Packer’s Lima: A Seed Without a Price

How do we put a monetary value on seeds—living heirlooms, stewarded for generations, whose stories mirror our own?

We continue to challenge ourselves and our customers with this question by offering one variety that has no determined price. Last year we offered Maine Sunset dry bean, and once again many of you responded with thoughtfulness and generosity. The highest price paid per packet was $25 (the lowest was $0.)

This year we invite you to pay what you like for Packer’s lima bean. Once we’ve covered our costs, all profit from Packer’s will go into our Seed Farmers Resilience Fund.

Ever grown lima beans? Now’s the time to try! Many Americans are haunted by childhood memories of being forced to eat grey mush called lima beans. But trust us—lima beans fresh from the garden are delectable!

From their origins in the food systems of indigenous people spanning the Americas, limas were selected into two distinct types: the larger-seeded plants of the Andes, and a smaller-seeded type of Mexico and southern U.S. When the Spanish colonized Peru, they exported lots of these beans to Europe, where they arrived in boxes labeled “Lima, Peru.” Europeans called them Lima Beans. In the southern U.S. their moniker Butter Beans describes the rich flavor.

In 1999, in recognition of what we then called Global Warming, Fedco began offering Packer’s to growers in the North, where maturing limas was considered iffy. Twenty-five years later, central Maine is reliably warm enough to mature a nice crop of these well-adapted lima beans. The bean seeds we are selling were grown by organic farmers in Iowa.

Past Pay-What-You-Wish Seeds:

2023 - Abenaki Calais Flint Corn: For the inaugural year of our seed-without-a-price program we choose a corn variety that was adapted to the region by Indigenous seed keepers, and then nearly lost.

2024 - Maine Sunset Dry Bean: A variety passed from farmer to mailman in Knox Ridge, Maine in the 1930s.