Finney Farm grows, packages, and distributes free organic, open-pollinated, heirloom seed. We do this to improve food access for our community and as a food sovereignty strategy.
In case you don't watch the video-a very small group of dedicated volunteers grows, packages, and shares these seeds at no cost. We don't have outside funding or grants, and this little group pays for all of the costs for this program. We operate on an extremely tight budget.
Feb 28 Update: Seed Request form is currently closed. We will use this week to process requests and ship next week. It is possible that we may reopen the request form at that time if we have enough seed inventory. To give an idea of volume--through shipping and pickup to households and organizations, we have had requests for over 7000 packages of seed in the past two weeks! The Gofundme page is open for donations if you are interested in supporting this work!
February 27 Update: Wow!
We greatly appreciate all the support on Gofundme! So amazing!!! We have had an unprecedented number of seed requests and will be closing the request form soon. We had budgeted $1000 (see the Gofundme link) to ship seed to low income households or community projects and we are just about at that number, counting only those who did not donate to cover shipping. As we run out of funds for to cover shipping for those who can't afford to donate, we will prioritize those who are in the Cascadia bioregion, those who indicated need, and those from historically lower income areas.
We have a new process for seed requests. Instead of a paypal link to cover shipping, we are running a gofundme campaign. If possible, we ask that low income households consider donating $5-$6 to cover actual postage for shipment, and other households consider donating $25-$100 to cover shipping for themselves and others who cannot afford to do so, and to help cover our out of pocket expenses in operating the seed distro.
We will accept as many seed requests for free seed as we can afford to ship. More donations on gofundme mean we can send more free seed. Our backyard gardener pack includes 20 packets of seed which has a retail value of about $90 plus shipping. If we could get 60 donors to contribute $100 each, ALL of our seed expenses could be covered for the entire year and allow us to ship 4000 packets of seed plus another 5000+ packets sent/delivered to schools, food banks, etc. All labor is volunteer in this program-no one is paid. We will accept as many seed requests for free seed as we can afford to ship and will update this page to reflect changes as needed. You can check out a little video about our project here https://youtu.be/_RyKwijCbjA
Feb 25 update: 40% of seed requests do not include a $5 donation to cover shipping. In 2020 and 2021, 95% of folks donated the cost of shipping, so this change is surprising to us and we will likely not be able to continue to shipments much longer at this rate as we will run out of funds. If you are local, save on shipping by choosing the pickup option. We normally distribute all seeds in person at events but during the pandemic began offering a shipping option. We do not have any way to cover shipping costs other than donations.
1. Visit our gofundme page for more details on our 2022 seed distro campaign.
2. Complete a seed request form. https://forms.gle/CZgYFoqh816Navcb9
PLEASE FILL THIS OUT ENTIRELY-we cannot ship seeds unless we have your complete mailing address. Unfortunately we do not have time to send emails and track down folks with incomplete info.
3. A backyard gardener set of seeds includes 20 packets. Scroll down to get an idea of what seeds you might receive!
If you are local, the seed request form (link above) has an option to arrange local pickup.
If you are an community minded organization who'd like some seeds, please use the request form link above and we can arrange for a quantity of free seeds to be shipped to you or picked up. We like to send seeds to organizations with a focus on populations including Indigenous/Native/First Nations, children, low income, immigrant, BIPOC, LGBTQ+, local to the Cascadia bioregion, or other social justice/outreach. Thanks friends, for growing food!
PS-Please save your seed! Folks at the Seed Ambassadors Project have a great downloadable/printable free publication to help you learn how: https://www.seedambassadors.org/seed-saving-guide/
If you are able to make a larger contribution, we would receive it with gratitude and continue the seed distro endeavors! Thank you!
This is a complete list of our seeds available for distribution in 2022 and quantities greatly vary (for example, we may begin with 500 packages of Scarlet Runner beans but only 120 of Leeks ). This is intended to give an idea of what may be possible rather than what you will actually access.
Lettuce mix (includes 6+ varieties)
Kale Mix (includes 4 varieties)
Rainbow Chard
Sunflower mix (6+ varieties inc mammoth, red, branching etc)
Flower mix (includes 6-10 varieties)
Rainbow Carrot mix (orange, red, yellow, white, purple)
Andover Parsnip
Cherokee Trail of Tears bean
French Climbing Bean
Finney Homestead Bean
Scarlett Runner Bean
Cranberry Pole Bean
Turkey Craw Pole Bean
Soup Pea
Hidatsa Shield Figure Pole Bean
Hot Pepper Mix (includes 6+ varieties)
Heirloom slicer tomato mix (includes about 15 varieties in a rainbow of colors)
Tomatillo (green and purple)
Cucumber mix (slicers including lemon cukes)
Winter Squash Mix (includes a few varieties)
Painted Mountain Corn (colorful corn for grinding, not sweet corn)
Basil (includes four varieties, two purple and two green)
King Sieg Leek
Broccoli Open Pollinated Mix (mostly two varieties best suited for fall)
Celery (contains a green variety and a red variety)
Rhutabaga
Turnip
Herb Garden Mix
Shirofumi Soybean
Black Kabouli Garbanzo Beans
One of our primary endeavors is our Seed Distro project. This project began around 2005, when we packaged up some of our homegrown seeds to share at the Okanogan Family Faire. It was such a success that we continued to grow and package seed, expanding our project and reach.
Over the years, our program as expanded. We now grow, package, and distribute around 10k packages of heirloom, open pollinated, organic seed at no charge each year. We mostly work with food banks, schools, community gardens, and low income households, but really...anyone can request some free seed for their project.
People often ask us why we don't sell our seed? Basically, we just want more people to grow their own food. We want organizations to help people learn to grow food and provide garden space for people who have none. We want heirloom varieties to be preserved, and to encourage species diversity for the health of our planet and people. So, we give our seed away to those who need it and will make use of it.
Our budget is tiny because it comes from the pockets of the volunteers who do the work.
We stretch every penny and rely entirely on volunteers for growing, processing, packaging, and distributing seed. Currently, about 5% of our budget comes from outside donations at events but we'd love to have more help with this project. If you'd like to make a monetary donation, please visit https://gofund.me/596e651f
You can check out a little video about our project here
This one is an older version, from 2014