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A quote: “The fruits of your labors may be reaped two generations from now. Trust, even when you don’t see the results.” ~~ Henri Nouwen
I’ll start with a story …
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“You ok, Mom?”
Worry pulled at David’s mouth. I waved him back. “Yes, dear. Just saying goodbye to the place.” I patted my stomach, “And just a little morning sickness, too. Now go finish helping your Dad round up your siblings.”
He nodded to me and left. He had become a bit of a mother hen of late since I found out I was pregnant again. He took his eldest child position seriously, including protecting the little life growing inside of me.
Six years here. I will miss it.
Such is the life of Archivists. The locations of our communities are rarely disclosed, even to others within the confederation. But our mission is supported by all. Archivists appear at the end of the growing season, gathering some of the best of each crop. We then prepare, catalogue, and store the seeds. Before spring planting, we are back to distribute some of our storage. We are the emergency back up least City cowards ever repeat the Gray Raids of ’33.
This is our year to rotate out, to find a new place to dig our cellars and build our drying tables.
I smile. Seeds aren’t the only thing the confederation propagates.
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Now, it’s your turn.
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. featured image, cropped, Adobe Stock standard license
GWB says: Grandpa always had hope. Not Pollyanna hope or just-sitting-around-moping hope. No, real hope, and a trust in the One. So, he had set aside these seeds eight decades ago, when the war started. He foresaw the Burning in which it would end and the desolation it would cause.
But, he knew his Scripture, and he knew the promises: God, Himself, would see them through and would bless them. But he also knew it would require His people to do some things, to be God’s instruments. So he stored away – carefully, securely – all kinds of seeds during the war. Fruit trees, grapevines, grasses, bushes, roses of Sharon, harvested by hand from heirloom species. He made sure they were viable. And he taught us the signs, so we would know the time was right, that God had prepared the ground once again for life.
Yesterday we saw the last sign for which we had been watching. Almost 80 years to the day from Grandpa putting away his first seeds. (Oh, yes, he carefully catalogued them.) Today we began opening the seed packets. Yes, it’s still winter, but some seeds need to be in the ground while it’s cold to come forth when spring arrives. So, we will dig today and bury them properly (Grandpa made sure there were instructions) and then we begin a new stage in our journey of hope. We place our hope in God into the ground to burst forth later with life.
It will be a wonder indeed to see this desert teeming with life. I might not see it, as it might not happen in my lifetime. But I’m teaching my children – the other place Grandpa taught us to put our hope – how to care for and nurture the life Grandpa prepared for. Our hands working the soil are God’s hands, returning our lives to the land He has given us. And the kids insisted on naming the first two trees we planted – Ariel and Kfir.
(Once again, well over 100. Sorry.)
Darleen Click says: I like! And no worries, GWB, I upped the count to 200 words. 
A bit bigger yard to play in.
Lewis says: I like it too, GWB! I had an uncle who not only loved Rose of Sharon, but made sure he passed around what he called “Startlings”! So many of my childhood haunts still showcase those Rose of Sharon! And I love your tree”names”, God bless you!
“Three hundred varieties of heritage beans, four hundred varieties of heritage tomatoes, two hundred varieties of heritage peas…” my student assistant paused, looked from the shipping manifest to me. “I understand about establishing a seed bank here on a planet of a system far from the fighting, but why so many kinds?”
I gave her a gentle smile to soften the words I was about to deliver. “My family came to America to escape the Great Hunger. You’ve probably heard it called the Irish Potato Famine.”
Yes, she knew the facts, but she didn’t grasp how it related to our present work. “Which happened because potatoes reproduce asexually. Every plant is a clone of every other plant, so a virgin field epidemic can wipe out a whole country’s crops. That’s why we’re taking seed potatoes from so many Peruvian landraces, because they represent the widest genetic diversity we can get for Solanum tuberosum. But all these other plants reproduce sexually…”
I gestured for her to hold. “True, but domesticated varieties are selected for the qualities we find most valuable as food or fodder, which tends to result in an inbred population. That’s how my grandfather’s generation of farmers got the 1971 Corn Blight, because all the seed companies were using the same male-sterile cytoplasm for their female rows in order to eliminate the need for detasseling. The resultant seed corn all carried the susceptibility, which allowed Southern leaf blight to sweep through the fields. Yields crashed and food prices spiked, but there wasn’t famine because industrial agriculture was already producing more than enough food, and Zea mays was only one of many staple food species in the American diet.”
Yes, she now understood the logic of seeking out these rare and forgotten heirloom seeds from one or another backwoods garden up on a hill or down in a holler somewhere. We all knew what had happened to Ynyewral, and Earth was a heck of a lot closer to the “front lines,” in as much as a war across interplanetary distances can be spoken of having front lines when we’re talking about planets orbiting stars that are all orbiting the giant black hole at the center of the galaxy.
GWB says: Nice.
Cameron says: Sorry I’m late! Inspiration was being stubborn:
I did not start life out on this farm. I was one of the city kids whose only experience with agriculture was field trips. I don’t remember much other than thinking that it stunk and listening to the teacher talk about how the people that worked there couldn’t get a job anywhere else.
The majority of the town was like her. The city was obviously the best place to live and those who chose to do something different were to be pitied or treated contemptuously. But there was something about the life that seemed a bit better in my eyes. And then I had the teacher who challenged us to think for ourselves and decide what the best way to live was for us.
To the horror of my parents and the neighbors, I was accepted into an Agricultural program with a full scholarship. Not many people were getting into that line of work and I believed in going where the opportunities were. And here I am, ten years later and planting seeds that would eventually feed others. And once in a while, some kid on a field trip gives me the same look that I had in my eyes.
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