Fallow No More
Last week I drove up to Winters, California to visit Kristyn Leach on her farm and conduct the last major interview necessary to complete my book on the Kitazawa Seed Company. In addition to her family obligations and agricultural activism, Kristyn works staggeringly long hours, so she has limited time to share with curious writers and their digital recorders. I certainly appreciated the opportunity to join her for a few hours, as I have always greatly enjoyed our conversations, and needed her perspective in order to properly contextualize the unexpected development that turned my book on its head.
I had been writing a book about Kitazawa for more than five years when, last November, owners Maya Shiroyama and Jim Ryugo let me know they were selling the company. I had first contacted Maya and Jim in early 2016, on the cusp of Kitazawa’s centennial, to see about documenting the legacy of the historic business, and I’d been intermittently cobbling a manuscript together ever since. The sale dramatically changed the prospects for that manuscript.
The sale was not the only major development that month, coincidentally enough. Less than two weeks prior, I had split with my publisher, a small environmental nonprofit with a food and agriculture focus. The split was amicable and mutual; when I suggested it, my editor seemed relieved that she didn’t have to force the issue herself. My analysis is of course subjective, but I think she simply lacked interest in the stories I wanted to tell, or wasn’t enthusiastic about the way I was telling them.
Having lost a publishing home and following a main character whose story had taken a drastic turn, I found myself adrift. Nearly one year later, I’m still in an odd place with this book, uncertain what its future will be. But talking with Kristyn last week certainly helped provide me with some necessary motivation, while filling in some useful narrative details related to her own experience of the Kitazawa sale and her decision to go fully independent with Second Generation Seeds, her seed line formerly featured in the Kitazawa catalog. And so I think it’s time to finally get this website back up and running. I had originally used it to document my own gardening efforts while I was reporting the book, until I let the hosting lapse and my internet landlords kicked all my content to the curb. I reloaded the site for a book launch once I landed a publishing contract, but (thankfully) I never went live.
I’m going live now, though, to keep some semblance of momentum, and to make sure I’m staying diligent with recording my own horticultural journey in all its glorious ineptitude. Kristyn gave me some soybeans to plant, and I feel obligated to tend them extra carefully, so maintaining this site should theoretically help with that. And hopefully, it will also provide some energy to keep me moving forward in pursuit of seed stories.