This episode is all about the Fish Pepper, an extremely flavorful, productive, and decorative variety that makes an excellent hot sauce. The white unripe fruit were used to flavor seafood dishes in the Black catering community of Baltimore in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Horace Pippin, the now-famed painter, shared this variety (and many others) with H. Ralph Weaver in the early 1940s in exchange for bee-sting therapy. Weaver's grandson (William Woys Weaver, who you will hear from in the second half of this episode) found the seeds in a baby food jar in his grandmother's deep freezer a couple decades later, many years after his grandfather's death, and was able to reintroduce them via Seed Savers Exchange.
In this episode, you will hear from Xavier Brown from Soilful City in Washington DC who makes Pippin Sauce from fish peppers grown by black farmers and urban gardeners in the DC and Maryland areas (including Denzel Mitchell, who you will also hear from). Soilful City offers their seeds through Truelove Seeds. You will also hear from Michael Twitty, author of the Cooking Gene. See links to the work of each of the speakers below.
SEED STORIES TOLD IN THIS EPISODE:
MORE INFO FROM THIS EPISODE:
Xavier Brown, January 2020
Denzel Mitchell, January 2020
Dr. William Woys Weaver, August 2019
Michael Twitty, April 2019
ABOUT:
Seeds And Their People is a radio show where we feature seed stories told by the people who truly love them. Hosted by Owen Taylor of Truelove Seeds and Chris Bolden-Newsome of Sankofa Community Farm at Bartram’s Garden.
trueloveseeds.com/blogs/satpradio
FIND OWEN HERE:
Truelove Seeds
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FIND CHRIS HERE:
Sankofa Community Farm at Bartram’s Garden
THANKS TO:
EP. 30: Happy 70th Birthday Karen Washington! Food and Plant Stories about our Queen.
EP. 29: How Did Your Favorite Seed Become Your Favorite Seed? Truelove Seeds Growers Gathering 2023
Ep. 28: Zee Lilani, Kula Nursery, and South Asian plants in the San Francisco Bay Area.
EP. 27: Improving Vegetable Crops through Seed Production with Bryan O'Hara of Tobacco Road Farm
EP. 26: Saving Spiny Nightshades, Breeding Cannabis, Adapting Tropical Crops, and much more with Northeastern Connecticut Botanist Bryan Connolly
EP. 25: Black Farming Vibes in the Delta: Three Wise Men
EP. 24: Mary Menniti and the Italian Garden Project
EP. 23: Dr. William Woys Weaver and the Roughwood Seed Collection
EP. 22: Gujarati Seeds and Flavors with Nital Vadalia-Kakadia
EP. 21: Haiqal’s Garden - Indonesian vegetables in South Philly
EP. 20: The Iraqi Seed Collective and Awafi Kitchen
EP. 19: From a Midwestern Slovak Family Farm to Black Catholic Mississippi
EP. 18: Dragged Through the Garden: Thai Food and Chicago Hotdogs with Heidi Ratanavanich and Family
EP. 17: Mycelial Networks of Seed Growers & the Truelove Seeds Listening Project
EP 16: Keeping Indigenous Seeds in Kenya with Akoth Ambugo
EP. 15: Seeds of the African Diaspora with Amirah Mitchell & Sistah Seeds
EP. 14: Iris Brown: Afro-Puerto Rican food and culture in Philadelphia
EP. 13: Halima Salazar & Dria Price: Building a Bridge from Mississippi to Nigeria
Ep. 12: Mrs. Pearlie Mae Jackson Trotter: a Jewel of the Mississippi Delta
Ep. 11: Kai Delgado Pfeifer and Filipinx ancestral food and plant medicine
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