Re-Imagining Receiving Seeds from Fruition

“We are showered every day with gifts, but they are not meant for us to keep. Their life is in their movement, the inhale and the exhale of our shared breath. Our work and our joy is to pass along the gift and to trust that what we put out into the universe will always come back.”

 Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

As we together remember and reimagine what sharing seeds as gifts might look, feel and taste like, how might you, our beloved community, receive them?

Let us affirm: Though our approach to sharing seeds is shifting away from buying, selling and other familiar facets of market economy, we’re more passionately than ever committed to growing and regionally adapting alongside hundreds of varieties of seeds and trees on this sweet, generous land with you. 

There are so many seeds we’ve yet to sow and share!

And Friends, though we’ve never sold seeds solely as the transactional commodity our society has made seeds in the last 150 years, Fruition is committed to sharing seeds more and more deeply as relational, animate and animating gifts, as our ancestors plant and humxn have since time immemorial. 

For us, that means sharing them with Adam Wilson’s ‘reckless generosity’ without requiring a market price to be paid.

So how will we sustain our work and lives? We’ll dig into that below, but first:

How might you receive seeds from us in the future? Here are two ways:

#1: Join us here on the farm!

So many of you have come to receive seeds, transplants and trees already on the farm and Friends, come on back! We cherish the gift of being in relationship with you here on the land that nourishes us all. 

We’ll share abundant opportunities to gather on the farm and share seeds throughout the year, especially in early spring as we all prepare and plant our gardens. Though we don’t anticipate having ‘normal business hours,’ we are growing seeds to be in community, so trust there will be ample opportunities to connect, receive and amplify the abundance.

#2: Let us come to you!

Hello, Rochester! Sending love, Ithaca! See you soon, Buffalo, Burlington, Boston and beyond! 

Would you love to welcome our merry traveling seed gifting practice in the future?

Let’s start the conversation here! 

We love being here on the farm and ohhhhh, we look so forward to bringing these seeds to your backyards, Friends. As we center seeds and relational gifting over market economy and access, we’ll be looking for places to welcome our merry pop-up seed gifting practice. So don’t be shy! As we invite gift culture into our community more widely, we imagine showing up for a few hours or few days in community spaces like libraries, garden centers, food coops and anywhere people may gather to share generosity and joy. Though the unknown is the only known, we are committed to embodying abundance just like these seeds: willing to travel and brilliantly designed to be shared expansively. If you find yourself drawn to dream such dreams with us, hop over to All Flourishing is Mutual: A Lil Survey for Growing Together, let’s be in touch!

And Friends, to affirm: as you receive these seeds, they are gifts. They are not ‘from’ us, they are from the earth. As you receive these seeds passing through our hands, all we ask is that you receive them trusting that you are worthy, no matter what you’ve done or haven’t done, no matter what you’ll do or won’t do. 

Trust that by simply receiving these seeds, you are playing an active role in amplifying the gift. 

And trust that we all, for the rest of our lives, will learn to live thank you more and more profoundly.

On Needing & Thanking Each Other

Do you understand that your quality of life and your survival are tied to how authentic and generous the connections are between you and the people and place you live with and in? 

adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy

Thank you for trusting, as we shift towards this approach, ever iterating, that we are considering  our own needs: We are not pretending we can give everything away indefinitely without having to receive. Indeed, we have great needs as we take on great risk, as we all do. As we seek to uncouple ‘what we need’ from ‘how the market perceives and values us,’ we invite you to receive any and all seeds we share as we together compost the scarcity and transactional patterning that is the water we swim in. 

How might we learn new patterns of abundance sharing together?

This much we know:

We all have gifts.

We all have needs.

Friends, dare we trust our needs are also gifts?

Dare we trust our earnest, yearning emptiness to draw each other’s abundance to our cup?

Friends, we need each other.

And, more than ever:

We need YOU!

As we step into sharing rather than selling seeds, learning to uncouple our needs with our ‘perceived market value,’ we are committed to sharing our needs in clear, honest, creative and widely accessible ways.

And Friends, we need you to both receive seeds as well as support our continued seed sharing in any way(s) feel generative and joyful for you, if and only as you are called.

We will do everything we can to be in service of seeds and sharing. We know we cannot do this alone and we’re honored to share concrete ways you can make this possible, both directly and indirectly, immediately and across time. What do we need?

We Need Relationship

Above all, as we step away from the familiar, fragile facade of market economy’s ‘stability,’ we step into the gift of trusting, reciprocal relationship. 

The quality of our relationships is the quality of our lives.

Without question, the most meaningful way you can show up in our lives, Friends, is being in relationship — in community! — with us. Being humxn together, in person, both here on the farm as well as when we travel to your neighborhood, are already gift and will only continue to be. There are many ways to be embodied here on the farm with us:

~ Join our public harvest sharing events throughout the seasons!

~ Attend one or many of our monthly community orchard & garden gatherings. And briefly:

Did you know we’ve planted 100+ fruit and nut trees on the farm?

We have no interest in selling any of this abundance: 

There is a deeper hunger we would nourish together.

We are hungry to share the experience of tending these trees 

and this land in community, laughing & learning together as we go, 

sharing the joys and trials of the seasons, 

so when we harvest and share the fruit, it’s that much sweeter.

Join us!

~ Moving forward, we’re so excited to share expansive and specific volunteer opportunities from seed starting in spring to filling seed packets to offering a workshop or experience here on the farm for our wide community. All those transplants you bring home each spring? We’ll fill that tunnel again, entirely gifts for us all, from seeds sown and tended together as a community. For us, by us, for us all. If you’d love to learn more about these opportunities, let us know over here.

We Have Material Needs…

We also anticipate having needs in the form of material goods (mason jars, lumber, printer ink & beyond) that will nourish our individual and collective care. You’ll find our current iteration of those material needs toward the bottom of All Flourishing is Mutual: A Lil Survey for Growing Together. If you would love to gift us something not on the list, just ask! We love that you’re thinking creatively and are open to the exploration.

…And Financial Needs, Too

As we step into gift culture, endeavoring to separate our financial needs from our ‘perceived market value,’ we’ll share our budget, sharing both what we financially need to continue our work as well as what we’ve received to date. Here’s our projected 2025 Budget:

If you’d love to make a financial contribution, thank you so!

If you’d love to explore more nuanced possibilities, share more here and you’ll hear from us soon.

Fruition’s Collaborative Needs & Dreams:

We would love to welcome a diversity of voices to the farm and we look forward to welcoming yours! Would you love to offer a workshop or other healing, skills building or delicious experience here on the farm? From social justice to sushi, seed saving to tomato preservation, let’s explore the possibilities together! We’d love for you to share your love with our wide community we love, share more here and don’t be shy.

Above all, trust us to know what we need, to make specific asks and also that we’re learning to receive as well as give. Trust that we will lean into the growing edges of honing these skills together, growing our comfort with discomfort. 

Thank you for helping us practice new ways of exploring and trusting abundance shared.

Growing Gratitude Beyond Market Economy

how to thank Fruition & keep the gift moving

Giving thanks for abundance is sweeter than the abundance itself. 

~ Rumi

How do we learn to give and receive differently, Friends?

And as we all learn how to give and receive seeds rather than sell them, let us affirm: As you receive these seeds, all we ask is that you receive them trusting that you are worthy, no matter what you’ve done or haven’t done, no matter what you’ll do or won’t do. 

Trust that by simply receiving these seeds, you are amplifying the gift of life, their 400 million year old legacy.

Trusting Our Gifts, The Gift Returns 

with seven haikus

Thank you, Nani Nehring-Bliss, for this exquisite continuous line drawing, gorgeously expressing the non-linear and interconnected nature of gifts, community and Fruition’s joyful, trusting commitment to gifts unfolding, surrounding us all with what we need:

Here’s to the seeds we’ve yet to share &  sow together…

…and see you soon!

Sow Seeds & Sing Songs,

and the Many Beings of Fruition

ps

I would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.

John O’Donohue