2025

WELCOME TO SEED TREASURES!

 

This is the Wolf Garden, about an acre in the middle of the woods; we have 6 isolation gardens!

Our beloved English Mastiff, Sarge, is keeping the critters out of our newly harvested crates of seed corn.

We love our squash and pumpkins; here’s a small portion of our harvest.

Many of our crops are not only tasty but beautiful too; here are Scarlet Runner and Carminat beans in our Sand Garden.

Granddaughter, Delilah, isn’t waiting for this zucchini to get cooked!

Our grandchildren, Mason and Ava, love helping pick vegetables for dinner.

Around here, we do a lot the old fashioned way; by hand.  Here, I’m planting some melons in our the Sand Garden.

We are perhaps the smallest seed business around!  My husband and I are the whole “crew”; we sometimes have a friend or two available to help.   We do it all, from tilling to seed harvesting by hand or with our little Kubota tractor.  With that said, let me introduce ourselves.  My husband, Will, and I have been homesteaders for over sixty years and have always been interested in saving open pollinated seeds as a continuation of our self-reliant lifestyle. Do you realize it’s estimated over 500 varieties of historical seeds go extinct each and every day, worldwide?  They will never be duplicated or available again!  Please help us save them.  Visitors always welcome!

Will and I occasionally get to enjoy our wonderful front porch.

Our Northern Minnesota, off grid, 200-acre homestead is way back in the woods; our driveway is a mile and a half long.  While this does pose a few difficulties, it, coupled with the fact there are no crops grown within many miles of us, it ensures there will never be GMO contamination to our naturally raised seeds.  We fertilize with manure from our own animals and use organic growing methods although we are not certified organic as there are too many hoops to jump through for our small operation.

Many of you will recognize me (Jackie Clay-Atkinson) from my articles in Backwoods Home Magazine and Self-Reliance, magazines supporting a self-reliant lifestyle, and my blog on the Backwoods Home website, HOMESTEADING WITH JACKIE CLAY. (www.backwoodshome/blogs/jackie clay).  My husband and I have been especially interested in preserving heritage open pollinated seeds which have been around for a long, long time and are often in danger of becoming extinct as commercial hybrids continually take their place.

However, these hybrids often have been developed for commercial growing, having traits such as good shipping ability, ripening all at once or appearance on store shelves.  They do not have the complex and wonderful flavors of old-time open pollinated varieties that have been around so long because of great traits.  Some are Native American crops.  Others were family favorites, brought to this country by immigrants from many different countries throughout the centuries.  We think of them as “history in a seed”!

All open pollinated crops are not old; some have been recently developed by seed savers and even hobby gardeners.  But both heritage seeds and modern open pollinated varieties allow folks to save their own seeds, saving both lots of money and these great crops.

So, we save seeds, by hand, from crops we’ve found to be not only tasty but usually beautiful and very productive.  If they don’t taste good and are productive, they don’t get raised on our homestead.  And living in Zone 3, we only choose very hardy varieties that will grow almost anywhere.

We had a tough gardening year in 2024.  First came 8+ inches of torrential rain in a few hours, which flooded out much of two of our big gardens.  Then there was more rain, coming about every day or two.  Our closest town of Cook was totally flooded, with three feet of water in many businesses!  We had to replant our corn three times!  Then came severe drought.  Wow, that was a struggle!  But, by the grace of God, we made it through with a pretty darned good harvest, despite the crazy weather.  We have a good supply of seeds but occasionally we run out and will substitute a like variety.  If you won’t accept possible substitutions, please don’t order.

Be assured that any seeds you buy from us will produce well, filling your table and pantry with tasty food.  We, ourselves, plant, harvest and collect the seeds from each crop.  AS SIGNERS OF THE SAFE SEED PLEDGE, WE WILL NEVER OFFER GMO SEEDS!  Nor do we ever sell hybrids.  We homestead and garden for the joy and intense sense of security it gives us and hope you enjoy the variety, production, taste and beauty of our crops which our seeds produce.

Unfortunately, due to huge rises in both paper products (seed packets, mailing envelopes), we grudgingly must increase our seed packet price to $3.50 each.   We are so sorry to have to do this and hope you loyal customers understand.  Our flat rate shipping stays the same (although the Post Office has raised its prices several times), $5 no matter how many packs of seed you order.

Also, due to tremendous increases in postage, we will no longer be shipping seeds to Canada.

Please click on “seed catalog”  in black bar at top to view what we have to offer this year!  And I promise you there’s a lot more to look at for 2025.  We are constantly looking for new “old” varieties to trial and offer to you.  Thanks for coming.  And a special thanks to our return customers as your loyalty and purchases support our homestead and let us accomplish much each year we wouldn’t be able to do without you.  So a huge THANK YOU!!!

If you or a friend would like a free paper catalog, you may just email us at jackieclay2007@yahoo.com.