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Katie Traub is our High Mowing Farm Manager and with her team of Stephen Purdy, Noah LePage, Taylor Maida and their awesome crew, they grow our seed crops, conduct extensive variety trials, and engage in breeding projects on our Vermont Farm. Together, they have over 30 years of organic farming experience.
Katie evaluating "Who Gets Kissed?" sweet corn in our 2014 trials.
Growing seeds is especially interesting and rewarding, but it can sometimes be stressful and frustrating. According to Katie Traub, "unexpected off-types and surprising germination failures" are some of the challenges they face as seed growers. For example, you can produce a beautiful crop, one that would be fine to eat, only to find upon extracting and drying the seeds, that there was some problem with their maturity and the germination rate is too low to sell the seed.
Noah driving the tractor while the crew transplants seedlings.
But a lot of joy comes from their knowledge of seed growing and its relationship to vegetable farming. They get to see the full life cycle expression of each plant and the interesting genetic aspects of seed production make their work very different from vegetable farming. One thing that makes seed growing really work on our small scale is having the correct specialized tools for the job. Threshing dry seeds, extracting wet seeds and rinsing and drying all require particular tools to be done efficiently. Many of these tools we have made ourselves, and when they work, everything goes smoothly, but when they don't it can be quite a hassle, requiring lots of extra labor. The team is always working on new techniques and tools to make seed growing easier, higher quality and more efficient, which is critical as our seed farm grows.
Honeynut butternut squash in particular is an interesting seed crop, and when we asked Katie if it was her favorite, she confirmed with an "Oh God, yeah!" After several years of selecting and improving this variety, Katie and the crew began producing the seed. Honeynut is a longer-season butternut, so it gets a lot of care early on in order to fully mature up here in Northern Vermont. But as our sweetest butternut, Katie talked about how rewarding it is to produce. She described how each vine makes many small squash, so there is more handling than with typical butternuts of a larger size.
Taylor in the artichoke trials.Stephen hoeing the cucurbits in the trials field.
The dark orange flesh is of such high quality that every year we bring the Honeynut harvest up to Pete's Greens, a neighboring farm, for curing and processing into soup and pie based after we extract the seeds. Honeynut also has a very small seed cavity, which of course is not so great for seed production but makes it an excellent variety in the kitchen. Our seed farmers and their hard work and dedication to the craft are what make it possible for us to offer unique, innovative varieties like Honeynut.
