Deeply Rooted - A Documentary with John Coykendall

On Sunday, November 5, my documentary “Deeply Rooted, John Coykendall’s Journey to Save Our Seeds and Stories” aired on PBS. It was a wonderful experience to see so many years of recording work come to fruition.

My story began many years ago in Washington Parish, Louisiana, when I began collecting heritage seeds and recording stories, tales and legends from that area.

From the very beginning, I realized that the stories and knowledge that I was exposed to on a daily basis were worthy of being recorded, and it was important that I record them.

Just as we have experienced great losses in our food crop diversity, we have also lost a great amount of knowledge from the older generations of farmers who are no longer with us. That is why I continue to work so hard to record as much knowledge as I can and seek out remaining seed varieties before they are lost.

For many years, I wondered what I would do with all of the material that I had collected in my drawing notebooks. A chance meeting at the Blackberry Farm Garden Shed with documentary producer Christine Melton turned my dreams of making those works into a documentary into a reality.

All along, I have felt that this isn’t so much a story about me as it is a story to honor those who have contributed so much to my life – from knowledge shared to the seeds that they passed down to me to preserve for future generations. I feel a great responsibility to record their histories and be the caretaker of their seeds.

I hope that this documentary will serve as an inspirational message to inspire a new generation to become recorders of knowledge and history and savers of our heritage seed varieties.

– John Coykendall, Master Gardener

Watch the full documentary on LPB.com, available until November 25.

Learn more about John Coykendall and hear his interview with Debbie Elliott aired on NPR Weekend Edition.