:CELEBRATE:

Happy 2026 to all our dear friends, gardeners, farmers, & dreamers!

Welcome! We are so glad you are here and reading this right now.  You belong here!
Only a short while ago, we realized that 2026 marks the entry into our 20th year as Uprising Seeds, and the shift from our original fresh market produce farm and CSA to an intentional focus on seed stewardship and sharing. What started as a small two-page, three-fold brochure of about 50 varieties (that we pinned up on bulletin boards and strategically left on side tables at conferences) has grown into the current catalog you find here of about 450 varieties. It's very personal work for us and is the manifestation of our love for our extended community, and our belief that we each have an intrinsic place at this ever-expanding and changing table. 
After reveling in the relative ease of the 2025 growing season and planning for 2026 with all who make this work possible, we’ve been indulging in moments of nostalgia, reading through our old print catalogs (back to the original three-fold!), and have remarked at the extent to which our motivation to engage in this work has remained consistent over the years. Our hope has always been that our work be a conduit for connectivity. Ultimately, we live relationally, and the degree to which we bring intention and care to ourselves and our relationships is the degree to which we are collectively nourished by them. Meaning we are all in this together.
Our catalogs have always been an intimate invitation and are probably the best way we can introduce ourselves to you. We have rarely focused on whether varieties will “sell well” (a quick look around this site will clearly prove that!). Rather, the varieties we’ve formed relationships with over the years have made their way into our catalog, largely because they’ve made their way into our hearts, adorned our kitchen tables and spaces, and become part of our shared memories. It’s hard to imagine them not being part of our year! Our hearts are big, so there are lots of them, and we fall in love more than out of love, so it's become quite the job to keep track of it all as the catalog keeps getting bigger.
Take this year, for example. We promised ourselves, “No New Varieties!” But then there are all these new storage tomatoes we’ve been loving eating this fall and winter, and we finally grew burdock again, and that beautiful white poppy seed finally germinated again, and there’s always a new enchanting sweet pea… and you can see where it all goes.
We are delighted you’re here and delighted to share brief excerpts from the past 19 years of catalogs!  
As always, Speak Up! Follow your heart as it leans towards Justice and Peace. Grow a garden. Leave some for everyone else. Share with everyone you can. There is always enough for us all. Believe it.
Thank you for joining us in this Joyous Uprising! 

Brian, Crystine, Farm Kids, Rio, Bre, Jesse, & Peter
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SOME EXCERPTS

2007
 “This family business is a product of our love of growing and sharing seeds and our belief that the future of food security and justice is based on regional stewardship of locally adapted plant varieties. As our name suggests, we see this work as a community revolt against the corporate hijacking of the seeds.”

2008
“We do not think of ourselves as seed preservationists on a mission to save old varieties.  Rather, we see the seed as a living thing. Something with a story, to be sure, but with a story that is continuing to unfold … becoming relevant to each new season and new piece of ground it is planted in.”

2009
 “While August found us watching our entire crop of lettuce seed melt in the unseasonable rain and later be eaten by Goldfinches, the beautiful, long-lived September and October sun allowed us to salvage other seed crops we had long given up on. And really, we love those Goldfinches!”

2010
“When we trial new varieties, we look at both strengths and weaknesses. Anyone could have grown beautiful watermelons in Whatcom County during the heat of 2009, but we want the ones that also set sweet fruit in the rainy fall of 2008. We grew beautiful lettuces all year in cool, cloudy 2008, but which varieties bolted the earliest when temps broke 100F in 2009? Which varieties still produced well in that bed where the weeds got away from us? Each year as we add new varieties to our catalogue, we continue to look for those that taste great, look great, and perform well in all the conditions our crazy northwest climate throws at us.”

2011
 “As astonished as we are by the work, we are even more astonished by the pure kindness, consideration, and generosity we have been shown throughout the years.”

2012
 “…we know that without all these dedicated growers, open-pollinated seed would fall more to the wayside than it already has. It is through our collective efforts and dedication that seeds such as these continue along on their journey to your own farms and gardens. Thank you for joining us! Let’s keep the stories unfolding, the seeds relevant to each new place they’re planted, the revolutions alive. They are more than a commodity. They are the gifts of a long and storied relationship between people and plants, and they are the wealth we leave our kids.”

2013
 “If we are able to get good public domain seeds into the hands of our fellow growers, excited children, new gardeners…and maybe contribute a couple of new varieties that will stand the test of time, then we will consider our work, time, and energy well spent.”

2014
 “Changing the way we interact with food, slowing it down and savoring it has the potential to be a vehicle for change…
This year, we hope you take on a three-day recipe. We hope you ferment something to eat (on purpose). We hope you put food and drink at the center of friendships. We hope you try to grow a labor or space inefficient veggie like Belgian endive, fresh garbanzo beans, or radicchio treviso tardivo to get a singularly unique food that can't be had any other way. We hope you flip some pancakes or make some skillet cornbread with fresh-ground, homegrown dry corn. Smoke chilies and tomatoes. Grind your own mustards. Sit on the front porch and shell fresh Garbanzos with your friends and neighbors. Play roulette with freshly picked and seared Padron Peppers. Pickle onions. Make medicine. Eat edible flowers. Lay quietly among the sunflowers and hummingbird sage as the birds wing their collective joy. Revel in the cacophony of sound in your patch of bee's friend. Remember and celebrate the magic of food, community, and creativity. It's all right here in this wee catalog and the many other catalogs of people who love seeds so much that they cannot help but shout it out and share.”

2015
 “Often it is the storied moments we remember most. A jumble of memories that include the first tilling; the first yellow finch alighting on a nearby fence post; the first sowing of cold hardy seeds; the celebration of worms, lady-bugs and all things with wings; the first emerging sprouts; the clean late June field (soon to be over-run by plant opportunists, again and again and again...); the steady sound of pounding posts intertwined with the relentless buzz of the ever present myriad of bees, wasps and flies; tendrils of pole beans and peas reaching for the next hold; the way our son slows us and says, “come lay under the tall corn stalks, it is so peaceful down here”; the many gentle fingers carefully transplanting the more delicate plants; sounds of laughter and song merging with sounds of worry and sorrow as we each pour ourselves into the body of this earth and this work; water...always the movement of water; wind...always the rush of pollen infused wind; wonder...always, always, always the wonder; the excitement of a “new” seed and the celebration of the ones we loved first; the cutting, piling, tarping, squeezing, stomping, whacking, body-aching craziness of harvest; the calm albeit electric “wind” of winnowing; testing, packing, and shipping seeds into new hands and sowing into new earth. This beautiful jumble is our seedscape. The seeds sown into the earth shake out their endless stories.”

2016
 “Each year as Fall turns to Winter and it comes time to write this welcome letter we arrive at this very simple and deeply felt sentiment: that the heart of this all is in the sharing of seeds and stories, the unraveling and re-envisioning of time and place as it relates to both, and the empowering of individuals to continue on this journey with and for one another and the health of the land that sustains us all. So, there you have it! You know what to do…”
2017
 “Our hope for the coming year is that as people move around the globe, either out of desperation or in seeking new opportunities, they find respect, fertile ground, and community in which they may thrive, much as their seeds that have made similar journeys before them have. As Potawatomi scientist and author Robin Wall Kimmerer writes in a piece about three sisters gardens, ‘All gifts are multiplied in relationship.’”

2018
 “To thresh is to separate the grain from the husk. Neither is an end, but 2 parts of an endless cycle of beginnings and ends that weave seamlessly into one another. Do it with joy, with sorrow, intention, and the understanding that interdependence is the root of all. Do better. If we have learned one thing this year, it is an old truth. The longer we sit quietly in one space, the more we see, the more that is revealed. So, be quiet! And then, plunge into all else that comes with unveiling. We were made for these times.”
and…
“In defense of seeded watermelons... We are left generally unimpressed with the newfound dominance of seedless watermelons in supermarkets, marketed as some sort of ‘improvement’ for better living. To us, it is nothing more than a victory for people who hate fun. If you do not know what to do with a wedge of summer-ripe watermelon containing seeds, we strongly urge you to hand it over to a child, or better yet, a group of children, stand back, and watch the fun unravel. YOU SPIT THEM, of course! And if you are inside...well, what the heck are you doing eating watermelon inside in the first place? Watermelon seed spitting is best enjoyed with friends and best performed with great gusto and flair. We need more joy in the world, and watermelon seeds represent, quite literally, the propagation of joy. So, please. Keep your seedless watermelons to yourself. Silly grownups and their bad ideas.

2019
 “So much of the identity of culture and a sense of place relates to its food traditions, rooted in the farmers, the trade routes, the soils, the immigration and forced relocation stories... We come together over meals, and the ingredients of those meals tell the stories of the relationships between people and place in their DNA. 
But that’s just the last couple of thousand years. 
What gives us as much joy in this work as a good meal created from the fruits of our labor is to walk through the field with a sense of wonder, to slow down, and to notice. The theme of this year’s catalog is POLLINATE, and that’s, in part, to recognize that our own relationship with plants enjoys a barely significant fraction of the dazzling complexity shared between plants, bees, and other pollinators. We’ve accomplished some clever breeding successes in our day, but frankly, bees have been breeding plants (and honestly, vice versa) since before we were a twinkle in the evolutionary eye. Bees and flowering plants were quite literally made for each other.
Pollination, the moving around of plant genetic material, is responsible for much of the diversity that surrounds and sustains us. It is such a powerful action that we metaphorically use the term almost universally in the positive sense to describe synergistic exchanges of ideas that result in expanded understanding.”

2020
 “The dream of warmer days and meals created from the day's harvest sustains us through the depths of winter. Our pantry is well stocked with treasures from 2019. Plenty of passata from Cuor di Bue Albenga tomatoes. Dried Fiashetto di Manduria tomatoes. Frozen edamame. Fermented hot sauces and ajvar, a tangy puree of roasted red peppers, eggplant, and garlic from the Balkans. Kimchi und Sauerkraut. Biquinho peppers, a Brazilian specialty (new to the catalog this year), are pickled in a boozy brine of cachaça and vinegar. We are still harvesting ‘Cascade Glaze’ collards and ‘Russian Frills’ kale, sweetened from cold and hardship. Radicchios in a myriad of colors and shapes, and a closet full of Belgian endive and Isontina chicory- the most perfect, beautiful rose-shaped radicchio you ever did see. A root cellar full of celeriac and onions, parsnips, and ‘Dowinda’ cabbage.
And we work hard through our donation programs to make sure that all of you who want a garden, the children who are just learning about gardens and stewardship, as well as those who are healing from trauma, have all the seeds they need. These are among the many things that make and keep us, and so many others, happy and inspired. 
We’re working to reshape how a seed company can interact with the needs of the food systems and communities it supports, and we are committed to cultivating that relationship with you.”

2021
 “We send each of you the enormous strength & support you may need as you enter this new year & hope that some of what we have to offer can open the way to respite, solace, & wonder. We wish you moments of profound joy & unexpected awe.
It is often expressed that the garden, gardening, & the simple act of creating a sustained relationship & conversation with care & presence are deeply nourishing. In these times, in this long & challenging year, such restorative bonds can also create a reunion of sorts between body, mind, & soul, creating a clearer mind, a refuge both within ourselves & among the plants. When we garden, whether for work or pleasure, we may find ourselves in quiet moments where our dreams meet the physical world, allowing for expansion, possibility, & play. In such moments, anything can feel possible.
Looking at a seed, you know that is true. Possibility & resilience grow, seed in hand, hand to earth, earth to microbes, microbes to seed, seed to plant, plant to sun, sun to earth, & water, eating, sharing, & all that exists to cultivate the exchanges & support beneath our feet & above our heads continually.”

2022
 “Looking back on 2020 and 2021, our hearts remain focused on the profound wish for each of you to find grounding and connection in the seeds you sow, the gardens you tend, and the cooperative spirit of care extended to all. Every year that we have written this letter, it has been a variation on this same theme. And rest assured that this theme extends into our own lives, into the care taken in growing each seed, and into our families, community, and our extended community that includes each of you. We deeply understand that seeds are not only a desire to eat homegrown tomatoes and radicchio. There are no words adequate to describe the focused sense of well-being and connection that comes from the shared relationship between sower, sown, and sown-in. The joyful realization that we are nourished in relationship with one another. Each action, each seed a gift and a rendering of imaginative, radical uprising!
The last years have been heartbreaking and eye-opening on so many fronts. As we do with seeds, we wish that each new realization gives rise to the opportunity to expand, share, and nourish. The occasion to listen to the stories that connect us and keep us constantly moving towards accountability, justice, and love.”

2023
 “Bre: As the days lengthen, I’m marinating on the theme of rejuvenation. How to lean on the weathered bark of experience as vibrant new growth brews within us. Allowing that bark to crack, just a little, to make space for something new. And as new tendrils emerge and reach for the sun, what ways can we intertwine and lift each other up?
Rio: In a world that can be rife with so much uncertainty, seeds provide me with a groundedness rooted in hope. Seeds are our ancient teachers, patient, enduring, adapting; each single seed birthing miracles all around us!
Scott: I love the work of the growing season and being in the field. But to be filling customers' orders with so much potential is special in its own way. I’m always curious what awaits each order shipped and the stories, memories, and experiences a seed may start. Happy growing, think about the way.”

2024
 “How will all this talk of collective connection being the pathway toward care and justice and the antithesis to othering, war, and all awful things help me know when to sow my flower seeds, how tall the plants may grow, how much fruit they will yield per 300 feet 5’ on-center raised beds?! Browse the site and delight in your dreams. Make them a tangible reality. But here’s a secret: the seeds are not just seeds, not production inputs or things to hoard away in vaults. They are little fires, and there is much to burn down. It can be overwhelming, yes, but when we walk together, leaving a wide swath of small fires in our wake, there is cleared, fertile ground for new seeds to sprout.”

2025
 “Like many of you, we meet the current moment with a heavy heart as witnesses to so much unraveling around us. Over the years, we’ve often said that the state of our relationship with seed and food as a culture is a mirror held up to that of the dominant systems and values at play in our society: that privatized genetics, inequality in land access, fabricated food scarcity, worker and land exploitation... are reflections of a profit-driven individualism. It is also a common refrain that the garden soothes, as a place of respite from the heaviness of the world around us, but what if, instead of going to the garden to escape from something, we went there to grow something? What if we channeled Bertolt Brecht’s notion of art? That our gardens and food communities are not ‘mirrors with which to reflect reality but hammers with which to shape it.’
Be Curious! Be radical! Revolution is what the Earth does. Literally.
Let’s grow to disrupt business as usual and nurture our roots in equity, connection, compassion, collaboration, mutual aid, and justice.”