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Saved seeds: a link to a healthy past.

By Sheila Mulrooney Eldred EatingWell June/July 2006

Cora Baker, a Potawatomi Native American from Wisconsin, spent a lifetime collecting heirloom seeds; some of her stock are believed to link back to plants that grew more than 800 years ago.

“I had prayed and prayed that someone would take this gardening up again,” she wrote, with the help of her great-granddaughter, shortly before her death in 2000 at the age of 94. “I feel that the Great Creator has answered my humble prayers.”

The answer came in the form of Dream of Wild Health, a garden-based education program in St. Paul, Minnesota, the group to whom Baker sent her collection.

Now, Baker’s life savings of seeds are flourishing into black turtle beans, Mandan blue flint corn, colorful Arikara squash and Potawatomi lima beans.

“We’re growing things we’ve never seen,” says Sally Auger, executive director of the project. “It’s an awesome responsibility to carry this on.”

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