Going to Seed with Dan Brisebois

This is the journey of how the Tourne-Sol co-operative Farm seed scoop collection evolved.

It is also a story about how most of what we know as farmers we’ve learned from other farmers.

Our First Seed Scoops

In the early Tourne-Sol years, we grew seed for our own use and for a couple seed companies. We didn’t need any seed scoops in those simple days.

But in January 2007, we jumped into the big league. We started selling our seed directly to gardeners and farmers in seed packs.

One of the early challenges we had to overcome was how to get the seed into those packs.

We raided our kitchen and used our fine measuring spoon collection. A collection of tablespoons and teaspoon fractions.

This worked well for beans. But it only gave us so many options.

And then we visited High Mowing Organic Seeds and saw the fine seed scoops they were using.

It took me a few years to track down those fantastic scoops. But when I did, everything changed.

Upping Our Scoop Game Phase 1

The scoops in question were “Lee powder measure kit” gunpowder scoops.

15 scoops smaller than a teaspoon!

I wrote about this farming innovation back in January 2011.

I still love these scoops. (And always will.)

Then we visited High Mowing again and we learned we had not finished the journey to seed scoop mastery.

Upping Our Scoop Game Phase 2

This is what we built after that fateful High Mowing visit.

A wall of scoops with scoops for every occasion.

On the top left, the “Lee powder measure kit” scoops are featured prominently.

On the top right, the kitchen measuring spoons we’ve collected from second hand stores (we left our fine measuring spoons in the kitchen.)

And then scoops and more scoops …

Here’s the High Mowing scoop wall that inspired us to go the distance.

We thought we were we had covered all out bases.

But the journey was not finished.

A facebook post from Lyne Bellemare of Terre Promise seeds brought the latest piece into our seed scoop toolkit.

Upping Our Scoop Game Phase 3

Lyne introduced us to this customizable scoop made from parts you might find around the house (especially with your feet – walking around the house in the dark at night.)

One advantage of this scoop is that it comes in many different colours.

You can also easily switch scoop sizes on the fly.

What Scoop Is Next!

I can only imagine that more seed scoop innovations will come our way.

Perhaps you have the scoop we do not yet know we need!

Do you have a scoop that I should know about?