Forest Shomer – Native Seeds and Prairie Restoration
Business-Organization: Inside Passage Seeds
FOREST SHOMER began saving seeds in 1969, and has been a full-time independent professional seedman since 1973. He founded and directed the nonprofit Abundant Life Seed Foundation in 1975, transplanted to the Olympic rainshadow in 1977, and settled in Port Townsend early in 1980, producing and distributing up to 600 types of seeds of open-pollinated vegetables, herbs and flowers, along with Northwest native species. Since 1992, he has owned and operated Inside Passage Seeds, listing 200 seeds of tree, shrub, wildflower and grass species of the coastal Northwest from SE Alaska to northern California. Beginning in 1974, he has regularly given workshops on seed-saving, herbs, and related issues of genetic diversity, more than 200 presentations in all. He gave the keynote address for the 2012 Northwest Permaculture Convergence and the Regenerations (Kauai) Seed and Plant Exchange in 2013. He has been wildcrafting Northwest plants for nearly 50 years.
In May 2018, he conceived and co-founded the WA nonprofit, Olympic Peninsula Prairies, together with bioremediation specialist Howard Sprouse and native-plant, bird, and whale expert Fred Sharpe.
Forest has served his community in leadership roles in Sacred Agriculture, Parks Commission, County Noxious Weed Board, Native Plant Society, and other ecology-centered ways for more than 40 years. He was the charter President of Friends of Fort Worden, and has spent hundreds of hours as a Park volunteer, removing invasive species from Fort Worden’s most unique and sensitive native-vegetation areas.
Port Townsend WA
United States
Website: https://www.insidepassageseeds.com
https://olympicpeninsulaprairies.godaddysites.com/
Social Media: https://www.facebook.com/Inside-Passage-Seeds-112996893031/
Workshop(s)
Workshop 1: Olympic Peninsula Prairies
Preservation, restoration and perpetuation of the ancestral prairies of the Olympic Peninsula. Before colonization, the Olympic Peninsula was home to thousands of acres of native prairie, both dryland (camas and Garry oak as principal components) and wetland (principally camas or beargrass, plus wetland shrubs). Prairies were maintained via periodic burning by the tribes. Historically, large prairie areas could be found at the four ‘corners’ of the Peninsula: southwest; northwest; north-northeast; and southeast. After diseases decimated the tribes, and burning became limited or prohibited after settlement, most of the prairie acreage was lost to farming, urban development, incipient woodlands, or neglect dominated by invasive species. Olympic prairie is now one of the most endangered ecotypes in this area. Olympic Peninsula Prairies is a Washington registered nonprofit organization (2018) working to identify sites that still support, or could be revitalized to support, authentic native prairie habitat. Two principal members, Forest Shomer and Howard Sprouse, are co-presenting this workshop.
