Reflections on 60 Years of Tree Crops with Robert Seip

Apr 22, 2024

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Through a confluence of events I was connected with one of the elders of the tree crops world, Bob Seip, and was invited to his farm, buried in rural Pennsylvania. Bob, or Robert, depending on how you know him, has seen a lot at 94, and after walking around the property buried in a foot of snow, it became clear he didn’t feel remotely finished yet.

We gathered around his kitchen table, surrounded by recording equipment and dogs and bowls of cracked hickories and butternuts, outside of cell phone services, talking about 70 years of farming and memories of his contemporaries and the trees that covered his landscape. Upon arriving, Zach Elfers, a prior guest on the podcast, shared his own stories of Bob. Robert’s daughter, Emilie Swackhammer and her husband Scott joined us under the cocktail tree, a tree next to the home with countless grafts, some of which may be cultivars thought to have been lost. For everything Robert has forgotten, his wife Cindy remembers and candidly chimes in between making sure everyone is fed.

There’s nothing quite like a conversation around a kitchen table about the things we are passionate about. This was a joy to share and I am incredibly indebted to the Seip family, as well as Zach & Carissa for sharing the moment with me. Of course, no good deed can go unpunished, as it goes, and after trekking offroad as the sun set to view some of the oldest planted trees on the property, my phone went missing and was only found by flashlight. Further, despite bringing backup recording gear, because of course when it’s the worst possible time for something to go wrong, it will, we still managed to have some audio issues. The most prominent issues are at the beginning of the episode, so please make it through the first few moments and it gets better.