Martin Luther King Branch Library
2922 Martin Luther King Jr Blvd , Dallas, Texas 75215
Saturday March 2nd from 2:00 – 5:00 p.m.
Little do people know, the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library in Dallas contains tens of thousands of seeds that are open for the community and also at no cost. All that is required is signing up for their email list and boom that’s it. Heck, there isn’t even a requirement to return seeds but you should at least consider it to help improve the Seed Library Community. You can also volunteer by help sorting and repacking seeds but you could even help facilitate an event like the upcoming one on March 2nd. Not only will this help you save money by growing food that’s known to produce here. But you also get to spend some time around like-minded people and converse.
Back to the topic of the post, the Dallas Seed Library and our good friends over at Restorative Farms are hosting this collaborative event at the MLK Branch Library. They are inviting all neighborhood gardeners to come and have fun but to also share their knowledge that will help build the community as a whole.
Now a little bit about Restorative Farms, they are non-profit, collaborative group with close friendships the Southern Methodist Universities, Hunt Institute for Engineering and Humanity, Texas A&M AgriLife, the State Fair of Texas “Big Texas Urban Farm”, the MLK JR Community Center and several other community groups. In November of 2017, all they started with was a 16 ‘x 20’ hoop house at the MLK Freedom Garden. They had close to 20,000 seedlings that year and they are planning to grow 40,000 this year with their new and improved seedling rack system. All this is managed by Tyrone Day, an experienced horticulturist from South Dallas and he’s also assisted by people who have been recently incarcerated and are working their way back into society.
Restorative Farms goal for the future is putting up a small urban farm in the Bertrand neighborhood by the DART’s Hatcher Station. They have already planned to use a mix of high tunnel hoop house growing and traditional in-ground growing agriculture also. This is just the beginning of what they call “BHAG”. Big, Hairy, Audacious, Goal. Recently the city of Dallas created a new role, Director of Urban Agriculture, who is one of the Restorative Farms longtime cohorts, Bob Curry. He is currently crafting up a practical, but ambitious 3-year plan that will affect the entire food system for Dallas. Just take a second to envision a full, Dallas urban agrisystem that starts in South Dallas and grows beyond.
Don’t forget to set a reminder for March 2nd or you will miss out on a great opportunity to not only educated yourself, but help connect and energize the community of Dallas!
Wonderful! I’ve not been to a seed swap before. How are seeds exchanged? Do I provide little bags or bag my seeds up before I come to offer to others? What’s the protocol?
From what I have seen on their website they hand out envelopes and blank labels. I’m assuming any size “envelope” that is labeled would be fine. Just make sure you don’t give out cross breed seeds that are labeled as a certain type.