Thursday, June 17, 2010

Flowing together


The location of Confluence Farm is somewhere in this photo. The Clearwater River is on the right and the Snake River is on the left. We are near the confluence of two rivers but the deeper meaning behind our name is from the other definition of confluence: a coming or flowing together, meeting, or gathering at one point. I will facilitate the "flowing together" of a vast array of genetic material. I plan to create complex grexes of many different fruits and vegetables. The goal is to have a genetically diverse base and let the genes "flow together" over time to end up with varieties that are better adapted to our location. But I may also keep adding to the grexes continuously so as selection pressures change with changing climates these grexes will be able to continuously adapt.

2 comments:

  1. is this your first season experimenting with grex creation?

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  2. Hi Daishin, Yes this is my first season and I'm trying to cross many different corn varieties this year and plan to cross corn for several years. I'm also growing potatoes from true seeds and hope I can get some to produce fruit so that I can grow potatoes from my own true seeds every year. Some things I will cross and others I will keep from crossing. Some things I plan and other times it is all sort of random depending on what I'm looking at and what pops into my head when I'm out in the garden. I like to plant a large variety of things. I currently have seeds for around 2000 varieties. More than I have space and time for.

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