By Hannah Helfner

On the first day of my junior year writing class for Sustainable Food and Farming majors at UMass, we were presented with the choice to work on a project either partnering with the League of Women Voters on a Sustainable Agriculture Expo or with Grow Food Amherst on a Seed Saving Workshop. Going into the class with basically zero familiarity on saving seeds, I decided to join that group in hopes to expand my knowledge. What I did not expect was that working on this project resulted in a meaningful experience for me, helping to develop my skills as a team-member, organizer, and also as a seed saver.

The 11 students in our group began our project by meeting with Phyllis Keenan, an Amherst community member and an experienced seed saver. We decided to organize a free workshop for community members at Amherst Town Hall about basic seed saving. Choosing March 31^st as the date for the event gave us plenty of time to prepare our research and make arrangements for the event to be a success. Because many of us began this project with little to no knowledge of the subject, we spent time in the first few weeks of the semester researching and compiling information on what is seed saving, how to do it, and other topics associated with saving seeds.

As we progressed further along in the semester, we continued to meet with Phyllis and began choosing specific topics for each individual to concentrate on and present at the workshop.  I was assigned to the topic of saving pepper seeds with my classmate Joe Cecchi. We also spent a good amount of time on conceptualizing the actual structure of the event, which I found to be the most difficult part of the whole process. Because each member of our team had different ideas of what the event would be, we worked to negotiate and decide on a vision that was agreed on my all members.

In order to attract attendees and enrich the workshop, we decided to feature Oona Coy, an experience seed saver as our guest speaker. Additionally, I was responsible for making the arrangement to reserve the room at town hall for our event from 7-9 pm on March 31^st. To do this, I contacted Stephanie Ciccarello, the sustainability coordinator at the town hall, who was very helpful in securing the room for us and arranging other logistics such as table and chair setup and projector use.

Now that we created a framework and plan for our event, we concentrated on advertising the workshop to the Amherst community. As another homework assignment for our class, we all created press releases for our event. Because of this, we were able to select the best one and send it out to a variety of different media sources. Emilee, another member of the group, created a flyer that was printed and hung up on campus and in town. Other ways of advertising our event were through emails and word-of-mouth.

As the event drew closer, we began to organize specific details such as props and posters. Meeting every week in class was a useful way for us all to check in and help someone if they were having difficulties with their research, poster, or handouts. Before we knew it, the day of the workshop was upon us and we all arrived at town hall a bit early to help set up.

Not knowing exactly what to expect going into the seed saving workshop, I was very pleasantly surprised. We had a great turnout- basically every chair set up was filled with community members and students. Oona presented an informational and engaging talk on seed saving background and basic skills. Afterwards, attendees were invited to walk around to the different stations set up all over the room. Each station had a different topic from tomatoes to storage to a kid’s table. There were many materials to be taken home such as seeds, pamphlets, and catalogues. Also, each member signed a contact list that will be compiled into Grow Food Amherst’s database so the connections and community built at this event will continue. The event only lasted for 1.5 hours but it felt like much longer. So much information was exchanged, questions were answered, connections were made, and smiles were brightened.

Oona Coy presenting a talk on seed saving

Being at this event was exciting for me for two main reasons. First, after working all semester on this project and experiencing all the effort that was put into making the event a success, it felt great to have such a positive turnout and response from the public. While standing at my booth, I was able to engage in conversations with people I normally wouldn’t and spread information that is useful and people seemed to really want to know. Second, it seemed like everyone there was having a nice time and many people expressed gratitude to us for putting on this event for the community. Often times school work does not go beyond the classroom but by engaging in this project I was able to connect my studies with a greater community and share my passions with others, for which I am very grateful to have this experience.

Friends having fun at the workshop

After the event was over, we all packed up, said goodbye, and went home. Although almost a week has gone by since the workshop, the positive feelings I am writing about still resonate with me. I know that the skills I gained from this experience will help me work in groups to organize events in the future, and also to save many many seeds!

Here is a short video about the workshop.

For more events sponsored by my class, see: Writing for Sustainability Projects 2015