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Summary

The excess seeds grown on my farm are available to home gardeners, small-scale farmers, and public-domain open-source plant breeders. I am growing promiscuously pollinated (PP) locally-adapted landrace populations that are specially suited to thrive on my subsistence level farm with it's unique climate and pests: irrigated desert, super-dry air, sunlight-drenched, cold radiant-cooled nights, short-season, no pesticides nor fertilizers, sporatic weeding, high-altitude clayish limestone-based lake-bottom soil, and philosophy towards diversity. The more of those conditions you share with me the better my seeds are likely to do for you.

My seed is most suitable for growers who live close to me and share a similar climate and philosophy towards growing. All of my varieties have been developed for organic subsistence level growing conditions without the use of cides nor fertilizers. Home gardeners, plant breeders, and small-scale market growers who welcome diversity of shape, taste, texture, color, size, and maturity dates may love my seeds. My seeds are unsuitable for commercial farms or large operations that require uniformity, predictibility, or stability. My seeds are especially suitable for seed savers who want to develop their own varieties or to diversify their current landraces.

Due to the wide genetic diversity, these seeds make an excellent emergency seed stash. There is so much genetic diversity among my seeds that some family type or other is likely to thrive wherever they are planted. Save the seeds and select for those families that do best in your conditions. Genetically diverse crops have a much better chance of adapting to ever changing weather and pests.

The foreign climate that has most surprised me where my varieties tend to do well have summers that are so blazing hot that vegetables tend to croak in the heat. My varieties are typically short-season, so when planted early in the spring or later in the summer, they may produce a crop before or after the worst of the summer heat, storms, and pests would ruin a longer-season crop. One southern grower tells me that he loves short-season crops, cause the longer a crop is in the ground, the more chances there are for something to go wrong.

I love grow reports, and taste reports. Recipes are lovely. Negative reports are particularly valuable to me because they give clues about what traits to work on during the coming years. If you post feedback in a public place, I may link to it or share it to bring more traffic to your post. Tagging me on Facebook, or posting to my wall is a great way for me to find your grow report.

Pricing is one silver dime, dated 1964 or earlier, per packet of seeds, or $5 paper currency. (No checks or digital payments.)

usa shipping is $5 per shipment which covers postage and a bubble envelope. If your shipment includes 4 or more packets of corn or beans, or more than about 20 packets total, please send a few extra dollars towards postage.

Shipping to usa only.

I have lived under a vow of poverty for more than 20 years, and have operated a food pantry for longer than that. I welcome donations to help me continue feeding my community and being a subsistence farmer breeding new varieties to enhance food security through common sense and traditional methods.

Some of my varieties were pledged to the open source seed initiative: You have the freedom to use these OSSI-Pledged seeds in any way you choose. In return, you pledge not to restrict others' use of these seeds or their derivatives by patents or other means, and to include this pledge with any transfer of these seeds or their derivatives.

All other varieties I offer are public domain. That means that they can be used without restrictions.

You are welcome to grow my varieties and sell the seeds. No permission is needed. If you let me know that you are growing my varieties for sale, I may do advertising for you. I ask a 5% royalty as a free-will offering to the plant breeder. If you are a market farmer and use my seed as the foundation for one of your crops, It tickles me if you remember the plant breeder with an honorarium.

Due to economic conditions, I am not currently selling seeds, only gifting. To get an idea of the kinds of projects that I'm working on, last year's catalog can be viewed at: http://garden.lofthouse.com/seed-list-2019.phtml

The list does not contain all of my breeding lines. If you would like seeds from one of my breeding lines, or from something you have read about that is not listed here, please ask.

If a variety carries my name, or the name of my village, or family, I have poured my money, time, and soul into developing that variety, and I believe it to be the best possible variety for my garden.

I am a human being, sharing my babies. So if something goes awry along the way, I'll do what I can to make things right, as a human being cooperating with another human being. I'm not a business, so shipping depends on my health, and that of my family and tribe, the weather, my travel schedule, etc. I might only make the treck to the post office once a week.

Warm Regards,
Joseph

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