Learn how to clean seeds easily & professionally at the homestead garden scale.
In this course you will learn…
* How to clean seed professionally. * How to get started selling your seeds. * To use low-tech, inexpensive methods. * Methods for dry and wet seed processing. * How plant lifecycles and lifespans affect seeds. * A framework for working with any type of seed. * To work with annual, biennial & perennial seeds. * From many examples that demystify seed cleaning. * To process veggie, herb, flower, fruit & berry seeds. * Seed processing for any size garden up to small farm.
with detailed photos, videos and a reference guide… plus a bonus module on The Business of Selling Seeds!
This Course Includes
Each module clearly outlines the techniques and approaches available in your seed cleaning toolkit. We include numerous examples working with various structures of seed heads and shapes of seeds. You will learn how to process and clean nearly any seed that you may want to grow.
Harvesting Seed
We cover how to time your harvest with a plant’s lifecycle. We show you what to look for as seeds ripen on your plants.
Threshing Seed
Learn how to separate seed from the dried flower head using your hands and feet as the primary tools. We cover many methods of threshing.
Winnowing Seed
We share how we use fan powered wind to separate heavier seed from lighter chaff. We offer many techniques and tips.
Screening Seed
Find out how to use screens to separate seeds from chaff. We encourage starting with inexpensive sieves, but professional screen options are also covered.
Wet Processing
Learn how to process wet seeded crops like tomatoes, squash, peppers as well as perennial fruit and berries. We share various methods and when to apply each one.
Storing Seed
We cover proper storage of cleaned seed to ensure viability and longevity. Learn the value of having backup seed stocks.
BONUS! The Business of Selling Seeds
Get started selling seed right away with our primer on starting a homestead seed business or part-time gig. We cover what you’ll need to consider before growing seed contracts or opening your own seed catalog.
Meet Your Teacher
Hi, I’m Noel!
From the start of my homesteading journey I’ve had a huge passion for plant propagation and working with seeds.
Seeds have given me so much joy through experiencing their beauty and magic. I’m also grateful that they share an opportunity for our family to enjoy additional revenue through stewarding and selling seed from our homestead garden.
I am honored to share insights from our family’s unique skill set. This course covers processing not only annual vegetable seeds, but also includes solid knowledge regarding cleaning and stewarding perennial seed from temperate flowers, herbs, berries and fruits.
Lately I’m working toward more resilience in our homestead gardens by embracing genetic diversity and always, always learning to work with Mother Earth. I’m grateful you’re here!
Our Family’s Background with Seeds
Ann and I have been growing, cleaning and selling seeds at the homestead scale for 7+ seasons. When we first learned how easy and fun it was to clean seeds with low tech methods, we started our own part-time homestead seed company.
Growing, cleaning and selling seeds has been a natural extension of our gardening efforts. We sell seeds by the packet directly to gardeners, and we also grow small seed contracts for a regional seed company.
Learning to process seeds empowered us with an additional revenue stream from our homestead activities and deepened our relationship with plants and their seeds.
We’ve grown accustomed to having a higher quality and quantity of seeds available at any given time to share with family, friends and our local community. We enjoy participating in the gift economy through seeds—receiving seeds is something every gardener gets excited about. What a joy!
Cleaning seeds is truly a family friendly activity. Like so many other aspects or gardening and homesteading, we’ve been able to share our seed business with our son since he was a toddler. So much of the process of harvesting and cleaning seeds is tactile, sensory and delightful—it’s been very natural to share every aspect of working with seeds with our little one.
We believe these skills and knowledge needs to be shared with the gardening culture at large. We want to help encourage and empower other gardeners and families to work with seeds. Seed stewardship skills are needed in every region, every community, every neighborhood to help ensure our global human community’s resilience, independence and connection with nature.
Homestead Culture’s course, Seed Processing for Abundance, acts as a comprehensive guide detailing the multi-faceted process of seed production for homesteaders and aspiring seed farmers alike. Creators Ann and Noel share their knowledge and passion for seed preservation through detailed explanations of each step of the process, offering helpful examples to illustrate their methodology along the way. They skillfully anticipate many of the common mistakes and potential risks that accompany seed production, offering troubleshooting suggestions that prove helpful to both beginners and more seasoned seed savers. Seed Processing for Abundance is an excellent resource for all levels of seed producers as it highlights the joy of saving and producing seeds while making the process accessible and inspirational!
Ellyn Greene — Owner and operator of Wayward Acres, Oregon
The proper way to save seeds for your food bank can be learned through trial and error over years of moldy or insect-ridden stores and poor harvests, or it can be learned through this thorough and knowledgeable course on seed saving. We all seek tips from those more experienced than ourselves, and this course delivers. Easily followed, well laid-out, this seed-saving course is packed with information and personal experience, as well as tips on how to sell seed. It explores harvesting, preparing, and storing seed without complicated or expensive equipment, and even shows how to easily winnow grains. Save yourself years of disappointment and take homesteadculture.com’s seed-saving course.
Diane C. Kennedy — Finch Frolic Garden Permaculture, Southern California
Noel and Ann’s Seed Processing Course is thorough, complete, and demonstrates that they’ve done their work through the seasons. Their practical tips from their own experience is super helpful and useful, and very DIY friendly. I particularly love their tips for processing so many different types of seeds. It inspires me to widen my scope of seeds that I save in my home garden! This course is easy to follow, concise, and has just the right humble details to feel empowered to try saving seeds.
Amy Rhine — Restoration Seeds, Oregon
Seeds are epitome of abundance. Nature is inherently abundant and relies on a myriad of everything so she can thrive. The simplest step away from the scarcity paradigm so deeply ingrained in our minds in the very recent several millennia… is the act of seed saving. A powerful creative act of natural selection, simple, but profound. For beginners and more advanced growers alike, this course will offer you a comprehensive process, a step-by-step guide and a deeper understanding of the culture of seed. While it’s impossible to encompass such a broad topic in a single book or video or course online, “Seed Processing for Abundance” will help you take your first confident steps on a never ending path towards regeneration, abundance and love for those tiny, yet mighty heroes, the seeds.
Bobby — Small Scale Permaculture, Bulgaria
Enroll Now!
Enjoy immediate access to the full course for life.
Passionate gardeners wanting a more intimate connection with seeds.
Homesteaders looking for an in-depth and comprehensive guide on seed cleaning.
Anyone interested in generating an income from selling home grown seeds.
People who want to learn how to clean and store small or large quantities of seed for food.
Students wanting to learn seed cleaning with a low-tech, inexpensive method that can scale from the home garden to a small farm operation.
Individuals wanting to offer high quality seed to their communities at local seed swaps or seed libraries.
Gardeners who wish to discover if seed cleaning is something they enjoy.
This course isn’t for:
People that don’t care about growing seed for selling, sharing or eating.
People needing a course that teaches the ins-and-outs of plant breeding and seed selection.
Large farmers whose scale requires expensive specialized equipment.
Those who don’t see the value in stewarding local seed.
Those not caring to further their relationship with plants and seeds.
Those that don’t see the importance of resiliency through local seed.
Those that don’t get excited about having a more intimate connection to life cycles in the garden.
Top 5 Ways this Course is Unique
1. Focus on Seed Cleaning
Most seed saving books include information about cleaning seeds, but it’s often lacking in details or examples and techniques and methods are often limited to a chapter at most. This course fills that gap by focusing largely on seed processing.
2. Diversity of Plants
Seed cleaning information is often limited primarily to vegetables. Our family also works with herb, flower, fruit and berry seeds. We also work with seeds from edible and medicinal weeds and some native plants. We are proud to offer seed processing examples covering a wide spectrum of plants and seeds.
3. Choose Your Adventure
Seed cleaning can be creative and fun! There are usually more than one way to harvest and process any given type of seed. We include many examples illustrating a gradient of options so that you can choose what feels right to you.
4. Rich Resource
This course is rich with examples and techniques, more than most gardeners will practice in a single season. Consider it not only an instructional and inspirational guide, but also a resource that you can pull up to refer to, whether your curiosity calls from the garden or your living space in the winter months as you plan your next growing season.
5. Embrace Natural Abundance
Seeds (and nature) dance to tunes of abundance. This course embraces the natural patterns of abundance, mirrored by our joy, delight and gratitude for seed, as part of our dedication to share openly from our hearts.
Just completed the Seed Processing for Abundance by Noel and Ann of Homestead Culture. WOW! So impressed with the thoroughness of this online course. It covers all aspects of seed saving, storage, and selling. I am a visual learner and love hearing about lessons learned in the field (best kind of education out there). Noel and Ann have created a learning line that speaks from their experience, education and hearts. They share with you their mentors and cite resources that they learned from along the way. There are pictures and/or videos in most lessons to make it clear to the processes they are teaching you. There are also helpful links to more in-depth information if you want to dive in deeper into a particular lesson. The lessons are diverse not only in the seed saving conversation, but in budgetary diversity and geographic considerations. Whether you are in the South or the Northwest you aren’t left out.
Formerly a Community Farmer from Southern California now located in the South, learning to grow in a more humid environment—Noel and Ann address how to be mindful of storage when living in humid environments, and options to consider.
I have started seed saving and had concerns about the seeds I saved not being true to the parent as my plots are close together. I have been set FREE from this mind set of achieving seed “purity” as the lesson plan introduced me to Grexes and Landraces!!!! I have always loved my vegetables grown from my seed saving but there was always the notion that things need to be true and pure in seed saving. As I go through my life one of my little golden rules has always been diversity and moderation in all things. I was glad to be reminded it applies to seeds TOO!
Thank you for creating such a loving impactful Homesteading Classroom that makes you feel like you are part of the family as you share with us your love of life, seed and Mother Earth.
Gloria Broming — Former Community Farmer, Tennessee
Frequently Asked Questions
How long will I have access to this course?
This course is evergreen so you will have ongoing access! You can access the course anytime. Progress at your own pace.
Are you available for help during the course?
Yes! We’d love to answer questions that may come up in your seed cleaning adventure. Every lesson in the course has a comment section. We suggest asking questions in the comments so that everyone can learn together.
What is the format of this online course?
The materials are presented as a series of lessons, organized into modules. You can follow the course chronologically or jump around as desired. While most of the content is written, there are also detailed images and helpful videos to help demonstrate crucial details and processes.
If I change my mind after purchasing can I have a refund?
Due to the nature of sharing digital content, we do not offer refunds.
What if I want to learn how to clean a specific seed?
This course includes many, many examples of cleaning seed through photos and videos. In those examples, processing seed of many distinct species of veggies, herbs and flowers are demonstrated.
Through these examples our goal is to show how we work with seeds of various shapes, sizes, weights, and textures. Through this variety we hope to demonstrate how you can take what you’ve learned and apply the skills to any type of seed you may encounter. We want to help empower you to work with any seeds that interest you.
With that said, we don’t claim to offer examples of cleaning every seed out there. If you are working with a seed that doesn’t have similar characteristics to our examples, or if you get stuck processing any seed you are working with, you can reach out in the comments for feedback and we will help with feedback.
Do I need to be a homesteader to take this course?
Definitely not! This course is ideal for any passionate gardener that wants to learn the ins and outs of seed cleaning. Furthermore, whether you are an urban or rural gardener does not matter; the concepts and methods shared in this course are applicable to a wide range of contexts.
I am not sure if I want to sell seeds.
This course is not just for starting a seed business. Although we do share information that can help you determine if selling seeds is right for you.
Some people want to learn how to clean seeds so that they can share quality seeds with their families, friends and communities. Seeds make amazing gifts!
In addition, this course is also intended to help families, homesteaders and gardeners clean bulk seed for consumption. We use the techniques shared in this course to clean seeds that our family consumes.
For example we clean beans and corn prior to storing them in our pantry for cooking and eating. We also clean seeds to use as spices such as fennel seed, mustard seed, breadseed poppy, onion seed, and many more.
We’ve even winnowed and screened some cracked nuts from their shells using the process outlined in this course.
What if I want to grow seeds at a farm scale?
The seed processing methods that we share are scalable from an urban garden on up to a small farm scale. We are sharing low-tech options for cleaning seed without machinery (other than an electric fan).
The methods we are presenting are tried and true, having been put to the test through the ages for small farms and homesteads alike. In fact we initially learned how to clean seeds using low tech methods from farmer Don Tipping at Siskiyou Seeds who proves every season that expensive specialized equipment are not needed to clean seeds at the farm scale.
Even if you decide to invest in specialized equipment later to mechanize and speed up the processes, its a great idea to learn the fundamentals of low tech seed cleaning by hand initially to really embody the process, for having backup options should machinery ever fail, and for working with smaller seed lots where larger equipment would be overkill.
As a bonus we also offer suggestions and resources for homemade seed cleaning machines for the DIY-ers that want to save money from buying new seed cleaning equipment.
What supplies will I need?
Our initial investment in supplies that we still rely on was under $30. Many of the supplies we already had on hand in our kitchen and garden shed. The rest were purchased second hand in thrift stores and yard sales. That doesn’t preclude you from buying new supplies, but it doesn’t have to be expensive.
For dry processing you will need:
Box fan with a speed dial.
Plastic containers of various sizes for holding seed heads and seeds such as: Yogurt containers, 5 gallon buckets, totes (plastic bins). For larger size seed crops used plastic barrels are handy.
Tarp and old pillowcases (optional)
Screens. We use kitchen sieves and colanders that are easily found at thrift stores. You can also make your own, or purchase professional screens. Each option are outlined in more detail in this course.
Mask or bandana (recommended) for protecting your lungs from dust while winnowing.
For wet processing you will need:
Containers of various sizes: 5 gallon buckets, quart or gallon jars or yogurt containers.
Screens (optional but helpful)
Water.
What are your qualifications?
Noel and Ann both attended the Seed Academy training at Siskiyou Seeds in the Spring of 2018.
We have both been growing, ethically wildcrafting, cleaning and selling seed for 7+ seasons.
We grow small seed contracts for a regional seed company.
We run our own family seed company selling seeds directly to gardeners through our website.
We steward seed for many of the crops that we grow in our homestead gardens.
We hold permaculture design certificates from The Ecology Center and San Diego Living Institute.
We have apprenticed directly with mentors at over a dozen farms (urban & rural), homesteads and permaculture gardens.
We have over 15 years of gardening experience including two suburban gardens and three rural gardens.
Noel has held various paying jobs at a permaculture garden, a bio-dynamic orchard and a native landscape design company.
Ann has held various paying jobs in the field of flower farming.
