourage the care-taking of genetic seed diversity for future generations. Our members grow, select & store seeds from plants that express genetic strengths adaptable to our soils & changing weather, or unique heirloom qualities that could enhance the resiliency of our local food system.
We advance our mission through a regional Salish Sea network of seed-saving garden-farmers & advocates, through organizing & attending regional seed swaps supporting open exchange of seeds, through workshops and educational demonstrations at public events, and by researching, building and acquiring appropriate-scale seed processing equipment and storage facilities.
We envision a future where a majority of local farmers and gardeners are saving at least some of their own seeds, with each individual playing a vital role in stewarding locally-adapted seed varieties and diversity. We envision a future where local farmers are once again educated and skilled in the art and science of selecting, harvesting, threshing, and cleaning seed of all types of food and medicinal plants. We envision a future where our local seed swaps are no longer dependent on seeds donated by large seed companies from outside the region, and instead become vital trading posts for local growers and seed stewards.
Donations Welcome for Salish Seed Co-Op Projects
Acquire Seed Processing Equipment
Equipment list includes: threshers, seed cleaning devices, the Clipper fanning mill and hand screens we have, de hulling equipment, grinding mills and potentially nut & corn shucking and grinding equipment.
The function would be to clean and process seeds used as food, grain, corn, beans, nuts.
The equipment would be housed at one location but would be available to the community much like the Whatcom Pastured Poultry equipment. With a small lifetime membership of say $20 you could rent the equipment and some of the seed that you clean would go back into the seed bank.

Salish Seed Co-Op Goals:
Set up and Organize Salish Seed Bank The seed storage component. Includes storage space, containers, physical organization systems and personal to organize, catalog and distribute seeds. Organizing with multiple goals in mind.
First priority would be to be a repository for all seed genetics that are appropriate for growing in Whatcom county and store them in trust for the people here. Record origins and breeding history of each seed variety in the bank.
Second priority would be go keep the seed resources renewed and recorded with reliable seed saving growers. Maintaining the best genetics and diversity.
Third focus would be to get extra seeds out to the community to grow food. Achieved through seed swaps, food banks, self serve seed kiosks at libraries and schools. 
Another ongoing function should be to train people how to grow crops out in order to correctly save seed so that there is reliable new seed coming back to the seed bank. Includes organizing classes, printing brochures, and bringing in speakers.

  • – Approximate space needed to start- 100- 200 Square feet
  • – Equipment needs. 5-10 file cabinets or equivalent mouse proof storage. Lots of containers, large and small, preferably glass. A sorting table. Dehumidifier and climate controls. Computer system to handle inventory, labels, brochures etc. Some office supplies.
  • – Approximate initial funds needed for equipment and staff. Equipment- Say $5000. Salary for 1 person to set the system up and get things going ???? Minimal input needed after setup, just maintenance.

2- The seed cleaning and processing equipment component. 
This components function would not only be used to clean seeds but also process seeds used as food, grain, corn, beans, nuts.
This equipment would be housed at one location but would be available to the community much like the Whatcom pastured poultry equipment is. With a small lifetime membership fee say $20 you can use it for a small rental say $10 a day and some of the seed that you clean would go back into the seed bank. Prefferably all of this equipment would be housed in a weather proof box trailer that could be hauled from site to site for threshing parties.

  • – Equipment list includes: A box trailer large enough to house, threshers, seed cleaning devices, the Clipper (we have), hand screens and others, de hulling equipment, mills and potentially nut & corn shucking, grinding equipment and an oil press.
  • – Approximate space needed to start- 500 – 1000 sq. feet
  • – Approximate initial funds needed for equipment- could be anywhere from $15,000 to $35,000 depending on what scale and type of equipment we decide to go with. Some of this we already have.

    Follow Salish Seed Guild on Facebook

Seed swap

Posted on by Brian Kerkvliet

Heirloom Seed Swap 2017
Seeds time to plan and start planting for the coming bounty2
We are all gearing up for a grand year here at Inspiration Farm. Time to get peas in the ground (saved from last years) Kale, spinach, mustard, cilantro, arugula, parsley and more. As today is a leaf day we will start with that.