Sand Mountain Seed Bank co-founders find calling in protecting heirloom plant varieties

Dove and Russell Stackhouse consider it a sacred trust to save and perpetuate heirloom vegetables, herbs, flowers and fruits. Holding heirloom bean seeds, they are standing beside some native tobacco in one of their greenhouses. The Stackhouses helped to found the Sand Mountain Seed Bank, and they will be explaining how North Alabama growers can become involved in the seed bank during a seed exchange in Huntsville Friday, Feb. 1, 2013. (Kay Campbell / KCampbell@al.com)

GERALDINE, Ala. – Russell and Dove Stackhouse are living their dream, even if they have been living in a tent for two years. It’s a dream that has put them at the center of seed-saving efforts in North Alabama.

With Charlotte Hagood, they have founded the Sand Mountain Seed Bank to begin cataloguing, growing, saving and propagating heirloom plants.

The Stackhouses and Hagood will explain their seed bank project at a seed exchange in Huntsville on Friday, Feb. 1, 2013, 6 p.m., at the Church of the Nativity, Episcopal, 208 Eustis Ave. S.E.

That seed exchange evening is sponsored by the church's local food efforts, which have founded Greene Street Farmer's Market, and by the Tennessee Valley Community Garden Association.

Whirlwind Farms, the 15 acres that the Stackhouses are restoring in the sandy soil of Sand Mountain, got its name the hard way. A couple years ago, when a second tornado knocked down yet another rental they’d been living in while they developed their land, they decided to just move out. Their household is sheltered under tarps hung on greenhouse poles. But when you farm for a living, Dove Stackhouse shrugs, you’re going to be out in the weather anyway, or in the greenhouse, tucking tiny seeds into soil trays.

End of the road, beginning of life

The farm seems isolated -- it’s off a dirt road at the end of another dirt road. The isolation is intentional. The Stackhouses grow vegetables for local farmer’s markets -- including Greene Street Market and Madison City Farmers Market -- for a living. But their calling is to grow heirloom seeds to produce more seeds, and they want to make sure their farm is distant enough from conventional farms so that those seeds are untainted by engineered hybrids.

Part of the Stackhouses' strategy for farming bio-dynamically is using goats to help clear brush and old garden plots -- and leave behind natural fertilizer. (The Huntsville Times file / Eric Schultz)

They know their corn, which is pollinated by wind, will be OK, since genetically modified corn comes into flower a couple weeks before the old strains.

They can isolate their own beans. For the seed bank, they work with other careful farmers to grow beans that are direct descendant of old peas that the area’s first European settlers brought into the area.

They grow 11 kinds of potatoes, dozens of tomatoes, and, this time of year, cold weather crops like collards, beets, lettuce and turnips.

“The idea is really for genetic viability and genetic diversity,” Dove Stackhouse said. “But also, heirloom varieties just taste so good!”

Stackhouse, whose degree is in forestry, and Russell Stackhouse, who is retired from the National Resources Conservation Service, both grew up in farming families. And they both saw how the increasing monoculture of factory farms drove both small family farms and old fashioned varieties of vegetables out of existence.

Both Dove and Russell have Native American blood in their veins. That may be where their protective dedication to protecting creation comes from. Or it may be their farming backgrounds. Or their ecology-related educations. What is certain is that nurturing the old seeds and saving the old stories of how those seeds got to North Alabama is a sacred trust for them.

Everything was created with intelligence -- even plants, according to biodynamic farmer and seed bank co-founder Dove Stackhouse. (The Huntsville Times file)

“We believe everything was created with intelligence – including plants,” Dove Stackhouse said. “We try to work with that intelligence, and we’re very conscious of taking our rightful place in creation.”

“We’re one point in this web, not the whole thing,” Dove said. “We’re needed in that web, but we need to be humble enough to work in our specific spot on that web. We view ourselves as stewards, not owners.”

That isn’t to say they expect plants not to change over time. Even now, they are beginning to try to select for tomatoes with more leaf cover so that future varieties will be able to withstand the scorching summer sun better as the region’s summers heat up.

“We need to keep true to seed, but everything evolves,” Dove said. “Everything we eat has been hybrid at one point. Things keep changing no matter how static you want to keep it.”

In fact, life on Earth is more like a dance.

“We are all spiritual, emotional, physical beings,” she said. “It’s the spiral of life. We’re all hooked together.”

The Stackhouses are happy to answer questions about the seed bank or about finding locally grown produce. They can be reached at WhirlwindFarms4@gmail.com.

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