Back to November 2022 Newsletter
Seedy Saturdays & Sundays: Looking Back... And Ahead
Rayna Almas
Do you remember the first Seedy Saturday or Seedy Sunday event you attended? They’ve been around for a long time now in Canada, with the first ones springing up in the early 1990's. And long before then, people were swapping seeds and exchanging knowledge at community gatherings. Needless to say, this isn't a new trend. But perhaps it's accurate to describe it as renewed?
You see, in the mid-1800s, a lot of people stopped saving their own seeds. This naturally led to fewer people swapping seeds and fewer people recognizing their importance. Then, as seed patents became established in the fourth quarter of the 1900’s, a movement back towards seed saving started. What you see today, with Seedy Saturdays and their equivalents all over the world, is decades of work by people like you to protect our food.
Prior to the pandemic, there were as many as 170 Seedy Saturday and Seedy Sunday events across Canada. The number has dipped amid COVID-19, unsurprisingly, but remains high - in 2021, there were over 80 events and for 2022, we promoted 84 Seedy Saturdays and Seedy Sundays in nine provinces (including two in Newfoundland & Labrador, which had previously not seen one since long before the pandemic began).
2022 Seedy Saturdays and Seedy Sundays
Many 2022 events (seems like a long time ago now!) continued down the virtual path, mostly out of necessity. When you think about large cities like Toronto and Hamilton, it’s not hard to imagine how exceedingly difficult it would have been to organize something for thousands of people this past spring.
Luckily, there were some incredible event organizers at the ready with creative ideas! Here’s a bit from one of the Innisfil organizers, Bridget:
“A highlight of the 5th Annual Innisfil Seedy Saturday this year was a program called Dinner & A Movie, a virtual film screening and cook-along for our community. We partnered with the Town of Innisfil's food security and literacy program What's Cooking, Innisfil? that aims to encourage new cooking skills through videos created by community partners while providing free, nutritious, pre-portioned ingredients to make each recipe. Our event cook-along video featured Quebec-style Yellow Split Pea Soup inspired by Aube Giroux's Modified, a documentary film that participants could view anytime on our event day from the comfort of home or wherever they get internet access. Our cooking video also highlighted programs that our Town offers to improve food security including other cooking programs designed for different demographics (ie. seniors, teens and children), access to community fridges and food gardening programs.”
And as the months wore on, something unexpected happened: we started learning about more and more new, in-person Seedy Saturday events popping up all over the place! Some in communities with long-standing events, and some in communities that had never hosted a seed swap before. In all, many, many thousands of people attended in-person, face-to-face Seedy events in 2022, and we were incredibly delighted to know that this became possible again.
More About What We Got Up To
Let’s start with seeds (it’s all about the seeds!). We sent out a total of 75 packages to Seedy Saturday & Sunday organizers between January and April 2022, each with about 30 packets of seeds. That ended up being over 2200 packets or 55,000 seeds mailed out from our little office in Waterloo ON to cities and towns all over Canada. Most of the seeds were tomato and lettuce varieties sourced from our Seed Library or from donations that come to us each fall by various seed savers. And continuing with the trend that started in 2020, the vast majority of seed companies in Canada were seeing great sales. When we contacted them, most cited that they don’t rely on the events for their income, though many were eager to get back to participating in community gatherings. In an effort to support them equitably, we created a Seed Map, built from our Seed Catalogue Index.
Now, back to the beginning - October 2021 (how is that over a year ago?!). After initially contacting organizers, we set up general meetings for them to meet, network, and share ideas. We held three meetings - what we’re calling Seedy Saturday Planning Sessions - with a total of 71 attendees across the three sessions.
As anyone who has attended Seedy Saturdays in the past likely knows, a huge part of these events is knowledge sharing. Once again, workshops and webinars were most commonly used to do this, and we decided to continue with our Seedy Saturday Speaker Series, a project that started in 2021. This time around, we brought on folks to create a set of 6 presentations, as well as updating two from last year - all are available on our website.
See the end of this article for some tidbits from 2022 event organizers
Looking Ahead to 2023
A few weeks ago, we sent out the first email welcoming event organizers back for another round of Seedy Saturday & Sunday events. This year, we are focusing on revamping our resources for organizers and volunteers (take a look at our updated webpages) while continuing to offer planning sessions, presentations, seed packets, and promotions.
We can’t know for certain yet, but we’re pretty confident that most events will be back to the good ol’ in-person style many of us longed for during COVID-19. We also suspect that a lot of events will continue to offer some form of virtual engagement because it was shown to be really successful!
We’ll keep the updates coming with future articles. In the meantime, we are looking for Seedy Saturday volunteers and welcome organizers to reach out if they’re not already on our list. Email rayna@seeds.ca to be in touch!
"Our event was a roaring success! We probably had 200 people but I have no idea because it was so packed and busy. The vendors were happy, the market was happy. It was awesome. Thank you for your support. Our leftover seeds will go to the food security association and the library for distribution in the community!" (Arlynne, Antigonish NS)
"Squamish Seedy Saturday in-person portion was quiet, partly because March 5th was a lovely warm and sunny day, but well appreciated by those who stopped by to exchange some seeds, learn about the Squamish seed library and from our community groups and vendors: The Squamish Gardeners, the Sea-to-Sky Invasive Species Council, Squamish Climate Action Network and Republic Heirloom Farm. FarmFolk CityFolk, who supports resilient food systems, BC farmers and seed security, also joined us. Some lucky attendees took home one of three books by Dan Jason of Salt Spring Seeds that we gave away as door prizes. This was all following a morning of online presentations by Amanda Smith and Bob Wildfong, thank you for sharing your precious knowledge with us and to everyone who made the day a success!" (Marie-ève, Squamish)
"Reflecting on the event, it's amazing to think how it was the result of multiple years hard work seed saving. I was able to share some seeds I had saved two years ago and some from the previous season. We even had Orach seeds from 2013! While some may consider this lost potential as the germination could be pretty low, I think it's pretty incredible these seeds are getting another chance to regrow, complete the life cycle, and provide more seeds [..] The generosity of our community was incredible to see, so many generous people brought seeds to share and everyone walked away with exciting new seeds to try and even some new garden supplies." (Siri, New Westminster BC)
"Thank you for all you have done to help us have some kind of event this year – the Zoom meetings brought us together, and I see that we have many different ways to get the heirloom seed growing and message out. In our small community of 2000, our event is small and for the past 4 years we have had 45-60 participants who usually stay for the entire day and all the presentations!" (Ruth Anne, Indian Head SK)
"Our 2022 Seedy Saturday was co-hosted by the Georgina-Brock Garden Club, the Beaverton Garden Club and the Cannington Horticultural Society. It was an overwhelming success attracting almost 600 attendees with 17 vendors selling/promoting seeds, seedlings, native plants, spring bulbs as well as garden art, herbal medicines, honey, landscaping services and more. Throughout the day there were knowledgeable speakers as well as a storytime for children with our local library. Children's activity bags were distributed throughout the day. As you might guess, we've reserved our date and locations for 2023! Thanks for all the guidance and, of course, the seeds provided by Seeds of Diversity." (Kathie, Georgina-Brock ON)
** Images provided by Arlynne McGrath, organizer of the Antigonish, NS Seedy Saturday event (top)
& LEC (Living Earth Council), organizers of the Truro, NS event (image in e-bulletin folder)
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