A seedy business

It's as if they grow on trees or something — but despite what you may think, starting a seed business is no easy feat. Now in their third year, Jordan Bouchard and Jamie Farris-Manning, owners of Bird & Bee, operate their certified-organic, open-pollinated seed business on an acre of land at the Just Food Farm in Blackburn Hamlet. Keen to re-introduce gardeners to vegetables nearly obliterated with the rise of industrial agriculture, they grow varieties such as Turkey Craw bean, Hanson lettuce and Canadian Crookneck squash that have been forgotten in modern plots, but according to Bouchard, have excellent flavour. The problem is that nearly every type of seed requires a different cleaning technique. “It’s a lot of equipment to accumulate — a lot of which you end up building yourself as you learn to clean each seed type,” Bouchard says. With a steadily expanding catalogue of more than 35 varieties of teeny, tiny seeds, that sounds like a lot work, but it's worth it. The pair is dedicated to preserving diversity within our food system, donating a portion of their yearly harvest to the Seeds of Diversity library.

Bird & Bee
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