PEOPLE making a difference...
The Fantons -
not your average suburban couple
IT WAS a suburban-looking house, much like the others along Old Bangalow Road. I park and walked up the driveway.
"Don't take your shoes off. We'll take a look at the garden first," comes the voice of Jude Fanton.
Michel and Jude Fanton
The ground is soggy after the rain of the last few days as we slosh into the garden. Here, in between house and railway line on what had once been manicured lawn, a transformation has taken place. From two rows of raised garden beds grow a plethora of species, some in flower, some in netting enclosures to prevent cross-pollination, others climbing bamboo trellises, some newly planted. Artful signs inform visitors what plants they are looking at.Jude explains how a chance observation had inspired Michel and her to design and plant out the beds of the Seed Savers' Network seed production garden.
"We went to this garden in Melbourne... the Fitzroy Community Garden... there were Laotian and Hmong people there... and we saw this amazingly intensive system where, within a very small space, people were producing enough greens for their families. That's the sort of system I wanted. I call it the 'Asian-intensive' system".
When the Fantons returned to Byron Bay they applied the close-planting method they had seen in Fitzroy. Designed for low maintenance with gravel paths and raised, concrete block beds, the garden is used to trial plant species sent to the network, for research into the plants and to produce food for the network's interns and their numerous visitors.
In October 1999, on the other side of the house, a triple row of terraced, ethnobotanic gardens was set up on the slope that falls to the street. Over the years this has matured into a diverse array of vegetables, herbs, fruiting shrubs and trees from around the world. Food plants from the Pacific Islands, South America and Asia make this garden an educational resource that produces such exotic foods such as Brazilian cherry, acerola cherry, jaboticaba, taro, tamarillo, cassava and pawpaw and as well as clumping bamboos and other species.
"Don't plant this", Jude says, pointing to a thick mat covering the soil in part of the orchard. "It's Pintos peanut and it forms a thick mat and goes about six inches under the ground as well."
We move along the narrow path between the beds. "This is definitely worth planting", she says. " ...it's like a capsule of vitamin C, it's so citrus tasting... it's called acerola cherry. And here... " - she points to a tree canopy above - " ...is the Japanese raisin tree. You eat the stem the fruit grown on, not the fruit itself. It tastes alright".
Days of gestation
Jude, a quietly-vivacious woman, trained as a school teacher in Adelaide, South Australia. Michel is a heavily-accented Frenchman who once lived in Tahiti and is the more exuberant of the two. For almost two decades the couple worked as directors of the Seed Savers Network, Australia's premier, community-based seed saving organisation.
Jude explains it was in the hill country behind the northern NSW village of Nimbin that, in 1986, the Seed Savers Network had its genesis.
"We started the network to look after varieties of vegetable we thought could disappear", she explains. "Part of the answer was to make sure that people knew how to look after their own seeds whatever the tricky ideas the controllers of the market might come up with. They had already thought of patenting and genetic engineering was on the horizon... Bill Mollison [ed: originator of the Permaculture design system] warned us about genetic engineering in 1986".
Over the following decade and a half the Seed Savers Network became the catalyst for community-based seed saving. Jude and Michel popularised the idea of gardeners saving their own seeds and swapping them with other gardeners. Home gardeners would become the solution to preserving and spreading the traditional or 'heirloom' varieties of plants which had been passed down through families for decades. For the Fantons, preserving our heritage plants was not the province of white coat-clad scientists scurrying around sterile laboratories to tend bits of plant tissue in test tubes. The Seed Savers Network is a vision for a do-it-yourself, community-based biodiversity preservation project on a national scale. It proved a fruitful vision.
"We encourage people to save seeds locally and to save seeds in their own gardens and farms by educating them through our newsletter and book, the Seed Savers Manual. We are less a lobby group than a public education and awareness raising organisation", explains Jude.
Eight years ago, Jude and Michel and son Zeph moved from the hills of Tuntable Falls community to the coast at Byron Bay. After eight years of renting, they obtained funds in 1998 to buy the house and land which has become the seed savers centre. Since then, the transformation of the suburban block has beed assisted by people who have spent time there to study seed saving.
Days of challenge and triumph
Sitting back after a lunch freshly picked from the garden, talk turns to the challenges of running the Seed Savers Network and to its future.
Jude and Michel are now in their late-fifties and are concerned about finding younger people to take over the network. Not that they are thinking of retiring - such a concept would be alien to a couple with so much energy.
Asked about the high points of running Australia's pioneering seed saving organisation, Jude becomes thoughtful then gives an unexpected reply:"Receiving letters is one of the nice parts... really interesting letters from old people. Another is the actual handling of the seeds.
"Having an annual conference every year is a high point because it means that we can actually see some of the people we deal with through the mail. For the past few years it's being able to spread some of the skills overseas and to train people to go and work in seed saving there".
And the difficulties? "Getting the newsletter out on time... making ends meet in the first few years, though the Seed Savers Manual has helped with that".
Days of reinvention
Seven or eight years ago Jude and Michel realised that they needed a change of direction.
"I do think you have to reinvent yourself... we were sort of getting bogged down doing the same thing over and over", says Jude. "It was at that time that Michel came up with the idea of working overseas.
"The first place we went was the Solomon Islands. That has been our greatest success so far because of the Kastom Garden Project which has the Planting Material Network, a seed saving and exchange organisation. We have been able to send two trainees over to Tony Jansen who manages the project - Emma Stone and Sandra Heilpern - to work and train over there. We have had Solomon Islanders from the project spend weeks here in Byron Bay learning how to run a seed saving system.
"After that we did Cuba where the agriculture department was worried about seeds being imported. They wanted to know more about how a seed swapping, seed finding and seed producing system worked.
"We went to Tonga. Cambodia was with the Department of Women's Affairs. Michel's been to Africa twice to speak at farmer's meetings and conferences about genetic engineering, to India to speak on the same topics and what to do about it and in 2003 we went to Afhghanistan to talk about the value of seed saving and exchange."
By early 1999 it was clear to Jude and Michel that the future of the network would be as a training provider.
"It's learning by doing, really", says Jude. "We have people stay here at the centre to learn the different tasks and processes involved in the seed produciton cycle. We also offer a week-long course in community seed saving and another the same length for people who want to work in seed saving and small scale organic agriculture in developing countries. Students come from all over the country to attend the courses and they appear to be very useful and inspirational for them. One student went over to East Timor to work with local NGOs after the country achieved independence from Indonesia."
Days of planning
During the week, the atmosphere at the Seed Savers Network is one of quiet busyness. Lorretta, a local woman, comes in a number of days to do the administrative work necessary to keeping the organisation going. In a garage converted into office, she answers the letters, takes the calls, processes membership applications and keeps the office functioning. Freed of these tasks, Jude and Michel do the strategic work... the planning, talking to the media and working on a new edition of the Seed Savers Manual.
As a break from the inside work, Jude spends time in the garden tending the herbs and vegetables and to harvest the evening meal - this is a household that eats from the garden. As a charitable organisation, the Network is eligible for assistance under the federal government's Work for the Dole scheme and two placements - a young woman and a man - work in the garden a couple days a week, both apparently happy with their assignment.
In mid-2005, the Fantons were granted permission by Byron Shire Counciil to construct a training centre on their land. This will contain a classroom as well as what Jude describes as " ...a prototype semi-underground seed bank". The building will create needed space and will free up the house a little.
The Network has developed a loyal and active membership over the years, but not long ago the Fantons saw the need to strengthen the Network by decentralising it. They fostered the setting up of local seed groups and in 2004 they published a manual advising people living in the same area on how to exchange seeds amongst themselves. The local seed groups are a means of keeping heirloom seeds in existence through use and to make the Seed Savers Network more self-sustaining and less reliant on the Fantons.
A future of seed and food
Meals with Jude and Michel are gastronomically interesting. "Here, try some of this", says Michel as he offers a large jar containing chunks of citrus-looking yellow stuff. "It's lemon we have preserved ourselves. And here we have the first olives we have processed from our own tree. All the rest of this food comes from our garden - nothing tastes as good as freshly-picked vegetables".
Home grown and processed food will play a larger role in the future of the Seed Savers Network if Michel's ideas come to fruition. "I would like to see the seed centre here in Byron Bay develop as a seed and food centre", he explains. "This is only an idea at present but I think it is the way I would like to go. I am an advocate of locally produced foods - we have had contact with the local convivium of the Slow Food movement in Byron Bay - and would like the seed centre to play a role in the move towards locally grown and processed foods in future. The link between seed saving, home or community garden food production, cooking and eating is a natural one."
As the major community-based seed saving organisation in the southern hemisphere, the challenge for Jude and Michel is to set up those structures that will ensure the continuation of the network. This will not be a simple task, but the Fantons have established a lot of goodwill around the country and it will be this that ensures seed saving remains a vital part of home gardening.
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