springing forward 55a cardboard picture of its former self.” You’d think we cared more about
the idea of what we’re eating than about what we’re eating. But then, if
you examine the history of women’s footwear, you’d think we cared more
about the idea of showing off our feet than about, oh, for example, walk-
ing. Humans can be fairly ridiculous animals.
I wouldn’t dare predict what will happen next with women’s footwear,
but I did learn recently that the last couturier in China who made shoes
for bound feet is about to go out of business (his last customers are all in
their nineties), and in a similar outburst of good sense, the fashion in veg-
etables may come back around to edibility. Heirlooms now sometimes
appear by name on restaurant menus, and are becoming an affordable
mainstay of farmers’ markets. Flavor in food is a novelty that seems to
keep customers coming back.
Partly to supply this demand, and partly because some people have
cared all along, national and international networks exist solely to allow
farmers and gardeners to exchange and save each other’s heirloom seeds.
The Seed Savers’ Exchange, headquartered on a farm in Decorah, Iowa,
was founded by Diane and Kent Whealy after Diane’s grandfather left her
the seeds of a pink tomato that his parents brought from Bavaria in the
1870s. Seeds are living units, not museum pieces; in jars on a shelf their
viability declines with age. Diane and Kent thought it seemed wise to
move seed collections into real gardens. Their idea has grown into a net-
work of 8,000 members who grow, save, and exchange more than 11,000
varieties from their own gardening heritage, forming an extensive living
collection. The Seed Savers’ Yearbook makes available to its members the
seeds of about twice as many vegetable varieties as are offered by all
U.S. and Canadian mail- order seed catalogs combined. Native Seeds/
SEARCH is a similar network focused on Native American crops; the
North American Fruit Explorers promotes heirloom fruit and nut tree col-
lections. Thanks to these and other devotees, the diversity of food crops is
now on the rise in the United States.
The world’s largest and best known save- the-endangered-foods orga-
nization is Slow Food International. Founded in Italy in 1986, the organi-
zation states that its aim is “to protect the pleasures of the table from the
homogenization of modern fast food and life.” The group has 83,000