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Shannie McCabe joins us to talk about what it’s like to be garden educator and catalog writer for Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.
See what Baker Creek has to offer today and be sure to pickup a catalog! – https://www.rareseeds.com
Also, checkout Shannie’s terrific videos on YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCToFIe32MeC-P8Z4Uptax_w
Transcription
Shannie: I was introduced to Baker Creek, and I thought wow, I love this catalog. This is the most beautiful, fascinating catalog. The stories behind these heirlooms are phenomenal.
As a market farmer I made sure to grow Baker Creek varieties because I wanted something that was like colorful and interesting to engage passers by at the farmers market.
I wanted something more interesting to stand out.
I had subscribed to the email newsletter for Baker Creek, and that’s where I saw a email saying they were hiring. So I responded and I moved to the Missouri Ozarks when I was in my early 20s, to a co-garden manager.
And then I started reading the catalog and the rest is history.
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Brian: Shannie McCabe studied environmental horticulture and sustainable agriculture at University of Rhode Island and has worked on farms growing organic veggies and flowers for a decade.
She has been the farm manager for Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company, and is currently a garden educator and catalog writer for the company.
She has traveled internationally for Baker Creek, searching for rare and unusual heirloom seeds to offer in the award winning Baker Creek catalog.
Shannie McCabe, welcome to the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.
Shannie: Thank you for having me.
Brian: Yeah, why don’t you let everyone know a little bit more about what it is that you do.
Shannie: Sure, yeah.
So basically, I teach gardening skills. I’m really really obsessed with heirloom seeds, and with gardening and market farming, and in all manner of small farming, gardening, permaculture, growing and homesteading, and then how we use those heirlooms in the kitchen and for crafts and such.
So I’m just really obsessed with heirlooms and all the different forms. I was formerly a co garden manager with a couple other people, I helped to write the seed catalog, we’ve got a few different writers on the catalog these days.
But I read the catalog, I helped to write content for our YouTube page.
Our YouTube channel is called, Rareseeds.
Then making Facebook videos and Instagram videos, and basically just getting out into the garden and into the kitchen with various heirloom varieties and educating about them.
Brian: That’s fabulous. So can you tell people who may be new to the gardening scene, especially what what heirloom seeds are and how they’re different from from the typical seeds?
Shannie: Sure, yeah. heirloom seeds are open pollinated varieties.
That means that they have been saved and passed down from generation to generation. They’re not hybrids, they’re not f1 hybrid, they have open pollination, which means their seeds can be reliably saved, year after year.
Typically, heirloom seeds have a history or a story, there’s some significance to how they came about whether they were passed along through generations within a family or they’re notably grown in a specific region, or they were bred for some specific use.
But typically, heirlooms have a story.
Some people define heirlooms as being 50 years or older. Although that definition isn’t consistent across the board at Baker Creek, we don’t really follow the 50 years rule, because there are some really fantastic open pollinated varieties that have been created in the last few years.
And we would really like to highlight and give reverence to that breeding work because it’s really something fantastic.
For all intents and purposes of a seed saver, and it is an heirloom seed, I mean, we can reliably save the seeds year after year, we’re going to get approximately the same crop as long as we prevent cross pollination if there’s a threat of that.
To go on to the biology side just a little bit. Basically, when you have a hybrid variety, that means it was cross bred more recently, and the genes haven’t been stabilized.
So basically, if you have a hybrid tomato and you try to save the seeds of that tomato, what you plant the next season, the fruits may not actually look anything like the fruit that you’ve saved the seed from because the genetics have not been stabilized and it’s a new cross.
Hybrids typically do have something called hybrid vigor, where, because it is a new genetic cross, sometimes the plants will yield higher or they will have more disease resistance and a bit more vigor and strength.
But heirlooms have really incredible depth of flavor.
Because most of the time, what is most often the trait that is selected for an heirloom breeding is flavor. So heirlooms are typically more flavorful.
They’re densely nutritious, they don’t yield as pie. Typically, that’s not always the case. But typically they don’t have as high of yield. And the thing about heirlooms is they’re typically a little more regionally adapted.
So you may find this the most perfect tomato that grows so beautifully, and a certain part of Oregon, but if you try to grow it in Florida might not do so well.
A lot of times heirlooms can also be regionally adapted, then there are also heirlooms out there that are more broadly adapted to growing in a wider range, but typically more regionally adapted.
Brian: Oh, that’s great. That’s great.
What can you tell us about yourself about how you ended up here?
How did you end up working with Baker Creek?
Shannie: I grew up on a three by seven mile island off the coast of Rhode Island called, Block Island and grew up on a farm and I didn’t have the opportunity to travel very much.
When I was young, I was really, really fascinated by the people that came to the island that I lived on for tourism. And to work in the tourism industry out there.
I met a lot of people from all over the world.
I was always really fascinated by cultural exchange, mostly through food, I was just really fascinated by the different kinds of foods that people ate, because I did have a pretty narrow, like small worldview because I was from a small town. I was always as a kid fascinated by other cultures and just thought it was really interesting to like, learn about other people’s languages and their history. And just to take a deep dive into what it’s like to live somewhere, you know, that’s not a three by seven mile island.
That was kind of the first interest in heirloom type stories.
Then I worked on a local historic farm that’s located on Block Island. I used to help pick basil flowers and harvest pumpkins and pick cherry tomatoes when I was a kid.
That was kind of like when I was bit by the farming bug and I was really, really loved that.
I went off to college and I studied environmental horticulture and sustainable agriculture.
Through college, I had some work study jobs, working at the greenhouses, and was really actually still standing is really beautiful, old glass greenhouse that I got to work in.
That was really fun.
And I also had a job at the Agricultural Experiment Station.
So I got to work on the small farm there. After college, I just was doing market farming and working on farms. And I was introduced to Baker Creek.
I thought, wow, I love this catalog. This is the most beautiful, fascinating catalog. The stories behind these heirlooms are phenomenal.
So as a market farmer, I made sure to grow Baker Creek varieties because I wanted something that was like colorful, and interesting to engage passers by at the farmers market.
I wanted something more interesting to stand out.
I had subscribed to the email newsletter for Baker Creek. And that’s where I saw a email saying they were hiring.
So I responded and I moved to the Missouri Ozarks when I was in my early 20s to the co-garden manager. And then I started writing the catalog and the rest is history.
Brian: Wow. That’s fabulous.
That’s really great.
So talk a little more about the catalog. Because I’m not sure if those in the audience if you’ve come across the Baker Creek catalog yet or not, but it really is an amazing thing.
Most catalogs you have out there just whole home but the Baker Creek catalog really is something amazing.
Let’s talk a little bit about that and how you got in a position of writing for it.
Shannie: Right, so the the basic free catalog is, it’s the Rareseed catalog.
And then we have the Whole Seed catalog, we actually offer two catalogs, one is free.
One is more like a coffee table book. It’s like 400 plus pages of articles and recipes and stories.
And it’s really something that doesn’t actually have an expiration date.
You could keep it around for years and years. It’s more like a collector’s item.
So we have a book that you can purchase.
And then of course we always will have the free catalog. You can order those on our website rareseeds.com by the way if you’re interested in getting yourself a catalog this winter.
I’m going to take you back a little bit to explain the catalog because there’s a story behind it. It’s really cool.
The owner and founder of Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, his name is Jere Gettle. And Jere grew up, his parents were kind of homesteaders they did farming and homesteading, few different states and they lived in Oregon and Montana and also the Missouri Ozarks where the company is located today.
Throughout his childhood, Jere was always fascinated by his family’s seed catalog collection. They had this really comprehensive collection of old antique seed catalogs.
And Jere was really fascinated by this.
He also was kind of catching the tail end of the hay day of the seed catalogs. So he was still getting them old Burpee seed catalog and Gambler’s and there’s a few others that may be Livingston.
He would order all these seed catalogs and he would just revel in the beauty of these heirloom seeds. He thought they were really fascinating.
And he also happened to notice that there was quite a decline in the number of seeds available, the number of varieties available and the the number of seed companies, small seed companies that were out there.
This was no coincidence, Jere was growing up in the 80s. And that was around the time that the seed industry in America was really consolidating to be just a few mega seed corporations and big seed houses.
A lot of the regionally specific small family owned seed companies have fallen by the wayside because they had just kind of lost the battle to the giant companies.
So he had a lot of this selja and love for the 1800s, 1900s seed catalogs, where there was a lot of showmanship, there were really beautiful lithograph plate illustrations, there were really amazing photos, lots of customer testimonials, and just just really fascinating kind of eye catching catalogs, he had noticed that they had become a little bit more bland, and not as exciting.
So he understood that some of the best times that a gardener has in the garden are actually in the winter, when you’re planning your garden for the next season.
That’s a really nice time for us gardeners, it’s cold outside, you can’t quite get out there just yet. But you’re just dreaming up your garden for the next season, you’re circling items and you’re just full of hope and wonderment about what you’re going to grow in this subsequent season.
So Jere really understood how important that part of gardening is, he made a catalog that reflected his love of going through the seed catalog and enjoying that process itself.
He put a lot of time into his seed descriptions and he really made sure to have colorful, engaging photos. And to really just embrace the experience of sitting down with your seat catalog, just kind of having a renaissance of that experience.
People really responded, people were really fascinated by somebody who brought kind of an old timey approach to the seed catalog.
It wasn’t all, you know, cut and dried business, it was more about something that’s beautiful to look at, and enjoyable to read and has a lot more back history and rich information than some of the seed companies have been doing.
So that’s kind of how he started designing his seed catalog. And each year it’s become bigger, and more colorful and more exuberant.
And I’m really grateful to get to contribute to that catalog.
I do help to write stories and to mostly I write descriptions. We have an amazing writer named Michelle Johnson, who’s writing a lot of the stories.
Also, Bevan Cohen has been helping to write the stories and write description.
So we’ve been all working together to make this really beautiful catalog, of course, our amazing photographer, Laura Stilson. She’s been taking fantastic photos for years now and really bringing excitement to the to the photos.
And Jere Gettle takes a lot of the photos and writes a lot of the content as well.
Brian: That’s really cool to hear kind of the background there. Because you could tell there’s, there’s quite a bit of a story he just went leafing through that you have such a broad job description.
Can you give us an idea of what a typical day would be or what the type of things that you would do on a daily basis?
Shannie: I will start my day going out into the garden and getting ideas for what I could teach viewers about in regards to how to garden better or how to use heirloom seeds.
So for instance, I will go out and notice that I have a bunch of beautiful blue butterfly pea flowers in bloom, and I will film myself harvesting them and then I’ll film myself dehydrating them and making them into powder.
And then I’ll say, oh, why don’t I make a recipe that people might want to try out.
And so I’ll maybe think of a recipe and film myself making it and take some photos throughout. Send that along to our editor and she will put it out on our social media pages on our YouTube.
You kinda have to fill in the gaps when you’re working with crops that people are generally not familiar with.
You have to do a lot of educating on the back end to get people to understand how are used. Otherwise, you know, you just don’t know what to do with these things.
So it’s good to put them into practice and to show people how they’re used in a practical sense.
So lots of video creation.
During catalog season, I will be writing descriptions like mad. I also always attend the National Heirloom Expo, which is an annual event that we put on at Baker Creek.
I usually go as a speaker and I helped to set the event up as well.
That is in Santa Rosa, California at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds.
And it’s usually the first week in September.
Brian: Great. Oh, fabulous.
For the average consumer out there that’s interested in heirloom seeds.
What makes Baker Creek different?
Why would they come to Baker creeks website or get a hold of one of their catalogs?
Shannie: There are a lot of reasons.
But I would say the educational side of it, we offer over 1,200 varieties in our catalog.
And you can find a lot of really rare stuff really arcane varieties that you may not find elsewhere, we always try to educate as much as possible as to the the uses of these varieties.
If you want to make homemade paprika, you can find the exact, you know, paprika, pepper, and then we’re probably going to even show you how to make paprika from those peppers.
So I think that we have a lot of comprehensive information on the history of these heirlooms and also how they’re used, it’s super special to get to find a seed company that is going to give you that much information.
And it’s not going to be a one liner description, it’s going to be in depth, and you’re probably going to come away with a lot of inspiration for creative work.
Brian: Awesome.
Commercial: Okay, let’s take a break from that conversation.
I wanted to bring up a question for you, during these crazy times, do you feel like your business is indestructible? Most people don’t?
And if not, the real question is why? And what can you do to make it as indestructible as possible?
Well, that’s the basis of my new book, nine ways to Amazon proof your business. Let me talk about what we discuss in the first chapter, determine focus. So one of the main ways that you can Amazon proof your business is by determining the focus of your business. And the real problem isn’t that you’re not doing enough, the real problem is, is that you may be doing too many things in too many places.
So one of the things I suggest is decide whether your focus is going to be acquisition, ascension, or monetization. And I go into the details of what that means in this chapter. It’s really the only three ways that you can grow your business. And if you just do that one step of determining focus, you can have a huge change in your entire business. But I also have eight other ways to Amazon proof your business, basically the idea of making it competition proof to even someone as big as amazon.com.
So if you’d like to get your hands on a free copy of my book, go to AmazonProofBook.com sign up and you will get a free copy and get the chance to purchase a physical copy of it for a special price. And now let’s get back to our show.
Brian: So what do you like best from your perspective about your business and or your industry as a whole?
Shannie: Oh, good question.
This is from a personal sense, going back to how I grew up on a small farm on a small island, I really liked the idea that we can learn so much about other cultures that we may not get to see in person through exchanging heirloom seeds.
I really do think that heirloom seeds are a great connector and an equalizer. It’s like it’s an excellent way to realize that we may be from different parts of the globe.
But we have similar uses similar gardening practices, similar uses for crops. And I think it’s just an incredible way to educate yourself about a different culture and to share.
It’s also an incredible way to open up your worldview.
So yeah, I just I like the exchange of information and knowledge. I like the opening of one’s worldview. I like the cultural representation, getting a real tangible experience of how someone else grows and cooks and eats.
Brian: Yeah, awesome.
On the flip side of that, if you could change one thing about your business or industry, what would it be?
Shannie: Now let me say this, there are a growing number of really amazing regionally adapted seed companies and we often work with not always but we do like to work with those seed companies to offer varieties if they, you know, come up with a variety and they want to sell it through Baker Creek.
I think one thing that I really love about the industry and I just would love to see more of is basically just working together to promote each other.
Brian: That’s great. That’s something you don’t always see in a lot of industry. So that’s cool.
Shannie: Yeah, we do really well in it, the whole industry…I think the industry as a whole does a good job of working together in a harmonious way. And like a really, like, just boost each other up. But if we could do it even more, that would be even better.
Brian: Great.
If you and I were to talk like, say, a year from now, and we had you back on the show, something like that. And we were to look back over the last 12 months, what would have had to have happen for you to feel happy with your progress in your life in your business?
Shannie: Huh, I’m going to try to really do a lot of work during this time of pandemic. So I really do in 12 months, if I were to check back in, I would hope that I would have gotten just an incredible amount of content created in the next year, connecting more with our customers and really finding out what are people up to in their gardens and what do they want to learn more about.
I would love to just get a good idea of what people want to learn about and make sure I really tailor it to people.
COVID seen so many people, so many brand spanking new gardeners, people that are just getting their fingernails dirty for the first time because they’ve been cooped up at home.
And I love to know that there’s a silver lining to the lockdown thing that people are getting out and starting to garden for the first time.
So in the next 12 months, if Baker Creek and I can help Baker Creek create a bunch more content to help brand spankin new gardeners and veteran gardeners alike to really get out and do more growing and to get to really hone those skills. I think that would be really fantastic.
Brian: All right. What are the obstacles Do you see that are staying in your way of getting there?
Shannie: The biggest obstacle I see for people getting out and gardening is that there’s there can be depending on where you live, a scarcity of available farm and gardening space.
I myself don’t garden, I can’t garden, my house, I don’t have a big enough yard.
So I garden at a community garden, and I think that people are going to have to maybe look outside the box for opportunities to grow their own food.
Because I think that one of the biggest challenges we face is not having enough space for gardening and farming. So community gardens are definitely going to be important for that.
Brian: You had mentioned that you had moved in the past year, and then we’ve gone through this situation.
For those listening, we’re recording this in November of 20.
So we’ve gone through this covid-19 pandemic, and we’ve have all these other things happening at the same time elections and everything else.
A lot of craziness happening this year. How has that affected you and and Baker Creek as a whole?
Shannie: Well, it may be a very politically divisive time. But people have definitely, we’ve seen a massive uptick in interest in gardening. Our pre-orders of our catalogs are the highest, you know they’ve ever been our sales are really, really improving.
And that’s just because more and more people are gardening for the first time. So overall, the pandemic has mostly encouraged more people to garden.
So that’s been good.
But one thing that’s been tricky is that I know that when the pandemic first hit there were shortages of seed just because people hadn’t anticipated how quickly people would buy up seeds.
When you make a seed order for the season, you anticipate a certain percentage of growth. But then COVID was unprecedented.
And a lot of people’s reaction to COVID was to just buy up a ton of heirloom seeds. This happened during y2k as well. It did cause a temporary shortage and seeds.
But I think a lot of farmers just upped the ante and planted more for their seed crops this year. So hopefully we will not be looking at as many shortages this year.
Brian: Well, that’s good. And so but other than that everything has been relatively stable. On your end, you guys have been able to handle the crisis and not to have…I mean, obviously with the uptick in sales. That’s great.
Shannie: Yeah, it’s been it’s tricky, because safety is a number one priority. I don’t work at the flagship where they pick the seeds, but I do know that they’ve been super careful about social distancing and following guidelines and keeping people safe and not sick.
That’s been a top priority.
And I don’t believe they’ve had any outbreaks or anything. Knock on wood.
We’ve had to ask our customers to be patient with us because we have been operating especially when the pandemic first really ramped up and people were in a lot of places we’re really closed down.
We weren’t able to go at full speed ahead, but now things are pretty low. Hold out, we kind of have a system figured out for social distancing. So we don’t expect to be having any issues.
Brian: It’s really good to hear from your perspective from being in this position for a while and understanding it. What advice would you have for someone that be interested in getting into the same field?
Shannie: You have to be obsessed with the topic.
You have to be really, really, really obsessed that I’m obsessed.
I annoy people with how much I want to talk about plants gardening, farming and heirloom seeds. And so if you’re not like annoyingly obsessed, you got to be passionate you really do so that’s my advice is to just like dive in headfirst love it, come at it with all your heart.
That translates, I’ve noticed people are really really receptive to anything that’s just genuine and if you know your stuff, if you know your stuff, you’re giving people good information.
And I guess I’m this is I’m speaking to being an educator, as an educator, doing online, you know, education for gardening, doing informative videos, you’re real, you’re genuine and you’re coming up with really good information that you do know firsthand.
It’s not second and you didn’t Google it, but you know, firsthand, that translates really well. That’s what people really want to see like you can be the goofiest person, you can be totally deadpan and dry, you can actually have any delivery that you want it just as long as you are yourself.
It actually doesn’t…I’ve totally noticed it really doesn’t matter.
There’s someone out there who wants to watch somebody deadpan explain something when be really concise, and curt, there’s other people that want to watch somebody completely go off the walls and ramble.
There are some people like that some people like a rambler, like I can be a rambler, but really, the determining factor is if you’re passionate, and if you’re knowledgeable, and just being real.
Brian: That’s awesome. That’s really good advice.
So what did I not ask you, what question did I not ask you that you’d like to answer?
Shannie: My making a plug for studying horticulture professionally.
I think that being self taught and learning yourself is a fantastic and an a fantastic way to go about becoming a horticulturist or farmer or gardener fine gardener educator.
Personally, I did choose the route of going to college for it and getting a degree. And I really don’t regret it because I learned a lot from a lot of really knowledgeable professionals and I got a really in depth education that did span a lot of different topics.
And so if you whether you choose formal education, or you choose to do it hands on, I really recommend that people make sure to be really comprehensive with the way they educate themselves.
If you’re going to be interested in farming, deep diving deep into the biology, the soil health, the environmental impact, but also the social impact the supply chain, understanding every facet is really important.
If you’re not going to pursue higher education in the field, then make sure to meet people in all different parts of the industry.
People that are doing sales, people that are growing themselves, people that work in with the environment in the after effects of agricultural runoff having first hand perspective or second hand I guess you’d be getting the firsthand perspective on from professionals and all those different fields is going to be tremendously helpful.
So whether you do it go into classes and getting you know sitting through lectures and guest speakers from all those industries, or just pounding the pavement and being outgoing and meeting those people.
But definitely giving yourself a well rounded perspective of what it’s like to work the land and be a farmer or gardener.
Brian: I think is really helpful. Really good.
I think that’s a common question that people would have about that.
What could listeners do if they’re interested in finding out more about Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds?
Shannie: Yeah, check us out on our website, Rareseeds.com.
You can find us on YouTube, our channel name is, Rareseeds.
You can find us on Facebook where we’re Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.
You can find us on Instagram where we’re Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.
Yep try the site, try Facebook, try Instagram, try YouTube, we have a Twitter even which I’m sure is probably Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. I don’t do Twitter but I think that’s what it is.
So yeah, check us out online that’s the best way and our website is, Rareseeds.com.
And you can find our catalog we can get our catalog mailed to you if you check out our site, Rareseeds.com and just click the free catalog tab or go all the way and order the whole seed catalog and you’re going to get them.
The most incredible seed catalog experience of your life.
Brian: That’s great. And thanks so much for spending time with Shannie McCabe, from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. Thanks so much for being on the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.
Shannie: Thanks so much for your time, take care.
Brian’s Closing Thoughts: You know I really appreciate the time that Shannie spent with us talking about Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. It’s an amazing company.
And it’s one of those that you can see how you can stand out in really a crowded marketplace and one of these areas that everybody is talking about heirloom seeds, and is selling this kind of that kind, but they’re able to do it in such a different way that allows them to stand out.
Shannie herself is one of those standout pieces to the puzzle, to have people on your team that have a passion that have a background that want to learn more, that even at a distance, they could be such an asset to your organization.
It’s really good to listen to this interview with that in mind, because I kept going back to in my mind is what an amazing person she is how it’s really great to keep your eyes open for those type of people, the type of people that you know can go on a podcast and represent your company like Shannie has here.
So that’s the big takeaway. I think with this interview and there’s a whole lot of other nuggets in there that she passed along to us really appreciate the time she spent with us on the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.
Outro: Join us again on the next Off The Grid Biz Podcast brought to you by the team at BrianJPombo.com, helping successful but overworked entrepreneurs, transform their companies into dream assets.
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Our theme music is Cold Sun by Dell. Our executive producer and head researcher is Sean E Douglas. I’m Brian Pombo and until next time, I wish you peace, freedom, and success.