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
One Year Since We Dropped Syngenta
Onward!
As we shift our reliance away from consolidated corporate control by giant chemical companies, we must commit ourselves to advancing seed breeding and distribution systems where the goals are a sovereign food system, climate resilience, ecological stewardship, and farmer and community well-being. Please join us in strengthening our co-op and our network of seed farmers who share this mission. A simple way is by choosing varieties with the OSSI symbol, and those labeled as Breeder Royalties or Breeder Grown.
We also invite you to pay attention to the supplier codes that accompany each variety description in our catalog. While many varieties we carry are open-source, open-pollinated, and grown on small farms, we also offer excellent hybrids available only from bigger multinational companies. Our supplier codes can help you make more informed choices that suit your goals and growing conditions.
During Fedco’s 47 years in business, we’ve done our best to continually evaluate what it means to be an ethical seed company, and to offer the best varieties for our demanding northern climate. In an increasingly complex and arcane industry, we are as committed as ever to evaluating the sources of our seed, and telling you whatever we discover.