• Home
• About Us
  • Seed Descriptions
  • Catalog Descriptions
  • Help Us Grow
  • The Dream…
• Gardening Info
• Education
  • Heritage Grains
• Our Growers
• Seed Pledge
  • Why buying locally produced seed is important to you
• Garden Journal

What Makes Us So Special?

We grow our seed in a Sustainable Manner which exceeds "organic" qualifications.

Our Location

Sustainable Seed Company is located in pastoral hills of historic Petaluma, California.  That is about 45 minutes north of San Francisco, California.  We do not operate a retail location at this time.  Mail order only.
Our mailing address is:
P.O. Box 636
Petaluma, CA 94952

We are a new generation of farmers who understand that if there is to be a bright future for humanity we need to start farming and living sustainably today.  We are the Sustainable Seed Company...

Sam

Sam is a man with a truly laid back attitude and positive outlook on life.  Many a time when I'm rushing about he reminds me to breathe, calm down and enjoy what I'm doing.  Sage advice seems to slip casually from him as you move through the garden rows.  I'm convinced there in a much older soul below his young exterior.  

Sam has a background in the nursery industry and has hoed more than one row to speak.  The man not only knows his plants, but has a true passion to learn more daily.  I'm always delighted to hear him ask for more information as he truly wants to know each variety on a deeper level.  This same passion leaps past veggies as he has become an apprentice beekeeper and "chief chicken man".  Sam has jumped into Sustainable Seed Co. giving many hours this summer to make our organic tomato seed production garden a great success.    

Nate

Nate is a native of the San Francisco Bay Area where he grew up understanding the importance of not only fresh food, but what it means to be locally grown here in California.  Nate's committed to seeing that we follow through with that same philosophy in every aspect of Sustainable Seed Co. 

Running a seed company with all its facets can be overwhelming at times.  In fact somethings can be a down right challenge, but I swear Nate doesn't see these things a challenge.  His "getter done" attitude towards life is not only uplifting, but makes you realize that you are a part of something much larger.    A family of sorts and truly together we can do anything.  Many a time I would walk down to the field and Nate was nowhere to be seen, but from deep within the rows I heard him singing an Irish tune as he happily imparted his magic to the plants and world around him. 

Maggie

Maggie has just joined us from Maine.  Nate made a trip a few years ago to the East Coast and look what he found!  They fell in love and since then Maggie always wanted to come to California. Well here she is!  They have plans to get married here on the farm this fall.  So we will be gearing up for a real hoe down.  

We are so glad Maggie is here, she is not only always smiling, but brings some much needed feminine energy in a sea of testosterone!  I'm still learning about Maggie so I'll be adding here as I learn about her, but I can tell you this what I know so far is I can see why Nate loves her so.  She is just really easy to be around and just the person you want by your side.  This lady knows how to get in there and get some work done.  No matter what you are doing she is willing to help.  If you call in and get Maggie on the phone tell her your glad she joined the team.  We sure are!!!

Theo

Theo is...well...what doesn't Theo do!  Actually, none of the entire website here would be possible without him.  He is a web and graphic artist genius.  His talent has really put Sustainable Seed Co. out in the world to be seen.  From this website to seed packages to banners and t-shirts.  If it says Sustainable Seed on it, he created it!

Without him phones wouldn't get answered, orders processed, seed packages filled, and on the story goes.  This company would come to a grinding halt without all the hours Theo tirelessly puts into the company.  Theo IS the Sustainable Seed Co.     So when you are admiring those amazing veggies you harvested this summer, remember to send him a quick email and a picture to let him know how satisfied you are.  

I'm Farmer John.    Not sure how I really got that name, it was somewhere between vegetable gardening and raising rare poultry I think.  It was my dream to start this seed company.  I suppose I should start from the beginning...

I was fortunate to have been born with “green” veins.  My grandparents on Dad's side lived way back a dirt road in the piney woods of Texas. I remember going to visit them as a child was always a bit of an adventure, as they were literally over two rivers, a creek and way through the woods! I always remember my grandparents having a huge organic vegetable garden that made up a great deal of their diet. Seven kids sprang from this garden and their ability to feed their children from it. I remember grandma teaching me the "secrets" to planting tomatoes, thumbing through her collection of vegetable seed catalogs and I always knew the best place to find fishing worms was in her rich compost pile. I'm grateful to have been exposed to heirloom seed even this far back. Who knew looking at Grandma's vegetable seed catalogs, published by so many colorful vegetable seed companies would have such an effect on me. I wonder if Grandma would have ever guessed I would one day have my own heirloom seed catalog! Her and Grandpa's interest in quality vegetable seed certainly had an impact in my life.

As a toddler, I followed my mother threw her beautiful gardens taking small steps and learning the basics of the gardening world. She and I would sit for hours on the back patio carefully potting vegetable seedlings. Anytime I showed an interest beyond her knowledge she took me to the library where I discovered a wonderful world of vegetable plant books at my finger tips. I created my first large vegetable garden and 16’ greenhouse when I was 9 with the help of my supportive father. He brought home materials for that greenhouse for over 6 months before we finally had enough to build it. I just couldn’t get enough; in fact my greenhouse was the first place I went each day when I came home from school. It was the best classroom I could have had as a young boy. If I wasn't there; I was in my vegetable garden planting heirloom seed the intriguing French neighbor shared with me from her native homeland. Each heirloom seed had a story of some far away place. I was a bit over zealous perhaps because that small plot of organic land in our backyard did over run my poor mother and neighbors with tomatoes, beans and squash for many years, but they never complained.

It seems I was surrounded by supportive people growing up. I even had a scout master that owned a nursery chain and donated hundreds of azaleas to my eagle scout project of beautifying our local church. Later; I became an environmental planner deeping my studies in native plants and learning to protect the green world around us from a political stand point. After 12 years of this I took out my 401K and opened a large retail nursery. I even started an on-line organic seed company when the “net” was just blossoming.

After this I started studying herbs and plant medicines. I traveled as far as Central America learning from shamans deep in the jungles, collecting seeds and ancestral secrets on how to grow them. Herbalism is what brought me to study here in California at the nation’s oldest and totally organic herbal school. Once here I met amazing folks with the same passions I had and began to realize that “talking to plants” wasn’t something unique to me! In fact I learned I was in the hot bed of such an area with Luther Burbank’s home and vegetable test fields just down the road! Looking back I’m humbled to have the love and support of so many people.For the last two years I have been asking myself how I can give back to these people, this planet that has nourished me for so long. My answer is the Sustainable Seed Company. A California Organic Seed Company offering heirloom seeds to the world.

• Growing what we sell or supporting trusted sustainable organic heirloom seed farmers here in America. We want to be the best vegetable seed company.  In 2010, we pledge to offer at least 30 percent of our own organic heirloom seed, grown with organic, sustainable practices here in California. Our goals are to offer 70 percent by 2011 and be totally sustainable as a seed company by 2012.


• Not selling F1 hybrid seed, imported seed, treated seed or genetically modified organisms. We sell only heirloom open-pollinated seed that you can save for your future food needs.  Learn to save seed and ensure a healthy food supply for your family.


• Spreading as much genetic diversity as possible by offering you as many heirloom seed varieties as we can at a price you can afford. This is why you will find most of our organic heirloom seed varieties for $.99!   Please, if you have a variety that you think is in danger of being lost:  send us as many seeds as possible, tell us the story behind the seed and how you got it and tell us how it grows.  Please make sure to give us your phone # and email in case we have more questions.  


• Putting the ability to grow your own food back in your hands by not only supplying open-pollinated heirloom seeds at a reasonable price, but giving you the educational resources you need to be successful. We will offer how-to videos, books, DVD s and pdfs on this site.  Ensuring your success in growing and saving heirloom seeds.  We believe this makes us one of the best vegetable seed companies out there.
  
  

We Feel Strongly About

  Controlling our food source: You will find not only vegetable seed but many life-sustaining grain seeds. Why? We need to start choosing how and what we eat, not be dictated to by corporate seed companies and their boardroom executives. We will continue to grow more of our own food and support others who do—and those foods can be grains, fruits, vegetables, and everything we need to live healthy lives. We will assist communities where people share goods, open-pollinated heirloom seeds, and services.

NO Printed Seed Catalog: We are only offering an on-line catalog.  Catalog retailers send out 20 billion catalogs a year, and almost none of the paper contains any recycled content. Instead, over 8 million tons of trees a year go into catalogs alone—which means 8 million tons of trees are going from forests to the landfill, with a short appearance as junk mail in between.  What does that mean? 

1 ton of virgin printing paper for catalogs uses 24 trees.  Now take the number above of 8 million tons used a year and you get 192,000,000 trees that are killed every year so you can thumb through a catalog!! That is roughly 640,000 acres of trees and forest ecosystems destroyed for JUST catalogs.  How in good conscious could you or anyone participate in this behavior? 

To put that into perspective, that is almost the entire state of Rhode Island being cut down every year for catalogs.  These are not just trees, but entire ecosystems of living beings that are destroyed for catalogs.  Our mission to green the planet, not de-green it.  Not to destroy life, but to help create it.  We will not be a part of this irresponsible behavior.  Yes, we might lose some customers to this policy, but someone has to take the first step in making a change.  We are NOT driven by the dollar but by our consciousness and the knowledge that human beings can do better in the world.  Our company vows to leave the smallest footprint possible on this planet as possible.  In fact we hope to green more than we take.  We are after all a seed company!

Supporting pollinators: Pollinators all around the world have been disappearing at alarming numbers due in no small part to pesticides and ill effects of GMOs, another reason we use no chemicals in any part of our business. We maintain beehives in our fields because we care about what is happening to bees. We are beekeepers—we even run a free bee rescue service. How many other seed companies do you know with their own bees? Bees pollinate at least a third of our seed crop. Without them we would be doing a great deal of hand pollination to create heirloom seeds. We owe a great debt to the humble bee and other natural pollinators.  We are constantly asking ourselves how we can be the best vegetable seed company and this is just one way we are doing that.

The Dream

We want to enrich people’s lives through community, and we want to build communities.  Literally! There are many organic farmers in California who can no longer afford to feed their families or to buy land. We face the no-land problem ourselves, and so do many of our friends. During every gathering someone always says, "If we only had land…"

We want to give people a way to feed themselves and a source of income. Growing heirloom open-pollinated seed can do both.

We want to put land back in the hands of organic farmers. This is the reason we buy from individual seed growers. If we use the money we get from you to buy heirloom seeds from small American organic farmers, the money goes back to where it belongs.   We do not buy "cheap" foreign seed like other seed companies. 


We want to buy land to farm organically and put it into a nonprofit that would give several families a place to live and work. This is key to sustainable living. Their fuel consumption would drop substantially, and that savings would spread as other cottage industries are born on the land that would serve the great community around. For instance, one of our heirloom seed growers runs a CSA that feeds a large, extended community. She also sells her surplus to local restaurants, thus keeping their carbon footprint to a minimum. I'm sure we’ve all heard the figure now that most of our food travels an average of 1,500 miles!

We want to help the process of creating local heirloom seed banks in each community. If people are going to have the ability to feed themselves, they need genetically viable heirloom seed banks to draw from. We pledge to donate all year-end seed packages to seed banks, and as soon as we are able to “pay the bills” we intend to start doing far more.  Watch our monthly newsletter to see how we are impacting communities with your support.  If you are in Northern California, come volunteer to help start one of our many programs! Get involved—this is YOUR community.

We want to help educate people about heirloom seeds. We’ll support local organic programs that are already in place, and we would like to help produce weekend classes, booklets, and DVDs that make this information available to a wider audience. We want to create demonstration gardens that not only teach but feed.

There is so much to do. This business is merely a mechanism to help people start feeding themselves. It is an answer to such questions as “What do we do?  How do we effect change in our community?” I’m not sure where this little seed company will lead us, but I hope it is to a more enriched life, one filled with the joy in children’s eyes as they harvest their first pumpkin, and the laughter echoing through the community kitchen as the first harvest is prepared to serve at the senior citizens center. The truth is that I will be able to give back some of the love and support I was so freely given. If this world needs anything right now, it is for all of us to step up and give back. This next decade will be a hard one for the world. A seed is hope. It contains the possibility of a new life and great abundance. Hope and possibility lie not only in seeds but in the soul of every person. With your help, we will begin to build the communities we need for a richer future.

Love, Farmer John