Deeply Rooted

[Paddler]

Yesterday, our local public TV station (WVIZ World) aired a program, titled Deeply Rooted, about a seed saver named John Coykendall. John lives in Washington parish in Louisiana, USA. He visits farmers (mostly older ones) and obtains seeds from the heirloom crops they grow. He takes these seeds to his farm and plants them in his fields until he has enough seed to save in his basement freezers. He shares them with others who want to taste the food that is no longer commercially available.

When he collects the original seeds. He interviews the farmer and his family and gets information about the seeds and the farming methods used to grow the crops. He also writes down stories about farm life in the parish and anything else the folks care to share with him. He records all this information in journals, along with pencil sketches of the farmer, his family, a barn, the plants he has the seeds for, anything that catches his eye. He has been doing this for many years and has stacks of journal books.

The journals are of various types and sizes. Many, however, appear to be Moleskine in A4 and A5 sizes, judging from the hard covers and the elastic bands. The writing and sketching are done with wood cased pencils with very soft lead. He sharpens them with a knife and the points are almost obtuse. The video shows tight close-ups of him writing and the sharp point crumbles a bit. His hand is easy to read and is mainly printing that is partly joined up.

I thought I had written a lot of stories. For every story I have written, this guy probably has a bookful.

[FredRydr]

Thank you, Paddler! http://www.pbs.org/video/louisiana-p...deeply-rooted/ I'll be looking for a re-broadcast or online streaming of the full show.

[Deb]

That's something I would like to see.

[penwash]

Hey, in a way, Mr. Coykendall and I have a similar approach, that is, sketch everything before it's lost forever.

He uses Moleskine, I use Rhodia

[jar]

There is another PBS show based on tomato seeds and those who collect and preserve heritage tomato plants but I can't find the link. The people were a man and woman and IIRC one German and the other Italian

[Deb]

I found videos about Mr Coykendall on YouTube. Inspiring stuff.

[Paddler]

Hey, in a way, Mr. Coykendall and I have a similar approach, that is, sketch everything before it's lost forever.

He uses Moleskine, I use Rhodia

That's cool. Mr. Coykendall says that whenever someone dies, a whole library of knowledge is lost. He is trying to save a little bit of it in his journals. The sketches are amazing. I don't know if they are meant to illustrate the stories or if they are just to give an overall sense of the journal entries.

There is an organization that is trying to catalog the contents of all those journals. The show interviewed a woman sitting amongst those stacks of books, trying to make a start on the project. She seemed a little bewildered. In a sense, the whole work is a catalog. They would be trying to make a catalog of a catalog. Would that be a meta-catalog? Maybe they have run aground on a real world variation on the Bertrand Russell paradox -- sort of a logical Mobius strip.

[Paddler]

Hey, in a way, Mr. Coykendall and I have a similar approach, that is, sketch everything before it's lost forever.

He uses Moleskine, I use Rhodia

That's cool. Mr. Coykendall says that whenever someone dies, a whole library of knowledge is lost. He is trying to save a little bit of it in his journals. The sketches are amazing. I don't know if they are meant to illustrate the stories or if they are just to give an overall sense of the journal entries.

There is an organization that is trying to catalog the contents of all those journals. The show interviewed a woman sitting amongst those stacks of books, trying to make a start on the project. She seemed a little bewildered. In a sense, the whole work is a catalog. They would be trying to make a catalog of a catalog. Would that be a meta-catalog? Maybe they have run aground on a real world variation on the Bertrand Russell paradox -- sort of a logical Mobius strip.

[Titivillus]

Wow that's just North of where I use to live. Knew there was cattle but not veggies.