Interview with Montana Survival Seeds
Montana Survival Seed is a small seed company located in the Bitterroot Valley of Western Montana. On behalf of “The Changing Times,” I speak with the founder and owner about his seed company, how seeds fit into his passion for ancestral skills, and why supporting locally-sourced and adapted seeds is a great choice. I really enjoyed our conversation while just in time for planting season, and absorbed some great advice and ideas for my own little gardening and seed saving adventure. - Megan Thornton
CT: What in your childhood created this vision?
Food is a really dang good thing. Growing up in the country of North Carolina, I was unaware of the origins of my food aside from my parents buying food at the grocery store. I rarely remember eating locally grown food or understanding the importance of saving seed. The concept of local was deaf upon my southern ears.
Not that I believed everything grew in a grocery store, yet the link was missing. Somewhere down the line, I heard that pollinators were dying off….and zero pollinators = zero food. The basic botany of plants was absent from learning in school, good gracious they don’t even teach you how to change a tire in school. They rarely teach these real skills. My saving grace was the extremely large patch of deciduous trees with rare flora which became the stomping grounds of my childhood…a childhood love of non-human life and a quiet headspace.
CT: What was the first seed you saved and sold? How did you come up with the name of your company?
I somehow managed to squeeze some dimes and half dollars together and “bought” some land in the Sapphire Mountains. I turned some abused ground into a small mountain GARLIC garden. Saving my best garlic and replanting every year since 2013. It started with garlic, and now its a seed catalogue with about 35 varieties of chemical-free and Non-GMO vegetables, flowers, and native seed.
Painted Mountain Corn (PM) from corn breeder Dave Christensen was the first seed I sold in my catalogue. Dave told me once that his PM is survival food, and corn has been a survival/staple food for many cultures around the world. Since he told me that story, I became somewhat obsessed about survival food/seeds. Dave has been to North Korea and other countries where growing food is at times impossible, and PM is now part of their diets. His seed corn is grown in Big Sandy, MT with out supplemental irrigation, and sown 2 to 3 weeks before last Spring frost. Sweet corn would die overnight in fright in these conditions. Montana Survival Seed is another way to teach survival/ancestral skills to folks. Metaphorically speaking, I hope to “plant a seed” in people through inspiration.
CT: Your seed company looks fun, please elaborate?
My public service announcement is simple….I despise chemical use and genetic modification.
I am begging people not to spray everything with chemicals, not to kill all the insects, while promoting healthy earthworm habitat, and inspiring children to become a farmers/seed savers when they grow up. Many people don’t understand this concept for many reasons. They go to work, watch tv, go to bed, unaware of where their food is grown, are scared of dirt, or unaware of the how a flower smells. I want to inspire people to be outside to play and grow some food. Please, don’t be silly and buy fruit shipped from New Zealand, or who God knows where, if you or your neighbors have beautiful old apple, pear, or cherry trees.
Ultimately, I want to have fun and offer playful engagements with people in their gardens and teach children about earthworms, butterflies, insects, pollinators, etc. The artwork and seeing my gardens are what I enjoy, not the finances and computer side of the business.
I love my native plant friends along with their seed babies. Close to half of my seed catalogue encompasses my wild and locally harvested native seeds. My native seeds come from the Sapphire Mountains, with a few exceptions harvested in the Bitterroot Mountains. I also lease land for my seed farm grow-outs with Missoula Grain and Vegetable Farm outside Stevensville, MT. They are a co-op of young, passionate, and insanely hard working local farmers who seriously want to feed the local communities.
The vast majority of seed companies will NOT tell you where their seed is grown, and often seeds are grown overseas and shipped to the seed companies. This ain’t my style folks. I want people to know who grows my seed. My seed packet will tell you where the seed are grown except for one organic variety, b/c its what I could find at the time of the seed crisis. I need to promote local if I wish to get local support right? I’m a big fan of local food systems. That’s what's nice about Painted Mountain. It might not be local just down the street but its from Montana. What is the true definition of local anyways? Is it 5 miles, is it a family or friend that is across the ocean? To me, that's still local b/c local = community.
I source seed from Montana seed farmer friends and Triple Divide Organic Seed Co-op which is based in Ronan, Montana. Supporting local helps me maintain a Montana Survival Seed cataloge. Seeds grown here will grow here…simple.
We are what we eat, if we eat garbage guess who our friend will be? Oscar the Grouch. Please honor our food, give thanks, and grow/raise food and seed responsibly.
Lastly, I print my packets from the power of my solar panels, hence I ain’t on the grid. I am also a member of OSSI (Open Source Seed Initiative), a group of seed dorks activity engaging in open and public domain of seeds and NOT plant patents or owning plants or their derivatives.
CT: Can you speak more about why you choose to include native plants (not just food plants for humans) in your inventory, such as milkweed and evening primrose.
Because they are cool, duh. To have a survival seed company, why not include something that is already growing here? These plants need less attention/water requirements, and provide food and homes for a plethora of pollinators, insects, and birds. I can walk out my outhouse door for a seed harvest walk with my soul mate, Dixie Dog. Do ya’ll realize how much fun that is to walk the mountain and harvest seeds? I don’t need to fence the mountain to keep deer, elk, and moose out or water them either. I let me boss know we’re “gonna take a seed walk”, and off we go.
Some native plants need a natural stratification cold/wet period to awaken from dormancy. This mimics the natural progression from Fall to Spring, which in simple talk means, it helps break down the natural seed germination inhibitors found in various levels in all seeds. Some of my seeds need upwards of 6-8 weeks for a good germination to occur. Not all my native seeds are this way, and not all domestics (vegetables and flowers) need to be stratified.
Lastly, native seeds were here first, and they live here in our uniquely harsh climate. If someone was just expecting to overwinter squash, tomato plants, they’d have a hard time getting them to come back up. Some natives are annuals while some are perennials. Some are “deer resistant” (put that in heavy quotations) and some are drought resistant.
Basically, I love native plants because they ask little attention of me and they ain’t domesticated. They plant are my friends and they support other critters with their beautiful flowers for pollinators and seeds for folks like me. My brother has two new baby girls…my names for them are Arnica and Glacier Lily, which are the first two Spring natives to emerge with flower here in my “yard” each year.
Lastly, if anyone is interested in helping Monarch butterflies, please call my good friend Maggie Hirschauer. She started the Bitterroot Monarch Project in association with the MPG Ranch. She is documenting all the Monarchs she can, and she NEEDS volunteers. If anyone is willing to help and have fun, please contact her. mhirschauer@mpgranch.com
What : What advice would you give a young person contemplating their future in these “Changing Times?”
Number one of all, is ethics. I’ve done things in my life that weren’t ethical to make money. At some point I realized, I don’t need to kill all the fish or cut down the trees to make money and chase my dreams. Hopefully with this seed company, I am giving back verses just taking, and I realize this way ain’t perfect either. I live on solar panels and something was blown up to make them, and I drive to the post office to mail my seeds and supporting fracking and other gas exploration methods. Give back somehow to the world by teaching, inspiring, building community, growing seeds, and most importantly…give things away to people w/o asking for something in return.
Next is, have fun, (as my Paw Paw always says) and don’t wait to play until you retire! Don’t skip on your family and friends because you are working so dang hard. Invest in your future by learning what investments are important to you…land, community, skills, 6+ months of food on hand, knowing local plants to forage, acquiring road kill, gold/silver coins, stock markets, anything that RESPECTFULLY earns confidence.
Finally, I believe the most important investment is knowledge and teaching/learning skills. Knowledge and skills will not take any more room in your backpack when it comes time to fix something or share your knowledge. Please inspire our children to learn/know about what dirt feels like b/w their toes on a wet spring day, get them to smell what a row of carrot flowers smells like (my favorite by the way), and teach them to SAVE SEEDS PLEASE :)
CT: You mentioned an upcoming Bison Robe (Tanning/Dressing) Class…sounds cool! Please tell.
Tom Elpel with Green University in Cardwell/Whitehall, Montana has been running a primitive/ancesteral skills campus for many years. For the past 5 years or so, I teach folks how to make a bison robe using zero chemicals along with a deer processing class. Take a bison raw hide, do some simple fancy steps, wait and work for 10-14 days, and Ka-Pow…you have a beautiful bison robe.
It’s a community based school where folks learn to live in a community, work together to learn life skills, and learn skills one cannot and will not learn in college unless they attend some super cool college. Tom’s school, other wise known as River Camp, is always seeking new interns, so check him out with a DuckDuckGo search.
CT: What is seed currency?
Seeds are the new currency, which is ironic since all ancestors lived and died depending on their “seeds”, and we have seemed to have forgotten our ancestors and their teachings. Seeds can be a metaphor here for any food source, bison herds, camas patches, salmon runs, bird migrations, cereal crops, even our children. If we don’t teach our children our ancestral ways, then we are more dependent on new technologies which seem fragile. We teach our children to go to the grocery store for food, “Momma, how do blackberries grow in the grocery store”? FOOD = MEDICINE.
Seeds are humanity’s ONLY lifeblood aside from water. We need these two things to ultimately survive. (Hence my Survival Seed company) What folks do when they make money? They buy crypto currencies, new 4 wheelers, new clothes, FOOD! What will happen when (not if) we have another scenario like 2020? All seed companies were flooded with orders getting 5 years of revenue in 6 months.
People buy lumber for their homes, gold/silver coins, buy or prepare 6+ months of food for storage, and stock up on a seemingly infinite supply of TP. Last I heard playing truth or dare, there is zero nutrition in eating lumber, TP, or coins, nor can you put these things in the ground and expect them to grow a new “something” to feed you. Yes, these things are investments, so are seeds. Seeds hold our past locked up in that tiny little life ball, and it’s our ONLY future if we save them.
A friend of mine, who currently resides in Hawaii, has pointed out to me that seeds are the new currency, and having community is one of the best investments for any person. Community provides a well rounded skill base needed to watch children, help with hunting, lend a shoulder in any situation, and help build anything. “Seeds” are probably one of the oldest life forms in our universe. All species want to survive, and I am unaware of any species who’s skill set is death. Skills are gained through time and experiences, and many survival skills are innate. Seeds are the baby plant’s memory of how to survive, which they gather through time and experience. Seeds are genetic dreams.
“Camas, camas, camas’’. This wild and native food source for many cultures in the American West purposefully tended by prescribed burning, harvesting bulbs during seed harvest season, culling the White Death Camas from their patches, and passing these plots down the maternal family tree through many generations. Folks would dig the roots, scatter new seeds in the hole, and have massive camas feasts during the Fall. These pits were dug 1-4 feet underground, camas was covered with green vegetation to create steam while being covered back with dirt. A fire was tended for upwards of 4 days to roast and steam the camas. Thats generational wealth when a community teaches its youngsters how to survive…all from a seed. Cultures honored their food and gave thanks in many ways. Who dances for the camas, the corn, the bison, the salmon these days? Ever seen anyone give honor, dances, and festivals for a drive thru cheeseburger and fries?
People having dreams about the animals and plants teaching them how to be used for survival and medicine. FOOD = MEDICINE. Nowadays, it seems different reality has taken over the world and it seems to not be revolved around RESPECT. Plants and animals do speak, only when one is open to hearing it, does it occur. How many times in your life has someone spoken to you and you never heard their words, even sitting right next to them?
When communities start establishing themselves, they start having more free time which creates wealth, art, and beauty. One of the first currencies was probably food, whether it was dried meat, seeds, berries. Then other stuff starts coming available for trade; gold, silver, amber, shells, tools, obsidian points, atlatls, hides. So, they trade a barrel of wheat berries for whatever, and then here you go, you build the pyramids. Then you trade across the oceans, make war, and move further away from our human genetic roots.
CT: Do you have advice for someone starting a garden, especially a novice gardener?
If you want to learn to make real leather or buckskin, please don’t start with a big bison or elk. Start small with a nice deer. Start small with a garden or any skill set. People have a tendency to go all out and then Bang…you’re burnt out, over whelmed, and lost motivation.
Salad greens. That's usually a really good gateway seed. Literally water them on occasion and thats the best medicine for any plant, this doesn’t mean once a month unless its drought resistant. Give it a little bit of good energy also. Plants are no different than people, so if you really want a relationship with somebody, don’t ignore or pooh pooh them for however long and still expect them to be your friend or partner. Expect to put a little bit of time and energy into it and expect to get a little something in return.
If you have a greenhouse, you have more options. If you live in town and have very little space, that's also completely different. What that means is, it all depends on the set up that people have at home. Some people don’t even know what to do. Well can you put a seed in dirt and water it on occasion?
Just experiment with a window sill, a patch of ground out side, an outdoor pot, a greenhouse, or even a starting tray with micro greens indoors during the winter time. I had a few trays of peas, wheatgrass, and arugula many years ago, b/c this was the easiest thing for me to have living things in my cabin.
Remember, everyone love flowers. It gets men out of trouble with their wives, their nectar feeds many life forms, and flowering plants are almost as old as the Dinosaurs!!! Seeds are the gifts of our ancestors, please remember this.
