Welcome to Fedco’s 47th Year!

Dendritic patterns meander and branch through our landscapes and our lives. Veins and hyphae, roots and watersheds, even the skidder trails for moving wood from forest to log yard—these patterns ebb and flow. They embody systems of collection and distribution, gathering, adapting and forging along paths of least resistance.

In contrast, our society conditions us to optimize, organize and prioritize. We fill our calendars and coffee pots, honing our time to efficiently check boxes. Instead of flowing toward our goals and destinations, we straighten our banks and surge past stillness.

Growing a garden and observing the biology of plants provides subtle guidance toward patterns of ease. Seeds ready to burst forth with a little coaxing, warmth, water, perhaps a bit of light, can spark inspiration. Freshly harvested greens reveal veins that delivered sugars to cells and roots, where far-reaching mycorrhizae exchange micronutrients for carbon-based compounds. Plants grown in barren soils or substrates, lacking mutualism, lack nutrition.

You can buy seeds, fertilizers, micronutrients, watering systems and grow lights. But you cannot simply buy a garden. There are patterns to learn and heed—bending them to fit our short-sighted efficiencies can (thankfully) only get us so far. There are seasons to follow, weather patterns to navigate, birds and insects to welcome, soil microbes to nurture. Gardens and humans alike thrive on interconnectedness, balance and flow.

Each season a garden invites us to branch out, to learn and invent, and to rediscover how the path of least resistance can lead to abundance—of food and connection—and to finding equilibrium.

Cooperatively,
Courtney Williams, Seeds Branch Coordinator