I met Kevin Wenkoff, of Bellrock, South Frontenac, at his apiary beyond their wild flower and herb garden. Kevin is a full-time school teacher and keeps a hobby apiary of four colonies of Russian honeybees on his two-acre property. Any honey that he collects he uses himself or gives away to family and friends.

I wanted to understand the work involved in keeping bees, so, leading me into his office he simply said, “OK, let’s suit up and go and take a look.” Dressed for a moon landing, we walked in that clumsy style of Neil Armstrong.

Dedicated beekeepers stress that it is the hands-on experience of keeping bees that is important in learning about these insects. Having bees on your hands and watching their daily dance conveys more information about the colony condition than reading.

Wenkoff had a goose feather for moving any bees out of the way or off my hands. It does not harm or frighten the bees - and if you have any exposed bare skin you do not want to frighten 20,000 bees.

Wenkoff spends about two hours a week working with and talking to his bees, and many more hours just watching and enjoying the relaxation that they provide. It is not all fun, however. Two years earlier he experienced a winter die-off of a complete colony and lost 12,237 bees.

When asked how he estimated that number, he replied, “It’s not an estimation. I asked my grade 6/7 French class from Prince Charles School in Verona if they would like to do some real math in my apiary. We organised a supervised school trip; most of the class came out to count dead bees in February”.

The students had to count and speak in French. One boy found and identified the Queen.

Wenkoff believes that his winter die-off was a natural disaster. It had been very cold that year and he had not added sufficient insulation.

His colonies have bounced back. This summer’s good nectar flow and new strong queen bees have helped. He will assist by ensuring that he leaves plenty of nectar and honey for them to feed off during the winter and he will add insulation to the hives. He is also considering a winter feeding program if he still has one weak hive late this fall.

Wenkoff is trying to allow the bees to survive naturally and he does not replace the colony queen bees. He allows the colony to make that decision, and they do.

Bees need to be creative; they are builders and foragers of nectar. Wenkoff does not give them a complete ready-built home with plastic honeycombs; rather, he encourages the bees to build their own honeycomb from a very small basic beeswax starter, on the frames. Commercial beekeepers cannot afford the time for this and insert a complete plastic backing shaped as the hexagonal honeycomb base on a frame.

Wenkoff’s approach to beekeeping is known as the Biodynamic method. This is not as cost-effective as that employed in commercial beekeeping, but this approach could be breeding stronger, more infection-resistant bees. Only time will tell.

The Sharbot Lake Farmers Market held their second annual Buttertart Challenge on Sept. 3, which drew 11 entries. The butter tart is a truly Canadian dessert, an ooey gooey delight that was invented in the 1900s in Barrie, Ontario and has a huge following of connoisseurs. The honour of judging the challenge was highly coveted, with one unnamed judge having actually begged for a spot! Each judge had to consume three full butter tarts in total, which left the delighted crowd with the rest! Believe us when we tell you, there were a lot of delighted testers and appreciative commentaries throughout the entire crowd! The winner of the coveted “Best Buttertart in Frontenac County” award was Karen Schonauer of Ardoch. Second prize was won by Kim Perry of Food Less Travelled in Verona, and third prize went to Guy Leger. Soon we will have to have our own butter tart road map to visit the many talented bakers in the Frontenac region.

As well, Natsuki Ono's name was drawn as the winner for the SLFM Kids' Word Search.

The Verona Lions Club will be welcoming 40 vendors on Saturday, Sept. 3 to an event that has grown steadily in recent years.

“People seem to come from all over to get their garlic, and see what is new. They are what I call 'foodies' who just love meeting with growers and supporting them,” said Wayne Conway of the Verona Lions, a key organizer of the event.

Over 40 vendors were registered for the garlic festival as of Tuesday, all from within 125 kilometres of Verona. Over half of them are producers of garlic and other garden produce, and the rest are craft vendors.

“That number is a bit down from the number of vendors we ended up with last year but every year there are last-minute additions, so I expect we will have as many or more this year than in previous years,” he said.

Among the vendors this year is a very local micro-producer, Bear Roots Gardens from downtown Verona. Pat and Kate Joslin work a 1/3 of an acre patch where they produce garlic, peppers, tomatoes, ground cherries and other vegetables, as well as a line of organic, locally adapted seeds. Don't miss their booth.

There are also four community groups who will have booths at the festival this year, including the Bellrock Community Hall; the Portland and District Heritage Society, who will be churning butter as part of their display; Girl Guides of Canada; and the Township of South Frontenac.

The canteen at the hall will be open and serving garlic- themed cuisine, and the Lions will have their two kids' rides as well as the mini-putt on hand to entertain the younger set.

At 1 pm, the Eastern Ontario Garlic Awards, one of the unique features of the Verona festival, will be presented, and the winners of the Verona Community Association's Flower Barrel contest will be announced as well. Paul Pospisil will preside over the garlic awards and John McDougall, a Lions Club member and township councilor, will be the emcee.

Before the award presentations, the festival will take some time to honor the memory of Ron Whan, a local garlic grower who played an important role in the development of the festival. Ron displayed, sold, and donated garlic each of the first nine years of the event. Last year he had a booth at the festival and at the 150th anniversary celebration for Frontenac County, but passed away a few weeks later.

Entry to the Verona Garlic Festival is by donation, and it runs from 9am until 1pm at the grounds of the Verona Lions Hall on Verona Sand Road. Don't forget to check out the Frontenac Farmers Market as well, which is held at Prince Charles School in Verona on Road 38.

Moderate rains last Saturday and sustained rains on Tuesday of this week have greened up the countryside in South Frontenac and brought some optimism to area farmers who have been watching their crops turn to dust and their pastures dwindle to nothing after a non-existent snow pack from last winter was followed by three months of hot dry weather.

But for the growing season of 2016, the rains, as welcome as they are for dry ponds and wells, are too lake to rescue most of the crops of 2016.

Dave Perry, from Perry Maine-Anjou Farm near Harrowsmith, was not particularly impressed when the Quinte and Cataraqui Region conservation authorities bumped up their drought designations from moderate to severe earlier this month.

“I don't know where they got the idea about a moderate drought,” he said over the phone on Monday evening (August 15). “Our first cut of hay was down by 50% in earlyJuneand my watering pond was down to the mud, for the first time in my lifetime, by July.”

In an industry as diverse as agriculture in South Frontenac, growers have faced different impacts from the drought of 2016, a summer that has been the driest in over 50 years, according to local farmers with long memories.

For Perry, who runs a beef cattle operation, the weather has had a large impact. He has been worrying about keeping his animals watered, a problem that he does not remember ever having to deal with.

“I don't even remember even hearing about my main watering pond dropping down so low from my grandparents when I was a kid,” he said. The Perrys have been on the same property for generations.

Rain last weekend brought the pond up about 4 inches, and the rain on Tuesday likely helped some more, but Perry said he has been moving his water pump around all summer, looking for pockets of water to fill watering troughs for his cattle.

He is only now starting to think about what he is going to do this winter, since not only was his first cut of hay diminished; the second cut still hasn't happened.

“Hay prices have doubled, and there isn't a lot available anyway because everyone who usually has some for sale needs everything they have for themselves.”

He could consider selling some cattle but is reluctant.

“We've been working on improving the genetics of our herd for a hundred years, and I don't really want to mess with that program by selling off animals I would normally want to breed. And even if I do, the price is down to $1.70 a pound, I hear, when it was $3.00 last spring.”

Perry said he is just now working to determine what he will do this winter, but doesn't really like any of the options.

Ron Sleeth, who runs Ellevale Farm near Battersea, a dairy operation with 30 milk cows in a herd of about 75 Holsteins, has been working the four-generation farm that he runs with his wife and children since 1962.

He also knew that this was going to be a difficult season by early June.

“Our first cut of hay, which we take off in June, was about 50% of the normal amount. Then we had no second cut at all. We might have a cut in a few weeks, in place of our normal third cut, but it will be about 50% as well, if not less,” he said.

Crops of barley and silage corn are all at about 50% as well. However, in the grand scheme of things, Sleeth considers himself to be lucky.

“Normally we grow all that we need to feed our cattle, and we have some left to sell. This year we will not have any to sell, and we will be buying some as well, but others are in much worse shape,” he said.

While Sleeth said he has sold off about 10 head of cattle that he might normally have kept as surrogates, the rest of the herd will remain intact, and milk production has remained high.

“I know some others who are not as lucky as I am, who are struggling and will be looking at serious consequences that will hurt them this year and into the future. It's not a good situation.”

Over at Sonset Farms near Inverary, Andrea Cumpson said they were “kind of basking in the rain right now” when contacted on Tuesday morning, as heavy rains were coming down just a couple of days after rains last Saturday.

As for the rest of the summer, she described it as “brutal; all summer we had only drops of rain. We felt like everyone around us was getting some rain and it was passing us by.”

She said that the drought has affected everything Sonset does on its mixed farm. Crops are all down about 50% or more, and some, such as corn, were so stilted and hard that it was harvested and will be fermented to produce silage.

Fortunately, their newly planted spelt crop fared pretty well, and their wells have all held up, so they have been able to water their cattle, pigs, and chickens.

“We decided to abandon watering our gardens to make sure there was enough water for the animals, so we have lost a lot of garden produce,” she said.

Sonset normally does a small Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) business, selling garden produce in advance and delivering it in season, but they have pulled out of those contracts this year.

With rain this week, though, perhaps some of the garden plants will recover in time to produce fruit. More than that, it has brought some life to the dry fields, and all the trees and vegetation on and around the farm.

“It's amazing how resilient the land is. The rain seems to have brought everything back to life,” she said.

Over in Verona, Pat and Kate Joslin run a small seed and market garden business, with a quarter of an acre in production.

Although they are able to water their gardens and have not felt the same impact from the drought as others, Pat said this week that they have lost their onions, winter squash and some of their tomatoes. Their seed business is the most vulnerable, as it takes two years to bring many of the plants to seed. The plants are brought in, kept over winter, then replanted and grown on until they go to seed.

“When you lose those because there isn't enough water, after all that labour, it is frustrating,” he said.

To visit the bee colonies of Markus Sanders of Crooked Hill Farm, north of Sharbot Lake, is to experience a kaleidoscope of color. Each year Saunders encourages his daughters to select the colours to paint the individual hive boxes, or supers.

Knowing that bees visually identify their hive, I asked him if this was an aid to assist returning bees to help them find their own hive. No, he assured me, it’s a simple trick to start getting his daughters involved in the family beekeeping business.

Saunders has 120 colonies of European honeybees in his apiaries on his 230-acre farm, and sells his honey locally at the Sharbot Lake Farmers Market.

Honeybees provide a pollination service to our crops. Crop yields can increase dramatically when there are plenty of honeybees in the area.

There has been a lot of discussion and government research carried out over the past few years into the dramatic losses being sustained by the bee industry.

Strong colonies, says Saunders, and his forest location have helped him avoid major hive die-offs or the feared Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Bee colony winter die-off rates have risen drastically, along with mite infestations, over the past two decades. These two problems are now major control issues for beekeepers. CCD was unknown 15 years ago in North America but it is now a real and well-debated issue for beekeepers. The bees leave with no regard for their own survival; they leave full frames of honey, and the young and the old. This is not the action of the caring bee communities that had existed prior to CCD hitting the hives.

To help maintain a healthy colony, Saunders will replace the queen bee in each colony every two years. He has also taken smaller, weaker colonies and blended them together with only one strong queen. In this case, he used a copy of the Frontenac News as the dividing screen between the two initial colonies, together with a queen metal separator. Bees of individual colonies distinguish each other by a unique scent. A bee from one hive will not be allowed into another hive. With the paper separating the two colonies, by the time the paper is chewed up, the scent given off by both initial colonies is the same and the total acceptance of each other has been established.

Beekeepers, crop and fruit farmers are working with government scientists to help build harvest yields and strong healthy bee colonies. At this time we do not appear to have the complete answer to hive die-off and CCD.

Ralph Goodale, the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, visited the Collins Bay Correctional Institution on Tuesday, before meeting with over 300 people at Kingston City Hall on Tuesday night, August 16, to hear submissions from the public. As expected, what he heard was consistent and boisterous support for re-establishing the six farms across the country, and specifically the two in Kingston.

Well-organised prison farm advocates in Kingston had been waiting for this day ever since Mark Gerretsen, the Liberal candidate in the Kingston and the Islands riding during the last election, made a commitment to work towards bringing back the farms in Kingston.

When in opposition, Liberal MPs Mark Holland and Wayne Easter, who was the agriculture critic at the time, supported the efforts to save the prison farms in opposition to the decision by the Harper government to close them.

Prisons farm advocates, mostly from Frontenac County, formed the Pen Farm Herd Co-op to purchase and maintain the unique genetic character of the prison farm herd, a major volunteer effort that has continued for three years, demonstrating the depth of local support for the prison farms.

They were on hand to advocate for the reinstatement of the prison herd, as were a number of former prison officials and inmates, all talking about the rehabilitative value that caring for animals brings to the prison population.

Goodale did not make any commitments on behalf of the government, but said the meeting was part of a feasibility study aimed at re-establishing “agri-food employment initiatives for offenders”.

In a meeting with the local prison farm committee after the public meeting, he appeared to go further.

One of the people at that meeting said that Goodale told them that the government was busy determining “how to get this done”.

On July 18, Owen and Cari Tryon opened their family farm to the public as a fundraiser for the Parham Fair.

The 200-acre farm, located on Wagarville Road, has been in the Tryon family for three generations. “My grandfather bought the farm in 1943 and my father grew up here. Cari and I took it over in 2004,” Owen Tryon told us.

The Tryon family sells produce, pork, chickens, turkeys, ducks, rabbits, beef and lamb, which are all government inspected. Owen and Cari, along with their four children, gave guests a look into their daily lives and routines.

Owen acts as the 2nd vice-president for the fair and said they decided a few weeks ago to put this Family Farm Day together. “We have done a baseball tournament in the past, but it became less and less popular, so we thought we would give this a try. Hopefully it becomes an annual event.”

Kids had their faces painted by Ashley Hickey and ran around with big smiles on their faces after jumping in the bouncy castle or taking a trip down the giant waterslide put up by the District 4 Rec Committee.

They also enjoyed a trailer-ride around the farm behind an ATV and some tried out the pedal tractors that will be used in a new event at the Parham Fair this year; the Pedal Tractor Pull.

Bob Teal of the District 4 Recreation Committee manned the grill at the canteen, where there were barbequed hot dogs and sausages, cold drinks, Black Kettle Popcorn and other treats for everyone to enjoy.

The barns and paddocks were busy with grown-ups and kids taking tours, meeting the animals and learning how a family-run farm works. Pepper the goat was a favourite, as well as the baby bunnies and the border collie puppy, which greeted everyone with a soft, wagging tail and a lick.

Hanny the donkey foal seemed to be the most photogenic of the farm animals and took a shine to the kids looking to give her some attention. With her soft fur, big eyes and big ears, she was a crowd pleaser. “She loves to have her neck rubbed” said Wendy Parliament, the president of the Parham Agricultural Society.

The Parham Fair will be held on Friday & Saturday, August 19 & 20 this year. The schedule includes the cattle show; sheep shearing; hay wagon rides; the popular horse draw; and the Best-Dressed Cowboy & Cowgirl event. There will be baked goods, local crafts and artisans and much more. The midway will be in full swing, and live music will be performed on Friday night by the Old Habits and on Saturday night by One Busted Ego and HD Supply.

There will not be a demolition derby this year, however. “We tried really hard to have it again this year since it is always so popular,” explained Parliament. “We had the sponsors lined up, but it takes a lot of manpower to set up and clean up the derby, especially the clean-up! We need volunteers out patrolling during the event too because we don't want drinking to be a problem.”

The agricultural society is considering having the derby as a separate event from the fair in the future. “We really want it for the community and are always looking for volunteers!” Parliament added with a bright smile.

The Tryon Family will be bringing some of their family farm friends to the Parham Fair. Everyone can meet their sheep, goats, poultry and more from 10am – 4pm on Saturday in the Critter Corral.

Josh Bennett is a young man doing an old job.

Happiest when he’s covered in dirt from working the land, Josh is the fifth generation of his family to work as a farmer.

“I like tending to the animals and doing crops,” the friendly 18-year-old confirms from his family’s sheep farm, which covers 600 acres in Inverary, Ontario. “I like being outdoors.”

Filled with plans to continue his family’s tradition of selling sheep meat/wool and cash crops, Josh is poised to leave the farm behind to embark on a post-secondary education.

For some, it is bittersweet to leave what you love just to learn how to do it better.

For Josh, he’s grateful for a show-of-support from the farming community.

“It will help a lot,” he says with sincerity about a recent grant from the Frontenac Federation of Agriculture (FFA).

“I appreciate the help.”

The FFA says Josh qualified for the $500 education bursary because of his farming background and five years with 4-H.

Josh intends to use the money to pay for two years of agriculture classes at Ridgetown Campus near London, Ontario.

With a focus on agriculture, food, the environment and rural communities, the campus is a division of the University of Guelph. It has been part of the Ontario Agriculture College since 1997.

Once he earns his diploma, Josh will return to the family farm to continue raising more than 1,800 sheep.

“Josh is a good guy and we feel we have a good representative from Frontenac County to go on to Ridgetown,” says President Gary Gordon when asked about the FFA’s opinion of this year’s award winner.

Speaking on behalf of the FFA, which is composed of farmers across Frontenac County who volunteer their time to act as the frontline of a national organization, he notes, “This farm is one to try new technology, which we like to see.

“He’s going to be the fifth generation (of his family) on the farm,” says Gary, impressed.

“We’re very pleased.”

To spend all day in hay fields surrounded by trees, with the possible sightings of abundant wildlife makes this farm girl happy. The season, where I get to bale hay is now in full swing. Haying season requires many steps that have to be completed. Each step needs to be finished, long before you actually get to the fun part, of driving in circles with your own thoughts, and to enjoy the view.

“I am not going to brag here”. In my experience if someone starts with that line you know they are indeed going to brag about something. I am no different.

Over the years, there have not been too many jobs that I have not tried to do myself, and for the most part accomplished here on the farm. Being stubborn and determined has served me well in what needs to be done, in all seasons. I had even figured out how to easily hook up that tricky PTO (power take-off) shaft on the baler, turning it just right, and then how to slide it onto the PTO of the tractor. I should tell you that unfortunately my arms do not have the strength they used to. This means, that today holding that heavy PTO shaft up and getting it into place is not something I can accomplish. My husband (fondly known as My Hero) had the solution.

He now leaves our round baler hooked up to the same tractor (Little Red), all season. This came about after the poor guy had to listen to my whiny complaints over and over. He has always found a solution to my problems and frustrations.

Fuel up the tractor and load the twine into the twine box, these jobs I can still handle without a problem. There is however still one job that continues to frustrate me. It is like I have a mental block, and will never accomplish, this seemingly easy to everyone else job.

There are so many grease fittings on haying equipment, the round baler, the tractor, the rake and especially the discbine. All combined, they seem to have hundreds of those little fittings just waiting for attention. That is probably an exaggeration but when you are exhausted, have to beat the weather, and are in a hurry it certainly feels that way.

My father-in-law used to say grease is cheaper than replacing a broken part. He was absolutely right. I grease religiously every morning before I head out to bale hay. There have been fires from the friction of metal on metal, so greasing moving parts would be extremely important, and never to be forgotten.

Now that we have established that greasing machinery is not the problem, I am going to admit the problem. I cannot for the life of me reload a grease gun. It always turns into some horrible scene, where big gobs of blue grease end up on my boots, my shirt and most times in my hair and on my face. An empty grease gun in my world is my biggest fear. This simple task, I have concluded is a skill I will never, ever accomplish. Those emergency phone calls to My Hero at his day job explaining (possibly whining) that the grease gun he had forgotten about was now empty, and I could not possibly finish greasing was something I was not proud of. He would try his best to walk me through the process. Ultimately, the call would end with him telling me where in the barn was another loaded grease gun.

Like I said, he always finds a solution. This would be where countless auction sales came into play. We now own about a dozen grease guns. Just about now, I am probably using one that had been lined up waiting, all loaded by a man who knows exactly what keeps this farm girl happy.

Grace Vanderzande is a Napanee area farmer, a writer, and a blogger @ www.buttonsthoughts.ca. Contact her at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

By Dawn Morden, the Mountain Grove Seed Company

Seeds are alive. As they grow, they are constantly adapting to their surroundings. Seeds were traditionally passed from generation to generation as a means to survival. Each generation would select the healthiest, strongest, most fruitful plants, the ones that survived, and save their seeds.

There is no definitive definition for an heirloom seed. They are old seeds, which were passed down from generation to generation. They are pollinated by insects or the wind.

Heirloom vegetables come in many different shapes, sizes and colours. Round carrots, pink celery, lobed tomatoes or white beets. Most heirlooms are more nutritious than store bought ones, and different colours contain different vitamins. If you grow heirloooms, their seeds can be saved so that you can grow them again.

Garden seeds have evolved from wild plants. They were picked and planted again. The plants with desirable characteristics were used and grown again, slowly changing the way that the plants grew. The wild grain that is wheat had kernels that would ripen a few at a time. As people picked them, they were selecting seed for the timing when it would ripen. Gradually, more kernels on each blade of wheat were ripe for picking, at the same time.

This is how our food has evolved. Heirloom seeds are centuries of work from the past, and are the security of our future. Each seed is a legacy. Some come with stories. Here are a few of these stories.

1500-Year-Old Cave Bean. This bean has a very old story. The original seed was found in a cave, in New Mexico. It was carbon dated to 1500 years old. The Cave Bean is an ancestor of the Anasazi Bean. It is a green pole bean that grows on 10-foot long vines.

Noires des Carmes Melon. This melon has a treasured history. It was grown in sixteenth century France and has been preserved in France by the Carmelite Monks since 1787. The melon is fragrant, juicy and four inches round. Its skin turns near black when ripe, and it has also been called the Black Rock Melon.

Cherokee Trail of Tears Bean. This bean has a story of persecution and sorrow, and is part of our history in North America. It is a bean given to us by the Cherokee people. In the winter of 1838, they were driven from their homeland in Tennessee and forced to relocate in Oklahoma. Over 4000 people died. The path that they walked on, and shed many tears, was later named the Trail of Tears. They carried these bean seeds with them as they walked.

Stowell's Evergreen Sweet Corn. In this corn lies a story of extreme greed. In 1848 Nathanial Stowell cross pollinated a flour corn with an Iroquois sugar corn, to produce his own variety of corn. He was from Massachusetts. He reluctantly sold his friend two ears for four dollars with a promise that his friend would only grow it for himself to eat. His friend then sold the corn to a seed company for $20,000. It was a popular variety when it was introduced by the seed company in 1856.

Deseronto Bean. This bean has origins close to home, but has lost its story. It is an old bean from the Tyendinaga reserve. It is a delicious fresh green bean, and its dried beans are plump, white and smooth. It is very productive regardless of the weather each season.

Red Fig Tomato. This tomato has a story of sustenance. It originated in Italy during the sixteenth century. It was picked whole and dried the same way that figs are, for eating throughout the year. It is a pear shaped red cherry tomato that also tastes good fresh. They really do dry whole; they do not get mouldy.

Montreal Melon. This melon has a rich history. Brought to Montreal by French settlers, and grown along the St. Lawrence River, it became a famous culinary delicacy. Melons were sold to hotels and restaurants in the US where there was a high demand, as it was resold for up to $1.00 per slice. By 1907 it was so profitable that some Montreal farmers hired armed guards to protect their fields. It was extinct by the 1920s but in 1995, a few seeds were found at the US department of agriculture. A green fleshed cantaloupe with an average weight of 12 lbs.

Jimmy's White Lake Bean. This bean has an intriguing story to tell. It comes from the White Lake area, near Almonte. Some friends moved to White Lake. They bought some green beans at a local farm stand. They asked the farmer where else they could buy those beans. He said you don't buy them, you grow them, and he gave them some seeds. His name was Jimmy.

There are thousands of varieties of heirloom seeds, every vegetable you can think of, some with stories and some have long lost their stories. Many heirlooms have been lost. Varieties that people can remember can't be found anywhere, to grow again. As these varieities become extinct, so does the genetic diversity of our food. In 1981, there were approximately 350 different kinds of garden peas available from seed companies, by 2004, there were only about 200. There were over 130 varieties of celery available in 1981, but only 70 by 2004. Over half of the varieties of vegetables, even today, are grown and sold by only one seed company in North America. This puts them at high risk for becoming extinct. Each gardener should adapt at least one thing that they love, and save the seeds from it, forever. Keep growing it and saving your seeds. Share your seeds with your friends and neighbours. Keep the legacy alive.

The Mountain Grove Seed Company has collected, and is collecting local heirloom seeds, local historic seeds. Our area has many things that were grown by grandparents and other relatives. These are our special heirlooms. So far the collection includes asparagus, chives, dill, sweet william and sweet peas. The bonny best tomato was grown in the Parham area in the early 1900s. Our original seeds were not from the area, but now have been grown here for the past twelve years. If you have any special family heirloom seeds that you would like to be included with our collection of local historic seeds, or any information about what varieties of vegetables that your ancestors grew, let us know. You can contact us on facebook (Mountain Grove Seed Company), or by email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. If you are interested in learning about saving seeds, there will be a seed saving workshop at the Sharbot Lake Farmer's Market on Saturday June 11, 2016.