Bill Best, professor emeritus from Berea College, is a Madison County, Kentucky, farmer and one of the charter members of the Lexington Farmers' Market. Widely known as a saver, collector, and grower of heirloom beans and tomatoes, he is the author of Saving Seeds, Preserving Taste: Heirloom Seed Savers in Appalachia. Dobree Adams is primarily known in the region as a fiber artist and photographer. She gardens and farms on a river bottom of the Kentucky north of Frankfort.
In the expanding contemporary world of heirloom seed savers, Bill
Best is already legend with over 700 varieties of discrete beans
and hundreds of tomatoes stockpiled and catalogued at his farm
outside of Berea, Kentucky. Best is distinguished not only for his
collection of seeds, but for his keen interest in the stories that
accompany them and his ability to weave those stories into the
history of a people and a region, the Appalachian South. At a time
of growing attention to and focus on American foodways as history,
Best's book is a valuable resource that will be used across the
discipline."" - Ronni Lundy, author of Victuals: An Appalachian
Journey, with Recipes and Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes, and Honest
Fried Chicken
""Bill Best's language and tone of voice are elegant notes of calm
discourse in a shrill world. Beneath the tackiness of American
popular culture there is a depth of traditional culture that is
invisible to the mass media. The book is a kind of seed itself,
fecund, filled with life and potential."" - Gurney Norman, author
of Ancient Creek: A Folktale and Kinfolks: The Wilgus Stories
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