Yes we haven’t blogged for a while, any of us…. oh dear.

Last week Nina was off and oh my gosh when somebody is away you appreciate all the things that they do (not that we don’t always appreciate our Nina!!). It was a real up and down week, with Tuesday and Thursday being quiet and Wednesday & Friday much busier. On the weekend we had the ‘Seed Swap’ all weekend so it was pretty busy (but nicely so, steady and plenty of time to chat to people!).

The Seed Swap has been organised by Ziggy for five years now and grew into a rather large event last year. This year she decided to scale it down and hold it over two days, with talks on the Friday night. I think it worked really well…. lots of people came, lots of seeds were swapped and we raised a good amount of money for the Heritage Seed Library too.

Seed Swapping is a great idea as many people save seed from plants they grow, or buy more seeds than they need. This way, you can exchange what you have for some new stuff!

On the more serious side, swapping is the only way many seeds get to be ‘traded’ at all. There are lots of rules about selling seeds, which in turn has led to fewer varieties being available – often ones which are best suited to commercial growers.

The inspiration for the Southampton Seed Swap came from ‘Seedy Sunday‘ in Brighton – I’ve just been browsing the website and photos and their swap is HUGE!!

The good news is that every year sees more seed swaps popping up all over the place, and Ziggy has a vision of an ‘inter swap swap’ where seeds left over from one event are sent on to the next, and so on.

Ziggy also remarked that the event was a bit linear and that we may need a ‘sister’ event in autumn to show & encourage people to save seeds, which can then be swapped the following spring. Watch this space!

Also this weekend we had cupcakes from Hannah of Southcoast Vegan cooking zine… they were splendid and today my clothes feel noticeably tighter (oh dear)