My Appalachian Life: Appalachian Seed Savers Swap, Pikeville, KY, April 4, 2026

Monday, May 25, 2026

Appalachian Seed Savers Swap, Pikeville, KY, April 4, 2026

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Photo Above Bill Best and John Coykendall, by Ashley Valentine-Coykendall. On Saturday, April 4, 2026, my wife Candice and I traveled to Pikeville, Kentucky, to the Appalachian Seed Savers Swap primarily to be able to spend time with our good friend Bill Best. We were able to spend time with Bill and his daughter Barbara, but the entire experience was one of the best days on the road we have had in quite some time. But for those of you who do not know about Bill Best and his writing here are some links to a few of the posts I have written over the last several years about Bill's writing and seed saving and propagating work. This link connects you to my reflections on one of Bill Best's two books on Appalachian Seed Saving. The book is called "Kentucky Heirloom Seed,:Growing, Eating, Saving". Since this blog post is intended to primarily be about the seed swap and seed saving, it seems judictious to support the work Bill Best has done in that field before moving on to post several links about Bill Best's excellent work in the fields of Appalachian Studies and Satirical Fiction. Bill Best is a master of many fields, a true polymath. This link will take you to a satirical book by Bill Best called "Li'l Donnie" for which I wrote the afteword. This link will take you to a blog post about a book of essays about Appalachian Culture which Bill Best edited called "100 Years Of Appalachian Visions" which is still pertinent today in the field of Appalachian Studies. This link will take you to a blog post about another satirical book by Bill Best called "The Tragedy Of Platitudinous Piety". This link takes you to my blog post about another excellent book by Bill Best in the field of Appalacian Studies called "The Appalachiain Renaissance At Berea College, 1944-1994". I have no clear idea of how many people were there in total or how many vendors were there either. We had also wanted to attend the swap as a tribute to our good friend Frank Barnett who had died on March 18, 2026, after having suffered a cascading series of health problems which began in the early fall with a cardiac valve replacement surgery. The seed swap organizers held a brief but heartfelt memorial tribute and prayer to Frank Barnett. His far too early death was a topic of discussion all day long and the length and breadth of his friendships in the field of Appalachian Seed Saving was readily apparent all day long. Frank would have been quietly modesty but proud of how he had affected many of the seed savers in the crowd.

Another highlight of the event for Candice and I was getting to meet another legendary seed saver, John Coykendall and his wife Ashley. I also bought a copy of John's book, "Preserving Our Roots: My Journey to Save Seeds and Stories" which I am in the process of finding is a masterpiece in the field of Seed Saving. The book lists teh authorship as John Coykendall with Christina Melton and with Photographs by Sarah Hackenberg. Ms. Hackenberg's photographs are exceptional. The book is also sprinkled with photographic reproductions of the many pertinent journal pages of John Coykendall who has been drawing and writing in leatherbound journals for most of his life. He was also a formally trained artist and art instructor and his pencil drawings on the pages of his journals are both highly artistic and suitably educational. They are first and foremost art, but also secondarily serve the educational purpose of the book. The book focuses primarily on Washington Parish Louisiana but does make periodic references to John Coykendall's life in Tennessee. I will post a discussion of that book when I have finished reading it in the next few days.

I believe it goes without saying anything further that both my wife and I thoroughly enjoyed our trip to the seed swap. It will not be our last. I haven't gardened in quite a few years, but having grown up in a gardening family where we grew, saved, canned, froze, dried, or otherwise preserved nearly everything we ate, I was not a total stranger to the world of Appalachian gardening and seed saving. I am not likely to become a devoted seed saver at this stage in my life. But I am fascinated by the devotion to their avocation which seed savers exhibit on a daily basis.