Seed Stories

These seeds defied USSR government control to travel to the United States in the late 1980’s! One of our seed steward mentors, Bill McDorman, was visiting an agricultural research station in Siberia on a trip to find seeds that might grow well in the harsh conditions mountain west. He asked whether he could take samples of the seeds back to the US to grow and distribute, but the research director told him he would need permission from the Kremlin. As he was leaving, one of […]

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The beautiful Painted Mountain corn is a metaphor for our times, blending together different seeds to create something new and beautiful. Painted Mountain was bred by Dave Christensen in Montana over 20 years ago. He crossed a huge variety of native corns together, selecting traits that led to a short season, drought-tolerant and cold-tolerant corn variety. Typically, when heritage varieties of corn leave indigenous hands, the variety is re-named something generic, severing the ties between the seeds and their cultural stories and histories. All corn […]

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Seeds have a story… Groundwork grows and maintains over 200 varieties of seed. We partner with local seed companies that adapt seeds to our arid Colorado region, breeding resiliency for a changing climate. Indian Blue Pearl Millet. Millet is one of the most drought tolerant, versatile grain crops in the world. Millet is a broad category of grasses with edible seeds. In fact, the word “millet” doesn’t just refer to many species, but it includes 10 different plant genera (that’s the first word in the […]

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