Exciting Changes at NIKIAN: Chapter IV

Lots has happened this last year that brings us a sense of anticipation and joy with relief! We have made a plan to transition the farm to the next generation - heirs of our choosing who will carry on what we've started while we gracefully step back from center stage.

We're not going far - aging in place in a little house up on the back forty where we can still be involved in the work that gives us great pleasure, but not have the responsibility for all.

In short, we can help where we want and otherwise just be a general nuisance to "the kids"!

From plans to reality - a great new adventure is underway. So much excitement and so much to anticipate!

Now what shall I do with all of my new found "spare time"???????

For the past 30 years I've been collecting seed from my garden plants and learning how to keep my favourites going year after year; how to propagate plants for large, beautiful colonies, how to grow a new shrub to replace a damaged one, how to cultivate a tree from a nut, how to produce mustard seed from, well, mustard seed!

The wonders of life's cycles.

Every year there's always more seed than I need - seed for the next veggie garden, seed for more perennials, for more annuals (never too many annuals!), for native plants, for exotics that live well here... seeds that I can share. Last fall I decided to collect even more seeds than I usually do and from my many rare and unusual plants and make them available to the gardening public.

We're still working out the details of quantities, packing, and mailing, and more seed varieties will go on line as they reach adequate germination rates,

but we're ready to offer what we have and send them off with a wish for gentle weather and a hope for happy harvests!

At the same time, diverse seed lots (species columbines and clematis, crambe and echinaceas) go out to a cold frame for winter sowing - the easiest way to achieve the freeze/thaw "stratification" cycles of our natural winter.

And, as of February and March, it's time to start sowing the seeds for this summer's gardens, beginning with artichokes and cardoons, onions and all their relatives.

Every seed sown is an active gesture of optimism and an antidote

to despair.