The Generational Resilience of Seeds : A look at epigenetics on the farm
The Robins are back in town. The flower buds on the Oso berry are opening up and the green/yellow hue of the Oregon Grape buds are becoming more vibrant. Spring is awakening, a new generation is being birthed. I want to explore something with y’all this month. As you may know March is National Women’s History Month and National Nutrition Month. As a woman whose main goal currently is to grow culturally relevant and nutritious food… this adds up.
To really understand why food sovereignty is such an important aspect of social and environmental justice is to come to respect and understand history. To fully comprehend the interconnectedness of Earth, of all ecosystems, of this singular, brief and fleeting experience as human in this complex web of life is to be introduced to Epigenetics. Epigenetics is simply a scientific field of study that explores the cross-generational effects of toxins, behaviors and nutrients. That is to say, it’s a field of study that seeks to more fully understand the effects of our lived experiences across many generations. How does our experience impact our grandchildren's options and outcomes?
I am no expert but I find these concepts fascinating. And by no means do I hold much esteem for western (white) science - in fact most western science has only gone on to prove what folks already knew in more traditionally and culturally relevant contexts. So color me the color of unimpressed.
Ultimately what I have come to learn is that when a person with a uterus is developing in a uterus as a fetus they are also developing the 3rd generation eggs - ½ (or more) of the cells needed to create the next person to enter this ethereal realm. What is life really? My random existential crises aside, the circumstances under which the grandmother egg cell is developed affects the daughter and granddaughters genetic predisposition, it can affect their outcomes in life, fundamentally altering their ability to process various nutrients, subtle behavior/personality traits and so on affecting outwards the next 3 generations. Whoa.
Anyways, this is true for plants too. If the parent plant experiences drought the next generation is highly likely to be more drought tolerant - genetically the needs of the plant have altered!
So, if this is occurring in and around us, it’s no wonder that the nutrition our grandparents ate, the foods they put into their bodies have affected us, and that which we each consume and how we care for ourselves now will reach forward to affect the next 3 generations and so on. Salish tribal communities have been shown to have a higher than normal salt content - this is shown through blood tests or some such. Now, in our current healthcare system a doctor is likely to recommend that these people cut back on their salt intake but the reality is that as ocean living peoples, estuary peoples, over centuries of relationship and consumption of salt water foods they have developed and accumulated to a healthier however higher than “normal” salt content in their bodies. That’s the transference I am talking about here. How our nutrition today is carried on through the generations of our ancestry.
As Valere Seagrest speaks to in her TEDx video you can watch on Youtube, she speaks to our more than 10,000 year relationship with this land. That’s 10,000 years to learn, observe, and experience. That’s a heck of a long time. These plants and animals are a living link to the land and our ancestral legacy. They remind us of who we are and where we come from, who has built us up. We are the soil. Did you know we know more about space or the deep ocean than we do about the very soil we touch and walk upon every day? The soil, that’s built up by the decay and refuse of others, that is living and breathing, providing nutrition and shelter. 10,000 years on this soil. The Sinixt are made of the blood (Columbia river) of Rain at the mouth of the river where it met Rain’s cousin Ocean and mixed and modeled out of the Earth found there in the estuary where the blood of Rain swirled with that of Oceans. We are soil.
As we practice saving seed on the Farm, acclimating these plant varieties from generation to generation to our climate, soil, ecology, we are engaging in such a profound relationship with these plants. We talk a lot about resisting the scarcity mindset and the land is helping to teach us how. Through lessons of gratitude, reciprocity, and caring for those folks we’ll never meet far into the future. We are changing, acclimating and adapting along with the plant seeds we are nurturing.
I don’t know exact current numbers but some statistics that Valere Seagrest mentioned in the TedX talk was that pre-contact, the Coast Salish and no doubt the Salish people broadly which includes the Sinixt - my, Farmer Michelle’s, people- ate 300 plus distinct and unique foods. Within the last decade that number has plummeted to 13-20 foods. Good Rain Farm is working towards increasing the biodiversity in which we consume and with which we engage in relationship. Our goal on this farm is to feed people long after we are dead and gone. Our goal is to replicate our activities in abundance. These are our teachings, the Sinixt culture, the Muckleshoot Culture, and the Salish culture are all intertwined with the land and all that inhabit and define it: plants, soil, water, wind, creatures, us. We grow over 150 varieties of foods, depending on how the definition of ‘foods’ is used in those above statistics but we are not yet close to 300 again. But now that we are striving and working hard for it, to preserve foods is to preserve food traditions, craft traditions, storytelling, language, land tending practices and so much more. As a Farmer that comes from a once extinct tribe, who was removed from the culture, growing food, growing Good Rain Farm has allowed me to remember and reconnect with all those aspects of culture and I have heard from others in our community that this farm is aiding them. I couldn’t be prouder of the work we do to positively affect and nourish the next 3 generations and those beyond, literally in our DNA and in the legacy we’ll leave behind- that is, this concept Xast Sqit Farm.
Written By Farmer Michelle M Week
Suggested Further Reading:
https://www.tahomapeak.com/valerie
https://www.allmyrelationspodcast.com/post/ep-2-food-sovereignty-a-growing-movement
