Food & Wine USA - (03)March 2019

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52

M
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MILLHOUSE

BUTTER BEAN

“These were discovered

on the back porch of a

gristmill,” Coykendall

says. “A lady found them

in a paper sack.” The

variegated coloring

comes from different

varieties being grown

in close proximity to

each other.

BLACKBERRY FARM

WALLAND,

TENNESSEE

JOHN

N COYKENDALL

AM

E

CO

MP

AN

Y

BOOK IT Plan a stay at Blackberry

Farm at blackberryfarm.com.

TAKE IT Purchase Coykendall’s

seeds ($5 per packet) at

blackberryfarmshop.com.

JOHN COYKENDALL has worked as

the Master Gardener at Blackberry

Farm, a luxurious hotel nestled in the

mountains of Tennessee, for the past

20 years. He tracks down heirloom

seeds and documents their “living

history” from their places of origin to

how they were used in cooking—and

sometimes he saves them from

oblivion. Take the Unknown Pea

of Washington Parish, Louisiana.

As mega-farms edged out small

growers, the once-ubiquitous legume

all but winked out of existence. “The

old-timers down here told me this

pea was extinct,” Coykendall says.

He spent 30 years looking for that

pea. Six years ago, he found it, in

the garden of Dan Seal, then 87, who

gave Coykendall a handful. “I was

like a child waiting for Christmas,”

he says. “I couldn’t wait to get those

in the ground.” He planted some at

Blackberry Farm (where the chefs

use it in pea flour macaroons), and

from that first harvest he’s gener-

ated enough new seeds to give the

pea to a number of other growers

who are planting, replenishing, and

dispersing it. “It’s in the bank, so to

speak,” he says. —NINA FRIEND

THE SEED

SAVER

PHOTOGRAPHY BY VICTOR PROTASIO