Forgive us for our long absence....we tried to plant too many new ideas and our blog fell to the weeds...so time to sharpen our garden tools and cultivate the blog!

So to start off, we are doing a throwback Thursday for September and revisit how the Sustainable Mountain Ag Center came to be:
Over 50 years ago, Bill and his wife, Irmgard and their three children moved to a farm outside of Berea, where Bill quickly began to cultivate the land and start crops whose bounty could be sold at the Farmers' Markets (Berea and Lexington--both of which he was a founding member). As you'll read in the article mentioned below, it didn't take too long for him to realize that the beans and tomatoes he was growing did not taste like the ones he had grown with his mother, Margaret. But every fall, when he would be visiting his family, his mother would give him seed beans which she had saved from that summer and remind Bill that he ought to be growing them. She didn't say why, but simply said that he ought to keep growing them. Gradually he started growing her beans again(because you should always listen to your mother's advice!), and to this day grows nothing but the heirlooms.
People at the market took notice of the tasty difference and it soon became a subject of great interest. As a result, Bill invited customers and vendors alike to bring in seeds from their own families and a spark was lit!
Soon others became aware of the deliciousness that is heirloom fruits and vegetables and before long Kentucky Living Magazine (formerly Rural Kentuckian) did an article on the Best Family and Farm and the people read it.........and then......the letters came. Along with the letters were stories of the seeds and their importance to their families......and the seeds came with it. Following the publication of the article, over the next six months Bill and Irmgard received 86 letters from 6 states--all with seeds and stories. As Bill says, " we went from knee deep to neck deep and it still keeps growing!" (and that was in 1998).
Next week we will tell you how the Best Family made the jump from growing beans and other vegetables to sell at the markets to providing the seeds for many others to grown their own heirloom vegetables!
In the meantime--
Here is a great article from Bill Best, written in 1998 and still very relative to today's world! https://www.heirlooms.org/heirloom-beans.html
and here is the article that started their journey to saving yesterday's seeds for today and tomorrow.
https://www.kentuckyliving.com/.../july-1988-growing...

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