About this course
Seed Seva Seasonal Journey;
A Distance Learning Online Mentorship
Our Seed Seva Educational program is a holistic, indigenous permaculture based approach to seed stewardship which honors the many layers of seed culture , from practical hands-on skills, cultural context and memory with guiding principles that are rooted in an indigenous ecology of interconnected relations. Seed Seva is our signature educational seed stewardship program, developed by Rowen White and Sierra Seeds.
Previously only offered in live immersions, we have created a wonderful distance mentorship curriculum to widen the circle of seed stewards and to make these teaches more widely available to our community worldwide. Upon purchase of this mentorship, you will instant access to 8 multi-layered Modules, that follow the course of the season from Spring until Fall. This is a self paced online course, but there are lots of students currently taking the course, so there is always folks to interact with inside the online classroom space, as well as in our active Facebook group.
The heart of our mission at Sierra Seeds is to cultivate, empower and grow good Seed Stewards. Through mentorship and education, we create greater sustainability in our food and seed systems by sharing essential practical skills coupled with deep and integrated seed literacy.
While this learning experience holds seeds as the center of our learning hub, we touch on many diverse array of topics on to cultivate fundamental seed literacy for all conscious and mindful eaters, lovers of life, guardians of life, storytellers, activists, and those who carry a new vision of Earth stewardship for future generations. Practical and integrative knowledge that will deepen your understanding of the cycles of life.
Seed stewardship is not limited to the work we do in the garden; it also extends to the kitchen and dining table, how we engage in our local food movement and community and beyond. We need more humans who care for the seeds!
Learning about seed stewardship will fundamentally change your perspective on food, and how we can work together with our beloved plants to create sustainable food and seed sovereignty that is in alignment with our values and ethics.
Over the last 18 years of following the seed path, I have had the honor and privilege of meeting and weaving together a beautiful network of mentors and seed friends that have helped me root into my vision of how I can be of best service to the seeds. They have helped me gather a proverbial basket of skills to feel confident as a Seed Keeper. It is through these relationships and experiences, and with the plants and seeds as my guides and teachers, I have been able to begin to cultivate my deep infinite knowing, and germinate my pure creative potential.
I want to offer this to each one of you.
Join us as we walk together through the seasons together.
How will we learn together?
When you register for the Seed Seva Seasonal Mentorship, you will get an email with instant access to the full online course and classroom space. This is a self paced online course. Each module holds new resources for you to learn from. There will be a diversity of modalities that we will use to learn. There are videos, audio recordings, readings, and templates that will inspire you as you cultivate your understandings of the cycles of life in a seed garden. There are planting guides, on how to cultivate a healthy and abundant seed and food garden, as well as thought-provoking readings and interviews from a wide spectrum of sources and teachers in our mentorship network.
The platform to access the materials is intuitive and easy to use, and we will have regular communication through email to invite you into the next cycles and phases of learning. You will have lifetime access to these resources and will be able to go review them throughout the seasons to continue to learn and grow.
There will also be a private community Facebook group where we can share inspiration, pictures of our gardens, insights, and reflections. I will be able to listen in and offer support and mentorship as you learn from our beloved plants. We can continue to learn from each other, and gather together in solidarity with other people of good hearts and minds who share our same vision for Earth Stewardship. You will find a community of people who will inspire and uplift you in your journey to reconnect to seeds, earth, and ancestral seed culture.
Here is a peak into some of the topics that we will explore together:
-Restoring Relationships; The Foundations of Seed Seva
-Moon Cycles and Phenology of Planning Our Seed Gardens
-Honoring Seed Origins; Sourcing Seeds Ethically
-Cultivating our Seed Heritage; Creating our Seed Garden Plans
-The Garden Journal; Good Record-keeping to Inspire Reverent Curiosity
-Seed Stories; Finding our way home
-Plant Kinship and Plant Midwifery
-Maintaining Good Seed through Mindful Seed Stewardship
-The Co-Evolutionary Dance; Indigenous Plant Breeding
-Seeds of Resistance; Cross Cultural Seed Stories
-Enduring Seeds and Original Agreements; A Modern history of Seed Stewardship and the Public Commons
-Seed Rematriation and Reconciliation
-Biennial Seed Stewardship
-Seed to Table; Seed Stewardship in the Kitchen
-Dry Seed Processing
-Wet Seed Processing
Good Recordkeeping for a Small Farm or Community Seed Bank
-Community Seed Systems
-Seed Justice
-Seed Storage
With this Instant Access Mentorship Course, you will receive:
~A seasonal themed Seed Stewardship learning module that aligns with every month of the season. This will have a video learning component with it. 2 monthly informative or inspirational videos; some based on practical hands-on skills and others based on potent and important issues and topics that further seed literacy. Each module has discussion prompts that are linked to a community forum inside the classroom space and also downloadable resources.
~Interviews and complementary content from an amazing lineup of inspiring seed stewards from around the country focused on the themes of the monthly seasonal cycles. These will vary from extra videos, podcasts, written articles and other downloadable resources. The heart of the content in the classroom is curated and cultivated by our lead seed mentor, Rowen White.
~Access to our private Facebook group to share inspiration with all the others who make up our vibrant learning community; This is an inspiring place to share your insights on this journey of learning from the seeds.
~The theme of this season is to cultivate a useful cyclical framework for our seed stewardship journey in the form of a seed inspired garden journal. There will be templates and prompts to assist our circle in this learning and observational multi-sensory learning experience.
~Seed of the Week interactive learning, where we go deep into the cultural memory and beauty of an heirloom seed variety each week.
Course primarily taught by Rowen White, founder and director of Sierra Seeds, with the help of numerous regional and national wise seedkeepers and other knowledge food and seed artists and activists.
No prior experience necessary, just come with an open heart and mind!
Through this group mentorship circle, I will invite you to unfurl into a place of empowerment, to step with greater depth onto the path of being a SeedKeeper and life steward. I have offered this mentorship in individual settings with great success to help springboard community organizations like seed libraries and seed cooperatives, and to individuals who wanted extended clarity on how to bring seed stewardship into their yearly garden plans and to enrich their lives overall. I have also customized this mentorship work to help support a network of elementary schools integrate seed stewardship into their seasonal curriculum. I have worked with community activists, with chefs, with musicians and artists, with food writers and film-makers, along with farmers and gardeners to elevate their home gardening experience as well as bring more meaning and depth into the relationships that exist in our homes, kitchens, dining tables and our gardens.
I want you to feel supported in your embodiment of this Seed Keeper pathway. Imagine this space is an earthy and cracked vessel, an ancient collective seed pot; hand shaped by an endless chain of Seed Keepers of all colors, stretching back through the ages. Your dreams and visions of how you want to make a contribution to the larger global movement of Seed Freedom will be honed and cultivated. The group container will hold you in a safe space of accountability and reflection for what shifts you want to make in your life to begin to cultivate gratitude and “Seed the Local Revolution” in your own unique expression.
Why are we offering Seed Seva in a Distance Learning Format?
As many of you know, I love to gather in a circle with all manner of people to share seed and stories and inspiration. I have spent the last few years teaching seed trainings and facilitating gatherings all over the country. In my travels and in conversations with my students, I realized was lacking in the teachings that we were offering was a commitment to mentorship and embodied follow-through. Once the juicy bubble of excitement and inspiration wore off from our 5-8 days together, it was can be difficult for participants to create small actionable ways to bring the seed work closer to home, integrated in their daily work and rhythm.
How many trainings or workshops have you been to where the sheer amount of new information, new skills, and knowledge leaves you feeling overwhelmed and hard to know how to integrate once you are back home?
Imagine the feeling of bringing the wisdom of this class into your home and garden, to learn at your own pace and rhythm.
Do you need a garden to join? No! There are many ways you can integrate this knowledge and experience outside of the garden! Over the years of teaching, many of my students don’t primarily identify as gardeners, but informed eaters, activists, teachers and others who wish to bring greater intimacy with the cycles of life that nourish us.
It is very difficult to condense a full season of learning into just a few days. This Seed to Seed Journey will allow right rhythm and space to fully integrate the teachings into your hearts, minds, and lives. This will be a potent multi-sensory learning experience!! You can follow along and we will assist you in learning in your own garden, or if you are just beginning the journey of growing your own food and seed, you will be inspired to visit local farms, botanical conservatories or community gardens to integrate the teachings. We will be offering videos and detailed pictures of all that we are doing on the farm during each month, so that you can follow along and learn in the natural rhythms of life, as the season’s change and the plant’s cycle from seed to sprout to blossom and back to seed again.
I feel compelled to offer this group mentorship circle as a way to complete the cycle of inspiration, and to truly cultivate and help water all the seeds of dreams and hope that we are all sowing!