Sierra Seed Cooperative

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. Our Seed Seva Educational program is a holistic, indigenous permaculture-based approach to seed stewardship that 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 are always folks to interact with inside the online classroom space, as well as in our active Facebook group.

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“The life-giving mystery in a handful of seeds has inspired the many stories and songs that create the sacred dance between people and plants.”

~ Rowen White

While this learning experience holds seeds as the center of our learning hub, we touch on many diverse arrays of topics 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.

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We invite you to come and sow seeds of hope with us as we dream into a collective vision of a more just and beautiful food system, as we rehydrate and integrate our cultural memories and stories, and regain a sense of place and purpose and cultural expression through our foods and seeds.

In all their shapes, sizes, colors, the seeds have granted us sustenance, flavors, art, craft, and most importantly story and song. The life-giving mystery in a handful of seeds has inspired the many stories and songs that create the sacred dance between people and plants. These seeds share insight on the alchemy of transformation of sunlight to food, one kernel into many. In the Seed Seva programs, we are humble disciples of these teachings of the seeds. We look to create gardens and methods of seed stewardship and plant breeding that strengthen the inherent life force within plants, and ensure that the seeds that we carry on to our next generations are selected for low input, whole organic systems.

In this time, it is a joy to be a part of the great re-awakening; seeing these ancient stories and connections within us come alive again. Our ancestors, who have faithfully passed us this incredible gift of life, are re-birthed through our connections to these seeds; these are their songs, their stories. It has only been a few short generations that we have seen these connections slip away; in the big wheel of time, only a few fleeting moments where we saw ourselves become distracted from the great mysteries by some of the false promises of technology and convenience.