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Kay Antúnez de Mayolo:Look, Listen, Learn
If you stop by Kay Antúnez de Mayolo ’s farmstand at Modoc Harvest ’s Food Hub and farmer ’s mart , on the Great Basin ’s westerly edge in rural northerly California , she might sell you “ unconstipated ” lettuce or tomato and permit you be on your way . She ’s not pushy about her garden truck . But if you look a little hard , you might point out that the baskets of cherry Lycopersicon esculentum are cut with something curious : a dry land cherry call ‘ Capuli ’ in Peru , ‘ Poho ’ in Hawaii , and ( long ago ) ‘ Cape Gooseberry ’ in the English colonies .
“ I learned that I could turn more people on to ground cherry tree if I flux them with a ‘ gateway yield ’ , ” Kay admits with a laugh . “ I realise that marketplace - goers do n’t just want the foreign poppycock I care to grow , but they ’ll try something raw — shiner melons , roselle , piles of strange herbs — if I get them talking . ”
At geezerhood 78 and at the helm ( with her married man , Erik ) of a hoop house and four acres of trickle - irrigate garden truck and fruit trees , Kay is actually a preeminent ethnobotanist specializing in native dyestuff plants . Her 1989 sea captain ’s thesis , catalog and pull in 56 plants historically used by the masterful ancient Peruvian journeyman as material dyes , is still cited by investigator today , and her house garden are burgeon with dyestuff plant that thrive in the mellow desert , including ‘ Hopi Dye ’ sunflower , madder , Japanese indigo , and weld ( all available on theExchange ) .
Kay dyed these yarn samples with Japanese indigo (blue), weld (yellow), and madder (red), plus overdyes.
Kay found the Exchange and join as a seed rescuer ( “ a life rank for just $ 100 ! ” ) in the tardy 1980s . She became friends with the lateSuzanne Ashworth , a longtime Seed Savers Exchange counselor-at-law and generator of the bestsellingSeed to Seed . “ We were always together , ” Kay says — by which she intend , their names were always near each other alphabetically in the Exchange . The two growers — who both taught stratum at American River College in Sacramento , California — hit up a camaraderie rich with “ labored - duty habitation gardening , ” sleuthing around to trace heirloom crops right in their own neighborhoods , and advocating for source deliverance .
In her later career , Kay turned toward environmental education , serve for 24 years as the Project Learning Tree state coordinator for California ’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection . When she retire in 2012 and moved to rural Modoc County , she amply expected to scale back and softly integrate into her young community , Surprise Valley , an arena settled in the aftermath of the Civil War and California ’s aureate rush and still the ancestral homeland of the Northern Paiute Gidutkad Band .
Around the same prison term , SSE began sell inheritance fruit trees , and she picked up a few “ interesting - sounding ” variety . “ Some did n’t do well , but in attempt to enter out how to grow apples here , I became aware of several quondam apple orchards in the county and came to find out that the original Homestead Act land owners show Malus pumila orchard for cider acetum , to ‘ prove up ’ their claims . ” But by the bend of the 21st 100 , many of these surviving trees were not clearly identified , posing a mystery Kay could n’t resist solving .
Kay dyed these yarn samples with Japanese indigo (blue), weld (yellow), and madder (red), plus overdyes.
“ What are these honest-to-goodness apple varieties , and can they be reintroduced in this area ? ” she wonder . Soon she helped start Modoc Harvest , a non-profit-making , to promote local food production with a husbandman ’s market and food hub . She round off up volunteers to catalog more than 200 “ inheritance ” apple trees in the county . This extend , of course , to extend classes on apple grafting and how to prune and rejuvenate trees . “ Locals were interested in their old trees , especially after we take hold tasting and facilitate them identify the apple varieties on their place , ” Kay recalls .
This , she articulate , is the magic of inviting your community into your garden , just to look at something unusual and break up receptive some oddment about how it got that way . “ I ’m a fall guy for narration , ” she says of the many magazine and diary she reads — let in the Seed Savers ExchangeHeritage Farm Companion — along with practical meetups she now attends , including SSE ’s 2024 virtual conference .
She ’s also a voracious reader of seed catalogs and saves them for both the lore and the actual seminal fluid - save know - how they hold in , including all those monumental former newspaper editions of the Exchange Yearbook .
Kay shows off her dahlias at the Surprise Valley Farmers Market.
“ If I could urge just one thing , ” she say , “ it ’s one - to - one fundamental interaction , specifically in the mentoring of new growers . ” A love of learning , she says , has no better seed bottom than soil . In the meantime , she ’s off to new projects , including a botanic dye workshop she ’s started with a thread shop class proprietor in the next town up .
“ And I ’m now interested in hydrangeas , ” she adds with a grinning . No doubt she ’ll bump a Quaker or colleague to learn along with her .
This clause by Kristine Kopperud was first published in the 2025 Seed Savers Exchange catalogue .
Kay tends comfrey and weld plants on her farm.
Hope and Practice
To celebrate Seed Savers Exchange ’s 50th day of remembrance , we are featuring the work and inspiration of Exchange listers in the " Hope and Practice " serial .
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