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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

NC Land Conservancies Protect Heirloom Plants

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Tuesday, May 1, 2018   

CHEROKEE, N.C. – This week's warm and sunny weather forecast in most parts of the state likely has many digging out their garden gloves and playing in the dirt. But before you head to a big-box store to purchase your seeds and plants, the state's land conservancies and family farms hope you'll consider heirloom varieties.

Nancy Long and her husband, Harold, exclusively plant vegetables on their farm in Cherokee County that once belonged to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indian.

"There's the ability to share with others by sharing the seeds and the stories and the memories," she says. "Like, it might be, 'Oh, these were grandpa's butter beans or grandma's favorite tomato.' All these seeds have so many different stories and the memories that go along with it."

Harold Long, a member of the Cherokee, received Cherokee tan pumpkin seeds that were retrieved by a North Carolina Extension Agent who traveled to Oklahoma. The seeds were once thought lost but found on a farm there. They've since shared the seeds through an outreach program. The Mainspring Conservation Trust has conservation easements on four farms in Cherokee and Clay counties to help preserve farms such as the Longs'.

Land conservancies are able to preserve farmland through the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service Farm Bill, currently up for renewal in Congress.

Sara Posey is the Hiwassee Programs Manager for the Mainspring Conservation Trust and says beyond the importance of preserving horticulture history, maintaining a variety helps protect the food supply.

"When we're in a monoculture, we are susceptible to insect blights, and if we only have one strain of a plant, then it's gone and that's the resurgence with heirloom," she explains. "They are all genetically different."

Long says people who have heirloom plants and vegetables on their own land can help secure the long-term history of varieties for generations to come.

"If more people would take an interest and have seed exchanges, more of the seeds would be able to get into other people's hands, so really in order to save a seed, you have to share them," Long adds.

Recently, the University of North Carolina-Asheville hosted a seed exchange. The Carolina Farm Stewardship Association has a similar program.


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