Our Story

The Seedstead is all about 'bringing seed home', and home is where the heart is. Our heart lies in Africa, in family, in sharing, in seed. We are passionate about what we do and how we do it.

The Seedstead is the next step in our family's journey, but perhaps we need to start at the beginning:

Sean and Nicola ably assisted by Tessa (who actually eats peppers) doing pepper evaluations

on their farm in South Africa.

The Freeman family has a long history in the seed industry, with the origins of The Seedstead rooted in South Africa.

As a young boy in Africa my father was an inveterate seed collector and often had seed in my pockets, these often went through the washing cycle much to my grandmothers "amusement". His seed collecting at that point was typically focused around South African indigenous trees and plants, with him collecting seed anytime he found a tree or plant shedding seed, as he entered his teenage years this interest extended to orchids and other exotic plants.

With the arrival of their first child in 1997 (me), one of their primary goals was to feed me the best food possible, and everyone knows that to do this you had to grow your own organic veggies. Which my parents promptly did.

This specific event is how my dad's journey into vegetable seed started. He was soon collecting vegetable seed from every gardener in the area, and then some.

Within a matter of a year or two, his hobby had become a bit of an obsession, with people calling him from across the country as word of his unusual vegetable seed collection spread. People would call up specifically to ask for rare and unusual vegetable seed varieties, and he would gladly share. The beauty of this was they would often have something to exchange in return, and this added to the collection.

This modest collection formed the basis of South Africa's very first online heirloom seed store, Livingseeds in August of 2009 with me helping as my dad's assistant for many years. Livingseeds is unique in South Africa as we grow over 80% of the seed varieties ourselves on my parents farm. South Africa has stringent seed importation laws, necessitating that they develop techniques that would ensure they could grow a large number of seed varieties in a very small area. Our farm in Africa is just over 80 acres in size with about 35 acres under intensive production in poly-tunnels, isolation cages and open fields

Over the years they have developed a number of proprietary techniques and systems to ensure that they keep our seed varieties pure from generation to generation. Livingseeds will typically grow over 800 varieties of vegetable seed on the farm every year. Getting the timing and logistics right to ensure that only pure seed is produced is a major management task and we are very fortunate that we have a strong team of breeders and production staff to ensure that this happens in the correct sequence every season.

The Seedstead was created when I moved to the US after falling in love and marrying a US citizen so that I can continue the love I have for heirloom seeds started by my father way back in 2009. The Seedstead strives to bring you unique varieties from around the world but with a specific focus on African heirlooms as well as tree seed. We are constantly looking for new varieties and if there is something you miss from home, whether that is Africa or somewhere else in the world, that we don't yet stock please reach out to us as we would love to help bring a taste of home to you!