The Seed Club.

I came home yesterday and there was a giant pile of seed packets on the kitchen table. Apparently Mike had found a free box filled with seeds, so he grabbed them. Most of them are exceedingly old, like from 2003. But there were a few from 2007. There were about eight packets of beets, five pumpkin, four endive, several beans and the list goes on. Since we aren't having much luck with our spinach seeds we planted so far outside I decided to give these a try, even though they are seven years old. You never know, maybe they will sprout better than the new stuff. I also threw out two rows of black-eyed peas and some endive, just for fun. If they sprout, it's free food, if they don't, no harm done.

I set out to make rye bread yesterday too. It all seemed to be going well until I put it in the oven and I think it actually shrank. Total rye bread failure. The only other time I have ever had a total bread failure was also with rye bread. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but I want to try out a couple other rye recipes and see if I can't find one that works. Besides, the flavor of the failed loaf wasn't very good either. It was a little sweet, a little caraway; maybe nice for snacking, but we wanted to make Tempeh Reubens and it just wouldn't meld well.

Just to prove what I giant dork I am, I got really excited when I got an email promoting the Grow Portland Seed Club. That's right, it's a volunteer driven seed club that provides organically grown, open-pollinated seeds that thrive in the Pacific Northwest climate. I think I am going to volunteer and go help pack some seeds. It helped that the seed packing get-together in my neighborhood is at Amnesia Brewing. That might have convinced me.

I also discovered this awesome endeavor: The Portland Fruit Tree Project. Also volunteer driven, you can register your fruit trees and get people to come out and help care for them and harvest them in exchange for providing some of your harvest to community food banks. God knows there is no way I will be able to eat all the plums that we get even if I make jams and jellies and preserves until my head explodes.

So, even though it's pouring down rain all day today, and for the next five days, I think this is a pretty darn cool place to live where you can find free seeds on the side of the street, volunteer for non-GMO gardening concerns while drinking beer, and have a hoard of volunteers come and help you harvest your trees.