Well then your packages only gets half way and there comes your mistake. Again, you started with the wrong premise that only get’s you half way and that’s why you make the same mistake over and over. You need to calculate so that your 2 packages go from end to end. That’s why steps are 0.5 so that you can make 34 steps that your packages must travel in total. Like I said, your melon example misleads you because it has completely different purpose than serendipity. You sharing only your seeds to certain people. It works in that example, but it has different premise than how serendipity works. That can finish in the middle after everyone has gotten seeds that you set out to share, but serendipity would continue.
My algorith not have 17 steps, it has half of the steps. Half of the ateps for each package.
The proupose is sharing my melons to the 17 persons on the serendipity?
Why 34? There is only 17 persons?
I share with everybody on the swap, and when the package comes arround I will put seeds for 17 more poeple. In that moment if there are 18 or 30 people on the swap, I will put seeds for those people.
My melon example is a simplification of this algorithm, to explain the system. For the reality is just doing this algorith for the same 17 people in different stages.
I send the packages right and left.
The left is you with you eggplant seeds. You recieve the melon seeds, you get 1kg of melons, and you put 8.5kg of eggplant. You send the package to the left.
Later in the month you recieve the right package with, 0.5kg of fava beans, 1.5kg of sunflower, 2.5 kg of herbs, 3.5 of peppers…, and 8.5 kg of zucchini. You get one kilo of each (except fava, you get 0.5 for now), and put 8.5kg of eggplants.
Next month you recieve the left package again, is completelly different, except for fava you get 0.5kg of fava beans. 1.5kg of tomatoes, 2.5 of brocolly…, 8.5 of radish. In this package you put half again of your eggpants, 8.5kg, you get one kilo each, and sent it to the left.
Both of the packages need to go from end to end (and by default go), otherwise you are doing just half the sharing. Which is why you got only half because you counted both packages until middle and after that terminated.
Not certain people as certain part of serendipity, certain people as fixed number of people and your goal is to send to those. In that kind of example you can have 2 packages that finish in the middle because at the that point everyone has gotten seeds. It doesn’t work with serendipity because both packages keep on moving. There is no fixed termination. You get half the weight, but douple the distance
Yes, but you simplified it so that it doesn’t apply to serendipity as explained above. Calculation has different target.
In the right package you have seeds from half of the persons on the swap. And in the left package you got seeds from the other half persons on the swap.
With this system you get hands on two packages once.
The quantity of the seed that you recieve is more, we do not need to trim the package to two kilos, because the seed that we ship is half.
The seed diversity is separated in two packages, so each package contains half of the diversity.
In a span of 10 months you get one serendipity, and with this system you get one package every 5 months average. In reality 2 packages every 10 month. Some people will recieve very near, and some more apart.
They go end to end, and then comes around again cyclically, but the seeds only need to one time for every person.
Why you want to ship my melon seeds 34 times? It is only necessary to ship 17 times, 17 people on the swap.
With the serendipity package we do not ship it 17 times, at least for myself it has to be shipped 21 times. I am four on the list. I had a go to the package from the 4 persons on the left, and then has to go around again 17 persons. And then I get it again.
When I received the serendipity again later this year, I expect my seeds that I put it there to be gone, all of them. What I have to do If I found them? I have to remove them? Shipping them again is not efficient at all.
Is there with the serendipity? You are going to have a go to the package and that it?
If it takes 10 months to get the package again, that is almost a new year and a new season for me. When I get the package again I have new seeds to share I got pumpkin, okra, broccoli, generation 3 melons, long lasting melons, lettuce cross pollinated, totally different from the past swap.
I suppose that differs, I got some of your melons, I will plant them in between my melons. Those hybrids I will put on the serendipity next time the package comes around. and next year I get some of your melons, and I will cross again with mine.
I was not expecting getting some seeds and that is it. Because of that my system is totally cyclic, and optimized for that, and a lot of other stuff.
We have not talked about what happens with this when there are a new person on the swap. with this system.
I am counting 17 times, because I was counting how much money It cost to ship my seeds to everybody else, with one package and two package. If we are counting how much money the package has to go a round is different.
I was counting one type of seed multiplied by the quantity of it. Every steep the seed decrease reaching zero. Like in the serendipity. 17->0, with my system is 8,5->0, and 8,5->0 for sending the seed.
A round with the serendipity is linear,
1->2->3->4->5->6->7->8->9->10->11->12->13->14->15->16->17->1
With my system is separated in two
This is the part for sending the package to everybody.
1->2->3->4->5->6->7->8->9
1->17->16->15->14->13->12->11->10
This is the part for receiving the package.
10->11->12->13->14->15->16->17->1
9->8->7->6->5->4->3->2->1
So a round should be something like this.
Right package
1->2->3->4->5->6->7->8->9->10->11->12->13->14->15->16->17->1
Left package
1->17->16->15->14->13->12->11->10->9->8->7->6->5->4->3->2->1
Oh, sending my melons cost me half of it, and then I have to add the cost of receiving your melons. So, you are saying is the same price to do a round with my system and the serendipity? Or the cost doubles if I have to send two packages, but we have to pay less because every package is lighter, and then the price is the same?
What we gain with two packages.
Price the same.
Complexity increases.
Seeds arrive faster, sending seeds takes half time to arrive.
Security, if one package is lost, we do not loose everything.
You receive two packages in the same span of time as you receive one from the serendipity
You can get seeds from the right side of the swap faster.
If anybody get both packages you can trim them and make a “basic kit seeds”
Maybe if we get to 40 person swap and everybody still want to be on the swap and it takes 20 month to do a round we need to have another package going around.
What you recommend to improve the actual system?
Making another serendipity 2 with another arrangement on the list.
Making another serendipity for fava beans and Cucurbitaceae ?
I have like 3 varieties that I have not shared yet from my long lasting melons, maybe there are some genes in those already shared seeds. And probably in summer I will have like 8 different new local varieties to share, and a couple more that I bought.
Thinks like:
Sharing seed like making seeds libraries?
Going to markets or conventions and start doing seed swaps there?
That is a great idea. I will do an update on my presentation topic.
They are going cyclical, for the majority of persons on the list they will get the two packages space out in time.
Doing seed stewards from different species?
I’m not sending your melons 34 times, I’m sending the packages 34 times. Like I said your premise is wrong. You have fixed target that you try to extrapolate to whole way of the package by just counting how you can share your melon seeds more efficiently. Your calculations only work for your fixed target, not for an indeterminate target. My correction to your calculations was just way of trying show what would happen, but it’s not really good example to use in any case as it doesn’t apply to serendipity. It breaks from the start when new seeds are added.
What actually happens is when you have 2 packages, one of them will behave just like the one send by it’s own until half way. Imagine with current package, that is about halfway, if second package was sent same time at this point 2 packages would have cost average 2 times, but they would have covered double distance. They would still need to finish to the other end and end up costing same as single package with same time.
Quantity of the seeds would be dependant of what people share, which should be the same overall. If people add all their seeds to one package 1kg is 1 kg, if they add half and half it will still be 1kg total and have the same changes of lasting as if all were added to one.
We certainly wouldn’t need to trim as much if there were 2 packages, but that would imply that less seeds were shared and instead of one package that was kept under 2kg, we could have 2 that are kept under 2kg. That would end up costing more with less seeds shared. Not really what the plan was. If one package is kept under 2kg it would definetely mean that there would be incentive to take seeds faster which would mean less dispersion, but at the same time it would keep it lighter and would cost less to send.
You have just tried to say that it would cost half, end then you say it would cost the same?
It would feel like it, but just initially. Average steps of seeds from person x to person y will be same both ways. We have a saying that, if you turn your face towards someone, you will turn your pack to someone. This is what also happens with 2 packages. Security would be advantage, although still on average loosing all would have about the same change in both cases. Double the distance, double the changes of loosing one of the packages. If loosing all seeds is a worry, then centralized system would better.
Like I said earlier, it’s inherently falty system that everytime you try to fix some aspect or think you have fixed some aspects, you end up making it worse in some other way. That’s why I said centralized would be better in every regard, except possibly the calculation of how the seeds are divided. That would need some system that is fair, but after it’s set up it could be used indevinetely with some miner adjustments as the system is tried. Plus side is that diversity could be maximized when everyone had actual change of getting seeds from everyone. Time would not be issue as whole thing could be done in a month, although it didn’t need to be done. Instead of receiving a package and trying to send it as fast as possible, you would have months until some fix date.
My initial intent was just to correct faulty calculations so that stuff aren’t done based on those. I have nothing against having 2 or more packages circulating, but it shouldn’t be based on a faulty premise. If you want to count pros and cons, then you would need to use actual pros and cons. The more I think each posible improvement, it just seems to lead cons that are easily ignored.
I was more thinking of a european going-to-seed hub where we would all send our seed donations and from where we would distribute. Same as what they are doing in the us. But is takes some logistics to put in place, and is not worth the effort for the moment , we are not numerous enough.
but the rule could be :
- you send your donation of seeds at your own costs, and you send some money along to cover the cots of one 250g shipment back to you (for example)
- then the hub team creates a list of what is available
- seed donators place their “order” and are served first.
- the rest can be put in a late serendipity round, dedicated to those who have not donated seeds but would like to get something.
big work for the “hub team”, but could be a long-term organization. with possibly a change of country every year ofr the hub.
European seed stewards is also a good idea, but I think it would need another discussion thread.
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I was thinking more of trying to copy what they’ve managed to do in the US that each season everyone sends their seed to seed stewards that then try to recombine the seed into individual packets and then send those out to anyone who’d like to get. But I’m sure other people would want to do even other things. The point was that we discuss those things in their own threads to not derail the seed chain.
I’m in a Facebook group for potato true seed. They have a beginners seed train and an advanced seed train. Kenosha potato project is the group.
For the beginners train people donate seeds, mainly the people who do the advanced train. Then there is a sign up post in the group. The seeds are all sent to one person who divides up the seed, collects addresses from the sign up list people, then mails out the seeds. Since potato seed is small, this is easy to do in regular envelopes.
I think it’s a good method. However I really like the (usa) seed train because I can look at everything and just take what I am interested in. If something is already gone then maybe someone will have seeds to share next year. If I’m really wanting something specific then I’m going to buy it anyways.
I’m mostly hoping to share with others. So this is going to be different for what different people want from it.
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Yes, and usually all the work has to be done it has to be done by individual volunteers ans is a lot of effort.
The only problem that I see that I would feel that is lost for the central hub is to make connections with people of the seeds packages. Tell me if I am wrong, with the central hub you receive a envelope with 20 different mixes of seeds, you do not know where that seed comes from, yo do not know what person comes from.
Maybe If Isabelle sending me some sunflower seeds I can tell her how are they are doing for me, I can cross pollinated with my own seeds and give her back next year. You are missing the connection with that other person through the seeds.
Yes, for getting a packet with a lot of diversity is probably a good think to do, but we are not a store or a seed bank we are people and we should not put aside humanity. The connections that we make along the way are worth troubles for sure.
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