Joseph's Media Appearances

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Today, I'm the featured guest on Christi Wilhelmi's Gardenerd podcast.

This week on the Gardenerd Tip of the Week Podcast, we journey down an unconventional rabbit hole with Joseph Lofthouse. He spends his days developing landrace seeds on his 6th-generation family farm in northern Utah.

He's also the author of Landrace Gardening: Food Security through Biodiversity and Promiscuous Pollination. What's a landrace you ask? Listen to find out. He opens our minds to resilient possibilities.

Link to podcast blog

Direct link to podcast

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Today's podcast appearance features an interview with the amazing Ben Cohen of Small House Farm

https://www.smallhousefarm.com/seedsandweedspodcast/ep-2-five-questions-with-joseph-lofthouse/

It's also on youtube.
https://youtu.be/eWqUxo2Xx8A

It's also on all the platforms: Spotify, Apple, Google etc

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I had a lively conversation with the Grow Your Grass Off podcast. They asked questions about things that I don't normally talk about, so the content seems fresh to me.

Find it on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/9M9ht0rJ8DE

[Joseph Lofthouse]

For the past 15 years, I worked to develop a network to create, preserve, and share genetically-diverse landrace varieties. The huge project exceeded my abilities. After publishing my book, a group of collaborators joined me in the endeavor.

The collaborators help me to refine my ideas. They challenge me to be consistent in how I talk about landraces, and the associated political and social issues.  They invite me to apply the principles of landrace gardening to all of my growing and social interactions.  They take care of technical, financial, social, and administrative tasks that immobilize me. Their neurodiversity and compassion help us work through difficult issues with grace and goodwill.

I feel honored to announce that a non-profit organization, Going To Seed,  has been organized to continue this work.

Courses
Our video and text-based courses cover the importance of genetic diversity, cross-pollination and breeding basics, seed selection and saving.

Community
The community provides a place for your knowledge to be �cross-pollinated, evolved, and applied. Gain insights, share ideas, troubleshoot your issues, and receive feedback.

Seeds
Genetically diverse seed mixes, curated by our members, help you get started breeding your own locally adapted crops.

Join our mailing list
We're just getting started, and there are lots of exciting things coming from Going to Seed. Sign up to receive updates about new programs, courses, and seed availability.

https://goingtoseed.org/

[William Schlegel]

I've been kind of enjoying the going to seed forum. It seems a little redundant with this forum. I feel sometimes like I am trying to re-create threads or just duplicate what we already have here. Though I also wonder if this forum will stick around forever.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

We limit discussion on the Going to Seed forum to landrace only.

The Open Source Plant Breeding forum is the best place for discussing general plant breeding topics, and things like specific species, genetics, alleles, pedigrees, heirlooms, hybrids, or science.

[Kadence Luneman]

I've been enjoying it as well. I feel like it's the introduction, dip your toes in place. On here it can be alot more technical. Which is good but can also scare newbies.

[UnicornEmily]

Yeah, there's definitely overlap, but I think there's a good reason for both forums to exist.  I like that this is a great place to go to get technical details and share high level expertise, and there is a good place to go to toss around random ideas and see if anything interesting comes out of it.  There's tons of overlap, but it's almost a left-brained versus right-brained difference.  High organization and planning versus "just trying stuff" seems like the difference in tone between the communities to me.

Both are super valuable, and while many people enjoy both, some people will strongly prefer one over the other.  So for me, frequenting both gives me more people to learn from with more diversity of perspectives.  It's lovely.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I'm speaking 3 times next weekend. All are free, just need to register ahead of time.

Gaia Foundation Seed Sovereignty UK & Ireland Programme
February 11th at
9 AM Mountain Time

Landrace gardening teaches that plants are stronger, tastier, and more reliable if impure parents are cross-pollinating and undergoing survival of the fittest selection. An heirloom is a variety that was developed long ago, on a far away farm, and has undergone 50 years of inbreeding. Landraces are locally-adapted to current conditions, and have enough genetic diversity to change with the ecosystem.
Get Tickets

Seed Library Summit
February 11th, Saturday
10:30 AM Pacific Time

Landrace Gardening: Finding Peace with Genetic Diversity

Explore the tension between curating heirloom varieties and offering locally adapting modern landraces. Learn some of the benefits and techniques of expanding the genetic diversity of varieties you share in your community. A landrace is a food crop with lots of genetic diversity which contributes to its ability to survive new pests, diseases, or changes in cultural practices or in the environment.
Get Tickets

Going To Seed
The monthly zoom meeting
Landrace Gardening Community
February 12th, Noon Mountain Time

William DeMille, our guest speaker, educates about soil health. I hope that he'll contribute some thoughts about how weeds fit into that philosophy. I had a lovely time exploring William's walipini this week. The get together is free to members of the forum or video course.
Going To Seed