Deeply Rooted: John Coykendall's Journey to Save Our Seeds and Stories

>> The Smoky Mountains to me is home.

It's very rich in history and heritage and the culture, and it seems to be reflected in those hills.

So the old farmers that went before me, when I plow those hillsides and work in the gardens and the fields, I can feel the footsteps of my ancestors that I am walking through, planting the same crops, the same seeds that they did.

It's a chain with no missing links coming all the way down to present.

I just want to see all that passed on.

I'd always heard stories of Louisiana and thought of Cajun Country or Creole.

But Washington Parish is hill country, a lot of it, and very, very similar to Marion and Walthall Counties just across the state line.

It's my Louisiana home.

As much as the seeds, also the history of the people that lived there, the way they lived, the way they farmed, their heritage.

When it comes to storytelling, I've tried to record as much of that as possible.

>> Since 1923, Camellia brand beans has helped bring people together over classic Southern meals.

A New Orleans based, family-owned company, Camellia is proud to support "Deeply Rooted" and Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

Other support provided by... >> One of the things I love best is watching them grow.

I love to go out there after a rain, you've planted those.

About two days later after the rain, you see that little crook, you know, where the seed is just starting to come up.

You see that little crook in the ground before the seed leaves pop out.

And I love to see it at that stage and then watch it every stage thereafter.

I love to watch them grow up.

My name is John Coykendall, born April 17, 1943, in Knoxville, Tennessee.

From the earliest age I can remember, there was two things.

There was art and farming.

I always loved to draw pictures when I should have been paying attention to lessons in school.

After school, I loved to go home and work with plants, whatever I could grow.

I like to make the comparison between art and farming, because I am a farmer, I am an artist, and the two are totally interlocked in my world.

After high school, I went to Ringling School of Art in Sarasota, Florida.

And after that, I went to graduate school, and that was the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts.

>> That term "Renaissance Man" is often overused and way too often applied.

But in this case, it's completely appropriate to think of him in that way.

>> John is one of the top bean collectors in the entire world.

He's been doing it for 50 years.

You know, it's a number we're trying to figure out.

How many beans does John really have?

Does he have 300?

Does he have 400?

What are they?

>> This one and the Red Ripper I think are the two best tasting ones I ever had.

Now, everybody's got their favorites.

>> He's somebody that gets you excited about what he's doing... >> This is lot like Christmas morning -- you never know what's going to be behind that wrapping.

>> He's somebody that gets you about farming, about just life in general.

He's got so many old stories that tells you some of the old ways.

>> "Daddy was bad to plant them speckled butter beans."

That's old Homer Graves.

You can tell all these different characters.

>> So much of it just has this beautiful hint of humor.

>> Just a bowl of butter beans Pass the cornbread, if you please I don't want no collard greens Just a bowl of good ol' butter beans Way back in antiquity, there was so much diversity.

All four of these that we pulled are totally different.

The losses are absolutely staggering.

We have lost somewhere upward of 94% of what was available over a hundred years ago, so that's why we're working so hard to save what is left.

Having these old varieties to draw from is very, very important because we simply don't know in the future what kind of conditions we're going to be facing -- global catastrophes, wars, floods, drought, all sorts of things that we could be facing in the future.

If you only have two or three things to choose from, your pests and diseases don't have very far to go.

If they wipe those out, then it's total extinction, you've lost it.

We need to hand down the very best that we started out with in the beginning.

The early crops, your beans and your peas, tomatoes, all of your early crops have such superior flavor, and that's what we want to pass on so that future chefs and cooks and young families will discover what real produce is.

We've had such a disconnect over the last 50 years or so.

We've gotten away from our roots.

This is an old variety that the Lang family brought from Pike County up in Mississippi in 1900 when they moved down to Washington Parish.

In the old days, it was all farm to table.

There was an old fellow down from Louisiana I was talking to one time, and he asked me what I did up at Blackberry Farm.

I said, "It's farm to table."

And he said, "Farm to table?

When we was growing up, it was farm to table or starve."

Today, here at Blackberry, we're able to reconnect people with that aspect of their lives.

>> At a moment when we are as Americans rediscovering the virtues of farm life, Blackberry is this kind of exposition of the possibilities.

>> Looking down the row, you can see an excellent example of the three-sisters method of farming.

We have the pumpkins, the peas, and the corn.

>> It's a place where best practices and age-old techniques are showcased both for their guests, for chefs who arrive there to cook for events, for those of us who read about it in magazines or newspapers or see films about it.

>> I would say most of those articles I've never even seen.

Usually I'm too busy worrying about the next crop of peas or taking care of the next beans that I have.

I guess it's kind of like an orphanage.

I'm taking all these little orphan children in and raising them up, so I have to be concerned with taking care of them and their welfare.

We're coming down into the heart of seed central right now.

There's three main freezers that house the collection.

I have something over 500 different varieties.

It's almost like going on an archeological dig.

Here's an old corn from Washington Parish, Piggott Red Cob corn.

The true interests in seeds for me began in March of 1959.

I found a copy of a 1913 William Henry Maule Seed Catalog, and I was immediately taken by the beautiful, old engravings of every food crop you can think of.

And from the moment that I saw that catalog, I started to wonder what had happened to these things.

Visually it's an art show all in itself.

If you hated butter beans or peas, you'd love to have jars of those in your kitchen.

If nothing else, just for the visual effects.

They're so beautiful to look at.

Everything I have here in this collection is offered through Seed Savers Exchange.

Seed Savers Exchange is the largest non-profit organization in the world that's maintaining genetic diversity.

This is the Pearl River County peanut.

And this came from a black family that has maintained this seed since the days of slavery.

One fact that strikes me right off the bat opening these freezers up is how many of the people that gave me these seeds originally are now deceased.

And I think of the possibility that each one of those people that handed these seeds down to me, they may well have been the last person to have any given variety.

I don't know that for sure, but I treat every seed I get as thought I was the only person that had it.

Some things I haven't even grown out yet.

I just hope I live long enough to grow everything that I've got in here.

Sometimes the stories that go with your seeds can be as interesting as the seeds themselves.

And that's known as memory banking, recording all of the cultural history of these old varieties.

This, for me, is probably the greatest prize of all.

And that's the Unknown Pea of Washington Parish.

I looked for this pea at least 30 years.

>> "Since I first began talking to old-time farmers here in Washington Parish, Louisiana, I've heard about the old pea that was once commonly grown in this area and it was called the Unknown Pea."

>> All the old timers told me about it.

They talked about growing it.

They talked about their fathers growing it, how it was common in every cornfield in the parish.

>> "No one seemed to know where the pea came from originally or if they ever had an official name.

In Washington Parish it was simply known as the Unknown Pea."

>> And I said, "Well, I've got to get a start of these.

Somebody give me a start of these so I can grow them, too."

But there wasn't anybody that had any.

Everybody said, "Well, I guess it's extinct now, gone."

>> "Down through the ages, I've asked a lot of people to be on the lookout for them.

Well, today, when Mr. Gus Magee showed up with a bottle in his hand, he said to me, "I got something for you," and there they were, that long lost Unknown Pea found at last."

>> And this is them right here.

So I have very carefully reproduced that.

I've since brought it back to Washington Parish and given it to a number of people.

I hope to see it reestablished as part of the history and heritage of this region.

>> This is the Unknown Pea.

John found this pea.

>> Gus Magee's the one who found it.

>> We thought it was extinct, but Gussy Magee had it, and I'm getting me a start of it, where I can grow them.

>> It is a race against time because we're in the 11th hour of saving the best of it.

Luckily, in the last number of years, we've had a lot of dedicated people who've been scouring the countryside and picking these things up.

You see, the way these things survived was backyard gardeners, farmers in areas, especially rural areas, where these things were handed down from generation to generation.

Those really are beautiful.

Look like little gems, polished stones.

That's called the Reverend Taylor, and Reverend Taylor lived down in Alabama.

>> What I love about saving seeds is what you've taught me, and that is that each bean or seed tells a story.

>> Today we would think of a family heirloom maybe as a photograph or a piece of furniture.

That was a living heirloom, your very survival, your very livelihood.

Just like the DNA of the family or the family members coming all the way down to present.

>> John's belief in seed saving, the possibilities of seed saving has inspired a whole generation of chefs.

>> What he did for me, he does for the world of gardening, he does for chefs globally.

One day I was at Blackberry Farm, and John walked up to me and said, "I have a gift for you," and here was a big box, and in that box was about 25 packs of seeds, every one of him pre-1900, all grown, reared, and a specialty of Washington Parish.

And I was, like, shocked!

And he's sitting in front of us shucking the little beans and says, "I know a lot about Louisiana."

And I said, "Really?

What do you know about Louisiana?"

Said, "Washington Parish -- What do you know about it?"

[ Laughs ] That was the opening of a door that was so wide that today I have a garden named after him here at White Oak.

>> While my life and work are in Tennessee now, and have been most of my life, I am very deeply rooted to this part of the country, Washington Parish, Louisiana, and the old farmers and the old ways of life.

It's a living connection not only with the people I know and spend time with but also the seeds that I grow.

This, to me, is a magical place.

Both the land, the farms, the history of those that have gone before.

I find it to be very much alive.

First I wound up in Washington Parish in 1973.

Jennifer Vise went to the same school I did, art school, and we met down in Sarasota, Florida, and I visited there that summer, and the rest I would say is history.

I don't know that it could be explained.

It's just a spiritual interconnection that you have to those around you and to the place, and I had that, a very strong sense of that, from day one.

>> You know what?

I ain't never met a pea I didn't like.

>> I hadn't either.

[ Both laugh ] Never met one I hadn't liked.

>> All peas are good.

>> Hyah!

>> This is a living time capsule, and I realized this is something that is not gonna be here forever.

>> Tastes like a root beer.

>> As the world changes, a lot of those things change.

>> How are y'all?

>> Thereafter I started to come down on a regular basis.

Ever since that time, I've been recording stories.

I was fascinated with the old timers, the old farmers, and the old way of life.

And I found myself wanting to preserve everything I could.

In the beginning, I wasn't very sophisticated in the note-taking.

It was just tiny, little binder notebooks in my pocket.

It's just gone on, escalated over the years.

Those journals contain literally everything.

They are family histories, family stories.

It can be hunting tales, farming stories, the corn they raised, the peas they raised in the cornfield.

The names of crops that I have known during my years in the parish.

Mr. Seldon Lang's Red Ripper peas, along with his red and black peas and Paw's old gray pea.

From Mr. Arlie O'Bryant came the yellow shoepeg corn, which once so commonly grown here.

They'll be recipe things, too.

I'm always collecting recipes.

Neta Duncan's fried taters.

Slice potatoes in thick slices.

Dredge in flour.

Anything at all I've ever had there I've written down in some form.

I'm always drawing things around the parish.

That's one of those old lightard posts as a boundary marker.

Trees or old barns.

Picket fences, farm tools.

They're not unusual in the historical sense because at one time they were common everywhere.

The simplest detail is something that would be lost if not recorded.

>> The images are all so romantic in here.

It's so charming.

"The blue days of October have returned."

Isn't that just a lovely thing to say?

This story is so much more important than just the tale of a little town because it is the tale of America.

And those little towns and the people who lived in them have dried up, gone away, and been forgotten.

And when I learned about John, I was just in awe of this man.

The fact that John has documented a way of life that has virtually disappeared and is rapidly still disappearing has incredible value.

This is really a very important effort at culinary archaeology.

Now, this particular passage just speaks volumes to me.

I can't believe that he actually talks about the Cottonpatch Geese.

"They had what they called Cottonpatch Geese way back yonder.

You put them geese in the cottonpatch, and they'd clean that grass out. "

That's a very important, important animal.

It's a fabulous variety of a heritage breed animal, and thank goodness there are just a handful of southerners who have held onto these original strains.

I mean, imagine hearing stories from people who remember things like this.

>> "Homer Graves' coffee spill.

We'll chalk it up to Homer's nervousness and get it out on washday."

[ Chuckles ] The overall impression is of opening a door to a whole world I never knew existed.

I've known John for a long while now, and I've been in situations where I see him scribbling in a notebook, I've looked over his shoulder before to see what the heck he's doing.

But I've never opened Pandora's notebook, you know?

It's a real treat.

These are just kind of evanescent moments that they're fleeting and gone but would have been gone were it not for John standing there and documenting it all.

>> Well, now, this sketch right here, that's just plain Mr. Doug.

I have no idea what Mr. Doug's last name is, but you can see by this drawing, he just had one arm, and he told me that when he was a boy, I think he was about 6 years old, he got that caught in a grist mill, it cut his arm off.

He told me he could pick more cotton one-handed than his brothers could with two hands.

I record the sentences just as they are spoken, the words, the phonetic spelling, and the way a sentence is structured.

"We got to talking about old Aunt Caroline Gabe and her living back in them days.

Somebody asked her about living alone.

'Ain't you afraid of staying alone, Miss Caroline?'

'Not for a minute.

I've got this old hog leg under my apron, and I ain't afraid to use it.'

Aunt Caroline sure could plow a a mule hoss.

She'd plow it till it fell.

She raised about six acres of cotton and two acres of corn."

I know so many of my old friends in Washington Parish in our discourses and times together, they'll refer to life -- they'll say it was a hard life, but it was a good life.

It was a simpler life, simpler way of life.

Mr. Arlie O'Bryant says that people weren't scattered then.

You didn't have time to be scattered.

>> I like the way John listens.

You know, he listens empathetically.

He's not passing judgment.

He's documenting the people and what comes from their mouths, and that's beautiful.

>> The Washington Parish Free Fair is known as the largest free fair in the United States.

Good morning!

Here we are.

Fair time already.

Good gosh.

Time flies.

Couldn't have a prettier day for it.

It's just an institution.

It's art of the community life, and people come from near and far.

Clayton and Cheryl Breland, folks.

>> How's it going?

>> Oh, it's fine.

>> When I die, hallelujah By and by I'll fly away Just a few more weary days and then I'll fly away To a land where joys will never end I'll fly away >> The fair represents the heart of Washington Parish.

It's a family reunion.

It's a chance to meet old friends.

Good to see you.

>> How are you?

>> I'm doing all kinds of fine.

Hello, hon.

>> What you got cooking there?

>> Good to see you.

First fair I went to was 1988.

I visited the Ben's Ford Kitchen.

And I looked at that, and I thought, "Gosh, I love cooking on wood-burning stoves.

I'd love to be a part of that."

Wow, look at this.

Miss Judy, you ready for some?

And I've been cooking on that stove ever since that first visit.

>> There's a sense that John is always -- He's trying to figure out how to get the best story out of people.

And while you're talking to him, what you see across the table is that fascinated face.

You don't see the furious hand working underneath the table as every word you say gets recorded.

>> How old are you?

>> 72.

>> You're just a boy.

I just turned 84.

>> 84?

>> Yeah.

>> Sometimes I meet people in passing here at the fair.

Very often they'll tell a story or some little tidbit of information, and I'll write that down.

They're out the door before I can get their name.

>> You want me to tell you a tall tale I just told him about this mule a 'ole boy bought, and he took him home, and went and put him in his barn, and his ears touched the top.

He wouldn't go in there.

So he went and got his jack and some blocks, and he was jacking the barn up.

I come by and said, "What you doing?"

He said, "I'm raising this barn.

I got to get that mule in there, and he won't go in there.

His ears touching."

I said, "Won't you just dig out a little bit right there?"

He said, "It's his ears that's too long, not his feet."

>> [ Laughs ] Oh, God, that's a good one.

>> Set the pumpkin.

[ Cheers and applause ] >> The Ag.

exhibits have been a central part of the fair since 1911.

>> We have six of those?

>> Yes.

But I don't have six of these.

>> Oh, well, we gonna put it in there, and we'll let the judges decide.

>> More peppers for the pepper class entries.

>> He's almost indigenous to Washington Parish.

>> This is the fair.

>> That is wonderful!

>> In most cases on the judging, they're looking for uniformity of shape, size, color.

We're going for perfection.

You know, this one came from Washington Parish.

It's one called Snow on the Mountain.

The man gave me that, he'd gotten that from a neighbor who was close to 90.

She had gotten it from her grandmother, and the grandmother told the 13-year-old granddaughter, she says, "I'm giving you this bean.

You take care of this bean.

You take care of it all of your life, it will take care of you."

So all through her life, the lady kept that, and she's passed it down to the future generations.

But I love what it illustrates of being self-sufficient, too, because it represents taking care of all of your food that way, all of your seed stock, everything that you're going to be living off of.

They were seed savers by necessity, and that's what they relied on.

>> We need more of that.

>> Yeah, we don't want to lose these things.

>> That's why we try to encourage the students.

That's why we have a youth section down here.

>> Yeah.

>> If we can save just one farmer out of all of those students... >> That's big.

>> You know, American agricultural production is a generational thing.

The average age for American farmers -- 65+ years old.

So what we're trying to do is show the younger producers that there is a good living to be made.

Take care.

>> Thank you, Mr. Henry.

>> And we talk about competing in this world and not being dependent in this world.

Agriculture is going to be the only thing that keeps us afloat.

>> It is.

Might find me a wife here today.

>> He's come to this fair every year.

He is a part of this fair.

>> I could no more think of not coming back here than I could not eating anymore or breathing.

>> And then I am giving you a key to the city.

>> Thank you so much.

[ Chuckles ] [ Applause ] >> One of the things that is interesting about John's relationship to Franklinton and Washington Parish is he's an outsider, you know.

Like, we are stepping into his world by way of these journals.

And oftentimes when you're an outsider, you see things more clearly.

You appreciate what's in the midst of these people, and you turn a mirror on their experiences and say look at this.

This is valuable.

This is important.

>> I certainly don't think of myself as an old timer.

I was born in 1943, but that's totally modern to me compared to the stories I'm telling.

And I think of how many there were.

Take 1973 when I was first there, how many would have been around.

>> Hi, John.

>> Hello, Miss Terri.

>> I have some really nice, old photographs from the fair.

This is a photograph of the first Washington Parish Fair.

And it was agricultural products that people were just showing off their produce to one another, and that's how the fair started.

>> As a seed saver, what would I have given to be able to go back in time and collect some seeds out of all of those entries.

Mercy.

Just a treasure trove.

I want to be a part of that picnic.

>> Me, too.

Written on the back of this original photograph was "Picnic at Mile Branch."

And, John, this is a shot of you when you were here in 1996 and some of the old timers that you were talking to, like you like to do.

>> Gosh, this is really something.

I think about Ms. Terri Seal when we were sitting in the Ben's Ford Kitchen.

She was looking over those books.

She said, "Now, don't let this get away from you."

She meant, "Don't let this get away from you" in terms of put this out there where it can be preserved, where people can learn from it.

Don't just let it gather dust on your shelf and nothing ever come of it.

And I probably was in real danger of letting that happen.

And thank goodness for you!

[ Chuckles ] I feel 100% total obligation.

I'm the caretaker of it.

I have to make sure that that's preserved for future generations.

And this is what we're working to save -- the history, the heritage, the way of life, a way of farming, way of cuisine.

So while they're still here, going to get every single thing we can.

I learned a tremendous amount.

I know that I owe my farming knowledge to these old timers.

Now, the earliest ones when I first started studying were all born in the 1880s, so this is going far back in time.

And that's the perfect knowledge to have for growing these old crops.

The old people used to say, "We were organic farmers and didn't know it."

>> Well, I'll daresay, you learned a good bit from Daddy.

>> Oh, mercy, a lifetime worth of knowledge.

I wrote down everything I could.

My first real inspiration was Mr. Seldon Lang.

He was famous for being one of the great old storytellers of the parish.

>> John spent long hours with Daddy.

You know, I mean, it wasn't just come and visit for an hour and leave.

Sometimes he would spend the entire day with him.

>> In the summer of 1987, he gave me a bag of the Red Ripper peas, and he wrote on the bag, "Red Ripper peas for the cornfield patch."

And I said, "Mr. Seldon, I want you to tell me everything you know about growing peas, and he just looked at me and said, "Good gosh, son, a blind man can make peas."

[ Laughter ] >> That sounds like him.

>> Many times at home while working on my own farm, I would think of my friend and teacher Pa Lang and what he was working on at that same moment in his gardens.

I remember Mr. Lang talking about his father when he planted some of the -- said, "You always want to plant that peas on the sorriest ground you got, poorest ground.

And now they'll make little poor-looking vines, but they'll be just loaded with peas."

>> Well, there's so much that I'm sure that Daddy told an outsider maybe that he didn't tell us.

And he and John just became great friends.

And he was almost Daddy's student, you know, as he was tell him about things.

>> A lot of people don't realize just how important field peas were in a diverse number of ways.

They have the nitrogen nodules on the roots.

They are nitrogen fixers.

They improve the soil.

They require very little water, no fertilizer.

They used to grow what they called green manure.

They would plant the field peas when they were up a foot or 2 feet tall.

They plow those under, and that was your fertilizer for your next crop.

A lot of your modern crops that have been developed require massive doses of pesticides, fertilizers, irrigation.

They'll produce well under those conditions.

But if they're stressed, then they won't do well at all.

Mr. Seldon Lang told me one time, he said if you didn't dig it out of the ground, shoot it out of the tree, or fish it out of the river, you didn't have it.

They relied very heavily on sweet potatoes, collard greens, field peas, butter beans, green beans.

Things that came out of the garden were a very, very big part of the diet.

In many ways, it was a pretty simple diet, but it was a hearty diet and a very healthy one.

>> And, of course, he liked Mama, too.

[ Laughs ] He liked Mama's cooking.

Mama always could pull food out of everywhere and feed a whole bunch of people at a moment's notice, you know, and John loved that.

He loved eating.

John could eat.

He can put away some food.

>> Maw Lang's biscuits.

One full sifter of flour, handful of shortening, milk, 8-ounce glass, work in with hands, use self-rising flour.

Bake at 500 degrees.

Cook quick.

>> Would anybody like a piece of pound cake?

>> Oh, mercy, hardly ever refuse it.

>> All right.

>> [ Laughs ] I'm so proud of it.

I don't want to eat it all at once.

>> John, we all make that cake.

That was the one Mama made.

>> I loved that.

>> That is it.

>> I remember her making that.

>> Daddy got a big kick out of you being here.

>> We had the best times, you know.

>> You had some of his seeds named for Grandpa?

>> He registered.

He registered some pea seeds.

>> Well, yes, I'm a member, you know, of the Seed Savers Exchange.

>> Right.

>> Anything that he gave me is now with them in that national collection.

>> I think that in all of our lives, there might be somebody who comes along that we have such a feeling with them like they're almost a family member, you know, that we just share so much together, and I think that was the way it was with Daddy and John.

>> When an old person dies, it's like burning a library down.

You think of all that knowledge they've got, all that history, all those stories, all that experience, and when they're gone, just like turning a light off, it's gone.

It's lost.

That's why I have such urgency when I'm around a lot of these old people.

>> I have a lot of Daddy's old seeds and things he left me.

I got -- John give me a lot.

John Coykendall give me a lot of seeds, heirloom seeds, and it means everything to me.

John, this will be enough for me to start right here.

This is all I need.

>> Let's get a bunch of them while we're at it.

>> Can't get John to quit shelling peas.

>> It's a habit.

>> [ Laughs ] >> If they're there, I can't quit doing it.

>> What you got in here?

>> We're just about to see.

Could be.

Red Ripper.

You got a lot of them.

>> Yeah.

My grandfather came right here on this place around the turn of the century, and this is the last 40 acres that's left.

I've got a wealth of knowledge in farming and gardening that I would love to share with my sons.

I'd like to leave this property like it was left to me, but it just -- it don't happen that way sometimes, you know.

>> The families I interview, people I talk to, that landscape is where they grew up.

They grew up there, and they made their livings.

You have the people that lived on the land, and the land reflects their character.

It's just -- It's a real relationship between the two.

These small canvases were down in Washington parish on the farms of friends of mine.

I look at these, I think of how much this landscape has changed over the years.

Fields like this that were once completely in corn or cotton, and today it's either pasture land or it's not farmed at all.

It's been such a huge change over the years.

[ Insects chirping ] "Conversations with Homer Graves.

I picked cotton by moonlight right up there at Mr. Lucious Crane's place.

We picked a bale out that night.

There was 8 or 10 of us."

>> Then you didn't have a cotton picker to pick with then.

>> These things right here, wasn't it?

[ Laughs ] >> That's what you picked.

>> The cotton pickers.

>> I know one night, we picked cotton all night long.

Daddy told me, said, "If you all pick a bale of cotton tonight, we'll go fishing tomorrow."

So we did.

>> I think about what Homer Graves said to me when I called him the other day.

"Son, if we don't get busy and get all this old stuff down 10, 15 years there won't be anybody left to be able to tell these stories, to know any history about them, especially the old farming ways."

>> Like I asked a boy the other day, "Where's all is old people?"

He said, "We are the old people."

I said, "Oh."

I said, "I don't feel old."

>> Isn't that something?

>> [ Chuckles ] >> Tell you what, we'll get down there at the Mile Branch, we'll bake up some of those good sweet potatoes.

We'll have some good three-tiered bacon, slab bacon.

Have a little smothered cabbage and some peas and rice and some of the few butter beans to go with it.

>> Ooh!

What you gonna do?

Fatten me up?

>> Yeah, want to keep you in good shape till the next fair.

>> We got to get somebody to make a little pone of corn bread about that thick.

>> Ruthie May used to make -- She had little ruffles on the top of it when it would come out of that stove.

>> [ Chuckles ] >> Make a man grit his teeth.

[ Chuckles ] >> That's where I got my first interest in Louisiana farming, Washington Parish.

All these old farmers was right there on your place.

It's the Vise family that's made it possible for me to meet all of these people.

That's the roots of it.

>> Yeah.

I farmed all of that all the way down to the woods.

You remember those pumpkins I had growing out the damn trees?

>> Oh, gosh, they were up in the tree.

One's this big around hanging out of pine trees way up, 15, 20 feet tall.

>> It really was.

>> Over the years and summer visits, we have worked together.

Calvin Vise and myself, we've planted gardens.

In the fall, we always put out a big fall garden.

You talk about those onions, you're the one who taught me how to do those, 'cause I've had a lot of people ask, "How do you grow onions?

We grow onions, we can't get anything but just the stem on it."

I'll ask them how they did it, said, "We pull the dirt up to them," and, of course, that's just the opposite.

>> That's the opposite.

With onions, you want to pull the dirt away from them and just leave them.

The roots in the ground, and they'll just blow up like a balloon.

>> Those were the biggest ones I've ever, ever seen, those onions.

I've never seen anything to match that.

That's about as basic an old house as you'll find, and there he is sitting right on the front porch.

I'll tell you exactly how I get out of the car when I go up to Mr. Arlie O'Bryant's house.

Mr. Arlie!

I step out of that truck, and I've got the book open and the pencil out, because the minute he starts talking, I start recording.

It doesn't matter what the subject is.

The language that's used, the way it's expressed, all of these things.

You're still deputy sheriff now.

>> Right now.

Right now.

Right now.

>> Washington Parish.

>> Yes, sirree.

>> Now, Mr. Arlie is gonna be 95 in a few days.

In most cases, we're talking about life in the very early years of his life.

"I done my school studying by coal oil lamp or by the light from the fireplace.

I come up poor, John.

I knowed I was hungry 'cause when I ate breakfast, we was usually eating warmed over peas.

I've done my share of plowing, too.

I was plowing the middle splitter when I was 13 year old.

That mule had to come around with that plow.

I couldn't lift it. "

They would talk about the sense of community and the bonds and the ties, how people helped each other out.

You relied on your neighbors, and they relied on you.

The man of the family got down sick, something happened.

Mr. Arlie talked about his father would say, "Come on, boys, we're going to load the wagons up."

They'd load up a couple of wagons and about four extra mules tied on behind.

And they'd go down and say, "We would plow that man's cotton crop out, plow his corn crop out, lay the crop by.

We would take care of it when they needed help."

I know in all the times, every single time when I visit Mr. Homer or Mr. Arlie, I always dread getting up and leaving.

I hate to leave because I keep thinking that there is one more gem in there that's gonna come out.

One more thing -- If I leave right now, I'm gonna miss that.

It's just so important, I never want to leave once I'm there recording those things.

"Always remember one thing -- when it's gone, it's gone.

There ain't no going back."

Mr. Arlie O'Bryant.

>> Truly, people who do not understand the danger that we as a civilization are putting ourselves in through this lack of biodiversity had better take a long look back at the potato famine, because that is exactly what happened in Ireland.

Everybody starved.

And if we are depending on just a handful of varieties, we ourselves are in danger of that same sort of starvation today.

>> The three main enemies of seeds are heat, light, and moisture.

You never dry it in the sun, never in a damp basement.

You wouldn't store them in direct light.

But the seed-saving process is pretty simple.

>> John is one of the best espousers of genetic diversity through seed saving that I have heard.

People talk about seed savers as collectors.

Well, collectors go out looking for things, bring it home, and fetishize it.

It's theirs.

John is not a collector, but a sharer, you know, someone who gathers things and then disperses, and that's the important piece of this.

>> So I never take anything for granted that it's going to be there next year.

It's up to me to preserve that, to be the steward of it.

This is the Gulf State Tomato.

It was introduced as a commercial tomato in 1921.

And this was back in the time when a commercial tomato still had a really good flavor.

I was amazed at how many young people didn't like tomatoes.

And I couldn't figure that out 'cause there's nothing in this world better than a real tomato, that wonderful heavenly flavor you get.

And it finally dawned on me.

They've been eating these Styrofoam plastic things.

When I finally convinced them to take a taste, I remember there was one young man that he said, "Give me that."

He cleaned off the whole board.

I had to start all over again.

Just loved those tomatoes.

But it's passing that on.

These are the descendants of six plants I brought back from Louisiana in '86.

You can take all these seeds, scrape out and save them.

You can have this 100 years from now.

Our ancestors handed this down to us, and all we have to do is claim it, or reclaim it and grow it, nurture it, preserve it.

So that's why we're working so hard to save what is left.

The food we grow not only nourishes our bodies -- it nourishes our spirits in many ways.

Memories of food are strong memories that are tied to strong emotions.

Those emotions can comfort us and connect us to our past and our future.

That is a connection I think many people are craving.

[ Chatter ] >> Yeah, got it.

Come pick.

Come help Papa.

>> Everyone, you see how I picked this pea?

>> We're going to pick some peas today.

These are John's Unknown Peas.

John give me these peas last year, and this is the crop that I raised.

It's a small pea, but they are delicious to eat.

>> I got this one.

>> That's a little small.

>> I got a lot of grandkids and great-grandkids that they get in on all this.

The little ones, they don't know the difference between a good pea and a bad pea.

>> You don't see as many people growing gardens and peas and butter beans and turnips and corn and stuff like that, but most people around here do have a little garden.

So it is being passed on.

>> What you want to do is get your fingernail next down to that seam.

And you just open them up like that.

>> That's another thing we do as a family is when Mike grows a bunch of stuff, we all get together and shell it and then divide it up.

We still do it as tradition.

>> Now, we still do put up a lot of things in jars.

>> Jelly?

Oh, my lord.

>> If I live to be 500 years old, we'd never eat all of the jelly we got.

>> It all goes back to being trained not to waste.

[ Chatter ] >> I really enjoy farming.

I love to raise it.

I love to see it grow.

It's quite an experience to see these peas that John gave me.

These are those beans that you seen me and John shelling at the table, and he's my friend.

Been my friend a long time, and I will give him a lot of seeds back.

I'm gonna try to get them to as many people that wants these peas.

I want to give them away to people that will garden with them.

>> Indian corn goes back to the very earliest of times.

The genetic homeland of corn was Mexico and Central America.

And that's where all your diversity comes from, like peas come from the Niger River Basin in Africa.

Butter beans or limas from Peru, potatoes from Peru.

So that's what we refer to as the center of origin.

That's where you find your most diversity.

Today with this renaissance or revival of interest in real food, it gives people something to look at.

They want to know where these came from, what kind of bean was it, how was it cooked, what do I need to know to grow this, what do I need to know to preserve the seed of it?

All of these things to me fit in.

If we go back to the early 1900s when there were still so many family farms, that was life.

Farming was life.

It was survival.

Everything you ate was part of that.

That has come down to us in a rich number of ways in terms of heritage of cooking the recipes.

And today, many people no longer depend on those for their livelihood, but they still have sentimental value, people still love to eat them.

This was one from Washington Parish.

It's called the purple eye butter bean.

One of my favorite was Maw Lang's recipe.

Had it many times when I went to eat at her house, and she simply would cook those in a lot of whole milk, rich milk, and butter, real butter, or as Homer calls it, "That good ol' cow salve butter."

>> Food becomes interwoven with the fabric of who people are, what home is.

And the preparation of food is part of the texture of family life, the part of community life.

There is a whole range of foods that have been preserved in stories, and those stories are told when the fields are planted and when the food is served at the table.

>> Cooking does not have to be a difficult thing.

It is not an art.

It is a craft that anybody can do, and we all have to eat to live, so what more important could there be than a good, healthy, home-cooked meal?

When you are trying to prepare good, healthy, simple food, there's nothing more valuable than very fresh ingredients, fresh picked, fresh off the farm, because you have to do so very little to those ingredients.

Most of the things, they're perfectly delicious raw.

>> The best we had was a cast-iron pot lovingly filled with the ingredients we had saved and jarred and canned and smoked and harvested all with our hands.

Today as we reach back out of this crazy world we live in, there's this deep desire within all of us to know from where we came from.

John Coykendall laid it all out for us right here.

>> From day one, since I've been saving seeds, always the greatest hope is to get more people interested, younger people will start asking their grandparents about it, neighbors, sometimes it's uncles, aunts, distant relatives, people in the community.

So you hope that people will come forth with those so we can take good care of them, make sure they're in safe hands.

>> This bean here?

This is one of the first ones you ever gave me.

>> Oh, gosh, yeah.

That was given to me by Mr. Albert W. Graves from Merryville.

Great, great flavor.

>> You know, this bean was in your freezer when I was 2 years old.

>> It's hard to believe.

>> And it just got grown out last year.

And we had almost a 100% germination rate.

I love it because this is really one of the first beans to get me started with what you love to do, which is saving seeds and preserving the history of the seeds.

>> You're an official seed saver now.

>> You know, the ones my age, we're on the way out.

I'm looking for the ones on the way in.

And luckily, we are really experiencing quite a -- I'd call it a renaissance in that.

>> A lot of these older heirloom varieties, not only are they pretty and tasty, they're higher in vitamins and nutrients, because when they're breeding these things, they're not worried about that, like how long is it gonna store, how far can I travel with it, how uniform is it going to be.

If you look at the Reverend Taylor butter bean, there's no uniformity there.

It's filled with colors, but why do we want it to all look the same?

Humanity is not all the same, and that's what makes us beautiful.

>> That's where the true love of life comes from, an understanding of who we are, where did we come from, where are we going, and what are we going to leave behind.

We are going to be those great-grandfathers.

What are we going to do for the future generations?

>> Many times I've told people don't overwhelm yourself.

Start out small.

It might be a few tomato plants, it might be a row of beans, a few cucumbers.

Learn as much as you can, and the best source, to me, are the older people who have done this all their lives.

Seek out someone who has this knowledge, who has grown these things, who still farms or gardens, and get your information from them.

There is a wealth of knowledge out there just waiting to be tapped.

To me, the most important thing you can regain is a sense of taste.

>> John Coykendall, yes, he has amassed this body of work through these journals and through his paintings.

I think even more important than that is the way he's inspired others to pass this knowledge along, to see value in peas and beans.

You may not recognize it at the moment, but here's John, this guy in overalls.

But if you take the time to pay attention to what he's saying and the knowledge that resides within him, the whole world opens up.

>> If there's one more seed out there I can find and preserve, if there's one more story, one more old timer that I can record their history and way of life, that's one more bit of heritage that's intact to pass on to future generations.

I just hope I've got a lot of years left to record a lot more and save a lot more.

>> Since 1923, Camellia brand beans has helped bring people together over classic Southern meals.

A New Orleans based, family-owned company, Camellia is proud to support "Deeply Rooted" and Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

Other support provided by... >> You'll find more information on John Coykendall's work, including a gallery of his journal entries and downloadable podcasts at lpb.org/deeplyrooted.

For a digital download or DVD copy of this film, go to lpb.org/shop.