Company nurtures old varieties, new gardeners

Winter has been long, cold and, for many of us, the party guest who doesn't know when to vamoose.

But the Ice Man Goeth, and sooner than you think.

I found proof of this imminent seasonal change last week in the form of an amiable young guy who was sitting at a table with a scoop - it looked like a miniature corncob pipe, but yellow and plastic. He was measuring onion seeds from a glass jar and weighing them on a scale. When the amount was correct - one gram or a speck over - he poured the seeds into their awaiting packet, and sealed it. After spending an hour filling packets of this purple bunching onion, he planned to spend the next hour or two washing dirty dishes. He gave his name as Para Praxis, a nom de commune, because he works at an egalitarian enterprise named Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, nestled in the backwoods of central Virginia, between Richmond and Charlottesville. The mailing address is Mineral, a town 12 miles to the north. Six months ago, Praxis, 26, was in "corporate sales" in Austin, selling software to computer programmers. Today he measures onion seeds by day and sleeps in a cold, converted barn at night with his gloves on. "It's kind of like heaven," he said.

Southern Exposure is in some respects a throwback to the 1970s, a commune for approximately 30 people like Praxis, mostly young and all idealistic. The seed company they work for is an employee-owned cooperative that sources and sells annuals, vegetables and herbs that are open-pollinated - that is, they will produce genetically stable seed that anyone can save for use the following season, seed that has not been altered in a lab, patented or possessed.

From a purely practical standpoint, Southern Exposure has established itself as a major source of varieties developed for use in the hot, humid climate of the mid-Atlantic and the Southeastern United States. Many of the varieties were unknown family heirlooms, passed solely between generations before Southern Exposure introduced them to a wider audience.

Since it was acquired from its founder in the 1990s, the enterprise has nurtured a tenfold increase in sales under the guiding hand of Ira Wallace. She is soft-spoken, pensive and seems to approach the travails of life with huge reserves of equanimity. A fire in the commune's main building in 2013 forced the early occupation of its new headquarters, a large three-story structure that sits like a wooden ship in the center of the farm compound. One idea was to call it the Seed Ark, but that seemed a bit precious and was dropped. I'm not sure I would have discarded the name - so much genetic treasure is preserved in and dispersed from this seed vessel.

In its loading-dock area, whole sacks of seed are received for packaging, either by hand or with a fancy automated machine. Eighty-five percent of the orders are online, the rest by phone or mail or even, egad, fax.

Amid a space cluttered with boxes, containers and the detritus of a seed business and communal living, all seems calm and quiet even though this is the busiest time of the year.

More than 80 percent of Southern Exposure's seed sales occur in the first three months of the year. This leaves the rest of the year as a time for growing their plants, for seed production and for feeding the commune. In addition to what's grown here, three other local farms produce most of the seed for Southern Exposure's 700 offered varieties, from popcorn to Southern varieties of tomato. The enterprise relies on a total of 70 growers, most in the mid-Atlantic region.

The regional bent and novelty are evident in the catalog, which includes peanut varieties from North Carolina, southwest Virginia and Tennessee. One drools, too, over 22 varieties of muskmelons and a similar array of black-eyed and other Southern peas.

Wallace leads me into the seed storage room, where two dozen floor-to-ceiling racks contain thousands of seed packets ready to go. I feel like Imelda Marcos in a Manolo Blahnik showroom.

Each variety comes with a tale. Wallace is pleased at the success of collard greens, that most Southern of brassicas, and in particular a variety named Alabama Blue. It has similarities with Red Russian kale, blue-green with plum veins, and is particularly sweet when harvested young. Kale, of course, has become the poster child of the local food movement.

"You know kale is king, but here, collards are queen," she said. "This year we sold more packets of a single variety of collards than of kale." Who's buying it? "Everybody and their sister," she said. She told me to grow some as baby collards in the spring, and then sow it in late summer for a mature crop through the autumn into winter.

I don't have garden space for corn, but if you do and want something beyond sweet corn, Wallace has got you covered. She has dozens of varieties for meal, including Appalachian heirlooms raised for hominy. If you have backyard chickens - alas, I don't - you will want to grow her Gourdseed Corn, which the hens can eat right off the cob, no preparation needed.

She has nine varieties of lima bean, including Thomas Jefferson's preferred Sieva and a variety from Georgia - Violet's Multicolored Butterbeans - that comes in a kaleidoscope of colors when grown as a dried bean. "I like to put them in a jar and give them as a holiday gift for soupmaking," she said.

I'm kicking myself because I forgot to get some, though I did buy more quantities of other things than I could possibly plant. (Southern Exposure isn't set up for walk-in trade; better to order at (540) 894-9480 or www.southernexposure.com).

I found (at last) a decorative variegated pepper named Fish, a ridged luffa of all things, which Wallace insists is edible when young, and a dwarf vining watermelon - Early Moonbeam - that she says can be trained up tomato trellises, though you have to support the fruit in some way.

Will the frigid winter portend an unbearably hot, muggy summer? After my little road trip, I feel more than ready.

For Wallace, the preservation and dissemination of these precious seeds symbolizes something much greater. Many young people spend time here and then leave infused with the desire to protect the earth and nurture one another. "That's our gift to the world," she said.