Farming for Flavor: A tasting night with Julia Sweet & Bill Braun at the Gilded Tomato

Bill Braun from the Freed Seed Federation will join us to discuss vegetable variety selection and the importance of growers selecting, saving, and breeding crops that are better adapted to their locations than what is available commercially.  Bill has championed local MA/RI varieties like the Macomber turnip and local corn varieties like the Rhode Island White Cap Flint corn as well as, of course, some exquisite new tomato varieties just ready for taste testing!

Bill Braun, farmer at Ivory Silo Farm in Westport and executive director of Freed Seed Federation, will discuss the crucial role of growers in the preservation, improvement, and breeding of regional seed varieties. He will bring some samples to taste tomato selections from a farmer/breeder participatory breeding project. Freed Seed Federation is a farmer-run nonprofit dedicated to place-based seed for the people. We partner farmers and breeders in the meaningful preservation, creation, and diversification of regional public domain seed, in an effort to foster mosaics of alternative community-based seed systems.