Preserving Our Roots explores the meanings of lives in which one grows one\'s own food, saves one\'s own seed, and shares meals with one\'s family and neighbors.
Accompanied by a rich selection of drawings, journal pages, and photographs--along with over forty recipes-- Preserving Our Roots chronicles Coykendall\'s passion for recording foods and narratives that capture the rhythms of daily life on farms, in kitchens, and across generations..
He highlights staple crops, agricultural practices, and favorite recipes from the families and friends who have hosted him.
Organized by season, the book offers a narrative chronicle of Coykendall\'s visits to Washington Parish since 1973.
In Preserving Our Roots: My Journey to Save Seeds and Stories , Coykendall shares a wealth of materials collected in his journals, ensuring they are passed on to future generations.
At the same time, he has unearthed and safeguarded rare varieties of food crops once grown in the area, then handed them back to the community.
Over the decades, he has recorded oral histories, recipes, tall tales, agricultural knowledge, and wisdom from generations past in more than eighty illustrated and handwritten journals.
Drawn to the Washington Parish area as a college student, Coykendall forged long-lasting friendships with local farmers and gardeners.
While his work takes him around the world searching for Seeds and the cultural knowledge of how to grow them, what inspires him most is his annual pilgrimage to Louisiana.
A Tennessee native and longtime master gardener at Blackberry Farm, Coykendall has become a celebrity in a growing movement that places a premium on farm-to-table cuisine with locally sourced, organic, and heirloom foods and flavors.
For over four decades, John Coykendall\'s passion has been Preserving the farm heritage of a small community in rural southeastern Louisiana. uisine.
Shields, author of Southern Provisions: The Creation and Revival of a Cuisine.
Coykendall and Melton have captured it all--the seed lore, the recipes, the tales...--David S.
Preserving Our Roots explores the meanings of lives in which one grows one\'s own food, saves one\'s own seed, and shares meals with one\'s family and neighbors
