Tom Wagner workshop

This weekend could be one of those ones, that completly change my life, like the chance afternoon that I spent at Johhny's Selected Seeds, in Maine, way back in 1985. I afraid that if I take up the tweezers and paintbrush, all the equipment that you need to make deliberate crosses, that I will get hooked. Seed saving is like learning a tune that someone else has written, plant breeding is the equivalent of composing, a creative act. I am quite tempted to try on-line poker and heroin but I know its not a good idea. However plant breeding is a good idea but might cause me to compromise most of the other areas of my life and become the addiction it is for Tom.

.Here is Tom looking at a potato in my garden that I grew from true potato seed from a potato from Tibet. Below he is standing beside the mass grave of over 9,000 people who died in Skibbereen during the Great Famine.

He has created new varieties of potatoes using the old 'Lumper' variety, whose failure was the major cause of the Famine. By crossing them with blight resistant varieties he has restored them and he symbolically sprinkled their seeds on the graves of the famine victims.

What is preventing famine here now?