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Old December 10, 2006   #4
carolyn137
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Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Upstate NY, zone 4b/5a
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What you see at Sandhill are two people, Glenn and his wife Linda, who are totally dedicated to the preservation of vegetable and poultry heirloom varieties.

Making enough money to cover their expenses is always a plus, and hasn't always happened, but making a significant profit is not their style, especially with Glenn still having his day job teaching to augment their hobby business.

Sure, I think they'd like to both spend full time at this hobby business but that can't be done now for lots of reasons.

Glenn has worked with Kent at SSE almost since the inception of SSE in 1975 and is still the Curator for Cucurbits although he spends less time there of late after teaching them how to pollinate cukes and melons and the like.

Glenn has been influential in getting many others involved in seed and poultry preservation and first knew Jere Gettle at Baker Creek when Jere was a youngster and ordered some heirloom birds, to give just one example.

And seldom will you find two people so very honest and above board about everything they do.

So that's why over the years we have been good friends, and that's why I send the best of my best to him re tomato varieties, and others do the same for their specialties, which gives him some very unique varieties not available elsewhere.

Sweet potato slips? Nope, I've never grown a sweet potato and it looks like I won't, but what a wonferful collection and it's one of Glenn's favorites. As I've said before, he's not a tomato eater of note altho Linda is.

And for the above reasons I wrote here, I do refer folks to Sandhill time and time again, not just b'c the prices are low, but b'c his reputation for tomato seed purity is superb. No place producing their own seed is going to be perfect b'c it's OP varieties they're dealing with, and those places who subcontract out and sometimes buy off the shelf can also have purity problems as well.

And the number of seeds they send out/pack of tomato seeds leans towards the ridiculous. But that's Glenn and Linda for you......always more than less.

Sure they get behind with orders after they start taking orders after Christmas, and yes, when it gets bad they do have a person or two who might help, but how can you expect ASAP processing at a place where there are no paid employees, as there are at Baker Creek and TGS and many others?

I personally would like to see them be able to let Glenn quit his day job and do only his veggie and poultry preservation, but when and if that ever happens is for sure in the future and not known.

We're pretty much in contact year round and I let him down this year again, b'c I'd offered to flesh out some of the tomato blurbs, and he accepted, and forgot to do so and felt bad about that. No, I wouldn't have said this tastes like this or that, I would only have added the basics such as leaf type, indet, det, maybe fruit shape and size and general DTM, as we have discussed. And only for those varieties I know b'c there are lots that he lsits that I've not grown.

Maybe next year.
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