“Sorry to scare you,” Colleen says with a sly grin, not looking terribly sorry.
Hand to chest, I let out a breath. “I shouldn’t have been snooping. I just couldn’t help—” Breaking off, I wave a hand at the side building. “Did you play there when you were a kid?”
Colleen shakes her head. “Nah, it’s only five or six years old.”
She doesn’t provide further clues, so I ask. “For the grandchildren, then?”
“Nope.” I didn’t spend a lot of time hanging out with Colleen at school, but I can read the hint of mischief in her eyes. She’s fucking with me.
“Ah, so it’s a…” I cast my gaze across the yard, looking for the most ridiculous possibility, and it lands on the animal still parked in front of my car, still chewing its cud, or whatever sheep do. “House for the sheep?”
Colleen snorts. “Wow. Nobody ever guesses that fast.”
“Riiight.” Now I know she’s screwing with me. “I wasn’t born yesterday, you know.”
She just shrugs, holding back a smile. “My grandparents had a special relationship.”
Not sure I want to know what that means, especially with regards to the sheep, I remember she told me of her grandfather’s passing at the end of last year. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“Thanks. It’s been tough.” She sighs, and the energy seems to drain out of her. “Come on and meet Gran. She’s in the garden.”
“The light is perfect right now. Okay if I start filming?”
Colleen shrugs. “Fine with me.”
She leads me around the side of the house, past the building where the sheep supposedly lives, and beyond an impressive compost pile before stopping at a gate. Colleen nods at the tall fence as she opens it. “We have a lot of deer.”
I almost feel like I’m entering the Secret Garden as I follow her through the gate. It’s not a fussy, formal place with mazes and roses, but it is beautifully laid out. Well-kept plots burst with produce: summer squashes, pole beans and cucumber. Tomatoes as big as your head and as small as a thimble.
Speechless, I take my time weaving up and down rows, zooming in on a yellow and green striped melon here, following a bee as it pollinates a zucchini blossom there.
“I’m sure the birds and the bees have plenty to say about seeds. If only you knew their language,” a woman with a slightly raspy voice says from behind me.
Turning, I find a grandma straight out of central casting grinning at me… until she sees the phone I’ve instinctively aimed at her. “We starting this already? But I haven’t done my makeup!”
She’s got me going for a few beats, and then I see the same exact expression Colleen beamed at me when she tried to convince me that the sheep lived in that monstrosity next to the house. Rolling my eyes, I grin. “You got me.”
“If you can’t laugh at life, then it’s not worth living is what I say.” Mrs. Bedd flicks a hand at my phone. “You can point that thing at me if you want. Hopefully I won’t break it.”
“I was just trying to catch your gorgeous garden at magic hour, but my mother did teach me some manners.” She, in fact, instilled in me an endless list of proper behavior, but I won’t go into that. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Bedd. I’m Diane McCarthy, a college classmate of Colleen’s.”
“Call me Ethel, honey,” Mrs. Bedd says, her grip firm as she squeezes my hand and then brushes it off. “Whoops, I got you dirty there.”
“Part and parcel of interviewing farmers.” I nod at the basket of vegetables under her arm. “If it’s okay, I’ll just film while you finish up whatever you’re doing.”
“That’s good, because I have to get the tomatoes in. We’re supposed to have a big storm tonight, and I don’t want them to get busted up. Colleen, can you fetch those bushel baskets? I need you to pitch in.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Colleen disappears, and Ethel sets to work, efficiently palming and twisting tomatoes off vines before nestling them into her basket.
“Be sure to get the ones just starting to turn too, Colleen,” Ethel says. Holding up a tomato that’s mostly green to the camera, she adds, “Most tomatoes will ripen in the sun on the counter or windowsill. Harvesting them before they’re fully ripe means I get ’em before the bugs and birds do.”
Ethel is a natural on camera, so I just keep asking questions. “Can you tell me about these varieties? They’re beautiful.”
“They are, aren’t they?”
She recites each variety’s name, qualities and origin as she moves down the row. “Every one of these tomatoes grew from seeds saved by one of the gals in my knitting group. All regional heirlooms. Some of ’em passed down for generations.”
Breathless as my camera records what is, essentially, food porn, I can’t wait to upload it to my computer so I can share this beauty with the world. As I often do when I get excited about a video, I send a silent thanks to the jerk who nudged me in this direction. We may have shared a night of sex that I revisit all too often when I’m alone in bed with a vibrator, but it was his testimony in front of the commission that spurred me to start Seeds of Change.
It was far too easy for him to feed the members of the committee nonsense they ate right up. To make them believe that seed savers are some sort of food terrorists. Meanwhile, their eyes glazed over at the very real statistics I shared regarding the loss of biodiversity in agriculture.
In that moment, I realized I needed to take my message to the streets. To teach as many people as possible that nurturing locally grown food is necessary for our survival as a species.
I may have been hurt by his deception, but I was angry too. Angry at him, but even more angry at my family. After all, it was our shameful legacy that propelled me to start the seed library in the first place. But after the hearing last year, fueled by the need to undo the damage my grandfather set in motion, I dug out my notes from documentary classes I took in college, studied other farming YouTube channels to make sure I wasn’t reinventing a wheel, put everything but the essentials in storage, moved out of my apartment, and hit the road.
If I ever see that guy again, I’ll want to slap him. But I should probably thank him first.
CHAPTER 4DIANE
Without even trying, I end up with a lunch invitation and continue to film Ethel as she effortlessly whips up a meal for a hungry crowd like it’s her mission in life. Without batting an eye, she welcomes each new arrival into the fold and makes them feel at home by giving them a job to do.
“My husband and I were only able to have one child, so when our grandchildren came to live with us, I had to learn how to stretch a meal real quick. After all, I had five growing kids to feed, plus half of their friends too,” Ethel grins as she pulls jars from the fridge. “I don’t get to do it as often these days, but when Lia and Molly said they wanted to go over some things for tomorrow's strawberry picking, I said I’d make lunch for everyone.”
First, a petite redhead stops in with fresh eggs and milk. Ethel sets her up beating eggs next to Colleen, who slices some of the tomatoes harvested earlier. And just before the skies open up with the predicted thunderstorm, a tall man who looks slightly familiar ushers in a beautiful brunette. As they enter, the woman lifts a cloth from the basket she’s carrying. “Brought my latest batch of gluten-free sourdough rolls.”
As Colleen introduces me, she explains that her older brother Ethan runs the family soybean operation, the brunette is his girlfriend Lia, and the redhead, Molly, works at a dairy farm down the road as well as at the Bedd’s weekend strawberry picking operation. I’ve suddenly got ideas for new videos, from the challenges facing field crop producers like Ethan to the added value of pick-your-own offerings. The subjects are outside the scope of my original purpose for the channel, but as I meet more and more people and learn about the trials growers go through, it feels right to keep listening.
There’s something about this family too. The way they treat each other—whether they’re a blood relation or not—is a complete one-eighty from the way I was brought up, and I just want to spend more time with them and soak it all in.
I put my camera away when we gather around the table. Everyone dives into the simple but amazing meal: ham, goat cheese and herb frittata with pickled vegetables and Lia’s rolls on the side. I can only imagine the way my mother would turn up her nose at the menu, but it’s not like she actually eats. She’ll do everything in her power to get a reservation at a Manhattan restaurant just because everyone’s talking about the chef, and then only eat two bites of her meal.
Once everyone’s been served, Colleen turns the tables on me. “What prompted you to start a YouTube channel? Didn’t you study something to do with sustainable development?”
“I did, but I minored in communications. After I graduated, I went to work at a non-profit focused on seed libraries.” Went to work is what I always say because people treat you differently if you tell them you funded a nonprofit with your trust fund. “We ran into some roadblocks at the end of last year when the state passed new regulations on sharing seeds.”
“I remember that,” Ethel says. “Some of my friends got skittish about sharing seeds in public because they didn’t want to get fined. Did the nonprofit fold?”
“Oh, it’s still going. And our advocacy helped to get the laws altered. But I pivoted to doing evangelical work.”
A few utensils clatter, all other conversation stops, and everyone stares at me.
Finally, Colleen clears her throat. “Do you mean, like, selling Bibles? We’re not, uh, religious.”
“Oh, not that kind of gospel. I’m spreading the word of local varieties, like your grandmother’s strawberries. At first, I just wanted to give farmers a platform, but it’s really taken off. I’m raising money, learning, and teaching all at the same time.”
“Do you ask for money?” Lia asks.
