• Saving Seeds, Preserving Taste

  • Heirloom Seed Savers in Appalachia
  • By: Bill Best
  • Narrated by: Pete Ferrand
  • Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (12 ratings)

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Saving Seeds, Preserving Taste  By  cover art

Saving Seeds, Preserving Taste

By: Bill Best
Narrated by: Pete Ferrand
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Publisher's summary

The Brown Goose, the White Case Knife, Ora's Speckled Bean, Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter - these are just a few of the heirloom fruits and vegetables you'll encounter in Bill Best's remarkable history of seed saving and the people who preserve both unique flavors and the Appalachian culture associated with them.

Saving Seeds, Preserving Taste will introduce listeners to the cultural traditions associated with seed saving, as well as the remarkable people who have used grafting practices and hand-by-hand trading to keep alive varieties that would otherwise have been lost. As local efforts to preserve heirloom seeds have become part of a growing national food movement, Appalachian seed savers play a crucial role in providing alternatives to large-scale agriculture and corporate food culture. Part flavor guide, part people's history, Saving Seeds, Preserving Taste will introduce you to a world you've never known - or perhaps remind you of one you remember well from your childhood.

©2013 Ohio University Press (P)2014 Redwood Audiobooks

Critic reviews

"Perhaps only once in a lifetime, we read a book that is a true treasure of American lore, one that no other person could write. Bill Best should be considered a National Treasure Keeper, for his beans, tomatoes, and corn - as well as his stories - are irreplaceable and therefore of immeasurable value." (Gary Nabhan, author of Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods)
"This animated narrative offers a glimpse into American folklore, migration patterns, and the glory of the family farm as it is known through its seeds, which live on season after season, offering distinctive local flavor." ( Publishers Weekly)

What listeners say about Saving Seeds, Preserving Taste

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Great book, ZZZZ narrator

This is a great book and you should buy it...in print. The narrator was so monotone and monotonous the words lost all meaning at times.

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Great history about Appalachian Seed Savers

I loved the voice of the narrator. Having been born in Tennessee, his voice had down home authenticity and personal authority. This is a wonderful book with inspiring stories of all the seed savers that protected our unique culinary heritage that we inherited from Native Americans from their gifting to us and sometimes by our taking their their land and seeds.
The way early settlers saved seeds that they acquired by intermarriage and then passing down through multiple generations until today is inspiring and reveals the closeness of families and their pride in maintaining genetic purity, taste and nutrition from these precious heirloom seeds that were and still are important to these hardy and resourceful people who have given us the gift of the choice over modern versions that emphasize color, shipping hardiness, and toughness to withstand mechanical harvesting over taste, quality and regional traditions and variety.

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