It is wonderful to read this interview by Carolyn of one of the most respected heirloom seedsmen I know of. Jeff is brilliant, gentle, fascinating, relevant - and just a nice guy. I’ve had the good fortune of spending some time with Jeff over the years (but it is never nearly enough). I hope you enjoy reading the interview that follows. One more thing - Jeff was the one who took the chance and offered Cherokee Purple (which he received from me) in a seed catalog for the first time in 1993. The rest, of course, is history!
Jeff McCormack; A Multi-faceted Seedsman
by Carolyn
Unlike so many biographies of plant and seedspersons, Jeff did not have that little garden out back that he nurtured and cultured when he was growing up. His love of plants and seeds came much later in life. He was born in Indianapolis, Indiana on September 8, 1942 (go ahead, send him a birthday card), went to college for two years in Marietta, OH and following a “sophomore slump” he joined the Navy as a medic stationed in Chelsea, MA. Eventually he returned to college and received his B.S. degree from the U. of Colorado at Boulder with a major in Biology and a minor in Chemistry. Following graduation he aimed his car East and joined a previous Navy friend in Northampton, MA where he got a job at Smith College. There he studied flight muscles in flies and when it was discovered that the compound they found important in flies (trehalose, a sugar) was found in greater concentration in lily pollen he found himself spending lots of time in the greenhouse harvesting pollen, and liking the greenhouse atmosphere. He started a Graduate Program at Smith but then made the decision to be near his then girlfriend at Yale and transferred to the nearby U. of Connecticut where he obtained his M.S. degree in Mammalian Physiology and Biochemistry.
One summer while at Storrs he worked in the Floriculture Greenhouse and “fondly remembers” the ex marine who ran the place similar to a boot camp! Other significant (for OTV readers) activities at that time included making 55 gallons of tomato wine one year, and all this time he and his housemates had rather respectable vegetable and flower gardens. But no, this wasn’t yet the “turn on” for his later seed activities although he mentioned that in the back of his mind there probably always a strong interest in that area. For instance, while growing up he’d stay with a Great Uncle, a family doctor, who had a summer home on a river in PA and he remembers his uncle planting potatoes and peas and harvesting strawberries. But what was most significant was the absolute love his uncle had for gardening; his family nicknamed him Lord Hoe Hoe!
Jeff decided to complete a Ph.D. at Storrs and worked on the pollination ecology of Sweet Shrub. That is, what compounds or pheromones did the flower have that attracted its insect pollinators. It was also at Storrs that he met Patty, his wife, while teaching a course in Comparative Anatomy and Physiology. With his degree in hand they moved to Middlebury, VT where Jeff accepted a position as Asst. Professor of Biology at Middlebury College. During the two years they stayed there he became very interested in the subject of alternative energies (solar, etc.) and having decided that Vermont, although lovely, was not the place to “go solar,” they moved to Charlottesville, VA. There he accepted a half time position teaching at Sweet Briar College, had a brief stint at U. of Virginia Medical School doing research and then accepted a ¾ time teaching position at UVA.
It was during this time in Virginia that his thoughts started to crystallize with respect to his future goals. He and Patty designed and built a solar home on 12 acres where they tried to be self-sustaining; they grew their own fish for food, raised vegetables and kept bees. He also became an active member of the now defunct Blue Ridge Seed Savers group and shared many interesting heirlooms with them. But it was the Potato Onions that did it! He received some from a member of the Blue Ridge Seed Savers group and was intrigued with their growth habit, hardiness and yield. His research showed that they were no longer available commercially, seed companies having dropped them starting in the early 1900’s. His interest in historical seeds and plants started to “gel”. He remembered the visits to Old Sturbridge Village, a recreation of an 1825 settlement in Masschusetts, where he was fascinated with the Jacob’s Cattle Beans, the old chicken varieties kept there, and old agricultural practices in general.
Capitalizing on the Potato Onion find he co-authored an article for Organic Gardening which generated quite a bit of interest in heirloom potato onions. So he decided to make some of their favorite heirlooms available and in 1982 decided to start a seed company. In January of 1983 he issued their first catalog, which had 67 varieties, most of them obtained from the Blue Ridge Seed Savers group and most of the seed offered was grown by them in a hand dug 40x50’ garden. At one point Jeff worked with a solar builder presenting workshops on the design, construction and management of solar greenhouses; the name of the company was Southern Exposure. The name of their new seed company became Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. Seed packets were hand written, they operated out of a closet and the seed operation then spread throughout the house … life was challenging! A 400 square foot addition in 1984 housed the seed office and they raised their seeds in 40 hand dug raised beds, each 20x4 feet. The seed company was heavily in debt but they decided to keep going. Jeff first met Kent Whealy of the Seed Savers Exchange in 1984 or ’85 and was very inspired both by Kent personally and the work of SSE in preservation of heirloom varieties.
In 1986 there were several very significant events. Until then Jeff had been teaching part time but the decision was made to go full time with the seed company even thought their total net profit as only $50. Also in 1986 Jeff first developed Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, an illness which continues to play a significant role in his life. He was sick for three years and during those years Patty rant the household, kept the family together, ran the seed company and worked FULL TIME! (Patty has an M.S. in Child Development and Family Relations).
Jeff’s initial three-year battle with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome resulted in important changes in his personal philosophy and general outlook on life. Until that experience he says he was a judgmental person and one who fiercely guarded his and Patty’s independence and privacy; on their rural 12-acre plot they had found happiness in isolation and independence. But Jeff discovered that independence is an illusion, we are all interdependent, and he and Patty felt vulnerable in the rural area where they were. By January of 1990 he was back to good health and they moved that January to their present location in Earlysville, a place where they would have neighbors, more conveniences, and not by any means the least, a good school district for their son Timmy. The Earlysville site has about two acres and about ½ acres is devoted to trials and seeds. They still produce seed for about 40% of the 500 or so varieties in their catalog.
Running a business is the most challenging ting Jeff says he’s ever done; as a matter of fact he says he used to be somewhat anti-business. He is not motivated by money and yet by hard work and perseverance he has become a success as measured by his criteria of making a meaningful difference in people’s lives and making a living. Part of that success can be attributed to the many comments I’ve heard about him (and experienced) concerning his strong sense of morals and ethics; he attributes part of that to his father. I asked him how he perceived his role in the seed industry. He sees his primary role as that of preserving old, heirloom varieties. But his answer was more complex. Some of his major interests are history, writing, science and art and he uses his catalog to express those interests. He is especially interested in why certain varieties were developed and who developed them. He cited the example of White Surecrop Corn seed which he received from a man in Texas who said it was developed in the early 1900’s to grow on low fertility soil and compete with weeds. In a larger sense Jeff feels strongly about the interrelationship between culture and agriculture; that is, how people’s lives are interdependent with what is grown. In other words, agriculture affects our culture and the reverse is also true. For Jeff, gardening is a personal relationship with the land, an act of faith and a sacred relationship.
I asked him if he was a frustrated hybridizer, knowing that he recently introduced McCormack’s Blue Giant, a corn, and knowing that he has so little time to hybridize. He said that he had done a number of tomato crosses in the mid-80’s but had not had time to go beyond the F1 stage to grow them out he would like to do some hybridizing with corns, Brassicas like broccoli and kale, squash and salt-tolerant tomatoes.
And I had to ask the obvious; what were his favorite tomatoes. He was careful to explain that his answer might be different if he were living further north or out west, but that given taste as a first priority and disease resistance as a second priority in the humid and hot southeast, he offered the following favorites. For color he’d pick Green Zebra and Big Rainbow, a bicolor. For flavor he could well have mentioned a dozen or more, but named the following; Persimmon, Eva Purple Ball, German Red Strawberry, Ozark Pink, Green Grape, Mullens Mortgage Lifter, Druzba, German Johnson, Brandywine (pink), Arkansas Traveler and Tappy’s Finest.
When I asked him what the most “fun” thing he’d done relative to heirlooms was, he immediately responded, “eat them!” and then he remembered the tomato wine episode during his graduate years. But he concluded that perhaps the most fun thing was to observe the incredible diversity that exists amongst heirlooms and cited Green Zebra and Riesentraube, both tomatoes, as examples. When asked about the least “fun” thing, he said “impure seed,” presumably, I suppose, he meant impure seed received from others.
I then asked Jeff his views about he commercialization of heirlooms which has accelerated so greatly in the last few years. His response was given off the cuff because I hadn’t given him my questions beforehand, and I really liked his spontaneous answer. He sees three facets to commercialization and likened them to a three-legged stool. One leg is the USDA who have a huge collection but funding priorities by the Federal Government make this leg somewhat weak. A second leg is the small farmers and families who perpetuate heirlooms with a rich genetic heritage, but the weakness here is that seed saving traditions are being abandoned and loss of land restricts those traditions. A third leg is the seed companies who can distribute heirloom seeds widely, which increases the probability that they might be perpetuated, but the weakness is that supply and demand restricts the varieties that customers elect to purchase. He views SSE as the struts on this three legged stool, interconnecting between the USDA, family heirlooms and seed companies and giving stability to the total structure. He feels SSE plays an important role in the perpetuation of heirlooms but is concerned about the percentage of crossed seed that is shared between members. This is something George Gleckler mentioned in Craig’s interview of George in the last issue, and is a comment that has been made by many individuals.
Jeff’s future goals include increasing his trials and concentrating on disease resistance, acquiring more land for seed production and trials, which may mean a move at some time in the future, and doing more hybridizing, as was mentioned earlier. His development of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in 1986 changed his life in many ways and it has also led to a strong interest in Oriental Medicine and the associated areas of acupuncture and acupressure. He is interested in the healing aspects of herbs and wonders about some day becoming an herbologist. He practices Tai Chi, a martial art which is said to move energy fields in the body and lead to a more centered person. I can relate to Jeff’s interest in these areas. My area of academic specialty is infectious diseases and I can tell you that the exact cause for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is not yet known although some researchers feel it is viral in nature. What this means is that when Jeff has months on end where he cannot live a normal, active life, there is no treatment; conventional medicine has nothing to offer him or others with the same disease. Ancient Oriental Medicine is increasingly being viewed as one alternative to conventional medicine and Jeff has had some success using those techniques.
Finally I asked him what kinds of things he would do if he had more personal time. to be in the woods, to communicate with nature was his immediate response. He recently completed a course in Apache tracking techniques for tracking animals and people; he loved it and described it as a wonderful puzzle. He “surfs” the Internet from time to time, and he’d like more time to do contra dancing, photography, stalking animals, reading and listening to music.
Although I’ve known Jeff for several years I learned much about him and Southern Exposure Seed Exchange that I’d not known before. It was a delight to interview him! Jeff and I agreed a few years ago that if either of us won a lottery (big time) his family and I would split the money, buy lots of land (I want my log cabin), grow heirloom vegetables and do all the things we don’t have time to do in the present “real world”. You never know!
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This article really speaks for itself. Carolyn teased some wonderful information from Jeff, who lived such a rich, multifaceted life. The conversation that led to this transcription by Carolyn must have been wonderful - and very fulfilling for both she and Jeff. It was so good to read this again after so many years - and it reminds me that I need to touch base with Jeff again, soon!
