Set up in the basement were various booths offering knowledge about best practices for backyard composting, vermiculture starter kits, seedlings, and most importantly, locally produced seeds.

At the core of this event’s mission is connecting local growers with seeds that have been produced by plants that have already grown in this climate. To do this, organizers encourage gardeners to save their own seeds from previous years’ gardens, and bring them in to trade for other seeds that have been saved by their neighbours.

Facilitating the swapping on Saturday was Valerie Bridgeman, one of five volunteers who put on this year’s event.

“Its like a seed trust of the future,” she said. “When you grow seeds locally and save your seeds and share them with people, then you know you’re going to get something that’s going to be good here.”

Bridgeman said since she and the other volunteers first started this event, she has seen an uptick in people bringing in the seeds they’ve saved to share with others.

Seedy Saturday events are hosted every year across the country thanks to the organization Seeds of Diversity, which is dedicated to preserving Canada’s seed biodiversity, including, importantly, the heirloom varieties.

Representing the organization in Ladysmith every year is Greta Kryger, who this year assembled some 4,000 small packages of seeds she grew on her own land, to be given away at the various Seedy Saturday events she attends.

“We have over 3,000 varieties that we keep in our catalogue for our members, and then we have a seed bank where we store a backup of all the old seeds,” she said, describing what Seeds of Diversity does.

While organizers encouraged seed trading, and welcomed donations from those who had no seeds to offer yet, the event also hosted several local seed producers there to sell their seeds. Among them was Chloé Laberge who runs Junco Seeds in Lac-des-Loups.

“A lot of the big seed companies are resellers. Although they may be Canadian owned and operated, they actually import their seeds from China, and everywhere in the world, so they’re just not adapted to our climate,” she explained.

“We’re growing these seeds year after year, and so the seed genetics are getting habituated to our climate and to our weather systems.”

Laberge said critical to Seedy Saturday events is the sharing of heirloom varieties, which are open pollinated and so reliably reproduce themselves year after year.

“Then you can share that seed with someone else, and that person can easily grow and save that same seed and know that same plant will grow next year. It’s power to the people, it’s democratic, it’s all in our hands. Hybrids don’t allow you to do that, and [patented] GMOs usually don’t allow you to do that either.”

Saturday’s gathering of gardeners was not just about swapping seeds, though. Three presentations were offered throughout the event. Trish Murphy spoke about the regenerative benefits of native species.

Mike Lamothe of L’Île-du-Grand-Calumet spoke about his project of reviving the Early Rose potato, a heritage variety local to the Pontiac that he first learned about in the song The Chapeau Boys. In an effort to repopularize the potato, Lamothe is inviting gardeners to grow some of the seeds he’s produced, on the promise that after their harvest, their grower finds two other people in their general location to also start growing them.

“I have about 30 growers now,” Lamothe said, adding he found the potatoes 13 new homes at Saturday’s event.

Closing out the presentations, Shane Lucas Bailey and Bryan Chen, in a talk titled “Building Alternative Wealth and Sustainability,” shared tales of their journey moving from Toronto to Thorne four years ago to try the homesteading life.

Bridgeman said the organizers, which include Dale Shutt, Christine Anderson, Mary Dubeau, and Leila Nulty, use part of the money donated throughout the day to pay the costs of hosting the event, but the rest goes to Seeds of Diversity and other local organizations in need.

“You can see from the flavour of it, it’s not like a home and garden show,” Bridgeman said, distinguishing Seedy Saturday from more commercial ventures.

“It’s just good to get people gardening. I think people really realized that during covid when they’d go to the grocery store and the shelves were empty, that [they] can have a little more power over what [they] eat.”

Mike Lamothe speaks about his work reviving the Early Rose potato, a heritage variety he first learned about in a local song.

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