Evening of Memory Stories titled «What grew in the Livonian coastal gardens?» and the start of the seed exchange season 2024
On February 22nd at 5:00 PM, at the Livonian community house at Kolka.
Event Host: Rūta Abaja
Let's collectively reminisce about what grew in the gardens of the Livonian settlements and in the orchards. Perhaps there are still some plants that adorned the settlements from earlier times!
Participants are encouraged to bring their own collected plant seeds; at the end of the event, a seed exchange will take place.
Cultural heritage is not only folk songs, historical objects of the past, clothing, buildings, and stories of events. It also includes traditional dishes prepared mostly from self-grown food. Enjoying childhood or ancestral dishes today isn't just about replicating recipes; it's also about the origin of the products, the land they come from, and the varieties or local breeds of plants or livestock that have grown.
The skill of the Livonians in cooking fish dishes is renowned, but for sklandrausis – it required one's own rye, potatoes, and carrots. Although the land in the Livonian coast is flat, everyone has grown plants for self-consumption, livestock, and for beauty, which, along with buildings, people, and lifestyle, are an integral characteristic of the Livonian coastal landscape. But how much do we know and remember about what grew in the Livonian coastal settlements?
The Evening of Memory Stories "What Grew in the Livonian Coastal Gardens?" is an invitation to collectively recall plants, their cultivation habits – to help document these hitherto overlooked landscapes and parts of Livonian coastal settlements. And perhaps together we will still discover some plants whose seeds or seedlings are still being nurtured in a settlement and could be considered as inherited Livonian or Livonian coastal cultural plants!
The sharing of memory and experience stories at the event will be encouraged by the messenger of the history of inherited and nurtured cultural plants, Rūta Abaja, who has been maintaining a seed exchange point at the Kolka library since 2021. At the end of the Evening of Memory Stories, every attendee will be invited to explore the range of seeds available in the Kolka seed exchange box. We especially encourage those who have collected seeds of a particular plant themselves and have brought them along for the exchange to participate!
