CALAMUS, Iowa — When you plant a seed, the bigger picture can take time to appear. The tiniest object grows into something larger than itself. Both metaphorically and physically, it's also the perfect descriptor for Glenn Drowns conservation work.
For 35 years, Drowns has planted, grown and harvested rare plant varieties.
After each harvest, he collects the seeds from each plant. Those seeds are dried, prepped and stored in the thousands of glass jars that line every room of Drowns' old farmhouse. Some are sold online to customers all over the world. Most, however, go back into the cycle of life on Drowns' farm, Sand Hill Preservation Center in rural Clinton County.
There are 2,950 seed varieties in Drowns' current collection, with more added each year.
It's backbreaking, all-consuming work for the full-time science teacher at the Calamus-Wheatland High School. But without Drowns' efforts, hundreds of seeds in his collection would no longer exist.
Step Inside The Farmhouse
The old farmhouse at the entrance to Sand Hill hasn't been lived in for years. Instead, Drowns has lined every single room with homemade shelves to hold his massive seed collection.
"You know, a carpenter would look at this and just shudder, but it's functional," Drowns joked. "I'm running out of space to store the seeds that I have, so it's becoming a nightmare to try to keep up with it, and I'm not going to build a bigger house!"
The shelves are filled with individually-labeled glass jars. Each one holds a unique plant variety, from all sorts of peppers and peas to different corn and eggplant variations. There's watermelons, beans and nearly 900 different types of tomatoes, just to name a few.
"It's really important that they're put away alphabetically because if you go to look for something and you don't find it, it's like a monster," Drowns said.
After harvesting, the seeds live on their shelves, but their history all lives in Drowns' mind.
Point out any jar and Drowns can tell you the location and time period that specific variety originated from, what it was traditionally used for, how it made its way to him and how many places it's still grown.
That last portion, is often only one: himself.
"I had the seed savers come down and talk to me. I helped when they got started here. But some of the people that are in there now, visited with me and said there's 600 and I think 76 varieties in this collection that wouldn't be here if it wasn't for me," Drowns said.
But like we mentioned earlier, there's a bigger picture here.
In his current house, on the other end of the farm property, Drowns' basement is filled with row after row of large plastic containers. Each one contains its own unique sweet potato variety.
"I will probably hit 300 sweet potato varieties before 2025," Drowns said. "The only other person that does this is a lady in Asheville, North Carolina, and she's in her 70s. She says she can't do it much anymore."
Each sweet potato needs to also be planted, grown and harvested each year. Laid end over end, that adds up to about 6,700 feet, or just over 1.25 miles of sweet potato rows. Drowns digs each row by hand.
"People volunteer usually once to help. And then you have to find a new sucker the next year," Drowns laughed.
The most ancient variety in his sweet potato collection goes back roughly 3,000 years to Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.
Walking in between his rows of tubs, Glenn continually pointed out different types that only exist on his farm.
"When I first started sweet potatoes, purple sweet potatoes, nobody wanted them. And now everybody realizes they're high in antioxidants. The value that they have, the amount of minerals and nutrients is phenomenal," Drowns said. "Now, I can't keep enough of them."
That, he says, is precisely why he does what he does. Many of the plant varieties Drowns had been preserving for decades have eventually become of interest to bigtime growers or food manufacturers over the years. Without his conservation efforts, those plants could have been lost.
Back in the kitchen of the old farmhouse, homemade drawers hold thousands pre-packaged seeds, ready to be shipped out to customers.
Drowns hardly makes any money from his seed business. But he'll be the first to tell you, he's not a business man.
"That's not my focus at all," Drowns said. "Conservation person. I like to educate. That's my big thing."
Planting The Seed
Drowns traces his seed preservation journey back to when he was just two years old growing up in Idaho. He remembers crawling through the fence in his backyard to help his neighbor plant in her garden.
"From the time I was little, I would save all the seeds out of oranges or whatever. I would keep the seeds and then plant them," Drowns said.
A few years later, when Drowns was in second grade, he saw the cover of a magazine that would change his life forever.
"That would have been in 1968 when I saw it. It said 'this is what the world's gonna look like in 2000. And it showed this big giant sewer dump, people wearing gas masks, you know, those types of things," Drowns said.
Later that same week, while fishing with his dad, Drowns noticed a big pipe dumping "yellow, creamy-looking stuff" into the river they were boating down. His father told him the nearby plant dumped runoff into the water.
"So then I thought, wow, something's got to be done," Drowns said. "I knew I was never gonna be able to buy enough land to save all of the butterflies and, you know, different birds and things. But I do what I could and something I can do is save seeds. So that's where the genetic preservation part comes in."
Growing Into Something Bigger
As you can imagine, it's not easy to single-handedly keep so many plants alive and well.
Over the years, similar conservationists Drowns admired have gotten older and ended their seed saving practices. Several have sent him their collections.
"It's a lot of work," Drowns admitted. "You know, when it's 20 below zero outside and I roll out of bed at 4:30, it's not fun doing chores."
But what keeps him going is the knowledge that any plants he loses might be lost forever. And as he gets older himself, Drowns has a goal of writing down each variety's history. All of it, he says is a lot of pressure. However, he doesn't let that stop him.
"We try to preserve them to make sure that they're still here for generations to come," Drowns said. "I don't think the general public understands how narrow, in some cases, our genetic supply of food has become."
While Drowns doesn't expect everyone to be able to grow, harvest and preserve thousands of plant varieties, he does encourage you to do what you can.
"Try to do something that you can on your scale, even if it's in a backyard. You may be able to save one variety of tomato or one variety of corn," Drowns said. "You can do something in your garden that will help keep our natural environment a better place."
You can check out Drowns' online seed sales here.
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