Alfred Reed Bishop and Doris William Butler

The picture above is the very tap root of Bishop's Homegrown/Face Of The Earth Seed. My grandparents shortly after moving to Pekin Indiana from Greensburg KY in 1947 where they purchased the farm that is now Bishop's Homegrown. This picture was taken in Pekin in front of the old co-op next to the old railroad depot, neither of which exist today.

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Monday, January 25, 2010

Thanks to Curtis Showell via Dr. Alan Kapuler


Today I recieved a wonderful package in the mail from my good friend Dr. Alan Kapuler. Of the many varied topics that Dr. Kapuler and I have spoken of in recent months Curtis Sylvester Showell and his terrific friendship with Dr. Kapuler and his fantastic collection of Cucurbits, many of which are had to find and missing from the listings in both the ARS GRIN as well as Seed Savers Exchange. Alan Kapuler had mentioned something recently about sending me some of the selections from Curti's seed collections, but I was little prepared for the amzing box of devotion and love and diversity he was about to send me.

Within the box there were probably close to 100 accessions of rare watermelon seed including many of the packages that Curtis had sent Alan Kapuler during the 80's and 90's as well as Peace Seeds envelopes packaged in the 90's, some older Baker Creek varieties, and even some of the watermelon seed Alan had mentioned to me that Curtis had sent him in the used cellophane from ciggarette packages as well as a hand addressed envelope to Peace seeds from Curtis stamped by the Bishopville MD post office! This is as reall as treasure will ever get!

I have spent the last couple of hours identifying the rarest of rare, 15 or 20 varieties which I will attempt to germinate (some of this seed is 20 years old) and isolate this season and offer through the soon to be announced seed company. These will pair well with the selection of rare squash I recieved from Gatersleben originally from Curtis Showells Collection.

Heres some pics of the collection:

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Dear Alan Bishop, I am a good friend of Alan Kapuler, I also knew Curtis and held him in great esteem. I would like to connect with you as i have a gigantic collection of cucurbits of all types. My e-mail is :simcox2@mac.com

All the best,

Joseph Simcox