A conversation between Julia Dakin and Valeria Esqueda.
Julia: What drew you to seeds, or to growing, in the first place?
Val: After graduating, I began volunteering at a community farm that functioned as a space for peer learning, curiosity, and exploration. The project itself was evolving organically, and we were constantly discovering new directions it could take. Through that experience, I became increasingly engaged with ideas surrounding food sovereignty and sustainable living, which naturally led me to conversations with my family. My family grew up within a culture rooted in subsistence farming, so I started asking my mother what it was like to be farmers. She immediately corrected me. She explained that they never identified themselves as “farmers” because growing food was simply a normal part of everyday life. It wasn’t viewed as an occupation or identity, it was just how people lived.
Julia: Where did your mother grow up?
Val: She grew up in a small town in north-central Mexico, in the state of Aguascalientes. In many parts of Mexico, there is a traditional village structure known as an ejido—communal agricultural land stewarded collectively by the community. These ejidos have played an important role in preserving regional landraces and agricultural traditions. I asked her if she had any seeds from that time period, she said no, we lost them, or stopped caring for them. If we're not going to have generational wealth in the form of land, at least it would have been nice to keep our seeds. One of the things that really stands out is policy from the U.S. that impacted Mexican culture, and that was 1994, NAFTA. That was one of the biggest blows to that ejido culture of subsistence farming and communal farming, where everybody helped each other grow through their seasons. There was a portion kept for the family, and a portion that was sold in the market for cash. That made me wonder, where do seeds come from? Those questions led me to seed sovereignty and the work of Vandana Shiva. When I later moved into a paid role at the community farm, I pushed to create a seed library. I began organizing and preserving seeds from the farm, teaching myself labeling, seed saving, and storage techniques as a way to reconnect stewardship, culture, and community.
Julia: How old were you at the time?
Val: About 4 years ago, I was 24 years old. I wanted to do something meaningful and seeds are meaningful to connect to. It was incredibly natural for me, because I saw the conversation around food growing very popular, and I like a challenge, so I thought, well, why aren't we talking about seeds more often? I felt like there was a lot of disregard for seeds because they're small. We lost the stories. There's an active force, everything from policy to corporate patents, trying to keep us from caring about them. Naturally, that drew me in even more. I also began having moments where I realized that seeds are, in many ways, our relatives. Many people believe these seeds were gifted directly from gods, or from the earth, whatever the cultural stories are. For me, they represent the closeness that we as humans have to seeds and to taking care of them. And I see myself as a seed. So I started to have a lot of philosophical shifts emerging at that time as I was growing more. We are seeds. We're a diasporic people. We were brought over here through the same patterns of climate and cultural change.
Julia: So in the last four years, what has your path looked like?
Val: I started a grassroots seed-saving project with a friend and applied for grants to support workshops, seed storage, and educational materials. I became involved with community groups focused on preserving seeds, especially corn, and we began planting in community gardens and saving seeds from Native Seeds/SEARCH. I also received support from CAFF to expand our seed collection and host seed-saving workshops. What started as work quickly became community-centered—just two people trying to get others curious and invested in seed stewardship. Around the same time, I began returning to Mexico with more intention. I had gone every summer since I was young, but now I was going specifically to speak with elders and learn from them.
Julia: You mean returning to your mother's hometown?
Val: Both my mom and dad are from the same place, so I’m able to speak with both sides of my family, who share similar backgrounds. I would ask who was still farming or caring for the land. Last year, I spoke with one of my mom’s uncles, who still grows maize mainly to feed his chickens. What struck me was the shift—from growing food for family consumption to growing for livestock feed. At first, that change felt strange to me, but I realized it reflected a much larger cultural shift. Many in my generation feel disconnected from knowledge that was once ordinary—saving seeds, sustaining crops, and caring for land. What was once common practice is now treated as a niche skill or something sold back to us. I don’t think previous generations let go of seeds easily; I think they were navigating larger questions of survival. Learning about colonial histories and restrictions on seed saving in places like Africa and Central America helped me understand that loss more deeply. I also continued learning from seed keepers and growers through gatherings like the Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Festival a few years ago.
One story that stayed with me was hearing from Guatemalan communities displaced by a violent hydroelectric dam project. It helped me understand that even if seed erasure isn’t always visible in front of me, it’s happening globally.
Julia: When you're not working, where do we find you?
Val: Outside, tending to the plants. I like to make things, so I like to experiment. I'm particularly drawn to woodworking, and also planting things and organizing my seed collection. That's my first line of defense. When I need to be outside, my first instinct is to go immediately outside and see what I can get my hands on. Second would be, right now, rock climbing. That's the fun thing. It keeps me super entertained. It feels like I'm not working out, and for my brain it feels so satisfying to see the colorful holds.
Julia: What drew you to adaptation gardening, and to Going to Seed specifically?
Val: During the pandemic, I read some of Masanobu Fukuoka’s work on natural farming, and it inspired me to experiment with his methods around 2021. I was living in an arid area near Temecula and Fallbrook in inland San Diego County, working with a field that had previously been used for motocross and parking, so the soil was heavily compacted. I wanted to see if a low-effort, regenerative approach could actually restore the land.
Using horse manure from a neighbor, straw bales, cover crops, daikon radish, and homemade clay seed pellets, I started experimenting without buying much of anything, following Fukuoka’s philosophy of simplicity and humility. After a good rain, I began seeing beans and radishes emerge, and I became really drawn to the process of making seed pellets.
Later, when I returned to my hometown and worked at the community garden, I incorporated seed-pellet making into my grant project. We hosted workshops where people could make their own seed pellets and take them home to scatter in gardens, fields, or neglected spaces. I even made them with my grandmother and spread them along a creek bed together. It became more than a farming practice—it became a way of building relationships and connecting with the people I loved.
Julia: Is adaptation gardening an extension of that, learning from the land?
Val: Let things evolve on their own, let things be, let the bugs pollinate. Don't try to add too many things, because you don't know the long-term effects. Learning those things reinforced what Fukuoka was saying in his book, which was that we're very shortsighted. We don't actually know what's best for the planet, because most of us are not listening that deeply to the earth, or to our bodies. At a seed-saving summit in 2024, I connected with the Going to Seed community and learned more about Aadaptation Ggardening, which closely aligned with what I had already been practicing—allowing climate and place to shape which seeds thrive. I was also inspired by Gary Paul Nabhan, whose work explores the relationship between people, seeds, and land. For me, seed saving is both creative and spiritual. I see it as co-creating with the earth rather than controlling it. Adaptation gardening reflects that relationship by allowing seeds to become stronger and more connected to the places where they grow. I think much of that understanding has been lost through modern industrial seed systems.
Julia: Have you had a favorite project, or species, that has drawn you in the most?
Val: One thing I'm very motivated by is fast-growing legumes. Most of the time, in my experience, I've been starting new gardens and new farms. As a landless farmer, I don't have the opportunity to keep building soil for many years at a time. Usually I get to be there for one or two years. I've seen the project I started at a community farm get wiped out to become a parking lot. That was rough. The soil was immaculate. So much work went into building it. Doing soil-building work felt sad. Why am I going to invest so much into the soil when it's going to be wiped out?
I started taking seed saving more seriously, because I can't bring the soil with me, but I can bring these seeds wherever I go. One of the species I was really impressed by was the pigeon pea. I knew very little about it. Pigeon pea, which is very important in the Caribbean, was a beautiful perennial tree in that Zone 9 climate, and it attracted a lot of bumblebees. I enjoyed that it would produce a lot of seed pods. I was focusing on food security a lot, so I thought this would be a great crop to cultivate, as well as a companion plant for things like tomatoes and chili peppers.
In my last farming job in Irvine, I met a Brazilian farmer who was deeply into syntropic farming and agroforestry. He taught me the approach, especially how to build soil from limited resources, which really resonated with my own conditions. From there, I began selecting fast-growing, soil-building crops like daikon radish and pigeon pea, along with roselle from Jamaica, which a friend brought from Oaxaca. We grew and saved seeds in Irvine, and later I tried them in California’s Central Valley, where timing, pests, and climate shifts taught me a lot—rabbits, squirrels, and a short season made success difficult, but I still saved seed.
I’m continuing to learn through each environment, adjusting for local pressures like animals, and trusting that I’ll be able to carry these seeds forward. My current approach is to work with new or unworked soils by combining a primary crop with supporting plants like daikon to improve soil structure. It’s a dense, collaborative planting system—almost like building a living guild where plants support each other, and I guide it through observation, chop-and-drop, and timing.
Julia: You mentioned ancestral crops from your parents' village. Are you still working with any of those?
Val: Yes. I grew Chapalote corn, an ancient variety from the semi-arid regions of Jalisco and Sinaloa, sourced from Native Seeds/SEARCH. It was my first successful milpa crop, and it was meaningful to bring it home and have my family identify it as pinole corn or maíz prieto, connecting it back to their knowledge.
Through that experience, I learned milpa is a multi-species system—not just corn, beans, and squash, but also plants like tomatillo, chile, and quelites. Since then, I’ve been focusing on Mesoamerican crops like amaranth, Chapalote corn, and cowpeas, including varieties from Botswana and the Tohono O’odham. I am drawn to resilient, low-input landraces that thrive in dry conditions with minimal care. I’ve also been experimenting with seed saving across these crops, continuing to build out a diverse, adaptive seed collection.
Julia: What kind of stories are you most excited to tell for Going to Seed?
Val: I’m most excited to tell stories of connection: how farmers, land stewards, growers, and gardeners are actively preparing for each growing season, and the care work that goes into that process. I was moved by what Gail Fuller (Circle 7 Farm) said about how difficult it is to find reliable, non-corporate seed at scale. I have spent a lot of time with small-scale and urban growers, and I’m especially interested in those who are experimenting and learning through practice. I want to ask how this work has impacted their lives—how it changes how they move through the world, how they speak, and how they see things. For me, that transformation is the most important part.