Sowing the seeds of good gardens

WATERVILLE, Maine -- Fedco's warehouse and headquarters here operate out of an old aluminum-sided chicken barn. Inside, it's cavernous and dimly lighted, the workers darting here and there, an intense blur of braids, hand-knitted wool sweaters, and sandals with socks.

Fedco Seeds, the no-frills gardening cooperative, has become wildly successful by reintroducing obscure varieties of vegetables, trees, and flowers, and selling them to gardeners all over the country. When gardens are dormant, and New England residents are bundled up or shoveling snow, it's seed-ordering time. At mid-winter, those in the know look forward to the company's seed catalog, illustrated with antique line drawings and amusing descriptions of flowers and vegetables. The catalog appeals to a wide range of gardeners by offering classic, disease-resistant workhorse varieties such as Big Beef tomatoes and Summertime iceberg lettuce, as well as lesser-known and hard-to-find niche and heirloom varieties.

In the seed packing room, a crew weighs out seeds and places them in paper packets. ''Some people say it's tedious, but I find it relaxing and somewhat artistic," says Tom Levesque, a packing coordinator. ''I like the look and feel of all of the different seeds, they're all so beautiful. Beets are dusty and prickly. Celosia flowers are shiny and black like little beads of oil. Bachelors Buttons are soft with tufts of bristle on the ends."

Another group is gathered around a table in the sunny test kitchen, where they'll taste winter squash. ''We're always evaluating varieties, tasting them to see if they're any good," says seed purchaser Nikos Kavanya. ''Old-timers really knew the difference between this variety and that. When I had a market garden, I was always surprised at how those folks would be picky, not just about tomatoes but about chard and everything." Last summer, inventory manager Roberta Bailey trialed (the word for growing seeds to test them) 13 varieties of spinach. ''There was just a foot or so of each, but all of them were so different," she says.

The attention to detail doesn't stop with the seeds. The whole company is run with workers and consumers in mind. Step into the world of Fedco -- the name stands for federation of cooperatives -- and everything about the place is unusual. As a cooperative, the business is owned by the consumer members and workers. There are no shareholders and no boss, and since nobody is getting rich, all of the savings are passed down to the members or put right back into the business. Small farmers, many local, grow a significant percentage of the seed stock -- often organically -- and the Fedco staff seems to be on a quest to save the world through good gardening.

In 1973, CR Lawn, Fedco's founder and resident visionary, planted a vegetable garden on a boggy half-acre behind his 50-acre farm in the backwoods of Canaan, Maine. Born in New York City and raised on a farm in Vermont, Lawn studied European history at Oberlin College and graduated from Yale Law School. He was headed to a career in politics or academia, but got sidetracked protesting the war in Vietnam.

He loved summers and fall on the farm but found winters, cooped up by the woodstove, dull. So he went to work doing accounting for the Maine Federation of Cooperatives, an organization that ran the local bulk-food warehouse and distribution center. He saw how the cooperative food system worked and decided to start a similar business for seeds. Now, 28 years later, Fedco is a $2 million-a-year business selling 15 tons of seed and growing steadily at 10 percent a year for many years. ''I feel like I planted a tiny little seed and it grew up like Jack and the beanstalk," says Lawn.

The founder likes to call himself ''an off-the-grid kind of guy." He wears his hair long and a wispy white beard even longer. He doesn't own a cellphone or a car and still lives half the year in Canaan, getting by without electricity or indoor plumbing. He lives on what he grows in a trial garden, which also allows him to test new varieties for Fedco. ''It goes way beyond being a hobby," he says.

Most of Fedco's staff feels this way about gardening. They raise chickens and turkeys, tend to fruit trees, cook what they grow, and put up food in root cellars and freezers. Some are market gardening on the side -- selling to farmers' markets.

After the frost, Lawn settles back into Waterville, using the winter to walk the small town streets with ''Kai dog," an 11-year-old mutt, and clock 80 to 90 hours a week at Fedco. He works late into the night, writing descriptions for the catalog and scrutinizing the finances of the company. ''I guess I'm the closest thing to a CFO that we have around here," he says.

At the squash tasting, varieties include Stripetti, Seminole, Early Acorn, Small Wonder, Pasta, Iran, Paydon, and Musquee de Provence. All have been halved, roasted cut sides down on a baking sheet, and cut into chunks.

Usually, fruits and vegetables are prepared as simply as possible. Some things are best tasted the way they will likely be used. Paste tomatoes, for instance, are stewed with garlic and served over pasta. Carrots are eaten both steamed and raw. Inventory manager Bailey says that if a carrot is good raw, it's probably good cooked, but some that aren't good raw improve on cooking. ''Last fall the crew got so tired of tasting carrots that most of what was written on the comments sheet was nasty, no matter how good the carrots were," she says.

Of the eight squash varieties, only Seminole and Paydon are considered worth offering. ''Maybe two winners -- that's not bad," says Lawn. ''I think Seminole would be great as a soup squash, but maybe not good enough to just eat plain," says seed grower Wini Noyes. Paydon, an heirloom variety from a farm in Connecticut, is the favorite of the day. The crew agrees that its flavor, texture, and sweetness are similar to better-known squashes like Sweet Dumpling and Delicata. Musquee de Provence, an elegant variety with deep orange flesh, is the big loser. ''This must have been popular in France only because they had lots of butter and cream," says Will Bonsall, a farmer from Industry, Maine. ''It's so watery. Beautiful and sexy, but really no flavor."

After the tasting, Noyes serves a lemon-scented pumpkin pie made from the now-legendary Long Pie Pumpkin. When Fedco offered Long Pie for the first time in 1999, it was an instant hit. Now anyone who has had it considers the deliciously creamy pumpkin to be the essential ingredient for pie.

''Long Pie is a good example of what we do here," says Lawn. ''It's a strange-looking pumpkin that came to Maine by way of the Azores and Nantucket. It was grown all over Androscoggin County, but was eventually forgotten and barely rescued from extinction.

''It's so exciting to discover something so delicious but so unknown -- like finding a treasure at the end of a long hunt."

Fedco Seeds, PO Box 520, Waterville, Maine 04903, 207-873-7333 or www.fedcoseeds.com.