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Brook wrote: I've received two seperate emails from DGers asking how I got interested in heirlooms. Funny thing is, that's something I always wonder about other people. So let's swap stories.
My interest came through the back door. One of my hobbies is living hisory---my wife and I re-enact 18th century lifestyles, generaly the 1750-1800 time frame, and, more specifically, the trans-Allegheny exploration and settlement period.
From that we developed a deep interest in period foodways, so much so that we became "authorities" on it. For awhile I wrote a monthly column, "Historic Foodways" in a living history magazine. And we even wrote a booklet, "A Colonial Cookery Sampler," for people interested in replicating 18th century dishes.
The next logical step was to grow the actual vegetable varieties of the period, so I started a colonial kitchen garden project. And from there, just like topsey, it just growed.
Freelance writers aren't allowed to have hobbies. Everything becomes grist for the writing mill. So I started writing about heirlooms as well as growing them. This, naturally, put me in contact with the really knowledgeable people like Will Weaver, and Kent Whealy, and Darrell Merrill, and John Swenson, and Jeff Nekola, and Joe Cavanaugh, and so on and so on, which merely fired my interest further.
So now, many people group me with those experts. Ain't so! There is too much that I don't know for that to be true. I'm just fortunate in that I can call upon the real experts to answer questions about those many things I don't know.
What about the rest of you? How'd you get involved?
