I met Marleny Alfaro while shooting at Native Seeds/SEARCH seed school. I had the pleasure of spending a day with her family when they welcomed me to their beautiful land in Mora, New Mexico. Below is our interview where the conversation ran the gamut from seed libraries to Barbara McClintock’s “jumping genes” and the “Ringing Cedars” of Russia.

Open Sesame: What was your experience at seed school?

Native Seeds School in Tuscon Arizona was one of the deepest most touching and wholesome experiences I’ve had in learning anything. It really touched on everything – the physical, the spiritual – they gave us really great advice and there was a certain energy…benevolent and so beneficial to all who were involved in it. I left fascinated and very

enthusiastic about saving seeds and getting back on the land. I cannot recommend it highly enough!

Open Sesame: What was one of your most memorable moments?

I think one of the most memorable moments I had during that whole week was recognizing that biodiversity is not a bad thing we had spent hundreds of years trying to breed out certain varieties because we call them land-races or impure and to realize that we’re missing a lot of diversity we’re missing strength. It’s sort of a metaphor for what we’re going with human beings and education, trying to weed out anybody who is different and I thought well we’re doing the same things with the plants and missing out on great varieties that could withstand the dramatic weather we’re experiencing… And we’re just making them disappear, causing them to disappear. That was an important moment to realize biodiversity is good…weeds are good.

Open Sesame: How are weeds good?

Weeds are amazing in that they fix problems in the soil. Wherever we see weeds it’s because nature is trying to bring in certain nutrients that are deficient in the soil. Also they have a huge variety of medicinal uses. Weeds are plants that we don’t know how to use yet.

Open Sesame: What have seeds taught you?

Seeds have taught me resilience. Seeds can be in the ground sometimes in the years and then come back. Seeds are a source of freedom and power and there are few things in our world that are not related to seeds. Our very existence is related to seeds. Every day I am in contact with life and how it sprouts it’s always exciting the little sprout come up. Yes there is life in there, there is life in there.

And also at a time when so many of our seeds are being taken by biotech companies… this is our right, we should keep it. This is important, we have had this long-standing relationship with seeds and nobody should come between that.

Open Sesame: What will you do differently now that you’ve attended Seed School?

Seed School has really changed my perspective on growing food and saving seeds. Now I am also looking at wild seeds, I’m looking at ways that I can share the seed, that I can maybe begin cooperatives and connect people through seed growing and saving. And that’s very different from before where I thought I will grow vegetables and fruit for the family to eat, and I started a seed library that should be enough.

It’s really not enough, for me now after seed school when I realized the magnitude of the issue, people not knowing how to save seeds and depending on companies to do all the work for them. So now I’m empowered because I can create my own varieties. I’m encouraged to do so and before I was afraid of tampering with these things. I thought it was best left to experts.

Open Sesame: What inspired you to start a seed library?

Starting a seed library is more of a feeling than anything else when I began exploring the idea of saving seed and planting for myself I discovered that many people don’t save seed anymore. And that many people don’t even have money to start their own garden. So for me to start a seed library, was partly to provide that opportunity and to also have a platform

from which to speak about the guaranteed safety involved in growing your own seed.

And the fascinating thing is that most people don’t know about these things. So the seed library has become a platform from which to share, connect and I’m very excited. I look at these biotech companies as great teachers. They’ve given us a great excuse to get together and form seed libraries and seed banks and cooperatives. You know, seed growing coops. I would not have met 100s of beautiful people if it hadn’t been for GM foods.

Open Sesame: What’s the reaction been to the seed library so far?

The reaction to the seed library and people have come from many towns in the southwest and they felt if it was such a blessing. They felt rejuvenated and honored to be part of the opening of a seed library. There was a certain energy, people were craving to connect with each other, to share the seeds speak a language that’s universal. And everybody feels connected when there are seeds and food. If you have a stomach and you eat, then seed is your business too and these people are very active in that. And so grateful and have come from everywhere knocked on my door and offered help. How can I help with the seed library? This is the question I hear the most often.

Open Sesame: What was your inspiration for calling your seed library “Mora Grows”.

We called our library the Mora Grows seed library in honor of the Richmond Grows seed library in California. They have it set up on their website so that anyone with one click has access to all of the info, all of the instructions on how to create your own seed library so I felt that that’s the least we can do to at least name it after them and our local artist coop and wool mill has been really generous and allowed us to place our seed library there. And they host our seed exchanges and they are going to be hosting our seed saving classes and more of this is happening in town thanks to the seed library. A lot of connections are being made and I didn’t want to forget Richmond Grows.

Open Sesame: Why did your family leave Florida?

Our family decided to come to the mountains and buy land because we really felt there was something missing in the city even though we were doing our dream jobs and we had a home there was something missing and what was missing for us was the freedom. The freedom to grow in your back yard, the freedom to produce your own electricity.

To go out for a walk in nature every day, to be away from cellphone towers we didn’t have that freedom. We wanted that experience of self-sufficiency, being able to provide for ourselves have free water coming from the earth.

That was huge for us, having free water having fertile land. Florida doesn’t really have much fertile land, it’s really sand. It would have taken us 1000s of dollars to amend that soil and to work with it, here it’s right there. You know the land is black and it glistens with quartz and there’s water flowing from the mountains and we’re close to the national forest and the

life forces and the health that we enjoy now is something unprecedented in our lives. To be able to build our own shelter, live free from bills and not really have to work so hard. The work of a gardener is intense as well and yet there’s a lot of health that one acquires through that process. I could not say the thing about an office job.

Open Sesame: You mentioned that the “Ringing Cedars” series of books has been a big influence on you. Tell me about the special way that you go about planting seeds.

In the 40s and 50s there was a scientist by the name of Barbara McClintock and her work has gone underground a little bit as happens in the scientific community. Yet it has blossomed as of late and she discovered transposable elements within seeds and these transposable elements are also known as jumping genes.

Especially in corn, she said in corn the plant will mutate, will alter itself genetically depending on the input, the surrounding input. So it would acquire info from the soil, from the winds from any patterns and its surroundings. So it occurred to some people that maybe they would also react and alter themselves in a similar fashion.

In doing some investigation we actually realized that many ancient societies used this technique unknowingly. They had an intuitive knowledge, an inner knowing that the seeds will respond to their input. So they would but several seeds under their tongue and coat them with their salvia. This is DNA sharing via saliva. And so the plant will carry this into itself, the seed will carry into itself. One would not water this seed for about 3 days.

Allowing it to really take it in. You don’t need to do it with all the plants. Plants communicate. So you do this with 5, maybe 8 and they’ll do the rest. So they’ll receive your info, your DNA and they’ll produce exactly the chemicals that our body needs, becoming your doctor so to speak, your nutritionist, laughs. The seed will do it, the plant will do it, so there is no need as we know now to go on special diets and have special supplements. If the seed knows you then it can prepare the package that you need. So it doesn’t matter how much organic or biodynamic food we eat. If the plant doesn’t know us, there’s only so much we can do. I became excited and started experimenting. This really took me into the seed world, this idea.

Open Sesame: What do you say to skeptics?

I would say to those who have a hard time believing this, to try it. There’s nothing like growing own plants and seeing how well you feel. You don’t believe it, try it and then you can study Barbara McClintock’s work and you can go investigate ancient societies like the Hunza people in the valley of Pakistan. These people until recently were only eating exclusively through from their gardens. The men could become parents way into their 90s and this was not a rare occurrence.

I would say to those who don’t believe, go study and see what people are doing around the world. Much has changed in the past 50 years. We’ve been conditioned to believe to leave this is up to experts and nutritionists to deal with our health. Yet the plants have been doing this for 1000s of years.